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Flying Across the World to Meet a Writer, a Group of Strangers… and Myself
I didn’t go to the south of France for a vacation. I went because I couldn’t not go.
Ten months earlier, on a flight back from Europe, I had picked up Kilomètre Zéro by Maud Ankaoua, and it did something I wasn’t expecting. Not only did it inspire me, but it gave me permission.
Permission to believe in the book I had been circling to write.
Permission to trust the voice inside me that had been longing to be expressed.
Permission to stop ignoring it and start feeling it.
So when one of my writing assignments — follow an author, not just their work but their way of showing up in the world — landed in front of me a few months later, I didn’t have to think very long. I watched as Maud prepared to release her next book, Tu m’avais promis. I followed the posts, the energy, the presence.
And when I saw she offered in-person seminars at her home in the south of France, my husband looked at me and said one word.
“Go.”
He made it possible and I am endlessly grateful.
As soon as I signed up, the internal work immediately began. Or, more accurately: the mind chatter kicked into full performance mode.
I had heard Maud say in an interview that during her seminars she asked participants to introduce themselves without using social labels or professional identities.
So there I was, on my daily morning walk with my Goldendoodle dragging me around the neighborhood, trying to figure out how on earth I was going to do that.
My monkey mind was doing what monkey minds do best.
How do you say you’re a biochemist and an acupuncturist… without saying you’re a biochemist and an acupuncturist?
“I’m a bunch of cells full of space and a bunch of meridians full of Qi?”
Ugh. No. Too nerdy.
“I’m a microcosm within a macrocosm?”
Absolutely not. Nobody is going to know what I’m talking about.
If I’m not a mom, scientist, wife, daughter, sister, friend… then what am I? Who am I?
That was exactly the question I had been circling in my book. The one I desperately wanted and didn’t want to publish.
Ugh.
Come on. What’s left underneath the labels?
“I’m a being who lives between two worlds, the scientific and the spiritual, between cultures, between languages, between translations, between Yin’s earthly energy and Yang’s heavenly energy…”
Hmm.
Maybe, but so abstract.
And underneath all those attempts, what I really wanted to say felt far too raw to speak out loud. That what mattered most to me was freedom, creative expression, honesty, humor, writing from the soul.
No. I could definitely not say that.
Too exposed.
All that and many other increasingly questionable versions spiraled through my head while my dog probably understood life much better than I did.
Little did I understand at this time that while I was managing my very enthusiastic Goldendoodle on one end of the leash, my own internal “poodle” — the monkey mind — had taken complete control of my end of the leash. (In French, Maud calls it the caniche — the poodle. Same creature. Different breed. Both bark. Both pull. Both need to be put on a leash, or as Maud would say, envoyé à la niche — sent back to its doghouse.)
I let the Goldendoodle off leash.
She moved through the world nose first, grounded by scent, grass, movement, instinct, while I wandered somewhere far above the trail in a cloud of possible and impossible scenarios, my caniche fully in charge.
Day 1 — Arrival
A few months later I was boarding a plane from San Diego, slightly in disbelief, mildly questioning the reality of what was happening, but fully committed.
When I arrived, jet-lagged, exhausted, but exactly where I needed to be, someone I had never met in my life kindly offered to pick me up at my hotel.
It was a detour for her, technically an inconvenience. And yet she did it without hesitation.
That simple gesture, so natural for her, landed deeply for me. Before we had even started, something had already opened.
I met a group of strangers, each with their own path, their own reason for being there, and somehow, surprisingly quickly, they didn’t feel entirely like strangers anymore.
We came from everywhere: France, Switzerland, Belgium, Canada, Brazil… and me, California. And yet, for those four days, our paths braided together.
We started with a walk that, on the surface, looked like a simple group walk. In reality it was a fragile and instant deep dive into the human core, a moment when a group of strangers tries to find themselves in a timeless bubble where everyday life and dream blur together, and everything lands a little deeper, with every step, every word, every breath.
Afterward we went back to Maud’s home, and let me tell you, there’s something slightly surreal about standing in the home of someone whose book quietly shifted your path by opening an existential doorway for you somewhere over the Atlantic.
At some point I noticed my mind had been quietly rehearsing how I would explain my presence there. How do you justify flying across the world to attend a seminar with an author?
I tried a few versions in my head. None of them worked.
Because the truth was much simpler. I didn’t come because it made sense in my mind. I came because it made sense in my entire being, because everything aligned in a way I couldn’t ignore, because something in me recognized something in her work, because the path I had been trying to write about was suddenly right in front of me.
Not in a book. In real life.
Day 2 — When the Shell Starts to Crack
If Day 1 opened the door, Day 2 walked straight through it.
My first night of “rest” resembled approximately two and a half hours of sleep, generously sprinkled with jet lag, emotional overflow, and a brain that refused to power down. The next morning, I showed up with minimal sleep, maximum vulnerability, and a very shaky inner landscape.
Perfect conditions for an emotional storm.
Luckily, I didn’t have to navigate it alone. Another participant staying at the same hotel had become my official ride-share-friend.
She didn’t only share her car, we also shared the same sense of humor, which became very useful somewhere on the winding roads of the south of France when her phone dropped from its improvised GPS holder several times for every ride we did.
While driving, in the middle of a roundabout, she came to a temporary standstill.
At that exact moment my monkey mind became extremely active, nudging her to please move out of there. She remained perfectly calm, casually fishing her phone off the floor and searching for directions, while I stared directly into the increasingly confused eyes of the driver waiting to enter the roundabout to my right.
At that point in the seminar, I had not yet been trained to gaze deeply into another human being’s soul, so I mostly focused on the whites of his eyes and insistently suggested to my driver that perhaps we continue moving before we collectively became one with French traffic. We also hadn’t learned yet about controlling our monkey minds or keeping our barking poodles quiet.
As a reaction to my insistent pleas to move out of there, she looked at me with a grin and answered:
“Agnès… do you want to walk?”
We both burst out laughing. My monkey mind had barked. And hers had barked right back. But we didn’t realize that yet. And the patient driver was a perfect example of holding his own on a tight leash.
By Day 3 she would become an anchor for me, one of my emotional support humans.
But let’s finish Day 2 first, because I can hear Lydie’s voice nudging me quietly to come back into the here and now.
• • •
On Day 2, the structure that Maud and Lydie had created really came to life.
It was a space where conversations went straight past the surface. Heart to heart. Human to human. The kind of exchanges that make you wonder why we spend years learning math, physics, and history before ever learning how to actually meet ourselves, and from that space, truly connect with others.
That’s when we talked about dreams and about the hyperactivity of our minds. Real dreams, the ones we don’t always say out loud. Real mind chatter, the one we too often say out loud. And so we practiced keeping our poodles under control, which was… partially unsuccessfully successful.
When it was my turn to share my dream, I said it.
My dream was to express myself through creative writing. To share the book I had in me.
But I was afraid of not being read.
And even more so, I was terrified of being read.
Lydie joined my two partners to gently help guide me through that space. My group was incredible — present, patient, trying to help me open something I was simultaneously desperate to open and equally determined to keep closed.
It’s a very interesting kind of tension. Shaking from within and trying to hold it physically together on the outside. Wanting to be seen and wanting to hide at the exact same time.
That day shook me. Emotionally and physically.
The lack of sleep didn’t help, or actually, maybe it did exactly what it needed to.
As Maud would say:
“Respire… le plan est toujours parfait.” (Breathe… everything is unfolding perfectly.)
So I breathed. A lot. Mostly because life lasts longer, then to stay awake, and also to stay present.
• • •
In my childhood my mom had described me as a turtle without a shell. I had quickly figured out that I needed to build my own.
The turtle was my sensitivity. The shell was all the protections I had built around it. Protections that were supposed to help me function, but were also keeping that sensitivity hidden, contained, and controlled.
That day, something started to shift. The shell didn’t fully open. But it was no longer completely sealed.
By the end of the day I was exhausted. I had barely held it together. And that’s exactly how it needed to be.
Day 3 — The Day the Shell Cracked
I had finally slept a full night, which at that point felt like a small miracle. I woke up steady, calmer, no trembling inside.
I felt ready. Or so I thought.
Ready to participate. Ready to share, at least a little. I walked in with a big smile, genuinely looking forward to the day.
Little did I know what to expect.
That morning, during the teachings, I again struggled to find the courage to speak — to share a piece of what had been sitting inside me for years. The closer I came to speaking, the tighter the shell seemed to get. Safe. Contained.
As soon as the mind slipped back in with its familiar chatter, I would close everything again. I started circling.
Open. Close. Open. Close.
Like I was testing the edges of something I wasn’t quite ready to fully step into.
When I finally spoke, the pressure relieved. My presence felt a bit forced, unnatural, a bit… ugh… but there was also a bit of pride. I did it. Not perfectly, but I did.
In Traditional Chinese Medicine we say: “Where there is free flow, there is no pain. Where there is no free flow, there is pain.” I finally let it flow a bit, and I told them exactly that.
• • •
Then came the afternoon.
We moved into a more experiential part of the seminar. And at some point I was gently encouraged by someone I am now incredibly grateful to (thank you, Lydie) to step forward and get grilled by Maud.
Voluntold might be the more accurate word, said with a big smile, because, hey… didn’t I sign up and pay for that?
Suddenly I was in front of eighteen people, being asked a simple question that didn’t feel simple at all.
Why was I holding the shell so tightly?
Why did my turtle, my sensitive, intuitive self, need such a thick shell?
I thought my shell was there to protect her. But maybe I wasn’t protecting her. Maybe I was keeping her in the dark.
Maud guided me gently. Carefully. Patiently. She asked about that sensitivity I kept referring to. She questioned whether all those walls were still necessary.
I don’t even remember her exact words. What I remember is what my mind translated:
Let go. Drop the shell. Now. In front of everyone.
The pressure built. Fast. Too fast.
She waited. Silence filled the space. A kind, patient silence, but still, silence.
Eighteen pairs of eyes. And me. Unable to move forward. Unable to find words. Unable to open that door.
And then, finally, from somewhere deep inside the pressure:
“I can’t do it.”
It came out shaky, barely audible, but it was true.
She nodded, gently, without pushing or forcing. Just a simple acknowledgment that I wasn’t ready. And she moved on.
I stood up and walked away. I needed space to breathe, to release something that had nowhere else to go.
Then everything broke open. Not in words. In something much more raw. A flood that had been held back for a long time finally found a way through.
And in one of those quietly profound human moments, someone who had been a complete stranger less than 24 hours earlier was suddenly there, holding that space with me. No questions, no fixing, just presence… Thank you.
Lydie came and guided me into meditation. An invitation to gently approach what I had been holding so tightly. To bring a little light to it.
I could feel it. The treasure I had been protecting. So close.
And yet, the knot in my throat held firm. My body knew. My mind made sure nothing came out.
What struck me most in that moment wasn’t just what I couldn’t access. It was how everyone around me responded. The care. The attention. The willingness to help me open something I couldn’t open alone.
At one point, my emotional support human I had only known for two days sat with me and started asking me questions. Precise ones. Grounded ones. The kind that gently lead you somewhere without forcing you there. She had me write things down, step by step, almost like I had gone back to school, except this time, the subject was me.
That afternoon I shared more than I had before. But the core of it was still sealed.
And that night I went back to my room with it, still inside me, still held, and the real work began.
• • •
I didn’t sleep much. Again. But this time it wasn’t just jet lag.
My mind circled around it. Over and over. Catching glimpses of something it had always known. Moving between two states.
Sacred. Scared.
Soul space. Mind space.
Back and forth. Again and again.
And only when the mind finally let go, in the darkness, in the safety of being alone, what I was holding so tightly began to move.
Hesitantly. Carefully. Not yet ready to be spoken, but fully felt.
There is something inside me that wants to be expressed. Something I’ve held back and known for a long time. Something that is finally taking shape in the form of my book.
I think I finally caught a glimpse of how to write about it.
For here, for now, I do know this. I will keep showing up. I will keep trying. I will keep writing. Until, one day, what is still held finds its way into the open.
Because maybe that’s the path. Not getting it right. But staying with it long enough for it to be expressed.
Day 4 — Soft and Deep
By Day 4, the emotional intensity had somehow become both softer and deeper at the same time.
We had spent days together laughing, unraveling, crying, hugging, spiraling, breathing, all while attempting to keep our internal poodles under control. Somewhere along the way, strangers had become something else entirely: hugging bodies, or, more accurately — buddies.
There were moments of gratitude, moments of silent recognition. We ended with what I described as speed dating for brief but intense declarations of appreciation — acknowledging what each person had brought into our lives during those few days — followed by moments of deep soul-level recognition staring into each other’s eyes (not the white part this time) while allowing ourselves to be fully seen.
For a few brief moments, we had stepped outside the usual noise of everyday life. Outside the roles we cling to. Outside the constant mental narration. And what remained underneath was surprisingly simple.
Human beings wanting to feel seen, human beings wanting to feel loved, human beings wanting to matter to one another.
Once you spend several days dropping social masks, talking about dreams, fears, purpose, and inner worlds together, emotional collapse becomes a fairly reasonable and frequent group activity.
• • •
Somewhere between the breakthroughs and the collective soulful deep diving, we were also welcomed each day with beautiful French apéros and homemade meals lovingly prepared by our amazing hosts. They not only knew how to take us around the world through their cooking — they understood that our bodies, not just our souls, needed care, grounding, warmth, and pleasure.
Honestly, they understood something important about healing. Emotional vulnerability becomes much more sustainable when accompanied by excellent home cooked meals, French cheese, fresh bread, salami, good wine, and people gently placing dessert in front of you shortly after you finish crying.
• • •
We returned to our respective worlds with open hearts and the sudden urge to let everyone know how much we loved them.
Honestly, after flying back across the world to my side of it, I realized I had the easier cultural adjustment. In America, a casual “love ya!” doesn’t immediately expose that you just came back from a highly concentrated French experience in collective soul-searching and emotional openness. My European friends, however, would have a much harder time justifying an accidental “je t’aime” slipping into the middle of a work meeting.
That said — after spending a week hugging instead of giving two kisses on the cheek to my new European friends, I found myself in awkward situations accidentally greeting Americans with European cheek kisses instead.
• • •
To those of you who showed me how to let things flow.
To the ones who caught me when I cracked open.
To the ones who cried on my shoulder, and the ones whose shoulders quietly held me in return.
To Maud and Lydie, who guided us through this deeply human experience with generosity, humor, kindness, and heart — thank you.
Thank you for opening a door for all of us. And thank you for reminding us that sometimes the path back to ourselves begins simply, by allowing ourselves to be seen.
I came home from the south of France with the book still inside me. But something had shifted. The shell had cracked. And I know, with more certainty than I did before, that I will keep showing up. I will keep walking, because the path is the goal. And my path now ran straight through the French riviera, across the Atlantic, and back to my desk.
For my French-speaking friends curious to experience a little of this journey for themselves: https://www.maud-ankaoua.com/seminaires.php