The Other Side of Monaco: The Brave Face Behind the Glamour - Gabrielle Achilleos

Financial struggle, hidden loneliness and the courage to ask for help.

Monaco is one of the wealthiest places on earth. It is also one of the loneliest places to run out of money. Gabrielle Achilleos knows both sides of that truth and she is talking about it here for the first time.

Born in Grasse, Gabrielle returned to the French Riviera at seventeen, with no plan and no contacts, in a caravan with chickens and a wolfhound. She built a property business, lost it in the 2009 crash, met her husband Russell at the Monaco Yacht Show, and moved to Monaco. For years, life was full. She co-founded a charity that has supported fifty orphan children in Uganda for over a decade. She went through five rounds of IVF. She ran fundraising events, built a network, and devoted herself entirely to work that mattered.

Then her husband lost his job. COVID arrived. And Gabrielle found herself struggling to make ends meet in one of the most expensive postcodes in the world -while fifty children in Uganda were still counting on her to pay their medical bills.

Gabrielle then worked five jobs at the same time: tutoring French, doing admin, managing a villa renovation, childcare, running the charity. She kept the banknotes in an old glass jar on the kitchen counter. She walked barefoot on the sand at Larvotto beach because it was free. She dealt with shame and guilt and the particular loneliness of struggling in a place where nobody admits to struggling.

She then rebuilt. A discovery during COVID lockdown led her to the Institute for Integrative Nutrition in New York. She trained as a certified integrative health coach, specialising in emotional eating, nutrition and holistic stress management. She launched Gabrielle's Zest 4 Life. She found work she loves. Her nervous system, she says, has been allowed to relax.

This conversation is one of the most honest I have recorded on this podcast. Gabrielle does not perform resilience. She just tells you what happened.

In this episode:

• Growing up between Grasse and London and arriving in France at seventeen with a caravan, chickens, and no running water
• Building a property business on the Riviera, the 2009 crash, and walking away with 400 euros and a suitcase
• Monaco, the golden years, the charity, and the financial crisis nobody around her could see
• Fifty children in Uganda, five jobs in Monaco, and a glass jar filling with banknotes
• The shame of struggling in Tinseltown and why most women there never admit it
• Walking in circles during COVID lockdown and finding the Institute for Integrative Nutrition
• Launching Gabrielle's Zest 4 Life, health coaching, emotional eating, and the four pillars of wellness
• The International Professional Women of Monaco: building a safe space for women who are simmering underneath the surface
• What it actually costs to rebuild a life on the French Riviera and what barefoot on the sand taught her about starting over

Find Gabrielle:

Instagram: @gabrielle_zest_4_life

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/106256138760498

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/gabriellezest4life

Chances 4 Children: https://c4c.mc/

This is the full-length episode. If you would like to listen to a condensed 28-minute version, it is available on Living the Dream – Radio Edition.

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Real stories of women building meaningful, sustainable lives in the South of France.

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