Being grateful doesn't mean it isn't hard

What happened when I moved to France pt. 2 🇫🇷

Hiya 🌊! I’m Lucy from Hype Yourself. Pop your email in to receive a selection of posts from the 52 PR Tips challenge, personal essays and other good things on self-promotion and creative living.

Two years ago, we were crammed into a 50-square-meter mobile home at a French campsite, trying to look professional on Zoom while dodging sunburned campers in speedos. We had sold our London home, but no rental agency would touch us with English payslips.

Our original home purchase stalled, and the current owner didn’t care that we’d uprooted our lives.

School run from the campsite

She was in no rush, so we started looking elsewhere when one day, we spotted our current house on LeBoncoin (the French version of GumTree).

I fell in love with the view.

The house had charm, though it wasn’t exactly my dream home.

Still, with other offers on the table, we got swept up in the frenzy and barely snagged it before it went to auction.

My partner, the co-founder of our children, grew up in Nice and later moved to Cannes—both out of our price range.

We ended up in the Var, in the sticks, but I reassured myself there were places nearby to explore.

(Little video of a thunderstorm from my garden this week)