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Shelby Cano was 31, living in Michigan, working night shifts at a hospital and feeling, by her own description, at a crossroads. The long-term relationship she’d built her twenties around had just ended. The nursing career she’d committed to at 18 felt like someone else’s choice. And somewhere in the back of her mind, the same thought kept circling: there’s something more out there that is waiting for me.
She didn’t move to Italy overnight. But looking back, everything was pointing there.
Before the Leap
Shelby grew up in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan, and spent most of her twenties in Colorado. She trained as a nurse, worked as one for a decade, and by most measures, had a stable, respectable life. But she had always felt that something was missing:
“I was always obsessed with the idea of just leaving everything and traveling. But in my twenties, between a long-term relationship and this idea that there was an upward trajectory to your career that you had to follow – I was watching all my friends getting promoted, investing, making more money, and I just kept dragging my life around. I tried to do little trips when I could, but actually leaving everything? That didn’t feel possible.”
The real turning point came at 29. Coming out of the pandemic, she booked a six-month trip to Southeast Asia with her then-boyfriend:
“I finally decided to take six months off, which actually turned into a year off of work, and to me that was just insane. But it taught me that you can. You don’t have to follow the career path that was set for you in your early 20s. Like, I was 18 and I decided I was going to be a nurse – which is really crazy, that we make those choices when we’re that young.”
She came back from that trip a different person. After breaking up with her boyfriend and returning to hospital work, she quickly realized she couldn’t stand it. So within months, she quit and booked a solo trip to Italy – just three months, just to travel, just to figure something out.
The Trip That Became a Move
Shelby chose Florence on a friend’s suggestion, and spent a month there, then a month in Rome, then back to Florence again. Within the first two weeks of that trip, around her 32nd birthday, she met what she describes as soulmate-level people. The connections she formed during those three months weren’t just meaningful. They felt, to her, like confirmation:
“I’ve always been drawn to Italy somehow, even without any family ties or specific reason. I spent ten years in my twenties not knowing where I was going. When I was in Florence, it was the first time in my life that I felt – okay, this is it.“
As you may know, making connections in a foreign country isn’t always that easy, especially if you’re moving alone. So, what Shelby did was to sign up for Italian classes, which helped a lot. And after a few weeks, eventually met her now-boyfriend Soufiane:
“We met online, and when we first saw each other, he picked me up on his Vespa and we went to Piazzale Michelangelo. It was the first time I really had a conversation with someone who doesn’t speak English. Our first date was almost entirely in broken Italian and intuition. It was super crazy. I wish he knew how funny I can be in my own language!! But for some reason, we’re still here, together”
The Visa, the Apartment Hunt and the Paperwork
When Shelby came home from Italy, she saved some money, sorted logistics, and officially moved with her dog in November 2024. She decided to go for a study visa – a process that went surprisingly smoothly – and enrolled in a full year of Italian language classes.
Beyond the delays with her permesso di soggiorno, the most difficult part by now for her was the apartment search. So what Shelby did was to reach out to the family that owned the apartment she first stayed in as an Airbnb and asked to rent it to her long-term:
“I didn’t know how difficult that was actually going to be. So I’m still here. I’m not paying Airbnb prices, but I’m still paying more than what’s normal for this area. My boyfriend and I contacted probably over a hundred, two hundred people online, but very few people got back to me or even hung up after we said that we were foreigners“
Unfortunately, this is a common problem in Italy, but there are ways to go through all the steps. We’ve recently talked about this situation with Justin Curtis Mavity, a real estate from the US working in Italy, in our podcast – so if you’re looking for ways to solve this problem, here’s the link.
A Year of Slowing Down
The study visa, in its own, allows you to work for a maximum of 20 hours a week. But as you may know, finding work in Italy takes time. So in her first “adjustment” year, while she was still looking for work, Shelby had the chance to finally find some time for her and discover what she actually liked:
“This year of not working has taught me so much about the things I’m actually interested in. Like, I love reading, I love writing, I love making clothes apparently. I’ve gotten into crochet now. I’m such a hobby person, and I never thought I was capable of that. I was a nurse. I’m sciency. I go to work, I watch TV series. And now I’m crafting. My whole desk is just covered in yarn.”
And then eventually got a job as a preschool teacher. Three years ago, she says, that would have seemed absurd. “But that’s what opportunity came to me and I had to take it.” It’s become one of her touchstone examples of what she now considers essential to making this kind of move work: flexibility. It’s about letting the universe give you what is supposed to happen, and opening yourself up to it.
So, for those who are wondering how the costs in a bigger city in Italy would be like, Shelby said that there’s still a huge difference compared to the US – not just for what concerns money, but also for her own habits:
“I feel like I used to go shopping a lot more, go out to eat a lot more at restaurants – now that’s a very special occasion. I’ve completely changed the way I shop, the things I buy. Huge lifestyle difference from when I was in the US. Here, groceries for two run around 50-70 euros a week“
What She Knows Now
The thing that keeps Shelby going, she says, isn’t certainty – she still doesn’t have her long-term plan figured out. It’s something closer to the absence of that particular restlessness that followed her around for a decade in the States:
“I don’t have this overwhelming sense of run, escape, your life could be better somewhere else. I had that for ten years. And I don’t have it anymore. That’s my lighthouse.”
If she could say something to the version of herself right before the solo trip, it would be: “There is a completely different life waiting for you. Just trust everything that’s about to happen. Your intuition is everything. Always follow it.”
I personally think Shelby’s story is a great reminder for all of you who are considering this huge change but is scared of going for it because of age or other social expectations. Since we do our interviews, we talked to so many people, and if there’s one thing we’ve learned from talking to people, it’s that you could be 20, 30, 40, or even 60 – it’s never too late to rewrite another version of ourselves and pursue what we think is meant for us.
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