As Cindy Sheahan got on a flight in 2017, she figured she was just going on a well-deserved holiday. Time off work, time for some fresh air, perhaps some trips off to destinations on her bucket list. But the adventure would lead on to something much larger.
Now she’s divorced, retired, and living on the other side of the world from her children, in Palermo, Sicily, the place where she now resides. It was not an easy choice, but Sheahan assures it was the best thing she has ever accomplished.
A life at the crossroads
In 2017, Sheahan’s life in Colorado seemed solid on the surface. She was married, had raised four children, and had established herself in a well-paying job. But mortality was all around her. Friends and relatives were passing on, and the impermanence of life struck her forcefully.
“You really don’t know how many days you get or what’s promised to you,” she remembered.
“I figured I’d start traveling abroad. My company was kind enough to let me take a sabbatical while I sorted out my world. It turned out to be a mistake for them, because I decided I wasn’t coming back.”
The moment she was immersed in the bigger world, tasting the food she had only heard about, going where she thought she would never travel, and going back to a “normal” existence in the United States of America was impossible.
“I wasn’t getting any younger,” she told me. “I figured I could always work again if I wanted to. But right now? I wanted to climb a waterfall in Cambodia and ride a motorbike in Vietnam.”
So she resigned from the job, retired prematurely, and terminated the 30-year-long marriage.
A union that was not sustainable
Sheahan was eager to share how she had lived a satisfactory life. She had had children through her husband. She had built a home. She had enjoyed four decades of friendship. But something was lacking.
“He had no curiosity,” she added in short. “I didn’t want just to walk the dog, play pickleball, and tend a garden. I wanted a bigger life.”
Divorce, retirement, and an overseas one-way ticket, it was all turmoil at once. In the beginning, she figured it’d just be temporary, an elongated stint of travel before somehow making it back home.
She even maintained her Denver apartment, renting it out to traveling nurses whenever she was stateside. But year after year, the hunger for discovery only grew larger.
On the road life
Sheahan dove headfirst into full-time travel, hostel life as well as backpack life that led her through almost 50 countries. Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Madagascar, Turkey, Cyprus, Spain, France, Portugal, and Greece, the list continued year after year.
Having spent years parenting children, the single life was freeing.
“Eating, sleeping, and reading when you want to is nice,” she said.
“I remember sitting on a bench in front of Picasso’s famous painting Guernica in the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid. Who knew I could sit and look at it for half an hour without anyone saying, “Oh my God, can we go? Are you done?”
It was freedom she never realized she needed.
Seven years on the road full-time had been enough for her, however. She was yearning for something new: an anchor. “I wanted to put my toothbrush on my own sink and put my clothes on a hanger somewhere,” she said.
But she was also certain about one thing: the base would not be in the United States.
Why not America?
The more time she was spending overseas, the less in touch she was with life back home.
“I wasn’t into the US’s overconsumption,” she explained. “With the divisive political climate and the ridiculous gun culture, there was no way in hell I’d live there after experiencing a more peaceful life in so many other countries.”
So in 2022, she relocated to Portugal on a retirement residency visa. It felt right at the time, but then she discovered she could apply for Italian citizenship by ancestry. If she applied for it in Italy, the process would proceed faster stateside.
That discovery made her pack her belongings for the third time.
Falling in love with Palermo
Sheahan traveled all around Italy before making the choice for permanent residence. She resided in an Umbrian medieval town, strolled the Milan, Florence, and Rome streets, and was also contemplating the choice of Bologna and Torino. Then, Palermo, the Sicilian capital.
“It hit me: I had found my soul city,” according to her. “Palermo is a feast for the senses. There’s laughter, joy, noise, and it’s completely lovely.”
She was already resident in the city center by October 2024. Instead of settling in the suburbs where they were affordable, she set herself up in the heart of Palermo’s hustle, where she could walk to cathedrals, gardens, market halls, as well as festivals.
The expatriate crowd of the city made it easy for her to adjust, and at once, she began feeling secure and at ease.
“I have a good friend who lives by the local train station, about a 30-minute walk from my apartment. I walk back from her house all the time late at midnight, and there’s no stress,” she added. “I’m not walking with the keys in my hand.“
Her Italian home
The new apartment feels like a dream when compared with the American rent scene. It has 1,100 square feet for roughly $900 per month, all-inclusive condo fees. It has terrazzo floors, high ceilings, medallions, and French doors opening onto three individual balconies.
“It came completely furnished and is gorgeous,” she said to me. “My bathroom is spacious, which is hard to find in Italy, where showers are often the size of a phone booth.”
The apartment building was built in the 1930s, but it doesn’t feel old by Italian standards. To Sheahan, it isn’t an apartment building but the symbol of the life she created for herself.
Financially, Sheahan says Italian life affords her freedoms the States cannot afford. She receives $1,500 each month in Social Security, not enough for rent in Denver. But in Palermo, it covers rent plus much more.
The groceries come at far lower costs as well. “You can buy tomatoes, eggplants, zucchini, sun-dried tomatoes, and everything else for a song,” she explained.
Another area that was surprisingly inexpensive was health care. After breaking her foot in 2024 in Tunisia, she had two sets of X-rays and some consultations with an orthopedist in Italy for less than $150.
As an American now, she’s fully covered through the national health care system. Regular care costs nothing, and specialists run about $40.
A healthier, happier life
Aside from the money aspects, Sheahan’s well-being has also changed. Strolling almost anywhere in Palermo has decreased her cholesterol, lowered her blood pressure, and trimmed her belly.
She purchases healthier foods, spends less money, and has made some new friends. “Living in Italy, I make a new discovery every day. That sense of wonder and joy has become a regular part of my life,” she says.
There are sacrifices. Sheahan misses the kids so much. But she maintains the kids’d rather fly in to see her in Italy than sit in some Denver bar. And when they do come in, she gets to share her new world.
No regrets
In her own words, Sheahan doesn’t think of those decisions as reckless but vital. “I feel like I outgrew a lot of people and places in the US,” she told me. “Don’t get me wrong, I desperately miss my friends and family, especially my kids. My quality of life has improved in Italy.”
Her story may be extreme to some people, but it’s just the lifestyle Sheahan had to embrace after life became too brief for “what ifs.“
And in Palermo, strolling home under the Sicilian moonlight, she doesn’t think about having left something. She thinks about finding it at long last.
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