#69. Feeling Lonely After Moving Abroad? Here's How to Lighten the Emotional Load

Moving abroad can look exciting from the outside — but inside, many immigrant and expat women carry a silent truth: loneliness, identity loss, homesickness, and the pressure to hold everything together. In this solo episode, I talk honestly about the emotional work women do when they uproot their lives, often without a title, paycheck, or community to hold them. 

I share the tools that helped me feel lighter - dealing with one big emotion at a time, rebuilding identity in small steps, and giving yourself permission to "faff around" and be un-serious in a life that often feels heavy. 

If you've ever felt invisible, overwhelmed, or permanently on duty after moving abroad, this episode officially reminds you that you're not the only one living through the immigrant experience: the opportunities, challenges and being heard.  You're allowed to feel good and have some levity. Often.

Leave a comment. Share your rituals for adding lightness in your life

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Transcript

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I have a question for the women who've migrated from your country of origin. Do you ever feel like you're spending so much of your time trying to get everything in place that you've actually forgotten to give yourself permission to be light? I share a perspective with you and a few tools that help me to lighten the load. Keep listening. This is The Places We Call Home podcast. It's a guide for women building a new life in a new country. We get honest about the emotional work of moving abroad and share tools, strategies, tips, and stories that help you find your footing so you feel less lonely. If you're trying to make sense of this new place and who you're becoming in it, you're in the right room It's your friend and host, Yolanda. It's so lovely to have you on this journey with me. Thank you for tuning in for this Friday episode. Now, I have been listening closely to immigrant women, you know, some friends and guests and women I meet in passing with whom I strike up conversations. And so I keep hearing the same thing, that it feels very lonely out here when you immigrate. Not because we don't love our new countries, but because we don't have the usual safety net of family and friends to help us carry the emotional responsibilities that come with uprooting our lives. We spend so much time just trying to get things perfect. We talk about the visas, we talk about the jobs, we talk about relocation packages and global assignments. And yes, those things are all part of the work, and they're really important. But I've come to realize that how you immigrated shapes everything. If you came as a solo traveler, you're carrying the whole weight of all the responsibilities: finding the job, sorting out the housing, the mortgage, the car, the money, knowing where it's going, knowing where it's coming from. You're doing all of that alone. That is a huge weight. Most of us didn't immigrate solo. Most of us immigrated because of a partner's job. To bring you some context, I have found out that only 23% of lead expats, the person who drives the move, only 23% are women, which means that the majority of us women, we arrive in our new country because of somebody else's assignment. And I am in no way saying that that's a bad thing, because it's new opportunities, and it means a great deal for the family. And we jump at those opportunities, expecting the best, fully excited. Often, we're the ones at home whilst the partner is off working. And 60% of trailing spouses are unemployed after relocating, even though most of you had active careers before the move. The woman who arrives in a new country without a title, without a paycheck, without the social scaffolding that once held you, me, us, our life together. But here's what I'm also realizing. It's simply that numbers can't tell you what it feels like to sit in a new apartment in a new city surrounded by boxes that hold your whole life, wondering who you're allowed to be now. So when you arrive and somebody back home or here says, "Oh, what's next for you?" It triggers a little bit of an alarm system, and you jump into action. We try to make it work for everyone. We tend to the kids, look after their schooling, their friendship connections, their whole process of acculturation. Just that in itself is a whole job. It's a big task We try to build a community. We scan for safety internally within themselves, as well as outside of the house. What's going on at school? What's going on on play dates? I see that we carry the whole emotional work of making everything come together. I'm not saying that our partners do not, but I feel, I sense that a majority of it really does fall on our shoulders, and that's where it all starts. It's not that you're idle, because you're not. You're overwhelmed. You are maybe a little bit frightened because you suddenly see the size of this task, not just for yourself, but for the whole family. I remember watching my mom do exactly that when we moved to England. A single parent, a few kids in a new country, and it was a huge pressure because she herself, even after many years, was still going through acculturating of being seen or being heard and belonging. If you're anything like me, you spend a lot of time in the car having these deep check-in conversations, trying to remember the lovely things from back home, but also trying to find new things to enjoy here, and taking them on the journey with you so that they carry some of that, and it's not you forcing them. That's a whole other job. And somewhere in all of that, we leave ourselves out of the, the equation intentionally, carving out time to just sit and breathe and do absolutely nothing serious. So here's my question for you. Do you need to spend more time simply just enjoying the fact that you're here, that you made it, that you had the courage to move, that things may not be perfect, but that they're okay? My tip for you today, something that I have learned recently, is simply this: Deal with one big emotion at a time. Start with a question of giving yourself permission to, what I call, faff around. Have fun. It means to just spend time doing something that is not at all serious, that is not heavy. You know you're doing something, you might not really see any results from it because it's not hugely vital, but it's something that you can do out of pure enjoyment, having fun, just chilling. Like, go for a walk. Go for a massage if you're able to. The second thing is you don't have to manage all of these things all at the same time. Just break them into different goals and tackle them separately. And I have now learned, and it made my life far easier. It worked for me, so I'm sharing it with you. I figured out what fed my soul. I needed to keep learning, so I took a post-grad class. I needed to have some sense of work that I'm establishing myself in some way, that my career hasn't just landed on the ground. So I started doing some pro bono consulting, working in teams with people who were far brighter than myself. The church that I found is very multicultural, very biblical, and with all of that, I didn't feel like I was a trailing spouse, trailing anything. I felt valued, I felt mentally engaged, and I was connected. And recently, I've been spending more time with my daughter just walking in the woods, stepping through streams with our shoes and our socks on, racing leaves and sticks down the streams, being happy doing something, but nothing serious, nothing heavy. Faffing around in water, faffing around in boats. That is what makes me happy. I think back to my mom again, and I don't remember many days where she had time to just chill. I don't want my life in the USA to be serious all the time. I love what I do. I love these conversations. I love sharing tools and perspectives with you all. I love it, and I'm going to keep doing it for as long as I possibly can. But I also want days where there is nothing to do but woo-hoo! Just light days. I want some days to be empty. So before I close, here's what I am asking from you. Share how you take time out for yourself. What do you do to faff around, to be light, to forget stresses and responsibilities that come with immigrating to a new country, a new culture? What do you do so that you can feel emotionally well and nourished and happy? There needs to be a thread of happiness running all the way through. That's it from me today. It's pelting hot outside, so I'm going to go out in it. However you are spending the rest of your day, I hope you have a lot of fun. Bye-bye.