Sitting at that table last night, I understood something differently.

I sat across from a woman who was born in Brazil, grew up in New Jersey, and is now here getting her master’s.

I met a 37-year-old woman who came here to find herself.

Another woman had just received dual citizenship after falling in love with Italian culture, despite being German.

There was a mother in her late seventies traveling with her daughter, who is in her fifties.

Another woman had come here with her son.

And the woman sitting to my right, originally from Michigan, shared how moving here had helped repair dynamics within her family and brought her closer to her son.

Different ages.

Different countries.

Different stories.

Different reasons for coming.

But there was something connecting all of us.

Each woman had listened to something within her that said: Go.

She followed her heart.

Her curiosity.

Her desire.

Her own version of what she wanted her life to look like.

And somehow, it brought all of us to the same table in Florence.

That reminded me why I did this in the first place.

I wanted to feel alive.

I wanted to get out of the mundane.

I started questioning every rule I had lived my life by.

Every belief.

Every identity I thought I needed to embody because somebody told me that was who I was, because it was expected of me, or because somewhere along the way I had bought into the belief that this was simply who I needed to be.

I started peeling away the layers.

And even though I already knew myself so well, this became a huge awakening for me.

I’ve shared before about the moment I heard:

You’ve outgrown your home.

It shifted everything.

Because I realized it wasn’t only about outgrowing my physical home in Florida.

I had outgrown the woman who was living in that home.

I had outgrown the life that woman had built.

I had even outgrown parts of the business I had built and the way I had built it.

And that is one of the greatest gifts of being alive.

We get to change.

We get to change our minds.

We get to decide who we want to be now.

We get to question the rules we’ve been living by and decide whether they are even ours.

And we get to choose differently because we want to.

Who cares what anybody thinks?

The women sitting around that table had chosen that for themselves.

Some had the support of their families.

Some didn’t.

Some questioned the decision.

Some said, “I’m doing it anyway.”

And that choice belongs to each and every one of us.

It’s your life.

It’s my life.

We have the right to live it in a way that feels true to who we are.

For me, I knew that at midlife, I didn’t want to waste another minute living in a way that felt out of integrity or inauthentic to who I came here to be.

I came here to live an extraordinary life.

I came here to see what is available to me.

I want to feel all of it.

Even the hard things.

I’ve shared many times about losing my mother.

There are days when missing her can still take my breath away.

There are moments when the grief can still sideline me.

But do you know what that also shows me?

How deeply I got to love her.

What a gift to have loved someone that much.

To have known a love so beautiful that her absence can still be felt so deeply.

That, too, is being alive.

And right now, being alive also looks like waking up in Florence and not always knowing what the day will bring.

It’s turning a corner and being stunned by architecture that has been standing for centuries.

It’s walking past works created by Botticelli or Leonardo da Vinci.

It’s standing in front of Michelangelo’s David and remembering that there is extraordinary beauty all around us when we are willing to actually see it.

And maybe your version of feeling alive has nothing to do with Italy.

Maybe the question isn’t, “Should I move to Florence?”

Maybe the question is:

What is your Florence?

If you’ve been feeling lost, stuck, blah—or you don’t even have the words for it, but you know you’re not fully living—what would make you feel alive again?

Maybe today it’s getting a gelato simply because you want one.

Maybe it’s going for a walk and actually taking in the air around you.

Maybe it’s booking the trip you keep thinking about.

Maybe it’s finally having the conversation.

Maybe it’s admitting that something you once wanted isn’t what you want anymore.

Maybe it’s allowing yourself to want something entirely different.

This life is yours.

And the only person who can turn the ordinary into extraordinary is you.

Through the way you see it.

Through what you choose.

Through the decisions you make for yourself.

I no longer wanted to live worried about what other people thought or according to rules I hadn’t consciously chosen for myself.

Choosing differently has been liberating.

Exciting.

Scary.

And it requires you to really be with yourself.

But there is something beautiful on the other side of that.

You come home to yourself.

And sometimes, you find yourself sitting around a table in Florence with women you’ve never met before, feeling more at home, more alive, more seen, and more excited about what is possible than you could have imagined.

Because you chose it.

Because you continue to choose it.

Because somewhere along the way, you allowed yourself to say:

I want more for this life—for me.

Not for anybody else.

And that “more” gets to look however you want it to look.

For me, right now, it looks like Florence, Italy.

I don’t need to know anything more than that.

And I love having the honor of sharing this experience and this chapter of my story with you here.

If this brought something up or out in you, I would love to hear your story.

What is your Florence?

Hit reply and tell me.

What is the thing, the place, the decision, the desire, or the version of your life that is asking you to choose it?

We’re all in this together.

And I am always here.

Rewrite the Rules,

Melissa Kathryn