Voyage et Liberté (LAURIE FARIA STOLARZ)

I was twenty years old the first time I got on a plane. 

I grew up in Massachusetts. At twenty, the furthest I’d ever been from home was a one-day road trip to New York City—a trip I was deeply grateful for. The city was a magical place—and it made me want to venture out more. Ever since I could remember, I’d dreamed of going to France. I’d been studying it in school—the regions, the people, the food and culture. And so, one day I decided to actually go. 

When I landed in Nice—palm trees lining the promenade, the Mediterranean stretching out in impossible blue, I felt completely disoriented. Everything was bright, airy, slower. Even the sunlight felt foreign, as did the people. The students in my program had stories. They’d backpacked across continents, studied languages abroad. Some had lived in multiple states, even multiple countries. They spoke casually about places I had only seen in books.

Their dreams were different, too. For most of them, money wasn’t the first concern. Their first concern wasn’t how they would make a living. It was what they enjoyed, where they wanted to be, what they wanted to do. They spoke about possibilities without hesitation, as if their lives were maps yet to be drawn. That concept was alien to me. Growing up, every decision was filtered through necessity: tuition, bills, the work that kept life moving.

This, for them, was another chapter. For me, it was the first one. I had been working full-time since I was fourteen. Before that, I babysat and worked in a pottery studio pulling molds, cleaning greenware, and emptying the kiln. Work wasn’t something I chose. It was something you did. It was woven into survival and responsibility, and into how I understood adulthood.

Going to France meant something radical. It meant not working. It meant waking up and not clocking in. I didn’t fully understand how deeply that defined me until it was gone. Without work, who was I? Without urgency, without the constant calculation of hours and money and obligation—who was I allowed to be? That was my first real freedom.

The bigger shock wasn’t the language. It was the perspective. For the first time, I was surrounded by people who had lived expansively, who saw life as something to design. They talked about options, adventures, dreams, choices. And these choices weren’t dictated by money. They were dictated by curiosity, desire, and what felt exciting and meaningful.

It sounds simple now. But when you grow up working, you don’t always experience life as a landscape of choices. You experience it as a sequence of necessities.

The other students didn’t even realize they were teaching me anything; but, from them, I learned that it was possible to choose adventure, that rest was not laziness, that dreaming was encouraged, and that curiosity was allowed. 

I began traveling on buses and trains to other parts of Europe. I watched landscapes blur past windows. I navigated new territory with a mix of fear and excitement. I took classes in Cannes, then later moved north to Paris to study at the Sorbonne. The classes were challenging, but for the first time in years, I had the space to invest in them. At home, I had always worked while studying to pay my tuition. My days were stacked, compressed. Here, my time stretched. And I learned to sit, to spend an afternoon on the beach, to linger in a café. 

To get there, I took out school loans for the first time. I didn’t want to. Debt scared me. It still does. But something inside me must have wanted that freedom more. Looking back, I don’t think it was just about France.

It was about allowing myself a life not entirely defined by necessity. That time—six months—was a privilege. I know, first hand, what it took to get there. But I also know that sometimes the bravest thing you can do is allow yourself to stop what you’re doing long enough to imagine something bigger.