Visiting Home
As I walked along the rugged coastal track with my now 74-year-old mother, I felt a heaviness in my chest.
It was my first visit home since relocating to Guatemala a year and a half earlier. With the 40-hour flight route, and the budget strain of simultaneous relocation and career change, I hadn’t been able to come sooner.
Spending time in my childhood home, sitting by cosy fires that protected us from the cool Tasmanian autumn, enjoying frequent drop-ins from my toddler niece and her parents, came as a much-needed rest. A pause. A reconnection with my family.
The Lives We Didn’t Live
A sadness and longing stirred within me as I thought about how, when we follow the threads of life, especially life abroad, it can lead you so far from your origins. From the lives you didn’t live, and will never live.
Familiarity, closeness, predictability, family. A life of proximity and safety. A life I might have enjoyed if I hadn’t been a globetrotting twenty-something who fell in love with the world.
A sense of grief arises as I acknowledged my young niece will grow up without me around. And guilt that my parents will age without me there to support them. I pay my debts of absence in month-long visits and long-distance phone calls. But it never feels quite enough.
Straddling Worlds
As I straddle three worlds – my origins in Australia, decade-long friendships in Cambodia, and my loving partner Guatemala – I feel full. Full of love, support, bonds that run bone deep. And also a longing for simplicity, for all of it to be in one place.
Life abroad, for me, has been a life-expanding experience of becoming who I truly am, in all my forms, and through all seasons. In truth, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
And it has been hard at times. Both can be true.
What I’ve Learned to Hold
That sadness, that grief, that guilt are emotions that may never be fully resolved. And I’ve come to understand that resolution isn’t always the goal.
As a therapist who works with expats and immigrants, I too have had to grapple with the complexities of this life choice, the ones that are almost impossible to reconcile. I’ve sat with this alongside my clients.
What’s helped hasn’t been trying to fix it, but in noticing and paying attention to our experiences in the present moment. In building the internal resilience to hold all of these experiences and emotions at once. Turning inward. Hearing and seeing what arises. And allowing it to be there.
If you’re living this kind of life and carrying these same tensions, you’re not alone. I work online with expats and immigrants worldwide. You’re welcome to get in touch.