2020 has been tough. For everyone. And even though I know that we are all entitled to our own struggles, and everything is relative, I can’t ignore the fact that we are extremely fortunate and privileged. We had a warm home during lockdown, and a garden to escape into. We had a park close by for our daily walks. We had friends who kept us sane on weekly Zoom calls. We had plenty of food and no financial worries. But everything has still changed for us.
We haven’t seen our daughter since February, or my family for longer. We lost a beloved family member. And with the pandemic rampant in the US (and no chance for us to get affordable health insurance), we lost our plans for the future. It’s time for us to find our forever home, and we always believed that would be in Florida. But, things change, and if there is one thing that we are really good at… it’s change.
Italy is Mark’s spiritual home. He has been coming to this little family home in the mountains of Emilia-Romagna almost every year since he was a baby. This house is great in the summer, warm days, cool nights, prosecco, porcini, truffles, gluten-free pizzas, and lots of friends, but doesn’t work for the winter. No heat.
A long time ago Mark promised me that we would never live in a cold winter climate again. I waived the promise while we were living in Scotland as we had more important things to worry about, but now I’m reinstating. Our forever home needs to be in a warm climate - so we head south. To Puglia, to Sicily, to the places we hope to discover along the way.
But that’s not the biggest part of the adventure. I’m resistant to the idea of long-term living in Italy since my Italian is… non bene. If we moved here, I want a place that could host our friends and family from around the world. A home that was more than my home, a home for everyone I love. But’s that not all.
Since my twenties, I have dreamed of having a place that in my dreaming I called, “The Art House.” It would be a place to create. My original dream was to open a theatre. A theatre that would also have art on the walls, books on the shelves, music nights, classes, etc… Since we can’t afford a theatre and a forever home, the theatre part had to go, but the desire for a place to create didn’t disappear with it.
We are going on a journey to find the Art House, or as we are now calling it… La Casa D’Arte. A place to create. It will be our forever home. But it will also be a place we share with others. The plan is to hold intimate, bespoke retreats there. Creation retreats. Writer’s retreats, life planning retreats, entrepreneurial retreats, Roam Research retreats. La Casa D’Arte will truly be a place to create.
We decided that it would be fun to document this journey to our ultimate life. So I am going to blog the journey here, and we are going to share the journey on Instagram. If you’d like to join us on our adventure you can follow the journey here on the blog, or use the options below. We’d love to hear your suggestions, feedback, and advice.
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