She couldn’t afford the life she wanted for her son in the U.S. Moving to Germany changed both their futures

Molly Williams, who grew up in Michigan, moved from the U.S. to Germany around 15 years ago and says it's the best decision she ever made. (Molly Williams via CNN Newsource)

Living within walking distance of the mountains of Bavaria, Molly Williams never misses an opportunity to go hiking.

She has hiked all over the Alpine landscapes around her home in southern Germany, in the pretty town of Allgäu near Munich, as well as the trails of the Dolomite mountains, over the border in northeastern Italy.

Today, she feels at home in this corner of the world. But 15 years ago, having never visited before, it was unknown to her. She’d grown up in Michigan and was living in Portland Oregon.

That didn’t stop her taking the leap to move here with her son, then aged eight.

“When I look back, I think I must have been crazy to take that leap,” Williams tells CNN. “But it really has proven to be one of the best decisions of my life.”

She now feels a sense of calm that she never experienced while living in the U.S. She’s married to a German and her son, now in his early 20s, is thriving. Williams works for a global industrial company.

“I feel like there’s a lot of noise in the United States,” she says. “And here, things just feel more real and grounded.”

But her move wasn’t an overnight success. Williams experienced problems settling in during her early days, but now feels she’s in the right place.

“I like being here,” she says. “I like the rhythm, and it smells like home to me.”

‘Best decision’

The seemingly sudden decision to move to Europe was actually many years in the making. She spent her early years in Germany, having been born there when her father was in the U.S. military and stationed in the country and her mother was teaching there. The family returned to the United States when she was around three.

“In many ways, Germany has been both the beginning and the second chapter of my life, first as the child of Americans abroad, and later as an American rebuilding a life overseas with my own son,” Williams says.

Originally, she had been on track to spend her life in the United States, after going to college, building a successful career and starting a family.

Later, divorced and bringing up her child alone, Williams says she soon realized she wouldn’t be able to provide her son with the type of life that she wanted, so she started looking for “opportunities” outside of the U.S.

“I was a mid-level income professional in the United States,” she says. “And I feel I still couldn’t make it work the way I wanted to.”

Exhausted by the pressure of having to balance work, childcare, health care and finances, she felt unsupported as a single parent.

“I wasn’t feeling at home in the U.S.,” she says. “I didn’t feel like there was the infrastructure to support being the type of parent I wanted to be.”

Researching potential relocation destinations, she liked the look of Germany’s minimum vacation policies and was intrigued by its education system — especially its embrace of nature and the outdoors, as well as its reputation for engineering and technology.

She felt that moving to the country could be a great opportunity for her son to become fluent in multiple languages.

Above all, she hoped Germany might be able to offer her the kind of lifestyle she’d hoped for.

Feeling emboldened, Williams, called a Germany-based company to enquire about potential opportunities and was offered a position.

Safety net

“They said, ‘Well, we’d actually like to move you to Munich.’ And I jumped at that opportunity… And three months later, I was relocating here.”

Williams arrived in Munich in 2012 with six suitcases, one filled with nearly 40 pounds of Lego bricks, and went on to move into an apartment in Glockenbachviertel, a vibrant Munich neighbourhood.

The cost of relocating came to around 15,000 euros, which is roughly US$17,451.

While Williams felt immediately welcomed into the local community, she describes her first six months in the country as “challenging” and “lonely” at times. She says she didn’t anticipate how difficult starting over solo in a foreign country would be.

Some aspects of life in Germany added to the friction. It took her a while to adjust to the bureaucracy in Germany and learned the hard way that rental properties in the country often require tenants to install their own lighting fixtures — and sometimes even kitchens.

Although Williams had assumed that her son would be able to attend a local school as a non-native speaker, this turned out not to be the case. But he was eventually accepted by a program and she was thrilled when he quickly bonded with classmates who were also non-native speakers.

Witnessing her son go through the German educational system turned out to be hugely helpful for Williams, who was able to develop a stronger understanding of Germans as a result.

“These are the kind of the communication models and the working models that gave me the opportunity to understand my co-workers and adults I interacted with,” she adds.

Childcare proved to be one of the biggest challenges for Williams during their first few years in Germany, with school days shorter than in the United States and more limited after-school options available.

“Balancing work with parenting as a single mother was often overwhelming,” she says. “Eventually, though, we found a rhythm and made it work.”

They eventually moved to Dachau, famous as the location of the Dachau Concentration Camp built by the Nazis, situated outside Munich. A picturesque Bavarian town, it offered Williams more resources as a single parent, than the more hipster-oriented Glockenbachviertel.

“I found people who were a little more open to me,” she explains, “So if I didn’t speak German perfectly, people were tolerant of that.”

WIlliams recalls being told early on that if she could survive her first three years in Germany, she’d be able to build a life there. That, she says, turned out to be true.

Making connections

“It took time to develop friendships and feel connected,” she says. Germans, she observed, tend to be more private, a situation that had her yearning for the ease of making friends in the U.S. “That’s the hardest part.”

While Williams initially arrived in Germany on a temporary visa which allows skilled professionals to stay and work in the country for up to four years, she was able to transition to permanent residency. She now has dual citizenship.

“After spending so many years building a life here, I wanted to fully participate in the country I now call home,” she says.

Williams is grateful to have been in the position to take her son on vacations to different European countries while he was growing up. To her great pride, he’s now studying at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom.

“He’s done great,” she says. “I think this international experience has really helped his mindset and viewpoint.”

Another bonus of life in Germany was not having to worry about health-care costs — Germany operates on a mandatory, co-funded insurance model.

“I think a lot of people think that German health care is free,” she says. “It’s not, but it gives you a strong basis and foundation.”

Around eight years ago, Williams met her now husband at a spin class. The pair married in 2023. Getting married in Germany proved to be harder than buying a house due to the bureaucracy, she says. Inheritance laws have also proven to be very different — under German law, the estate of a deceased person will pass directly to their heir or heirs.

While she spoke some German moving to the country, Williams is not yet fluent and admits that her husband speaks her native language better than she speaks his — so they usually stick to English.

The pair moved to the mountainous region of Allgäu just over three years ago. Williams says she had become tired of city life and her new rural location is closer to the version of Germany she imagined before relocating.

Today, Williams is thankful she took a leap of faith all those years ago and feels that the decision to move to Germany was the best thing for both her and her son.

“As a single mother, I would not have been able to afford university on my own,” she says. “And honestly, I think he would not have had some of the opportunities he had, simply because of the constraints I would have had.”

She doesn’t envision herself returning to the U.S. anytime soon but returns twice a year to visit family and friends and hasn’t completely ruled it out, stressing that she’s always open to “new adventures.”

However, Williams loves her life in Germany and feels that she’s where she’s meant to be — for now at least.

“In Germany, I discovered a different rhythm of life,” Williams says. “People protect their personal time more, vacations are truly vacations, and there is less pressure to always be “on…”

“I feel more present, more grounded, and more connected to the people around me and to everyday life.

By Tamara Hardingham-Gill, CNN