The move to Corsica

How closing one door, and opening an unexpected new one, completely changed the trajectory of my life.

Maïlys Ray

Jun 10, 2025

Article voiceover

1×

0:00

-11:35

In the previous chapter of my memoir-like exploration, I wrote:

“I didn’t know it yet, but the ground beneath me was already shifting.
The quiet seeds planted in those early years — persistence, passion, trust — were beginning to take root.
Soon, they would carry me across the sea, toward a place, and a life, where I could finally live closer to my true values.”
—
Extract from “The slow work of becoming”

This chapter is the story of that crossing, and of everything it slowly began to change.

I can't pinpoint the exact moment the idea of moving to Corsica began to take shape, nor the moment it became an obvious choice for my partner and I.

If you’d told my 20-something self that I’d one day live in Bastia, she would have laughed out loud and probably said something like, “Are you out of your mind?!”

I had always imagined myself abroad, building a life in big, buoyant cities — the kind I had dreamed about as a teen, watching TV series set in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles… Even my attempt to find a job in London back in 2009 was part of that vision. I thought for a long time that this kind of life was what success looked like for me.

So when the idea of moving to Corsica first came up, it was rather unexpected. My partner mentioned a few times that he was missing his homeland and living near the sea, but even he had never really imagined coming back to live in Corsica before retiring – if ever.

As for me, I had always loved Corsica. Every time we visited his family, something in me softened. It felt like home. But I had never truly imagined living there. And certainly not building a future in a small Mediterranean city, far from the fast-paced life I had once longed for.

Yet, at this point in my life, that old dream of a busy, cosmopolitan life no longer felt like mine, and deep down, I knew it wasn’t what I truly wanted anymore.

That’s why I slowly began to consider saying yes to this unexpected and slightly crazy idea of moving to Corsica.

I think what ultimately convinced me was that we had been trying unsuccessfully to get pregnant while in Toulouse, and something inside me was telling me that the environment I was in was one of the reasons it wasn’t working. Honestly, I wasn’t feeling good and aligned in Toulouse, and my body knew it.

I realized recently that this move was way more than a geographical move for me. I had moved several times already and wasn’t particularly sentimentally attached to Toulouse. Of course, the geography was somehow important in this ‘Corsican’ move because for the first time in my life I was considering leaving mainland France to live on an island in the Mediterranean sea, and in a very small city compared to the ones I had lived in in the past.

But it was extremely meaningful for me for another reason:

It was my symbolic way of closing a door I had kept open for far too long, the door to my old corporate life.

And I realized this only a few days ago. I think that’s the reason I struggled so much to get started in the writing of this chapter of my memoir-like exploration. Initially I thought I felt resistant in writing this chapter because it felt redundant with the essay I wrote to celebrate my 8th anniversary of moving to Corsica. But the real reason I felt stuck was deeper than that. I needed to integrate what the act of moving to Corsica truly meant for me. And I only did this while working on my next professional “move”.

Spending time on my “why” these past few weeks, I came to realize that - even if I wasn’t fully aware of it at the time - during the years I’ve spent in Toulouse after quitting my last corporate job, I had somehow secretly clung to the illusion that I could go back to my old life at some point, and return one way or another to the corporate path I had trained for.

Despite being self-employed since December 2013, I went to a few job interviews over the years, for marketing roles in start-ups or in the wine world, for communication roles in communication agencies… But each time, something didn’t feel right during the interview process. And at one point I came to the conclusion that I didn’t actually want to get those jobs because working for myself felt more aligned, even though I wasn’t yet earning much from it.

A few months before moving to Corsica, despite my uncertainty in the outcome, I decided to trust this inner voice and shift my focus to the present moment instead of worrying about the future.

I arrived in Corsica with no real plans business-wise, because my previous freelance contracts had almost magically come to a natural end before our move. I should have been worried about my ability to recreate opportunities in Corsica… but strangely I wasn’t. I totally went with the flow. And again, focused on what drove me deep inside, instead of focusing on the outcome.

So not only did I ‘put myself in front of beauty’, but I soaked in it fully.

Early morning view of Bastia from the ferry (not taken the day of our arrival but in July 2017) - Copyright: the author, Maïlys Ray

And instead of trying to land new contracts as fast as possible, I let my curiosity take the lead.

I met new people, new winemakers without ulterior motives.

I wrote again on my blog, especially about the women I had the chance to meet.

I took my camera out again and enjoyed capturing the beauty around me.

I traveled to new places, in Corsica, but also back to Italy.

And through the encounters I made, some work opportunities started to appear naturally, without me pushing for it.

But the most important opportunity of all happened just a few months after moving. When someone I had met online, through various common wine-related groups, reached out and offered me to cover a few community management missions for her during her maternity leave.

Not only did this person gave me the opportunity I had waited for to show what I was truly capable of, but after these initial missions she was the first to spontaneously offer me that recognition I didn’t know my projector-self was craving for.

This led to a long-term collaboration I’ve enjoyed for many years. I know she’s reading this newsletter, so I want to use this opportunity to thank her properly.

Thank you, Eva, for offering me this hand I didn’t know I needed to pull me out of the shadows I had stayed in for far too long. I’ll be forever grateful for the way you ‘saw’ me and helped me indirectly see myself again. Working with you has been a true pleasure all these years – and still is, when we have the chance to team up again 😉 And I’m glad that it gave us the opportunity to know each other and deepen our relationship outside of work.

This invitation and recognition helped me gain the confidence I had lacked to show up even more authentically in my business, and other great opportunities kept unfolding naturally within my first year in Corsica.

I was feeling joyful again, and deeply aligned both in my work and in my life. And that’s when I decided to make room for another thing that was important for me: becoming a mother.

We decided to try again to get pregnant and this time, after a few trials, we got our wishes granted. I got pregnant in October 2018 and welcomed my daughter in July 2019. The perfect way for the Universe to send me the message that things happen when the time and circumstances are right.

It took me eight years, but I only recently fully understood what this move to Corsica really meant to me.

Writing my last essay “Taking the next step” actually helped me name what had been quietly integrating beneath the surface for weeks. That move to Corsica — unexpected, intuitive, quietly courageous — wasn’t just a relocation. It was my first true rebirth.

A heart-led and symbolic decision that marked the moment I fully shed a version of myself I had outgrown — the one still trying to hold onto old definitions of success and belonging.

In doing that, I created space for a new identity to emerge. One that was fully ready to receive the gift of becoming a mother.

And the reason I finally see it so clearly now is because… I can feel another identity shift coming. A new rebirth.

And this time, I recognize the signs because they feel familiar. That quiet internal nudge. The pull toward alignment. The invitation to trust something deeper, even if I don’t have the full picture yet.

I also feel that before this new identity appears clearly to me, I still have a few lessons and insights to integrate to be ready to receive what the Universe has in store for me.

Maybe now is the time I sit with what motherhood has taught me.

Because it’s undeniable that motherhood changed me. It once again shifted the ground beneath me. More slowly. More invisibly.

It wasn’t a rebirth so much as a profound and disorienting process of becoming, one that has been deeply uncomfortable at times, and that has taken years to even begin to understand.

A process that’s also intimately tied to the fact that becoming the mother of a girl reignited an inner fire within me, casting a new light that reinforced some of my deepest values.

But that will be the topic of a next chapter.

What about you?