I want to tell you something that doesn’t always make it into the polished version of this story.
When I finally moved to Italy, it wasn’t the carefully planned, beautifully executed life change it might look like from the outside. I had been dreaming about living here for eighteen years. Eighteen years of visits, of that feeling when the plane landed and everything in me relaxed, of knowing somewhere quietly that this was where I was supposed to be.
But when the move actually happened, it wasn’t because I’d finally found the perfect moment or put the perfect plan in place.
It happened because I was broken.
What it really looked like
I was completely burnt out. Not the kind of tired that a holiday fixes, but the deep, bone-level exhaustion that comes from spending too long in a life that no longer fits. I felt like I was suffocating. Going through the motions of a life I had built carefully and sensibly, that looked perfectly fine from the outside, and feeling absolutely nothing for it on the inside.
The decision to move wasn’t measured or strategic. It was emotional. Urgent. Driven by the feeling that if I didn’t do something different, I was going to disappear entirely into a version of myself I didn’t recognise.
And so somehow, at my lowest ebb, running on empty and feeling more than a little terrified, I changed everything.
I left my job. I sold my house. I moved to Italy.
The part I don’t always talk about
Here’s what I’ve learned since, and why it matters for you.
I made mistakes. Ones I could have avoided entirely if I’d had better information going in. The move was harder and more chaotic than it needed to be, not because moving to Italy is impossible, but because I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
The visa process. The bureaucracy. The income requirements. The things that seem straightforward until you’re in the middle of them and realise you’ve misunderstood something fundamental. I navigated all of it while already running on empty, piecing things together as I went, and it was genuinely tough.
It worked out. I’m here, and I love my life in a way I didn’t know was possible. But I look back and think, that could have been so much smoother.
Why I started running workshops
I didn’t want other women to go through it the way I did.
Not the burnout part, and not the chaotic, underprepared move part either. Because here’s the thing: you don’t have to wait until you’re completely exhausted and desperate before you give yourself permission to want something different. And you don’t have to figure out the practical side of this alone, learning the hard way as you go.
Moving to Italy is absolutely possible. But it works so much better when you go into it with clear, honest information about what it actually involves.
That’s why I created my Italy Move Workshop. It’s a practical, no-nonsense session where I walk you through everything I wish I’d known before I made the move, including the visa options available to non-EU citizens, the income requirements, what to have in place before you apply, and the mistakes that catch most people out.
Not because I want to put you off. Quite the opposite. I want you to be so well-prepared that when you make this move, it goes as smoothly as possible.
If Italy keeps calling you
If you’ve been thinking about this for a while, whether that’s a few months or, like me, the better part of two decades, I want you to know that the thinking is worth taking seriously.
Not as a fantasy. Not as a someday. But as something you could actually plan for, properly and with your eyes open.
The dream is real. The life on the other side of it is real. I’m living it right now, between Rome and Lago di Bracciano, on an ordinary Tuesday that still occasionally stops me in my tracks.
But getting here took more than wanting it. It took understanding how it actually works.
That’s what the workshop is for.
Join the free How to Move to Italy Workshop here
Come and get clear on what this could actually look like for you.