I don’t often write down my thoughts when i read your truly honest depictions of life as you see it. This time i had a thought about living from the inside out. I’m 69 end of January and i’ve had a wonderful career, a brilliant daughter ( some context) and what occurs to me is that having a rich life ( in human terms) means being involved with what brings us joy. For me it’s been serving others, bringing people together, singing with quality singers, being with my daughter, gardening, writing, reading, being in France, and the list goes on. By being conscious about our needs, bodies, minds etc. we become true to ourselves and it’s the present moment that matters. Of course it takes focus and personal discipline which i know you have plenty of to be able to write to us as you do.
Oh how I love your post Karen, it's gentle & meaningful. Your honesty and openness hits home as you shared what you have been feeling which is an honor to receive, merci. Discovering your playfulness doesn't surprise me because I always feel that when I read your posts, you always make me laugh. Your playfulness is always there but maybe it was hiding under a lid of pressure as you described. I've been in creativity mode since the end of 2025 so I guess thats my word for 2026. I hope I can extend it while planning my move to France because thats how I receive France, as a creative place, but that may just be my own perspective (I dunno). I wish you so much joy in your play and thank you so much for your beautiful heart!!!!! Bonne 2026 à vous! (I probably didn't spell that correctly 🤷🏻♀️)~~ Jane
Jane- it’s Sharon who just wrote to Karen. I want to spend 6 mos/year in France. I did this in Nice in 2025. Where are you going? Anything i can do to help? Phone#415.717.7182.
Hi Sharon, I will give you a call tomorrow if thats ok? I’m winding down here on the east coast and trying not to freak out about the pending storm. Going to meditate/quiet my brain…
Hi Karen, this is another warm, refreshing and honest post 💗 I love the idea of playfulness… I need more of this. I recently created a 2026 vision board for the first time in my life – a lot of which relates to my career – so watch this space! I’m an autoentrepreneur and sometimes it’s exhausting having to do everything myself, but I’m propelling myself forward. Wishing you a fun and playful 2026 🥳
Oh that's great that you made a vision board. I really find it inspiring. Yes, we'll be watching to see what you're up to! And as a lifelong entrepreneur, I feel your pain. Whyyy do we have to do everything ourselves haha 🤷♀️ 😂 I will offer up that question I like to pose sometimes--"What if it didn't have to be hard?" I read that somewhere and when I'm feeling weighed down by it all it seems to help--wishing you a MARVELOUS, energizing and joyful 2026 🥂💕
Play feels like such a generous choice for yourself this year. There’s freedom in letting curiosity lead before outcomes get involved. I love how your journal became a living space instead of another thing to perfect. It reads like permission to explore without pressure.
A lot of what you're saying in this post is resonating with me. We are in the middle of moving to France (Tarn/Aveyron region). We are actually already in France; our home in the Netherlands was sold, so we had to leave. We are waiting on the 'notaire' to finish the documents for our new home - that process did already start in June last year, so we're getting a bit anxious now.
Normally, I would have already decided upon my word for the year ahead. Things like growth, new beginnings and the like come to mind. But these words also make me shiver a bit. I feel the pressure of their deeper meaning. Your choice for 'play' seems more adequate, and I might adapt to that as well. Play, as in finding a creative way to melt my professional life into our new life in France. Not forgetting about my quality standards, but loosening up a bit, and giving myself more time to adjust and find a new rhythm. And in addition, we will be starting a gîtes business. To reduce the pressure on that project, we have already decided to see 2026 as a sort of gap year. We will host some people while we are still working on the (minor) renovations, and 2027 will be the year of our full business launch. I think it will be fun 'playing' with all our ideas for business and our 'nouvelle vie'.
Bonne chance for you, getting your new career in action!
Carla, thank you so much for this great message, and congrats on your move--bienvenue en France 🇫🇷
Wow, you do have a lot going on but your gîtes business sounds fantastic and also renovating a new home--there is so much you can do creatively. I agree wholeheartedly with your "slow launch" where you take this year to experiment, play, and have as much fun with it as you can as you get everything ready for 2027. Just hearing about it makes me very excited for your next chapter. I'm wishing you all the very best and hope to hear more about your progress as the year unfolds❣️
Thanks Karen🙏🏻 I do post about our move on my Insta @ktdcarla and on my blog https://kitchentablediary.wordpress.com/ (which I might move to Substack later this year).
I love the way you’re choosing play as a way back into yourself and your creativity. It takes so much pressure off and opens space for curiosity instead of self-demand. The journal idea feels so alive and personal, like a place where ideas can breathe before they have to become anything. That kind of gentleness with ambition is such a gift.
Reinvention is a fantastic word! Also, yes I couldn't help myself. Dang just wanted to be there on the page hahaha--but I know you understand. And I just love knowing that I make you laugh. It means everything! We gotta have fun 😎
I too have been focused on growing and honoring my creativity lately. I even started a Creativity Club and began hosting retreats at my home where we play with creativity in different ways from various angles. After reading The Creative Act last year, I now use it as a centering start to each day by opening to a random page and reading the passage that shows up. My word this year is flow. Love that it showed up in the artist's video you posted.
I love your Word of the year and think it is so key to our creative practice—it’s really everything. It’s when the source sweeps us up and we feel the current and then we feel ourselves becoming part of it.
And yes, the book is so perfect for a daily practice — wishing you the best for your creative workshops—where are you in the world?
Hi Karen! I love your word too; these are times when we need to cultivate a little playfulness.
You touched on something that I find oddly absent from the French expat Substack-verse: what the hell to do with one's life professionally? It seems that a lot of people moving here now are either retired, or carrying over a totally distance-friendly job -- although who knows what will remain "distance-friendly" in the coming years...?
There are definitely ups and downs to moving abroad; in my case the first five years had way more downs than ups. Hold on, you're almost to that five-year mark!
Betty, thank you so much. This encouragement coming from you means a lot❣️
Yes, it seems to be true that many transplants to France are working remotely or (luckily) not concerned about a real French-centric occupation.
Nothing wrong with that, but I do want to shift my energy and output to Europe since I’m permanently here and here all year-round and forever 😂. And I’m not at all ready to stop creating something good, or as some people call it, working! Haha
I hope and believe this year will be interesting because, related to what you said, I’m now four years in and I can deal with a bit more ☺️
I just can’t tell you how much I appreciate your kind words, knowing that you’ve been through it yourself and made a beautiful life here 😘😘
Oh and also, guess what? You actually did inspire me to turn part of one of my many notebooks into a type of mini "vision board," maybe not so much "vision" as "inspiration" or even just "interest." I spent some time this morning cutting up an old Saveurs magazine from 2002 and ended up with a map of France and its different cow breeds, a picture of sucrine lettuce, a quotation about Bordeaux, and more. I glued them in and scribbled down a few thoughts or questions with Faber-Castell pencils, and just left it at that. It was extremely satisfying. I've never done anything quite like that! Thank you for the idea!
This makes me so happy! And I agree--there is just something about cutting out pictures and words and sticking them in a little book. I've been looking at mine every day and adding things in. I even bought a random magazine yesterday just to cut it up. Also I love sucrine ! And I sometimes fold the pictures, just gluing one quarter or half to the page so I have to unfold them when I open the journal and that is like a little fun mystery activity that delights me every time 😂
Well, I quickly got channeled into teaching English, as I had been a teacher in the USA. I had hoped that the change of country might also lead to a change of career, but that didn’t happen. But there were other factors involved. (I’m in fact going to talk about that on my next live in mid-February.)
You have the advantage of living in Paris where there are a lot of English-speakers, tourists, big companies, etc. I’m sure your past experience and your creative side will lead to something somewhere, or working for yourself in some capacity!
I really liked this : (Caps are mine) "as you explore and go forward into seeing that you Have done something, that you Can do something. The act of playing removes the obstacles we’ve put between us and everything we want. It brings delight, creates Confidence and lets us get to know what we’re working with".
It may help me tackle something I've been procrastinating about because, what if it didn't work out...
Salut Karen, Lovely post. Fellow American, living in France, and trying not to let the news noise ruin my creativity. Such a challenge these days!! I am doing Jessica's watercolor challenge, and it's so much fun! My first time picking up a brush. My favorite hobby is to putter! LOL Putter in the garden, putter in the kitchen, and putter on paper! My word is, well, it's s two words: To Be. After 35 years in the restaurant business, it's hard not to feel like you need TO BE doing something! Living in France is a wonderful experience of doing just that! Bonne Sante! Sara
So good “To Be” brava ❣️oh I wanted to do the challenge but felt I was too late to start—but maybe I will!! I too love to putter about and wander around ha !
Also I was in the restaurant biz for many years in NYC—where were you?
I’m so happy to get your message— how lovely to be connected ❣️🥂
Oh mon dieu! So many places! A couple of short stints in Colorado and Wyoming as a ski-crazed youngster working at night in restaurants, which got the addiction started! Then on to Atlanta, Phoenix, Chicago, Lake Tahoe, Santa Fe, and finished up in Asheville and the surrounding mountain towns in North Carolina. My husband and I owned four restaurants there and bought a farm! Kinda mind-boggling when I think about it. Although I do believe it prepared me for the big move to France!!
Play! Jouer! Ah, oui, C'est si important! Bonjour Karen. Merci for reminding us of that--everything doesn't have to have a goal, an end result that our society defines as "success."
We can be successful as creative beings in whatever we choose--music, art, n'import quoi, n'est-ce pas. Whatever feeds our soul; and that can translate into bringing happiness to others as well. Now that I'm living part-time in the beautiful Mexican town of San Miguel de Allende, even riding the bus is joyful. I'm setting up a painting studio in my new apartment and loving returning to this art-form, setting writing books aside for awhile--maybe forever, as what moves me now is the brush on the canvas! Merci comme toujours pour partager votre chemin du coeur avec nous.
I’m so excited for you! I’ve heard how lovely and creative a town is San Miguel and it sounds dreamy—how fabulous that you’re doing this now!
And yes, we can be fulfilled just through the joy of creating, of noticing, of being with beauty and nature. If we also add that spirit of play, of pure exploration, I think we’re really on to something. I’m wishing you every happiness on your new adventure and hope you’ll post some photos of your new studio soon 🎨👩🎨💕
Ah, au fond personnel je vais bien--mais, vis-a-vis le pays USA, je suis tres déprimé! En fait, mon mari et moi, nous avons acheté une nouvelle maison, actually a duplex, en San Miguel de Allende, Karen. It's lovely! I've missed the last two or three months of reading your marvelous newsletter because we have been so busy, buying furniture at estate sales, settling in, advertising for a renter for the upstairs apartment, explaining to our kids why it's not crazy to buy a house in Mexico in our eighties, and so on!
I was thrilled to open La Flaneuse, aujourd'hui! And will read on--toujours merveilleux!
Dear Karen,
I don’t often write down my thoughts when i read your truly honest depictions of life as you see it. This time i had a thought about living from the inside out. I’m 69 end of January and i’ve had a wonderful career, a brilliant daughter ( some context) and what occurs to me is that having a rich life ( in human terms) means being involved with what brings us joy. For me it’s been serving others, bringing people together, singing with quality singers, being with my daughter, gardening, writing, reading, being in France, and the list goes on. By being conscious about our needs, bodies, minds etc. we become true to ourselves and it’s the present moment that matters. Of course it takes focus and personal discipline which i know you have plenty of to be able to write to us as you do.
Wishing you lots of joy going forward. 🦋
Hello Sharon, thank you for this wonderful and inspiring note that I know will help all of us to appreciate what really matters 💐
I love the idea of living from the inside out and we all need a reminder about being present here and now 💕
Saw your message when I was drinking my first cup of coffee and your thoughts will stay with me
Also happy early birthday to you 🎉🥂😘
Oh how I love your post Karen, it's gentle & meaningful. Your honesty and openness hits home as you shared what you have been feeling which is an honor to receive, merci. Discovering your playfulness doesn't surprise me because I always feel that when I read your posts, you always make me laugh. Your playfulness is always there but maybe it was hiding under a lid of pressure as you described. I've been in creativity mode since the end of 2025 so I guess thats my word for 2026. I hope I can extend it while planning my move to France because thats how I receive France, as a creative place, but that may just be my own perspective (I dunno). I wish you so much joy in your play and thank you so much for your beautiful heart!!!!! Bonne 2026 à vous! (I probably didn't spell that correctly 🤷🏻♀️)~~ Jane
Bonne année Jane ! Your spelling is great, but you can of course “tutoyer” me, which means you can say “toi” instead of “vous” 😃
Your message means so much to me, and I love your word too. It’s great that you both ended 2025 and flowed into 2026 in the flow of creativity
I know what you mean and I also see France as a great place of creativity where artists and artisans are truly respected—I feel very inspired here.
You must be so excited planning your move—a brand new chapter in a magnificent country 🇫🇷💕💕
Jane- it’s Sharon who just wrote to Karen. I want to spend 6 mos/year in France. I did this in Nice in 2025. Where are you going? Anything i can do to help? Phone#415.717.7182.
Hi Sharon, I will give you a call tomorrow if thats ok? I’m winding down here on the east coast and trying not to freak out about the pending storm. Going to meditate/quiet my brain…
Hi Karen, this is another warm, refreshing and honest post 💗 I love the idea of playfulness… I need more of this. I recently created a 2026 vision board for the first time in my life – a lot of which relates to my career – so watch this space! I’m an autoentrepreneur and sometimes it’s exhausting having to do everything myself, but I’m propelling myself forward. Wishing you a fun and playful 2026 🥳
Oh that's great that you made a vision board. I really find it inspiring. Yes, we'll be watching to see what you're up to! And as a lifelong entrepreneur, I feel your pain. Whyyy do we have to do everything ourselves haha 🤷♀️ 😂 I will offer up that question I like to pose sometimes--"What if it didn't have to be hard?" I read that somewhere and when I'm feeling weighed down by it all it seems to help--wishing you a MARVELOUS, energizing and joyful 2026 🥂💕
Such a great question....I'm going to have to remember this next time I'm feeling overwhelmed 💞🥳
💕💕
Merci Karen- always inspirational!
Merci Susan ! 💕🌸
Play feels like such a generous choice for yourself this year. There’s freedom in letting curiosity lead before outcomes get involved. I love how your journal became a living space instead of another thing to perfect. It reads like permission to explore without pressure.
Yes! And wouldn’t you know it, I’m opening my journal with much more of a sense of fun and delight each day with just that reframing ☺️
Hi Karen,
A lot of what you're saying in this post is resonating with me. We are in the middle of moving to France (Tarn/Aveyron region). We are actually already in France; our home in the Netherlands was sold, so we had to leave. We are waiting on the 'notaire' to finish the documents for our new home - that process did already start in June last year, so we're getting a bit anxious now.
Normally, I would have already decided upon my word for the year ahead. Things like growth, new beginnings and the like come to mind. But these words also make me shiver a bit. I feel the pressure of their deeper meaning. Your choice for 'play' seems more adequate, and I might adapt to that as well. Play, as in finding a creative way to melt my professional life into our new life in France. Not forgetting about my quality standards, but loosening up a bit, and giving myself more time to adjust and find a new rhythm. And in addition, we will be starting a gîtes business. To reduce the pressure on that project, we have already decided to see 2026 as a sort of gap year. We will host some people while we are still working on the (minor) renovations, and 2027 will be the year of our full business launch. I think it will be fun 'playing' with all our ideas for business and our 'nouvelle vie'.
Bonne chance for you, getting your new career in action!
Carla, thank you so much for this great message, and congrats on your move--bienvenue en France 🇫🇷
Wow, you do have a lot going on but your gîtes business sounds fantastic and also renovating a new home--there is so much you can do creatively. I agree wholeheartedly with your "slow launch" where you take this year to experiment, play, and have as much fun with it as you can as you get everything ready for 2027. Just hearing about it makes me very excited for your next chapter. I'm wishing you all the very best and hope to hear more about your progress as the year unfolds❣️
Thanks Karen🙏🏻 I do post about our move on my Insta @ktdcarla and on my blog https://kitchentablediary.wordpress.com/ (which I might move to Substack later this year).
I love the way you’re choosing play as a way back into yourself and your creativity. It takes so much pressure off and opens space for curiosity instead of self-demand. The journal idea feels so alive and personal, like a place where ideas can breathe before they have to become anything. That kind of gentleness with ambition is such a gift.
So beautifully said, thank you for taking the time to share this ❣️
Of course you wrote the word “dang.” You make me giggle! 🤭 my word of 2026 is reinvention. It fits perfectly.
Reinvention is a fantastic word! Also, yes I couldn't help myself. Dang just wanted to be there on the page hahaha--but I know you understand. And I just love knowing that I make you laugh. It means everything! We gotta have fun 😎
I love to laugh! Thank you! 😊
This is just the framing for 2026 that I needed. Thank you!
And this is just the kind note that I needed, so look at us, helping each other ❣️❣️❣️Wising you a playful and joyful new year 🥂
I too have been focused on growing and honoring my creativity lately. I even started a Creativity Club and began hosting retreats at my home where we play with creativity in different ways from various angles. After reading The Creative Act last year, I now use it as a centering start to each day by opening to a random page and reading the passage that shows up. My word this year is flow. Love that it showed up in the artist's video you posted.
I love your Word of the year and think it is so key to our creative practice—it’s really everything. It’s when the source sweeps us up and we feel the current and then we feel ourselves becoming part of it.
And yes, the book is so perfect for a daily practice — wishing you the best for your creative workshops—where are you in the world?
I am in Texas (a blueberry in a bowl of tomato soup). Can't get much further from Paris...
Hi Karen! I love your word too; these are times when we need to cultivate a little playfulness.
You touched on something that I find oddly absent from the French expat Substack-verse: what the hell to do with one's life professionally? It seems that a lot of people moving here now are either retired, or carrying over a totally distance-friendly job -- although who knows what will remain "distance-friendly" in the coming years...?
There are definitely ups and downs to moving abroad; in my case the first five years had way more downs than ups. Hold on, you're almost to that five-year mark!
Betty, thank you so much. This encouragement coming from you means a lot❣️
Yes, it seems to be true that many transplants to France are working remotely or (luckily) not concerned about a real French-centric occupation.
Nothing wrong with that, but I do want to shift my energy and output to Europe since I’m permanently here and here all year-round and forever 😂. And I’m not at all ready to stop creating something good, or as some people call it, working! Haha
I hope and believe this year will be interesting because, related to what you said, I’m now four years in and I can deal with a bit more ☺️
I just can’t tell you how much I appreciate your kind words, knowing that you’ve been through it yourself and made a beautiful life here 😘😘
Oh and also, guess what? You actually did inspire me to turn part of one of my many notebooks into a type of mini "vision board," maybe not so much "vision" as "inspiration" or even just "interest." I spent some time this morning cutting up an old Saveurs magazine from 2002 and ended up with a map of France and its different cow breeds, a picture of sucrine lettuce, a quotation about Bordeaux, and more. I glued them in and scribbled down a few thoughts or questions with Faber-Castell pencils, and just left it at that. It was extremely satisfying. I've never done anything quite like that! Thank you for the idea!
This makes me so happy! And I agree--there is just something about cutting out pictures and words and sticking them in a little book. I've been looking at mine every day and adding things in. I even bought a random magazine yesterday just to cut it up. Also I love sucrine ! And I sometimes fold the pictures, just gluing one quarter or half to the page so I have to unfold them when I open the journal and that is like a little fun mystery activity that delights me every time 😂
Well, I quickly got channeled into teaching English, as I had been a teacher in the USA. I had hoped that the change of country might also lead to a change of career, but that didn’t happen. But there were other factors involved. (I’m in fact going to talk about that on my next live in mid-February.)
You have the advantage of living in Paris where there are a lot of English-speakers, tourists, big companies, etc. I’m sure your past experience and your creative side will lead to something somewhere, or working for yourself in some capacity!
I really liked this : (Caps are mine) "as you explore and go forward into seeing that you Have done something, that you Can do something. The act of playing removes the obstacles we’ve put between us and everything we want. It brings delight, creates Confidence and lets us get to know what we’re working with".
It may help me tackle something I've been procrastinating about because, what if it didn't work out...
Salut Karen, Lovely post. Fellow American, living in France, and trying not to let the news noise ruin my creativity. Such a challenge these days!! I am doing Jessica's watercolor challenge, and it's so much fun! My first time picking up a brush. My favorite hobby is to putter! LOL Putter in the garden, putter in the kitchen, and putter on paper! My word is, well, it's s two words: To Be. After 35 years in the restaurant business, it's hard not to feel like you need TO BE doing something! Living in France is a wonderful experience of doing just that! Bonne Sante! Sara
So good “To Be” brava ❣️oh I wanted to do the challenge but felt I was too late to start—but maybe I will!! I too love to putter about and wander around ha !
Also I was in the restaurant biz for many years in NYC—where were you?
I’m so happy to get your message— how lovely to be connected ❣️🥂
Oh mon dieu! So many places! A couple of short stints in Colorado and Wyoming as a ski-crazed youngster working at night in restaurants, which got the addiction started! Then on to Atlanta, Phoenix, Chicago, Lake Tahoe, Santa Fe, and finished up in Asheville and the surrounding mountain towns in North Carolina. My husband and I owned four restaurants there and bought a farm! Kinda mind-boggling when I think about it. Although I do believe it prepared me for the big move to France!!
Bonne weekend!
Amazing et à toi aussi ❣️
Play! Jouer! Ah, oui, C'est si important! Bonjour Karen. Merci for reminding us of that--everything doesn't have to have a goal, an end result that our society defines as "success."
We can be successful as creative beings in whatever we choose--music, art, n'import quoi, n'est-ce pas. Whatever feeds our soul; and that can translate into bringing happiness to others as well. Now that I'm living part-time in the beautiful Mexican town of San Miguel de Allende, even riding the bus is joyful. I'm setting up a painting studio in my new apartment and loving returning to this art-form, setting writing books aside for awhile--maybe forever, as what moves me now is the brush on the canvas! Merci comme toujours pour partager votre chemin du coeur avec nous.
I’m so excited for you! I’ve heard how lovely and creative a town is San Miguel and it sounds dreamy—how fabulous that you’re doing this now!
And yes, we can be fulfilled just through the joy of creating, of noticing, of being with beauty and nature. If we also add that spirit of play, of pure exploration, I think we’re really on to something. I’m wishing you every happiness on your new adventure and hope you’ll post some photos of your new studio soon 🎨👩🎨💕
Ah, au fond personnel je vais bien--mais, vis-a-vis le pays USA, je suis tres déprimé! En fait, mon mari et moi, nous avons acheté une nouvelle maison, actually a duplex, en San Miguel de Allende, Karen. It's lovely! I've missed the last two or three months of reading your marvelous newsletter because we have been so busy, buying furniture at estate sales, settling in, advertising for a renter for the upstairs apartment, explaining to our kids why it's not crazy to buy a house in Mexico in our eighties, and so on!
I was thrilled to open La Flaneuse, aujourd'hui! And will read on--toujours merveilleux!
Chère Sher, bonne année et félicitations pour ta nouvelle maison au Méxique—c’est super. T’es une inspiration ❣️so happy to see you here 😘😘
Play is parfait!💕
☺️wishing you a lovely new year!