How Growing Up French and English Taught Me to Live Well
A Franco-British blueprint for living fully, without burning out or checking out.
We live in extremes, in a time of overstimulation and under-connection, where we’re told to either perform or feel, but rarely both.
Most people I know are either sprinting toward success or crashing in its aftermath.
They’re working overtime, healing on retreats, quitting jobs, starting new ones, searching for purpose, managing anxiety, tracking sleep. Always managing. Always optimising. Always swinging between hustle and escape, but never really feeling anchored.
Pleasure is either sold to us or shamed out of us. And somewhere along the way, we stopped asking how life feels, and started performing how it looks.
But I was raised in the middle. Tastefully. Not in a romanticised way, in a real one. With awareness. With presence. With taste. Even on a Tuesday. Even on a school night.
Because I grew up between French and English. And the older I get, the more I realise, that’s what taught me how to live.
The Cultural Blueprint
My mum is French (Parisian, which really does matter). She taught me to notice. To care about the details. To live well, even quietly. To lay the table properly, dress well, argue passionately. To feel everything deeply, and not apologise for it.
In French culture, presence is power. There’s always a side salad. Always a vinaigrette. A bottle of wine is opened not for celebration, but because it’s dinnertime. Living well wasn’t saved for weekends or special occasions. It was folded into the everyday.
People love to hate the French. That “Je ne sais quoi”, the attitude, the obsession with cheese. But under all that? A quiet mastery of life. A deep understanding of rhythm, ritual, and taste. And whether we admit it or not, most of us are starving for exactly that.
My dad is English in the classic sense. Reserved, self-contained, pragmatic. He taught me how to stay calm (I am still learning). How to get up and get on with it. How to be optimistic, even when things are hard. There’s no drama. Just follow-through.
In British culture, discipline is a virtue. There’s humour in discomfort. Dignity in silence. You show up, even when you don’t feel like it. You don’t need a mood to honour a commitment. You just do it.
And somewhere between them, I found the rhythm I now live by.
Not One or the Other, But Both.
French culture taught me to feel.
English culture taught me to function.
One says: feel everything.
The other says: hold it together.
One says: live fully.
The other says: get on with it.
Together, they gave me range. Together, they gave me what I call, Tasteful Hedonism®.
It’s the blend, not the binary. It’s my French side whispering light the candle anyway, and my English side reminding me don’t forget to show up tomorrow. This isn’t just cultural nostalgia. It’s a third way of living, one I believe more people are starving for than they realise.
Bilingual in More Than One Way
The older I get, the more I realise bilingualism gave me more than just two languages, it gave me two lenses. Two frequencies to live in. Two ways of making sense of the world.
And I didn’t just grow up in it. I studied it. International Media and Communications with Spanish. A whole degree spent analysing how our realities are shaped, by culture, by language, by media. How some cultures move fast. Others move deep. How some perform success. Others embody it.
We found an old home video the other day. I must’ve been about five years old, talking to my mum in French, turning to my dad and answering in English, all in the same sentence. No switch in tone. No pause.
It’s not the bilingualism that moves me now. It’s how natural the shift was. How early we learn to read the room. To code-switch. To stretch. To split the difference between who we are and who we’re expected to be.
Nobody calls it performance when you’re five. But that’s what it is. And most of us never stop.
Back then, I hated being different. People at school would ask: “Say something in French!” Like I was a party trick. I could never understand why my mum even bothered teaching us french. It felt pointless, and weirdly embarrassing.
But, now I get it.
She wasn’t just teaching me French. She was teaching me how to move between worlds. To hold more than one truth at once. To live in more than one frequency.
The Frequency You Can Actually Live In
I used to think I had to pick a lane. Be more productive, or more present. Build the empire, or burn it all down and run away to Bali to #heal.
But that’s not real life.
Real life isn’t a binary. It’s a blend.
It’s work and play, at the same time.
It’s showing up and slowing down.
It’s pouring the wine and closing the deal.
It’s designing a life that feels like yours, not one that just looks impressive online.
Tasteful Hedonism® isn’t indulgence. It’s intelligence.
It’s presence with stamina. Joy with follow-through.
It’s lighting the candle, and sending the invoice.
Proof of Concept: My Life
When I left university, I spent the next few years travelling the world, living in different countries, and getting paid for it. I felt like I’d escaped the matrix. I remember thinking: why save up to travel when I could earn and travel at the same time?
I did a ski season. Then I started capturing it all. 50 Millions views on TikTok, and an article in The Insider, later. I saw an opportunity to work with brands by creating content and building strategies from the lifestyle I was already living. I did 16 weeks of Yacht Week in Croatia, skied in Japan, sailed through the BVIs, did one too many ski festivals, went on safari in South Africa, all because I could tell a story with my iPhone. This was before I even started Trendie Social.
And for a long time, I said I ran a social media agency. Technically true. But not the full truth.
What I was really doing was helping brands feel human again. Helping people feel something. I was translating culture, emotion, energy, and turning it into strategy.
But I was also living fast. Global campaigns. Viral content. All the highs, but no real anchor. I was building for everyone else, not for myself.
And there was no job title for that. Content creator comes close, but I wasn’t just creating content. I was living it. strategising it. Connecting everything.
On Explaining Yourself
That’s where the problem starts. Because in British culture, people want a job title. Something they can understand. Something that fits in a LinkedIn bio.
But I never fit neatly into a box. I was translating rhythm into revenue. Energy into emotion. I didn’t just post, I positioned. I didn’t just work, I lived. And I made a living by doing so.
Now when people ask what I do, I just say:
“I live my life and make money from it.”
Cue the confused look. The head tilt. The polite pause that says, Right… but what do you actually do?
But not everything needs explaining. In France, they get that. You don’t need to be a something. You can just be someone. You don’t need to brand your purpose to validate your existence.
Raison d’être exists, but it’s not a slogan. It’s a slow burn. A way of just being. A reason that unfolds as you go.
And maybe that’s what Tasteful Hedonism really is:
The courage to stop explaining, and start living. Fully, but tastefully.
I stopped posting every beautiful thing I saw.
I stopped trying to package my personality into a niche.
I stopped waiting for the moment where everything would feel “on track.”
Instead, I started noticing.
How I felt when I lit the candle.
How I slowed down when I cooked.
How much more alive I felt when I wasn’t trying to prove anything.
That’s when Tasteful Hedonism stopped being just an aesthetic… and became a survival tactic.
What It Really Means to Grow Up This Way
Growing up as a Tasteful Hedonist doesn’t mean I was raised in luxury.
It means I was raised to notice.
To find rhythm. To speak softly and feel deeply.
To build something real, and enjoy it, too.
It’s not about performing perfection.
It’s about living with intention.
Tasteful Hedonism is the anchor I always come back to. It’s not a brand or aesthetic, it’s a life strategy. One that says: success is not what it looks like. It’s what it feels like.
It’s the blend, not the binary. It’s my French side reminding me to live well, and my English side making sure I follow through.
So no, I don’t have a five-year plan.
But I do have a life that feels like mine.
And maybe that’s the new ambition.
Maybe that’s enough.
Stay Trendie ;)
India xxx