WHOLEHEARTED LIVING - CULTIVATING AN EXPAT LIFE IN EUROPE

One woman's story of leaving the USA to settle in Ecuador and then moving further to settle in Europe where she is buying and renovating an apartment.

INTRO

Today I have the last guest in my series on Cultivating Wholehearted Living - thriving in the second half of life. Christina is an American expat living in Europe. Today she's sharing her story about how this came about and the lessons she learned along the way. Christina has a youtube channel where she posts updates on the renovation of her lovely unit in Chiatura, Georgia and it's fascinating watching the process. 

I'll hand it over to Christina from here....

CHRISTINA'S STORY

I have been enjoying Leanne’s blog, Cresting The Hill, for 3 years, now. I’ve been inspired by her message, that I interpret to mean, cherish your life, and live it on your own terms. Having benefited from all her wisdom, I am honored to have been asked to write a guest post on how I got to this place in my life.

The journey that I’m about to describe is two-fold, in that it is both a spiritual one, and a physical one. I’ll get to the spiritual part in a bit, but first let me tell you about how my husband and I became perpetual travellers for 10 years, which led to buying a historic apartment here in Chiatura, Georgia.

WHEN THE AMERICAN DREAM SOURS

The events that led to our eventual decision to live abroad began in 1999 when we bought a house with my sister in Belfast, Maine. We made an agreement with her when we moved in together that we would split all the bills down the middle, including the mortgage, the utilities, and the renovation costs. The living arrangement between our families didn’t work out and she and her 3 children returned to Virginia the following year.

Since we had relieved my sister of paying her share of the monthly mortgage payments when she left, the next 7 years were a struggle for us. While Tim worked full time as a manager for the US Postal Service and I worked as a teacher for Head start, we made every effort to maintain a good homelife for our 2 children while trying to do renovations on the home in our spare time.

A CHANGE OF LOCATION

Finally, relief came in the summer of 2008, when Tim accepted a job offer for a higher- level position within the Postal Service in Lake Charles, Louisiana. The position included an increase in salary as well as a contract with a re-location company who would be obligated to buy our house as well as pay for our household goods to be moved to Louisiana. In September of 2008, Tim and I and our daughter Sarah got in our car and drove to our new home in Lake Charles, Louisiana. At that time our son Alex had already left home four years before to enlist in the Navy.

After 6 months we realized our move to Louisiana had been a mistake. Tim was working day and night struggling to fix problems at his office that were years in the making. I was unable to find an actual teaching job and ended up working at a daycare facility. Sarah’s new school was so over-crowded and so behind academically that she was unable to take the courses that she was interested in. Since we were so dissatisfied with our new lifestyle we decided that the best thing to do for our family was for Tim to take early retirement from the Postal Service.

THE FIRST STEP OF THE JOURNEY

After doing some research online into where we could live comfortably on a government pension, we discovered that Ecuador had a very low cost of living, a temperate climate, and a beautiful, diverse, landscape. Since the Ecuadorian government was offering pensioners visas to expats for obtaining residency, we decided this would be the perfect country for us to live in.

After Tim signed the retirement paperwork in March of 2009 we began to prepare for our move to Ecuador. We drove to Houston to visit the Ecuadorian Consulate and received our temporary residency visas. We withdrew Sarah from school in Lake Charles and enrolled her in an online school out of Maine. She had only to complete one typing course and she was able to receive her high school diploma before we left for Ecuador. We sold the few pieces of furniture that we had then on June 1st, 2009 with one suitcase each in tow, we flew to Quito, Ecuador.

Ecuador statue
Ecuador
After we had been in Ecuador for 6 months we got our residency visas. Looking back on that time in our lives I think we felt that retirement was supposed to be about settling in somewhere and making a permanent home. After about 9 months in Quito though we became restless and thought we wanted to live in a smaller city, so we moved to Cuenca. For 9 months we resided in Cuenca while still exploring other parts of Ecuador from coastal cities to the Amazon Rain Forest.

EUROPE BECKONS

We loved our time in Ecuador, but after 18 months we realized we were not ready to settle down. We yearned to see more. One day as Tim and I were walking along the river in Cuenca, he asked me how I would feel about traveling in Europe. I was thrilled by the prospect but unsure about whether we could afford it. After doing some research we found that there were many countries we could stay in that were affordable.

In January of 2011 we flew to the States to see our son before we began a perpetual travel lifestyle that would last for 9 years.

visiting Edinborough
visiting Edinborough
This is the part of the story where my spiritual awakening comes in. Right around the time that I turned 50 when we were in Ecuador, I had started to question why since my childhood, I had such low self-esteem. In March of 2011 when we stopped in Washington DC on our way to beginning our European tour, I bought a book called “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron. After having tossed the book aside years before, I was finally determined to do the work that was needed to improve my self-esteem.

A SPIRITUAL EPIPHANY

When we arrived in Budapest, Hungary I began reading and doing the exercises in the book that helped me determine who the enemies of my self-worth were. I also learned that I wasn’t to blame for how I was treated as a child. I learned about morning pages, a type of meditation, that I practice to this day. For the next 9 years as we traveled from country to country, usually staying 3 months in each place, I began feeling better and better about myself and much more confident.

Towards the end of my 50’s I found out from one of my siblings that my mom had disowned me. When I called and tried to talk to her about it she refused to explain why she had done it. I tried to talk to several of my siblings about it but they just blamed me and even hinted that I was being held responsible for how I behaved when I was 20 years old. I knew at that point that to keep my positive feelings of self-worth intact, I would have to break ties with a family that insisted on trying to make me feel bad about myself. It took me a few years to get over what my mom did but through my morning pages I have worked out that I am not in any way responsible for her behavior.

SETTLING IN GEORGIA

In 2018 Tim and I were feeling like we needed to make changes in our perpetual travel lifestyle. The places we were visiting began to look the same. Our 3 month stay in each country became too long. We did some research online about the country Georgia and discovered that we could stay for one year on a tourist visa. At one point, we thought about getting residency, but when the government increased the amount of money we would need we decided against it.

An old photo of the house with our apartment in Chiatura
An old photo of the house with our apartment in Chiatura
We decided to buy a property here in Chiatura, Georgia, instead. We bought an apartment in this historic building in 2019. It needed complete renovation and we worked on it all through the Pandemic in 2020. We moved in last August of 2021. We’re still doing some sanding and painting, but living here is saving us the money that we’ll use to continue with a different sort of a travel lifestyle. When more countries open their borders we’ll be able to go where we want for a shorter length of time and have a home to come back to.

Just as my travel journey will continue, so will my spiritual one that will lead me to becoming the best version of myself - a carefree, confident woman living a life of good intention.

RELATED POSTS


Meet Christina

One woman's story of leaving the USA to settle in Ecuador and then moving further to settle in Europe where she is buying and renovating an apartment.

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Cresting the Hill - a blog for Midlife (Middle Aged / 50+) women who want to thrive
One woman's story of leaving the USA to settle in Ecuador and then moving further to settle in Europe where she is buying and renovating an apartment.

52 comments

  1. Hi Leanne and Christina, I have been following along with both of you for years too and have enjoyed the stories of Christina's travels and subsequent homes. What brave decisions and thinking outside the square to get to where you are now and what you've done is nothing short of amazing! Thanks so much for sharing your story with us and showing your 'journeys' and insights learnt along the way. All the best for your future!

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    1. Hi Deb. I found that writing this post was very cathartic, in that it allowed me to look back on my past without regrets, but rather with a new perspective, on what we went through. The best part is that it got us to where we are now. Thank you so much for reading my post. xx Christina Daggett

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    2. Hi Deb - I've loved Christina and Cheryl's adventures too - both midlife women living in countries that speak a different language - crazy! But they're flourishing and thriving and I'm a tad jealous. I'm living vicariously through Christina's apartment reno.

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  2. Hi, Leanne - Thank you for introducing us to Christine. She has definitely made some brave decisions. And, she has made me a tad nostalgic for expat life!

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    1. Thank you so much for reading my post! Though I'm loving our new home, I'm itchy to travel again! We're going to finish a few more things on the apartment, then we'll be off again. I haven't stayed connected withe the blogging world, but plan to visit your blog very soon. Christina Daggett

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    2. Hi Donna - expats always inspire me - living in a new country, coping with a new culture, different language, different currency etc etc. I love the adventure of it all and wish I was a bit braver sometimes.

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  3. What a wonderful way to use retirement to expand your horizons!

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    1. I'm always so envious of people who are happy to pull up stakes and set off on an adventure Joanne. Christina has taken it to a whole new level!

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    2. Hi Joanne. I am just loving this life! Now we're beginning the second phase of this travel lifestyle, and I can't wait! Thank you so much for reading my post.

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  4. Wow. Georgia must be quite a culture shock (or does that just show how little i know about Georgia?)

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    1. I knew nothing as well Lydia - had to google it and also mention that it was the one in Europe - not the one in the USA!

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    2. Hi Lydia. Georgia is not so very different from the other places we've traveled to, in the last 10 years. They have great food, wine, and a beautiful, mountainous landscape. Best of all, they have a very low cost of living, which enabled us to buy a property here. Also we can stay here, one year, on a tourist visa. Thank you so much for reading my post!

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  5. What a story! Some brave decisions made & from the perspective of hindsight you must look back in awe. I really should drag The Artist's Way out again and actually work through it rather than cherry pick at it.

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    1. I was thinking the same thing about The Artist's Way Jo - maybe I need to buy it for myself for Christmas and see what it is that so many women have discovered and I might be missing out on!

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    2. Hi Jo. It's nice to have those photos, from all the places we've been, because sometimes, I forget. I carried the Artist's Way, while traveling, for a long time. Finally I gave it to my daughter, who was also changed forever, from reading it. Now I'm planning to get it for my Kindle. I think it would be interesting to do the exercises, again, and see where I am now. Thank you so much for reading my post!

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  6. Oh wow, I really love Christina's honesty and openness about the decisions they've made and why some have worked and others haven't but also the reflection on each and it seems there's a recognition they wouldn't have had the incredibly journey they've had if not for some of those decisions. I think sometimes we make a decision thinking it's 'forever' or right, but we soon realise it wasn't.

    I've read The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron as well. I've not been great at working through the whole book though enjoyed doing the morning pages and probably should start them again.

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    1. I love reading overviews of other women's life journeys Deb - the choices that wound their way through and brought the person to somewhere new. I think we all assume that our lives will be very linear, but often they're much more divergent and circuitous than we ever would have expected.

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    2. Hi. The first time that I tried to read The Artist's Way, years ago, when I was still working, I just wasn't ready to be open, and let memories come flooding back. When we started our European tour, I was 52, and ready to start the recovery process. Give the book a try. You won't be sorry. Thank you so much for reading my post! Christina Daggett

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  7. Hi Christina, nice to see you here. I recall reading some of your story, but then I lost track of you. I will visit your blog today and get caught up. I do have a couple of things that I am curious about. Did buying the property in Georgia help with permanent residency status or are you still working on that? Also, after Ecuador, what happened to your daughter?

    I worked through the Artist's Way many years ago and continued the 'morning pages' for years. It was a great guide to accessing the inner-self and although painful at times, it was quite revealing. I'm glad it opened up your spiritual journey.

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    1. Hi Suzanne - it's been wonderful having Christina as a guest - I find her story fascinating and I'm becoming quite curious about the Artist's Way too :)

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    2. Hi Suzanne. It's so great to connect with you, again! I didn't do much in the way of blogging, during the pandemic, since we weren't traveling, but I do have a YouTube channel, where I've documented our renovation process. I'm going to find your blog as well, and get acquainted again. Thank you so much for reading my post!

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    3. Hi Suzanne. Looking back, I realized that I hadn't answered a couple of questions, that you had. We are allowed to stay in Georgia, for one year, with a tourist visa. After the year, we only have to leave the country, for a day, then we can come right back. We did start the residency process, but the Georgian government changed the amount of money needed, to obtain residency, so we decided not to pursue it. Our daughter, Sarah, initially stayed behind, in Ecuador, but later joined us in Europe. Now, she is married, and lives with her husband, and baby girl, in the Netherlands. I'm going to try and connect with you, today. Christina Daggett

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  8. The Artist's Way is an old friend of mine also and I still do the morning pages. Love your story, Christina, I also pulled up stakes 25 years ago and moved to my island home. Still love the ocean view. My early morning walk always gives me prompts fot the blog I write.

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    1. Hi Judith - It really intrigues me when I read about people moving to new places and creating new lives for themselves. I guess we did that to a smaller degree when we moved to the country when our kids were small - they were my motivation for the move, so when I see others do it later in life I think it's even more interesting.

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    2. Hi Judith. Your Island home sounds incredible! I'm going to check out your blog. Thank you so much for reading my post! Christina Daggett

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  9. Gosh I admire your determination and sense of adventure. My husband and I are now in our early 70s and we did similar moves all around our state of NSW in Australia in our 20s, teaching in remote places and having many stories to share later. Now we have moved again in our late 60s , this time one of necessity and to save money. The money thing has not worked as the real estate market here in our part of Australia has skyrocketed in covid times. Nevertheless, we are content in our 50+years relationship, but our family live in the city so we see them less, and the biggest thing that challenged us in recent years was my oral cancer diagnosis. For that I am very glad to be 2 hours away from the best health professionals. I applaud your sense of adventure, I am saddened by the family relationship challenges, and sad to say, I found Morning Pages FAR too hard to handwrite when I gave it a go in 2016 but know many like yourself who love it. Thanks Leanne for sharing this story. Great to catch up with your blog post after linking it to #LifeThisWeek on Denyse Whelan Blogs. Next week, hard to believe, is the 2nd last Monday link up for 2021.
    Hope to see you then! I will be sharing my snaps. Denyse.

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    1. Hi Denyse. I've been keeping journals, and writing them in long-hand, since I was a kid. It's so much easier for me to put my thoughts together, that way. The morning pages become a more meditative process by writing them long-hand. I've read your story as well, and I think you are an incredibly, brave soul. I'm looking forward to reading your blog again. Thanks so much, for reading my post! Christina Daggett

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    2. Hi Denyse - one of the great things about blogging has been meeting so many women who have lived interesting lives. All different, but so many challenges faced and conquered - and then the growth that comes from beating the odds. I love how we're all thriving in our own ways and are benefitting from the lessons along the way.

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  10. Thanks, Christina, for sharing this wonderful story! You zest for life and adventure is truly admirable. Travel is a great way of learning and broadening one's outlook of our world and this life. I am glad that you and Tim could take an early retirement and look at life in your own terms.

    Family relationships are always a challenge. It's better to be associated with people who have positive influence on us. They may be our family or friends. But what matters is the strength of the relationship, and not if one bonded by blood or not.

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    1. Hi Pradeep - wise words indeed about family. Just because we came from the same bloodline doesn't automatically guarantee we'll see life the same way - and it takes a long time to realize that it's okay to move on from those who continually hurt our hearts. I'm so glad to see Christina living her best life despite the lack of love her family has shown towards her in the lead up to her life in Georgia.

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    2. Hi Pradeep- Thank you so much for your kind and encouraging words. You are so right about the travel. It's given me such a broad perspective, and healed my soul in such an incredible way! Thank you so much for reading my post. Christina Daggett

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  11. Thank you Leanne and Christina for sharing this story. I have read Christina's blog, so it was nice to get the background story and understand better how you made your way to Georgia. I am glad that you have found and embraced healing and growth. I am awed by your courage, both in exploring the world and your own spirit. Thanks again for sharing your story with us.

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    1. Hi Christie. It's great to connect with you again. Thank you so much for reading my story! I'm headed over to check out your blog.

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    2. Hi Christie - I've been fascinated by Christina's story from the first blog post of her's that I read - and I found this post interesting too because she shares some of her personal growth and how it tied in with their decision making process. I envy her adventurous spirit!

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  12. I'm fascinated by stories of Americans living the expat life in retirement. I still have about 8 years to go, but I'm already thinking about what I want that phase of my life to look like. Thank you for sharing your adventures! Your story is inspiring.

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    1. Hi Janet. It was an absolute pleasure sharing my story, and getting to know all of you, through your kind and thoughtful comments. Thank you so much for reading my post, and I hope you will also find your retirement dream.

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    2. Expats are so interesting aren't they Janet? I would love to be that brave - and it obviously runs in the family seeing Christina's daughter is now living in the Netherlands. I feel like it's the Midlife version of running away to join the circus - so exciting!

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  13. Thank you, Christina, for sharing your story. I'll visit your YouTube channel soon. I recall reading your blog around the time your started your home renos. It's good to have a base and travel in Europe. Have a happy and healthy holiday season! Thank you Leanne for linking this post with #weekendcoffeeshare.

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    1. Hi Natalie. It's great to connect with you again! Though this renovation has presented quite a few challenges, lately, I am grateful to have this base to travel from. Thank you so much for reading my post. I'm going to pop over and check out your blog.

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    2. Hi Natalie - I've loved watching the renovations Christina's been doing - it's all so high end and in keeping with the age and history of the apartment - and it must be such a joy for them seeing it all coming together at last.

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    1. It was such a fascinating one wasn't it Maria?

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  15. Hi Maria- Thank you for reading my post. It was such a pleasure to write. Christina Daggett

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  16. How very interesting to read Christina's story! It's always interesting to learn about other people's moving-abroad experiences, the why and the how and how everything worked out. But I'm ashamed to say I had to look up Georgia on a map! I didn't know it was a part of Europe. Thanks for sharing!

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    1. Hi Susanne. Don't feel bad. Even after we started our travels in Europe, we didn't know about Georgia. It wasn't until around 20018, that we discovered information about this beautiful country. I hope you'll check out my blog and videos, if you are interested in learning more about Georgia. Thank you so much for reading my post! Christina Daggett

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    2. Hi Susanne - I didn't know there was a Georgia in Europe either - I'd only heard of the one in the USA - that's why I was careful to mention where Christina was in the bigger picture - that she'd moved across the world - not just across the country!

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  17. Wow. My husband and I are thinking about living abroad when we retire. I am so sorry to hear that the out-of-state move did not work out for you. I know my husband fantasizes about moving out-of-state, but I hear problems like me not being able to find a job in my profession or my husband getting let go.

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    1. Hi Julie. I assume you are living in the States right now. I know things are really difficult, with the current state of affairs. If I had to move back to the States, I would live in Florida. Governor DeSantas seems to be doing a great job, maintaining the civil rights of Florida's residents. Happy Holidays, and thank you so much for reading my post!

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    2. It's such a tricky stage of life isn't it Julie? We struggle with wanting adventure but balancing it with letting go of what we know and feel safe with. I think that's why I always admire people like Christina who take the plunge and do such a big life change.

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  18. Hi Christina, I love your story, as you already know. :-) What frustrates me these days is that we're so close now, geographically, to each other - but so far! Hopefully one day we'll be able to get together and have the much awaited chat that we are both looking forward to. Thanks Leanne, for featuring Christina on your blog. Merry Christmas to you both! xx

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    1. Hi Cheryl - I love that I've had both of you here as guests because you both lead such fascinating lives - the spirit of adventure is so strong in the two of you. I hope you manage to catch up with each other next year - it'd make a fantastic blog post and you'd have SO much to talk about! x Merry Christmas!

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  19. Hi Cheryl. I'm hoping that once we get our second jab, that we'll be able to travel within the EU. I'd love to get together, in Bulgaria, someday soon. I'm going to look up the restrictions, in Bulgaria, and see if we can travel there, once we've had the vaccine. Thank you so much for reading my post, Dear friend, and have a wonderful holiday! Christina Daggett

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Thanks so much for your comment - it's where the connection begins.