A former COO left her Chicago life for Lisbon. Three years later, she's moving to Amsterdam with a growing business and a deeper relationship with her mother.
Alpha Score of 57 reflects moderate overall profile with strong momentum, poor value, moderate quality, moderate sentiment.
The chief operating officer of a growing company owned a home in Chicago and drove a luxury car. From the outside, everything looked like a success. Yet any chance she got, she would leave.
She spent years creating a life she perpetually needed breaks from. She dreamed of leaving corporate, starting her own business, and moving to Europe. Three fears kept her frozen: losing financial security, disappointing her mother as an only child, and having to rebuild a social life from scratch in a foreign country.
After conversations with a therapist, she realized she was waiting for a feeling that wasn't coming. She wasn't ever going to feel ready. In April 2023, she left the US with two suitcases and a one-way ticket to Europe.
Roughly two weeks into the trip, sitting in an Airbnb in Lisbon with the sun shining in through the open window, the sounds of the lively streets outside, and a cup of espresso, it hit her: This is it. This is home.
The hardest part was telling her mother. Her mother cried. After some time to process, and a promise that she would return home for Christmas, her mother said she wanted her to be happy and would learn to cope.
She joined every expat community she could find. She went to Meetup events, slid into the DMs of local Instagram influencers, attended dinners designed for singles to make friends, joined WhatsApp groups, took dance classes, tried Bumble BFF. It was awkward at times. If she walked away with one new friend, she considered it a success. Slowly, her friendship circle grew.
By the end of that year, at a holiday dinner with friends, she realized she had built exactly what she had been afraid of losing: a full social life, a growing business, a sense of stability. She had a busier social calendar in Lisbon after six months than after a lifetime in Chicago.
Her mother and she started taking trips together, something they never did when they lived 20 minutes apart. The distance made their time together far more intentional, which actually deepened their relationship.
Three years later, she is starting another new chapter in Amsterdam with a level of confidence she never had before. "My only regret in this journey is spending too many years waiting to be 'ready,'" she said. "All I ever really needed was a big dose of courage and forward momentum."
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