The Loneliness of Moving Abroad

Have you ever moved to a new country and suddenly felt like you'd lost a part of yourself?

Maybe nobody knows your story. Maybe simple conversations feel exhausting. Or maybe you miss the version of yourself that felt confident and at ease.

In this episode, Emma shares why moving abroad can feel so lonely, and how building your confidence in English can help you rebuild connection, belonging and a sense of home.

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Moving abroad is exciting, but it can also be one of the loneliest experiences you'll ever have.

In this episode of the Hey Lady! Confident English Podcast, Emma explores why so many English learners feel isolated after relocating, and why the biggest challenge often isn't your English level. It's rebuilding your identity and finding your place in a completely new environment.

You'll discover practical ways to build confidence before you move, connect with people more easily once you arrive, and create a sense of belonging through regular conversations.

If you've recently moved abroad, or you're planning to, this episode will help you understand why those feelings are so common and how small conversations can become the foundation for confidence, friendship and belonging.

💬 About Emma

Emma is the founder of Hey Lady! and creator of the YouTube channel mmmEnglish, trusted by more than 6 million English learners worldwide.

Hey Lady! is a global English-speaking community where women build confidence through real conversations, connection and consistent speaking practice.

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🎙️ Have a question or challenge you'd like Emma to talk about in a future episode?

You can send a voice message or share your experience below.

Transcript

0:00

I know that lots of you who tune in each week are living abroad, and I've spent years living in other countries as well. And when you move to a new country, you don't just leave behind your friends and your family, you leave behind a version of you that knew how everything worked. You had a job that you were qualified to do. You had certifications that were recognised. You had a network, connections, people who knew you, people who you could call if you needed something. And then suddenly, you're in a brand-new place. There's new rules and new systems, and often it's in a new language. And don't get me wrong, it is so exciting to be building a new life, but it's also really challenging, isn't it? Things that you never thought twice about suddenly are really complicated and hard. In English, you feel like a completely different person because in this new country, in this new place, it's like no one recognises who you are. Some days, you don't even recognise yourself. Hey, everyone. Welcome back, and an extra big welcome to you if you are joining us for the very first time. This is the Confident English podcast. My name is Emma. I'm the founder of Hey Lady!, which is an online community that brings women together from all over the world to practise speaking English. Every week, we break down the barriers that keep you from speaking with confidence, whether that's at work, while you're traveling, or in everyday life. If you've been learning English for a long time and you are still struggling to speak up, you are in exactly the right place. All right. Let's get straight into the episode. So here's a listener question that I received last week. Hi, Emma. I found your podcast last month, and I've listened to every episode since then. My name is Nasreen, and I moved here from Iran two years ago. Back home, I was a doctor. I had a team. Here, my qualifications are not recognised. Last month, I had an interview for a job I could have done 10 years ago. I know my English is good, but the way they looked at me, I lost my words, and I sound like I know nothing. I don't feel like myself anymore. What can I do?" Nasreen, thank you for sending your question in. Honestly, the amount of courage and determination that it takes to rebuild a life in a foreign country, it can only really be appreciated by people who have actually lived it, and I can't pretend to really know what it takes. But I have supported hundreds of women through that journey, women who felt like they lost their identity, that they lost themselves after moving to an English-speaking country. The idea of moving to a new place can sound glamorous and really exciting, but the reality can be very different, right? It can be frustrating. It can be a lonely place to find yourself in. So if you're listening right now and Nasreen's experience sounds familiar, then stay with me because everything that I'm about to share is for you as well. Maybe you moved abroad for work or for study. Perhaps you followed your partner, or did you arrive completely on your own? Maybe you had a plan in place, but maybe you just set off on an adventure that turned into a whole new life. Maybe you fell in love with someone or somewhere Maybe this move was the culmination of years of hard work and effort and sacrifice. We end up living in different countries for all kinds of different reasons. However you arrived, it's very easy to romanticise the life and the friendships and the sense of belonging that you dream about. But it's not often that everything turns out that way. The new people around you, they already have full lives. They have old friends and family commitments and routines that were well-established long before you arrived. And meanwhile, the people who know you best are thousands of kilometers away. You might be busy all day and still have no one nearby to really talk to. You can live with people that you love and still feel isolated. You can work or study alongside other people without feeling like they truly know you. And then speaking in your non-native language, that can make the distance feel even greater. You hesitate before joining a conversation. You miss the right moment to say something. A joke pops into your head just a little bit too late, or you avoid phone calls because you just don't know how the other person is gonna respond. None of these moments seem especially serious when you list them on their own, but over time, they start to add up, and your world gets smaller because you show up in it less. And that is when difficulty speaking English can become something much bigger. It can become loneliness and isolation. Now, I want to talk about loneliness because it's something that people don't often see or notice or plan for. And being lonely isn't always about having no one around you. Often it comes from not feeling known or feeling different, feeling like you don't belong. Nasreen's interview is an example of this. Her qualifications not being recognised is a real problem, and speaking English more confidently can't easily fix that, right? But what happened inside the interview is something that many women will recognise. She knew she was capable, she knew she had experience, and yet in that moment she couldn't communicate in a way that felt like her, and she lost confidence, and she lost belief in herself. For another woman, that moment could happen at work, or on a date, or at university, or, oof, when you're meeting your partner's friends and you're trying to make a good impression. The painful part is the gap between who you know yourself to be and the person that you're actually able to be in that moment. And after a few bad experiences, you might start avoiding those situations, those moments where you don't get to show up as your true self. But it's in those conversations, the ones that you avoid, that they end up being the same conversations that can help you to build your network, to make friends, and to find your place in your new home. So a really important question is: how do you stop that cycle? Well, if you haven't moved to an English-speaking country yet, but you're listening to this podcast knowing that one day you will, well then, my advice for you is to start speaking before you go. Real life doesn't follow the dialogues that you study in textbooks. People will speak quickly, they will change the subject, and they'll use phrases that you haven't heard of yet. The goal isn't to prepare for every possible situation or conversation. The goal is to become comfortable responding when a conversation doesn't go as planned. You learn to ask someone to repeat themselves without feeling embarrassed or feeling judged. You make a mistake and you discover that the conversation can continue. You stop needing every sentence to be perfect before you say it, because real conversation is imperfect. It's not perfect. If you already have lots of experience speaking, it gives you such an enormous advantage when you do arrive. The practical tasks will all still be unfamiliar, and building relationships will take time, but you won't be meeting those challenges whilst also learning how to trust your own voice and how to speak up in those moments that matter. The best time to begin building confidence in English isn't once you desperately need it. It's before you actually arrive. But what about if you are already living in an English-speaking country and you're already experiencing some of these challenges in your everyday life? It's not too late. Of course not. You need somewhere to build your confidence without every conversation feeling important. A job interview isn't a safe place to practise losing your words and finding them again, right? Neither is a medical appointment, or your first day at work, or a conversation where you're desperate to make a good impression. You build confidence in lower pressure conversations so that your confidence is then available to you when you need it, when you're in those higher pressure conversations. And that means speaking regularly with people. It means making mistakes without feeling like you've failed, and it also means getting used to sharing your ideas and your opinions instead of just responding to simple questions. But speaking practice solves only one part of that problem. If you're feeling isolated, then you also need connection. You need relationships. It's really difficult to feel like you belong when every conversation that you have is with a stranger, and every conversation begins from zero, and you have to work up from there. Connection develops when people remember you. They ask you about something that you mentioned last time you spoke. They start to learn what makes you laugh and what matters to you, and also you begin to learn about them. So eventually, then you stop feeling like an outsider trying to get in or trying to get noticed. You become someone that people know, someone that people remember that they're happy to see And that sense of belonging can change how you show up everywhere. When you have people to talk to who encourage you and somewhere that you feel understood, you're not facing every difficult moment on your own. You have more confidence to start that conversation at work, to introduce yourself to someone, to say yes when an invitation arrives. A supportive community doesn't replace the life that you're building in a new country. It helps you to build it. And this is where Hey Lady! can help. It's a place to connect and to make friends in English. Some women join us before they move to an English-speaking country. They want to arrive with real conversation experience under their belt, and they want to arrive with the confidence to use the English that they already know. And an added bonus, they get to connect with others who are already living in those countries, a way to find out what life is really like, or a way to start building those connections before you even get there. Now, other women join Hey Lady! after they've moved to an English-speaking country, and that's because they are looking to make friends, and they want to practise speaking and become more confident speakers. Inside Hey Lady! you can speak regularly with women from more than 120 different countries. Some of them are building careers or studying. Some are retired, some are traveling. Others are raising families, starting relationships, or completely changing direction working out what their new life will be like. There's no single story of what it means to move abroad, but many of our members at Hey Lady! understand what that feeling is like, what that experience is like to build a life in another language, in a new place. And inside Hey Lady! you can practise handling real conversations without waiting until your English is perfect before speaking. And because you can meet the same women again and again, speaking practice grows into genuine connection, real friendships. You develop the confidence that you need to take your English out into the life around you as you're building your network in your new home. So whether you're preparing to move or you're already living somewhere new, you don't have to wait for belonging. You don't have to wait to be accepted. You can start building your network and your community in English right now. And we have a free seven-day trial at Hey Lady!, so you really can come inside the community, meet some of our team, meet some of our members, and truly experience it for yourself first before you decide if you'd like to stay. The Hey Lady! team will help you to get started, we'll show you how to find conversations and speaking opportunities that really interest you. Now, if you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to like, subscribe if you're watching on YouTube. If you're listening as a podcast, then please take a moment or two just to leave us a little review. Every little bit helps us to reach more women who need to hear this message. And if you have moved abroad or if you're preparing to move abroad, leave me a comment and tell me about your experience. I would love to know if any of the things that I shared today really struck a chord. Thanks again for being here with me today. Wherever you are and whatever difficult moment that you are in right now, I hope that you're not alone, or I hope that you know you don't have to be I'll see you next week for our next episode.