Cover Art by Ute Hagen

What if home wasn’t a place, but something you carried with you?

In February 2011, when their rented house suddenly sold and their comfortable routine crumbled, Ellen Barone and her husband, Hank, faced a choice: scramble to rebuild the same life, or leap into the unknown. They chose the leap, packing their lives into storage and setting out for what they thought would be a one-year adventure—three months each in four different countries, starting with Mexico.

But one year became two, then five, then a decade. What began as a planned experiment—perhaps even a search for a new home—became a journey of reinvention, a couple learning to live without the safety nets they'd spent decades building. They traded financial security for freedom, familiar communities for connections across language barriers, and comfortable routines for the constant work of adapting to new cultures.

As they moved from Mexico to South America to Europe, they discovered that what drew them to stay in each place—and what ultimately pushed them to leave—was often the same: a growing sense of connection, and a deepening awareness of what 'home' could mean when it's no longer tied to one place.

In December 2019, they returned to the U.S. for what they thought would be a brief visit. Then the pandemic hit, and the world, along with their carefully unstructured life, came to a sudden halt. But in 2022, as international travel resumed, so did their courage to choose uncertainty over security—this time beginning in Scotland and continuing with the same quiet determination to live differently.

I Could Live Here is a personal and quietly radical memoir about the risks and rewards of choosing uncertainty, the complexities of partnership when everything familiar falls away, and what it means to belong—in the world, and in your own skin.

With tenderness, insight, and disarming honesty, Ellen Barone explores what happens when you give up everything you're supposed to want—and discover what you actually need.