Reflecting back on my teenager’s years I already knew deep down that I would not live in France. Maybe I had inherited the travel gene from my dad who chose a career in the French Navy? I watched Cousteau, scubadived, dreamt of the sea. I studied seaweeds, got a PhD. I was always curious of students coming from far away... What were their beliefs? What did they cook? I was greedy to learn about different cultures. I married a South African, and we lived in South Africa for 15 years. Then we moved to Belgium, Denmark, and, for a couple of years, the south of France, before the last leg of our current journey, Ireland.
Each time you move you have to reinvent yourself. Re-ground, re-root. It’s exciting at first when you are younger, without children, with all your belongings fitting into a blue trunk. It becomes harder after a few times, when you have found a job you really enjoy, have managed to grow meaningful friendships, when you have purpose.
Children come. You raise them without family support. Moving becomes another challenge when children grow up and are at sensitive schooling times such as at the end of primary school, or coming up to exam years; when they have their own meaningful friends. Responsibility grows heavy on your shoulders, your heart shrink in pain. Children grow up, they need you less. You are facing yourself in a mirror one morning ... what happens now for me? You have followed your spouse around the Globe, given to your children, what is left of you?
Living as expats, outside your country, your culture, without family, isn’t easy. When you move, you lose everything, your life staying behind, and you have to start all over again. It can be very exciting and you raise ever again to the challenge. However...
It is a trauma.
It has consequences.
It brings stress.
You are tired, should I say, a bit scared.
Facing change.
Following.
Adapting.
In this sensitive time, coaching can make a huge difference and help you through.
You are not alone anymore, dealing with the removal company that heartlessly goes through your house packing every item of your life into white paper sheets. One minute the house is your space, you have breakfast, the next there is a swarm of activity and boxes are neatly stacked up into a truck. You are now standing at the beginning of another new adventure.
Let me help you navigate these new waters.
Coaching will lift up your spirits, help you setting up new goals, help you find new energy to define your new life and face its challenges. I am your very own personal international life change coach.
Reach out to me
Isabelle@naturallycoaching.
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