My Own Magic: A Reappearing Act

By Anna Kloots

For every woman searching for her voice, Anna Kloots shares her story of starting over by trusting the magic that was always within...

Despite what appeared to be a glamorous existence full of globetrotting adventures, behind the scenes, Anna felt invisible in her own life. Consumed by a marriage that left no space for her own desires and creativity, she chose to reframe the failure of her marriage as an opportunity to begin again.

It was Anna's innate sense of adventure and love for the unknown that led her to move abroad; travel around the world, visiting 80 countries; start her own business; and marry a magician—all before her mid-twenties. From the outside, her jet-setting lifestyle alongside her husband looked perfect. But though she appeared to have all the freedom in the world, in reality she was trapped in a slow-motion disappearing act.

When her marriage collapsed, she decided to use her unhappy ending as a chance for a new beginning—a reappearance into her own life and sense of exploration and discovery, letting each destination challenge, change, and shape her.

Following Anna's extensive travels from the bustling streets of Jaipur to the canals of Venice to the desert of Dubai, My Own Magic is a powerful memoir—a true, coming-of-age story about a woman rediscovering the magic that she always had.

Anna's memoir is proof that travel can transform you, inspire you, and even save you. Perfect for fans of Eat Pray Love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson
• Release date: May 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9780785255673

Anna Kloots

Anna Kloots is an American writer and photographer often seen dancing down the streets of Paris, where she currently lives. Her writing candidly recounts her decade traveling, her relationships, and her observations on life as an expat. Anna always adds a little sparkle to anything she does, chinks outside the box, and drinks champagne every day.

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BACKSTAGE

Author’s Note

Memories are a lot like magic tricks: little moments, full of wonder, that stir our emotions as they unfold. Both memories and magic tricks can be astonishing and insightful, but perhaps also misleading, for when we think back we may see or remember only what we want to believe. Our own minds can, after all, play tricks on us.

Both memories and magic can be shared, while also solitary. We can experience the same moment with another person and agree on how it ended, but we each walk away with very different interpretations of exactly what happened.

We can’t perfectly remember each moment in a magic trick, just like we can’t perfectly remember each moment that makes up a memory. But we do our best to honestly recall what we saw and how we felt, to form an explanation for what happened that is our truth.

Over ten years, I lived many moments and saw many magic tricks.

This is how I remember them.

Do You Know How He Does It?

There’s an age-old fascination with how magic is done. The question How did he do it? is whispered among the audience at every show. Many of us are actually unable to enjoy the performance without trying to uncover the method as we watch. Even after the show is over, the mystery plagues us for days as we attempt to understand how we were fooled. We reason:

He couldn’t have known.

I would have seen.

I had a free choice.

This very reasoning is the direct result of the magician’s choice of words while performing. You didn’t realize it, but he reaffirmed the credibility of his actions as they happened with phrases like, That’s fair, isn’t it? You could have chosen any card, right? No one asked you to say that, did they?

At a loss for logic, we create elaborate explanations in our heads to solve the mysteries we witnessed. We weave webs of invisible strings, props, and trapdoors. But if the magician were to ever share his secrets with you, you would see the solution is never as complicated as you imagined. The reality is, the truth was right before your eyes the entire time, but you were misdirected. The choices you believed were yours to make were influenced; the things that felt fair were controlled from the start. Manipulation is the nature of the art form. Magic is built on astonishing wonders and impossible feats, but also on deception. You know what you are experiencing is not possible in the real world, but a good magician makes you want to abandon logic, suspend your disbelief, and temporarily enter a world where anything is possible and miracles do occur.

During the decade I spent as a magician’s wife and assistant, I was asked the question Do you know how he does it? every day. People spit it up like a reflex within minutes of learning his occupation.

I don’t know a thing, I’d lie, as I’d been instructed to. (A magician never reveals his secrets to anyone.)

But of course, I knew everything: all the tricks, methods, and moves. Or so I thought. It was only after my time as a magician’s assistant ended that I began to realize maybe I had been fooled just as easily as everyone else.

ACT I

Cause for Celebration

While most people reserve celebrations for life’s biggest events, I believe in making a big deal out of the little moments too. So I bake cakes and pop corks on the obscure holidays, or the first day of a new season, or sometimes simply because it’s Tuesday. I’ve always tried to add a little sparkle to the ordinary.

But once I came across a type of celebration I’d never imagined. I was in Palm Springs when I spotted four middle-aged women by the pool, popping bottles of champagne in matching black satin pajamas.

You girls are fabulous! I shouted. What are you celebrating?

One grinned and yelled back, My divorce!

Oh, I stammered, well, uh . . . good for you!

I hadn’t known what to say. I had never heard of, let alone witnessed, a divorce party. My first thought was that divorce is not something to celebrate.

But as I watched them clinking their glasses and smiling, I decided that I had no right to judge. I didn’t know anything about that woman, her situation, or her relationship. I did know, though, that not everyone’s marriage goes according to plan; mine was currently far from blissful. Maybe for her, divorce was a reason to raise a glass.

A year later I thought of that woman again as I sat alone by a pool, just a few weeks into navigating my own divorce and drowning in the negative stigma attached to it. I was back in my hometown, Canton, Ohio, at the community fitness center that used to be my high school hangout. I hadn’t been there in twelve years but wasn’t surprised to find everything was exactly as I remembered it, just visibly run-down. The paint on the rim of the pool was chipped and faded. The rubber straps on the sun loungers were snapped and sunken, and instead of the perimeter being packed, there were only a dozen solitary sunbathers.

Before leaving the house, I had poured an entire bottle of Whispering Angel into a Nalgene thermos so I could sneak it in. My high school boyfriend had given the thermos to me, and though I hadn’t really liked it at the time, it was now proving to be quite a thoughtful gift. I should have never broken up with you, Andres, I thought as I poured.

Though it was only 10 a.m. when I arrived, I pulled out the thermos, took a sip, and then opened the first page of my new book: Psychopath Free: Recovering from Emotionally Abusive Relationships with Narcissists, Sociopaths, and Other Toxic People. I didn’t think my husband was a psychopath, nor that our relationship was abusive, but the other titles in the Divorce section of the bookstore had been so depressing I couldn’t bring myself to buy them. At least this one sounded like a page-turner.

When I was growing up, I didn’t have a set path I planned to follow, and that didn’t bother me. I thought of my dreams like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle without a box that gave away the final image. I wasn’t sure what my future would look like, but I trusted that everything would all fit together one day and make something far more beautiful than anything I could imagine now. That puzzle felt nearly complete when I got married; then divorce ripped apart all the progress and left me back in Ohio in pieces, and I felt I had only myself to blame.

I built my entire life and identity around my ex-husband, so when he left, my home, my job, and my confidence vanished with him. I was convinced I could be nothing without him, could do nothing without him, and I carried so much shame that my marriage was over. I knew that eventually everyone had to find out, but I didn’t want to be the one to have to explain it. How could I answer the question What happened? when I didn’t really understand myself? All I knew was that in the eyes of the world, I had failed at the most important thing to succeed in, and people would talk about it in sad, hushed tones: Did you hear what happened to Anna?

Suddenly I was no longer the vibrant, happy girl who celebrated each day. I hated being awake and often spent the entire day just waiting for night to come. But when it did, I couldn’t sleep. I tried to smile so people would think I was okay, but every happy action I performed felt manufactured. It wasn’t that I missed my ex-husband or wanted him back; the way in which we slowly unraveled left no trace of lingering love between us or chance of reconciliation. What I missed was myself, and what I wanted back was the young woman I’d let disappear. I felt I needed to reconnect with her, so I decided to go back to my roots.

Being in Ohio always makes me feel like a kid again. I spent a decade traveling to eighty-three countries, and Canton always offered the familiarity and nostalgia that my life lacked. My hometown hasn’t changed much over the years, and neither has my parent’s house. Every detail of my old bedroom remains intact from my adolescence: my prom dresses are still in the closet; my teenage journals are stacked in the nightstand; my worn-out pointe shoes hang on the wall. As I aged, new mementos and artifacts were added: postcards I sent home from far-off places, commemorative biscuit tins I collected while living in England, dried flowers from my wedding bouquet. But that summer, my parents swept the house like a crime scene before I arrived, removing all evidence that I had ever been married. The empty void on the walls where wedding photos once hung reminded me of my own reflection in the mirror: just a shadow remained of what was once such a colorful picture. Instead of my usual Canton routine of boating and ice cream, I had spent the last week sitting in cold, fluorescent-lit offices meeting with divorce lawyers. There was always a full tissue box on their desk when I walked in, which I’d emptied by the time I left. After several days of that, I wanted nothing more than to sit in the sunshine alone.

As I sat by the pool that day with my self-help book and my wine, I couldn’t help but wonder what my younger self would think of me today if she saw me as a stranger across the pool.

She would think I was old . . . but she’d like my bikini. She’d wonder why I was there alone, without kids or a husband. Maybe she’d look for a wedding ring and notice the faint tan line where mine used to be. Then she would notice my book title and think, Yikes.

What if she knew, with her whole life ahead of her and so many beautiful dreams she planned to make come true, that in twelve years she would be back in this very spot: devastated, divorced, drinking wine alone at 10 a.m.? Her future that once felt so bright, now dull. Her infectious smile wiped away. Her joy vanished; her confidence replaced with shame.

I wondered, If I could tell her something, would I? Would I warn her? Give her a chance to rewrite her ending?

Yes is what came to my mind first. But then I thought about it longer.

A lot of painful things happened in my relationship. But a lot of beautiful things happened, too, and for many moments, over many of those years, I was happy. I fell in love. I had a fairy-tale wedding. I embarked on a decade of adventures that took me all over the world and changed me, challenged me, and slowly revealed to me a lot about who I was and who I wanted to become. But they also made me realize that I couldn’t fully be myself or have much say in my own future within the constraints of my relationship. I fought as hard as I could to save my marriage, and though it devastated me when it ended, I knew that it was right. I took solace in the fact that I gave everything I was capable of giving. I believe he did too.

Still, I couldn’t shake the horrible feeling that I had failed.

It was only as I packed my bags six months later and moved to Paris that I recognized that failure had been essential to my story. My dreams were right there waiting for me to grab them, and it was failure that left me no other choice but to step outside the box and trust my own magic.

Paris Forever!

Paris

January 2020

At Charles de Gaulle, my Uber driver’s expression upon seeing my five suitcases was priceless.

You are just one? he asked.

He laughed hysterically as I nodded yes and struggled to move my cases toward the curb.

I never in my life pick up just one person with five cases. Oh my Goooood—hahahahaha.

He was a middle-aged man, thin as a rail and dressed in a three-piece polyester suit.

Well, I’m moving here. I attempted to defend myself. So my whole life is in these five bags.

His mockery instantly turned to intrigue, and as we began our drive into Paris, he dove into questions.

You move here for boyfriend?

No, I responded.

Family?

No, I said again, and I saw his eyebrows raise in the mirror.

You have friends here?

No, I answered again, which caused him to burst into another fit of laughter.

Oh my Goooood! Hahahahaha! This is terrible! You move here as single girl without boyfriend, friends, or family? How sad! Hahahaha!

A lesser person might have taken that moment to tell him to go screw himself, or at least pull out their phone and give him a very poor Uber rating. A smarter person might have just lied, feigning an engagement or ill relative. But I couldn’t get over the irony of what was amounting to my first conversation in Paris. You couldn’t write this dialogue, I thought. No one would believe it.

While the driver was certainly rude, everything he was saying was entirely true—and precisely why I came to Paris.

For the last ten years, I had planned my days around my husband’s schedule and my desire to maximize our time together, often at the expense of my own growth and success. When he left, I instantly filled the void with my parents and siblings. I’d drop anything I was doing to babysit my new niece or help my mom pick out towels for the new apartment they rented in Manhattan. Instead of making time for myself, I spent every moment I could with the people who made me feel happy, useful, and secure. It was clear that the only thing bringing me fulfillment was the relationships in my life. Serving others had always brought me purpose, and as long as the people I loved were accessible, I would prioritize them over myself. Once I realized that, I knew I had to leave. With no one to bring me purpose or happiness, I would have to find it within. Living in Paris had always been my dream, and I moved there for no one but me.

The Airbnb I rented to live in temporarily while I looked for a long-term place happened to be in the Marais, the bit of Paris I lived in when I studied abroad eleven years prior. The pictures made it look lovely, but after traveling the world for the past decade, I was well versed in the expectation-versus-reality moment that often occurs with accommodations booked online and was prepared for the room to look different than the advertisement. But anything would be an improvement on where I was coming from: the five-hundred-square-foot apartment my ex-husband’s family owned in New York. It was once his parents’ pied-à-terre, but after he graduated college, he moved in and transformed it into his bachelor pad / personal museum for his vast collection of antique magic. It was large for a New York apartment, but it was a studio—just one large room; the bedroom was an alcove that just fit a full-size bed and one nightstand, on his side. Shelves holding thousands of magic books lined one wall; twelve-foot posters of magic tricks hung on another; and props, wands, and costumes were displayed throughout, tucked under glass domes or stretched onto life-size mannequins. When I moved in, my few boxes of things went right into the loft so they wouldn’t disturb the decor. I lived there for six years—with never even a book of mine on a shelf.

As we pulled up, just the façade of the building brought a smile to my face. It was quintessentially Parisian, five stories tall with wrought-iron balconies on the second and fifth floors. An elaborate stone carving bordered the large blue door with a scripty No. 8 perched at the top. There was an old-fashioned metro sign outside the entrance to the station, just opposite. I bid my Uber driver goodbye, spent an hour lugging my five bags up three flights of small spiral staircases, turned the handle, and stepped into my new world.

Sunlight flooded the room, illuminating the highlights of the parquet floors. Three French windows, framed by thick cream curtains, looked out on the street below. One had a window seat covered with a sheepskin rug and an oversized pillow. I promised myself I’d sit there every morning and write. The walls were whipped cream–colored with intricate molding. I wanted to devour them. An antique, gilded mirror rested on the floor on the opposite wall, making the room appear double its size. A pink velvet couch just big enough for me to stretch out on for a nap sat on a diagonal in a corner. It perfectly complemented the pink-and-black floral rug. A crown-shaped crystal chandelier sparkled in the middle of the ceiling, crowning this gem of a place. Two pocket doors hid a tiny bedroom entirely wallpapered with pale-gray and white damask with matching curtains, while crystal sconces and small night tables stood on each side of the bed. A whitewashed wardrobe rested against the wall, so full of character I felt it might spring to life and dress me for dinner like in Beauty and the Beast. On the left was the kitchen, with marine-blue cabinets, white marble, and a Moroccan-tiled floor.

But my favorite detail was the oval antique painting of the Virgin Mary, her hands in prayer with two angels on each side. It hung above a little wooden bureau that had a vase of wilting yellow tulips and a half-burned candle in a brass holder, dried wax poetically dripping down the right side.

If I could have dreamed a home into existence, it would be this one. It was small but felt safe, was new but felt familiar, like it had always been a part of me. I loved every detail, down to the gold, antique coffee spoons. I couldn’t believe the apartment I had found, and for half the cost of places I’d rented in New York.

I sat down at the wooden table and let the tears stream down my cheeks as I smiled.

I finally had a place that felt like mine.

I walked to dinner that night without an umbrella, despite the trickle of rain. The rain in Paris has never bothered me. In fact, I find it makes the city a whole new kind of beautiful. Puddles on the cobblestones reflect the streetlights and give everything a warm, golden glow. Fog hangs in the air, and little bins inside cafés fill with a collection of soggy umbrellas. Rain does not stop the Parisians from sitting outside, smoking outside, and kissing outside. No one runs or tries to dodge it; they just keep being.

I didn’t have an exact destination in mind; I just wanted to wander until I found a place that felt magical, which never takes very long in Paris. Through the fog, I saw the shining bistro lights of Chez Janou, a little restaurant perched on a corner and known for its classic decor, bad house wine, and enormous-sized chocolate mousse à volonté—the French equivalent of all-you-can-eat. I’d heard of it but had never been. It’s authentic but a bit touristy, and that seemed to match my sentiment.

Pour deux? the waiter asked as I approached him. For two?

Non, je suis seule. No, I’m alone.

My Uber driver’s words played in my head. When I see person at dinner alone, I think so sooooo sad!

The waiter looked surprised but grabbed a menu, and together we weaved through the restaurant until we came to a little two-top in the back along the banquet. Next to my table was another where a woman was also seated alone.

Why is it that the two most beautiful women in the restaurant are dining alone? the waiter teased as I slid into my chair.

He put down the menus and pretended to join me, taking my hand to kiss it. As I laughed, I realized one of the reasons I love France most: every interaction revolves around passion. The whole city is so consumed by it, they can’t help it. Waiters compliment, shopkeepers flirt, vendors at the market may make declarations of love. Strangers on the street will lock eyes with you and hold your gaze just a moment too long, and anything exchanged by hand, be it money or bread or even just a wave, somehow feels intimate. The waiter wasn’t interested in me, nor I him—but he is a French man, and I am a woman. In his mind, I deserved to be told I’m beautiful. I deserved to have my wit tested. And above all, I deserved a dinner companion.

But I had no boyfriend, no friends, and no family here. So I was dining alone.

With no one to talk to, I instead began an internal conversation with myself, noting the details of Chez Janou on that rainy Tuesday in January so that I never would forget my first night of my new life in Paris. I committed to memory the color of the worn red-leather booths, the chipped tile floor, and the grain of the wooden tables that have likely been there for centuries. I admired the round, oversized bulbs hanging from the ceiling that illuminated the colorful vintage posters on the walls and reflected in the antique mirrors. I noted the song softly playing so I could play it again and think of this night. I ordered a glass of champagne to celebrate that I had made it; a dream so long in the making had officially become my reality. When my food arrived, I stuffed myself with warm baguette slices smothered in salty butter, creamy spoonfuls of roasted chestnut velouté, and forkfuls of tagliatelles aux escargots. Then I ordered a serving of their famous chocolate mousse. The waiter appeared with the jar of it and an enormous spoon. He scooped one massive blob onto my plate, then added another. I picked up my spoon to dig in.

And in that moment, I honestly couldn’t think of a single person who I wished was sitting across from me. Paris was the only companion I needed.

* * *

People always ask me why I love Paris.

I can’t answer the question, because there is no specific thing that I can pinpoint; it’s everything. It’s a feeling that comes over every inch of me when I marvel at elaborate lampposts, recline in a chair in the Tuileries, or tuck a warm baguette (pas trop cuite, s’il vous plaît) under my arm as I leave the boulangerie. Aside from an affinity to the book Madeline, nothing connects my childhood to France, or to traveling at all. We didn’t even have a French restaurant in Canton. There wasn’t much diversity in my school or neighborhood, so the concept of different cultures and countries was revealed to me primarily through characters in books and movies. Almost everyone I knew came from a nuclear, churchgoing, all-American family like mine. Traveling meant going to the Carolinas, or if you were lucky, Disney World.

Though I certainly grew up fortunate, as a family of seven we didn’t have the means to travel often when I was young—certainly not on airplanes. Once per year, we all piled into our enormous conversion van and drove to Hilton Head Island, where we stayed in the same condo, cooked the same meals, and rode the same bikes down the beach in matching outfits. It was my favorite week of the year.

The only other trips I took were humble Saturday journeys to our local library, a ritual my dad started with me. As he headed to adult nonfiction, I would bolt up the stairs to the children’s area and start pulling at the shelves, assessing what covers I’d never opened before. At an early age, I was drawn to tales of adventure. I was allowed to check out up to twelve books, so after some deliberation and swapping, I’d head back downstairs with a tall stack and my library card ready. All week long I could be found lying on my top-bunk bed among fruit snacks and stories, devouring both until my supply ran out. In a chaotic house of five children, I’d keep quiet for hours in my room with an open book. I didn’t feel like I was in my bedroom; I felt like I was on Prince Edward Island with Anne of Green Gables, following the yellow brick road to the Emerald City with Dorothy, or wand-shopping in Diagon Alley with Harry Potter. These stories were my first trips. As I read about worlds that sounded so different from my own, I wanted to see them myself. I wanted to slip through a magical wardrobe and taste Turkish delight like Edmund Pevensie and shop for lippy at a store called Boots like Georgia Nicolson. Reading opened the world to me.

The middle school I attended was a small, public magnet school for the arts, but it was so underfunded it was literally crumbling. Ceiling tiles suddenly crashing to the floor during class was a common occurrence. Without money to renovate or add on to the building, the school bought the only type of annex they could afford: a little red trailer. It housed the library in the front and the French room in the back. French was offered to only a handful of students and was not something you could apply or sign up for. Entry was based solely on test scores and teacher recommendation. Given my aptitude for English, my fourth-grade teacher believed I was a prime candidate to learn French. Her act of faith changed the course of my life.

Our first assignment in French class was to choose a French name. I listened as my teacher, Madame Fillez, read the list of possible identities, and it hit me that from now on, in this room, I could be someone else. I could speak a different language. I could discover a different way of life. I could travel.

I never realized how much I wanted to until the opportunity arose. I chose the name Éponine, since my only knowledge of France at the time came from the musical Les Misérables. My oldest sister, Traci, whom I idolized, often blasted the soundtrack from the boom box in her room, and I knew the choice would make her proud.

Madame Fillez didn’t just teach me vocabulary words and verb tenses. She made me my first crêpe, introduced me to Edgar Degas, showed me my first Givenchy fashion show, and taught me the words to La Marseillaise. She taught France, not just French, and I sat through each school day waiting for the hour that I could walk into that trailer and greet her with an overly enthusiastic Bonjour, madame! I stuck with it all through high school, and by my senior year, I was writing essays in French on themes in the novel Candide. I had learned all the French grammar, history, and literature that school could offer, and so I wanted to go experience France firsthand.

I was approaching graduation, and rather than joining the senior trip all my friends were planning to Myrtle Beach, I wanted to take a trip to Paris, even if it meant that I had to go alone and use every penny I’d saved working at a local ice cream parlor and folding polos at Abercrombie and Fitch. I prepared and argued my case to my