On How We Got Here
In May 2022, We closed our little sourdough bakery set in rural eastern North Carolina, sold our house, our belongings and car, and after saying goodbye to our three adult children and other members of our family, left for Sicily, Italy.
the four bags we brought with us.
It was a difficult time to start, full of worry, uncertainty and angst over what might come next for us, two middle-aged, unfinished, aspiring adults brave or stupid enough to move halfway around the world. The struggles we encountered in navigating this new world we had thrust upon ourselves, paled in comparison to the existential struggles of the one we'd left behind. Worry over our children. Fighting back feelings of abandonment, overcoming the colossal change of what the Jungian psychoanalyst James Hollis describes as overwhelmment: the essential powerlessness in the face of our environment.
Heavy stuff, I know. Being partially retired—in addition to powerless—you find an inordinate amount of time on your hands to ponder.
At the center of the reasons for our moving here lies the same search for longing, purpose and place universal to every human being.. It was also a homecoming of sorts—Franca’s father was born in Sicily—and reckoning with the midlife awareness of finitude, the acceptance of which allows everyone, at least in theory, to enter into what is hopefully an extremely authentic attitude about what it means to be alive.
That said, setting aside, briefly, the huge do-over moving to Sicily has offered us in terms of how we eat, what we do with our time, on what and how we spend money, the question still looms of what will happen if and when we learn that it’s not everything we’d imagined? When the luster of paradise fades. All I can say to that is we shall see. Nothing in life is for certain.
If you have similar feelings of family, heritage and what ever else might be saying to you: check it out, see for yourself, then please consider giving us a chance to show you Sicily in a way the guidebooks never could. Up close. Personal. Slow. Even if you’re not up for a move as on grand a scale as ours, you can discover a lot about Sicily, just from seeing it with the right state of mind. At right people .
To learn more about our move to Sicily, I've collected a few essays from our newsletter, The Revelate, on longing, purpose and place. You can dig deeper here.
And if you have Sicilian roots or are you connected to Sicily through marriage and would like help uncovering the places where your ancestors lived and worked, we’re happy to help. We’ll tailor a tour specifically suited to the discovery of your place of origin, complete with as much detail as you desire. We can design your tour based on your interests and your budget. No minimum participation required.
