About
In 1992, I was 23 years old, studying Italian in Florence. And, like so many before me, I felt the most enchanting connection - almost as if this city had been waiting for me.
Then life did what life does. I went home to Sweden, built a career, fell in love, had two children, and ran a web agency for nearly a decade. Florence became that beautiful thing you carry somewhere in the back of your chest - never quite gone, just quietly waiting.
Thirty years later, almost to the detail, my daughter Emma did the same thing. She was 23, studying art restoration in Florence at Lorenzo de' Medici, living the chapter I had once lived. And she asked if I wanted to come and be her roommate.
I said yes.
What followed was my first solo season in Florence - and the quiet, unexpected realization that this was not just a visit. It was a beginning.
Memories from 1992 in Florence - "mixed tapes" and the '90s bob haircut.
Between solos seasons - home in the Swedish arctic mountains.
I am Pernilla. A happily married empty nester, a former interior designer and web agency owner. I now split my time between an attic in the Florence Oltrarno area and our cabin in the Swedish arctic mountains. I have spent the better part of three years learning that the life you imagined does not require uprooting everything. It just requires a solo season.
A solo season is exactly what it sounds like. Not a divorce. Not an escape. Not forever. Just a chapter written entirely on your own terms, while the rest of your life stays safely, lovingly intact. For me that has meant five seasons in Florence since 2023, each one teaching me something the previous one could not. I share the everyday texture of those seasons here - the cafés, the walks, the work, the pauses, and the occasional strong opinion from Sid, an Italian Greyhound with very firm views about dinner time and carrots.
During those seasons I also built something new. After nearly a decade of building other people's dreams, I made a quiet decision to build my own. Midlife in Italy is where that story lives.
If you are here, I suspect you know the feeling. A quiet pull toward something more. A sense that there is a chapter you have not written yet. To find out I invite you to my Seven Days to Find Your Next Chapter ››
Welcome. I am so glad you are here.
Pernilla 🍋
Explore the Midlife in Italy blog
Solo Seasons
The heart of this site. Stories from solo chapters spent in Florence - the everyday texture of a life lived at your own pace, on your own terms.
Life in Florence
The cafés, the markets, the ancient streets and the small everyday magic of this city. A love letter to Florence, written from the inside.
The Next Chapter
The honest behind-the-scenes of building something new in midlife - the tools, the mindset shifts, and the quiet process of turning a dream into a direction.
Seven Days to Find Your Next Chapter
Seven days, seven letters. A free email series to help you find your next chapter. One gentle letter a day - each one a quiet, practical tool to help you hear yourself again.
The Digital Renaissance Blueprint
The free guide to the $1 trillion knowledge economy - reframing digital income as the new literacy, just as we once learned PCs, email and online banking.
Seven Days to Find Your Next Chapter.
I'm Pernilla - a happily married empty nester, sharing my solo seasons in Florence, slowly and honestly. This blog is where I write about the cafés, the walks, the work, and the quiet process of finding the next chapter.
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