In this episode of Finding Home Elsewhere, I sit down with Quin Charity - my wife and the person who’s helped shape this project from day one. Now living outside Nantes, France, Quin reflects on what it really means to rebuild a life from the inside out.
We talk about the quiet changes that happen when you move abroad. Beyond the logistics, there’s a kind of emotional rewiring, the loss of familiar rhythms, and the surprising ways home stops being a place and starts becoming something you carry. This is a story about changes, love, and the spaces in between.
still learning
This is the one person everyone has told me to interview.
For this episode, I finally sat down with the person who’s shaped this project from the beginning—my wife, Quin Charity. She’s edited every episode of Finding Home Elsewhere, cut my tangents, and quietly believed in it all long before I did.
We’ve made all these moves together, step by step, but there are still so many conversations that we haven’t had. I’m so glad we got to capture this one.
After over 20 years together, she continues to surprise me.
“Home is not just the physical space—it’s also an emotional space.”
She talks about what it means to carry a sense of home inside you, and how that idea changes over time. How the places we return to can feel both familiar and distant.
How even a good changes comes with their own tradeoffs.
Quin has this way of noticing the details I miss: she goes into exactly what a home is and feels like, and how we ignored out own ideas of “home” with our early choices in France.
“The hardest part is really the emotional part.”
Quin puts it differently than I would, but the impact lands just the same.
It’s about the confusion, the disorientation, the quiet overwhelm. Missing people and places you can’t reach anymore.
And sometimes, it’s the harder truth: whatever was once there has changed. You’ve changed. And even if you don’t want to go back, it’s frustrating knowing that you couldn’t if you tried.
“You can do anything if you have love.”
Even in our own relationship, some of this doesn’t get said out loud very often.
Quin reminded me that love and partnership were what held us steady while the rest of our entire lives was being dismantled.
It gave us something solid to stand on, even as we stripped our life down to a handful of suitcases.
“Where do you want to do the boring things?”
This might be my favorite line from the whole conversation.
She and I have had this conversation for years as it’s been one of her regular questions for years. Where do you want to spend most of your time doing the stuff of your life?
life isn’t made up of big moments, not most days.
It’s made up of a lot of small, daily stuff that shapes your days.
And that’s what this episode is really about.
Not just moving abroad, but choosing a life. Together.
—K
(Note: this episode was recorded just after the holidays.)
The conversation with Quin goes deeper in Part 2.
We talk about how leaving the U.S. shifted her sense of identity, the unexpected creative freedom she’s found here, and the complicated feelings around what we’ve left behind.
If that sounds like your kind of thing, consider subscribing to unlock the rest—plus future episodes and posts delivered right to you. No pressure. But if the first half set the stage, the second half is where it really gets personal.
See you in part 2!
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