There’s a version of this story that circulates online, and I think it does a lot of women a disservice.
Moving to Italy is not a magic fix. It will not solve your problems, cure your burnout, or automatically make everything feel aligned. And if that’s what you’re quietly hoping for, I say that with real kindness, because I understand that hope completely.
But here’s what it will do.
It will show you exactly who you are. And that, it turns out, is where everything actually changes.
The version you see online
When people imagine moving to Italy, whether they’re dreaming from a rainy street in London or a busy city in the States, they picture sunlight on old buildings, long lunches with nowhere to be, slow mornings and beautiful views. That life exists. I’ve lived those moments and I’m living them still, here between Rome and Lago di Bracciano.
But what doesn’t make it onto Instagram is everything else that comes with it.
What nobody tells you about moving abroad
Moving abroad doesn’t remove your problems. It removes your distractions.
The routines you relied on, the identity you’d spent years building, the environment that held everything in its familiar place: all of that falls away. And what you’re left with, whether you were expecting it or not, is yourself.
That’s the part nobody really talks about when they write about expat life in Italy.
During my first year here, I felt completely alive and deeply uncertain at the same time. Proud of myself one minute and questioning everything the next. Moving abroad in midlife means more than changing your location. You step out of everything that made you feel like you knew who you were.
Your support network disappears overnight. Your professional identity no longer means anything in a new country. Your sense of being competent and capable takes a real knock. Things that once felt effortless suddenly take real effort, simple tasks take longer, and you don’t always understand how things work here.
That can be genuinely confronting.
The identity shift no one prepares you for
Back home, I knew who I was. I had a career, experience, a clear place in the world. Italy asked me to rebuild all of that from the ground up, not practically, but emotionally.
Because when you strip everything familiar away, you’re left with a question that feels uncomfortable and important in equal measure.
Who am I without all of this?
Sitting with that question is not easy. But it’s also where the real growth happens. For many women experiencing burnout in midlife, it’s a question that was always there, quietly waiting to be asked.
Why Italy will not rescue you
This matters, so I want to say it plainly.
Italy is not a solution to burnout. It won’t make an unhappy life happy, and it won’t automatically bring you into alignment with yourself. If anything, it amplifies what’s already there. The things you’ve been avoiding become harder to ignore when all the noise and distraction of your old life goes quiet.
Feeling disconnected? You’ll feel it more clearly here. Unsure of yourself? That will surface quickly.
But if you face all of that honestly, something shifts. Something that wouldn’t have shifted if you’d stayed exactly where you were.
What Italy gave me instead
Italy didn’t fix my life. But it gave me space to think, time to reset, and distance from the version of life that had stopped fitting. Within that space, I started to rebuild. More slowly, more honestly, and more in line with who I was actually becoming rather than who I thought I was supposed to be.
That’s not a small thing. That’s everything.
The beauty and the reality, side by side
Genuine beauty exists in expat life in Italy. The lifestyle, the food, the culture, the pace of daily life: all of it is real and I am grateful for it every single day.
But frustration with bureaucracy that makes no sense also exists here. Language barriers leave you feeling like a child. Loneliness creeps in at unexpected moments. Doubt surfaces on the hard days, and going back starts to feel like the easier option.
Both things exist here at the same time. You deserve to know that before you make this decision, not to put you off, but because understanding the full picture is what allows you to prepare properly.
Why preparation matters more than most people realise
The women I see thriving here are not the ones who came chasing an escape. They came knowing why they wanted this, ready for the reality rather than the aesthetic, and with enough preparation to build a real life rather than a fantasy.
That preparation makes an enormous difference.
Moving to Italy as a non-EU citizen requires real planning, whether you’re coming from the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, or anywhere else outside the European Union. Understanding your visa options is where most people get stuck. The Italy elective residency visa, one of the most popular routes for those with passive income or savings, requires proof of around €31,000 per year, private health insurance, and confirmed accommodation. The Italy digital nomad visa, which allows remote workers to live here legally, carries its own set of income and employment requirements. These are not things you can figure out once you’ve already arrived.
Knowing your financial position, choosing the right location, and giving yourself a realistic timeline to settle in: these are what turn a stressful, chaotic move into one that actually works.
The honest truth about how my own move happened
I moved to Italy in 2023 after dreaming about it for eighteen years.
But when it finally happened, careful planning had nothing to do with it. Total burnout drove that decision. The feeling of suffocating in a life I no longer wanted. Being so exhausted and so broken that staying felt more impossible than leaving.
Mistakes followed. The move was harder and messier than it needed to be, and most of that came down to not knowing what I didn’t know. As a former languages teacher who had spent years travelling across Italy, I thought I understood the country. Living here turned out to be a completely different education.
It worked out. I’m here, and my life feels more like mine than it ever has. But with the right information going in, so much of that difficulty could have been avoided.
Why I started running workshops
You shouldn’t have to figure this out the hard way.
Arriving in another country feeling overwhelmed and underprepared is not the start anyone deserves. And waiting until you’re completely burnt out before giving yourself permission to want something different isn’t necessary either.
Starting over in Italy is absolutely possible. For women in midlife who are ready for a second chapter, it can be genuinely life-changing. Going into it with clear, honest information about what it actually involves makes all the difference, regardless of where in the world you’re moving from.
My free workshop is for women seriously considering moving to Italy as a non-EU citizen. Together we cover the visa options, the income requirements, what to have in place before you apply, and the mistakes that are entirely avoidable with the right information.
It’s the conversation I wish someone had had with me before I made the move.
Save your place on the free workshop here
Moving to Italy didn’t fix my life.
But it gave me the space to rebuild it. And sometimes that is exactly what you need. Not a perfect solution, not a guarantee. A different place to begin again, with your eyes open this time.
