Sometimes the longest journey we make is not across countries, but back to ourselves.
When we talk about coming home, we usually think of a place. A house, a town, a country. Somewhere familiar waiting for us at the end of a journey.
But over the past few years, I have begun to wonder whether a place can become familiar for reasons we only understand much later.
For as long as I can remember, France has felt strangely familiar to me. As though something within me recognised it long before I understood why.
Years ago, while working in the beauty industry and travelling extensively, a friend took me to a cemetery in the South of France.
At first, I couldn’t understand why we were going there. Yet standing on a quiet hillside, surrounded by old stone tombs overlooking the landscape below, I remember thinking something that has stayed with me ever since:
“I’m going to come here again.”
What struck me was the peace. At the time, I couldn’t explain why it affected me so deeply.
Over the years, I returned to France again and again, sometimes once a year, sometimes twice. Each visit left me feeling lighter and more myself.
This latest journey felt different. I came back with a sense of how I wanted my days to feel, and that feeling stayed with me after the holiday had ended.
The morning walks that once felt like discipline now feel like a natural rhythm. Writing no longer feels like something I have to force. I take more time over food. Slowness no longer feels unproductive, and urgency has begun to loosen its grip.
For years, I thought transformation meant becoming someone new: learning more, doing more, adding more. I had given less thought to what I might already know about myself, or how easily that knowledge could get lost in a busy life.
I’m beginning to pay more attention to it. To the pace at which I think clearly, the work I want to give my time to, and the simple routines I want to keep.
France gave me enough distance to notice these things. Coming home has meant making room for them in everyday life.
