LIFE BEGINS

As she gracefully traverses the intricate landscape of turning 40, Solenn Heussaff candidly shares her journey of redefining what it means to achieve success and find true happiness

- Maritess Garcia Reyes

These days, Solenn Heussaff’s mornings begin at 4am with a quiet moment in her garden, where she gathers her thoughts before her children wake up at 7am. “I watch the sun rise,” says the multi-hyphenate mother and wife. Later in the day, she dedicates time to her two daughters, five-and-a-half-year-old Thylane Katana and two-year-old Maëlys Lionel, alongside her husband, Nico Bolzico. Despite being a hands-on mum, Solenn carves out space for her passions, from painting and playing padel to engaging with over a million subscribers on her YouTube channel and sharing on Instagram as inspiration strikes. This unhurried, steady life, a departure from the whirlwind of her twenties, is what she now equates with happiness.

Approaching her 40th birthday this month, Solenn shares, “I feel at my best.” She looks forward to her forties as a time to enjoy life, control her schedule and prioritise being present with her family. For her, this new milestone is about slowing down and intentionally subtracting unnecessary aspects from her life. “I want to be able to say yes or no to certain things, work on my schedule and not on someone else's schedule as I realise I am lucky enough to do so.”

While the French-Filipino beauty finds joy at this stage in her life, she acknowledges the profound responsibilities that accompany it. “You're at this point where you're raising a family and at the same time your parents are getting old,” Solenn shares, a reality that has become particularly poignant with her own father’s condition. Her 78-year-old father, Louis Paul Heussaff, has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, a progressive neurodegenerative disorder.

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