I got divorced abroad and decided to stay in Europe. My $900 pension goes so much further in a tiny French village.

Karen Anderson moved to a small village in Northwestern France.

Courtesy of Karen Anderson/ Getty Images After divorcing her European husband, Karen Anderson decided to remain in France.

She says she'd love to move back to the US, but the higher cost of living makes that unrealistic.

She says affordable housing and healthcare have made life in France far less stressful.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Karen Anderson, 57, a Californian who moved to the UK in 2011 and now lives in a small village in northwestern France.

The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

I was working as a 911 dispatcher for a California police department when I met my ex-husband, who is English.

After dating for a year, we got married in 2011 and eventually moved to his home country, the United Kingdom.

I wanted a different life and the chance to experience more of the world.

For years, we split our time between the UK, where he worked, and France.

And in 2016, we bought a house in France for €45,000 ($50,450), far less than anything we could have afforded in the UK.

At closing, I remember being handed more than 100 pages of paperwork.

We were foreigners buying a home in a language we didn't understand, so it was very scary.

But our hands were held during the process.