When Should We Make the Move Abroad?

When my husband and I were on our honeymoon we had the classic wide-eyed newlywed conversations: How many kids do we want? What names do we like? What city will we live in?    || resist the rising barf ||   A mansion, apartment, shack, house – wait that’s the game of M.A.S.H. Amongst those goals was to live abroad. As we close in on 13 awesome years of marriage, our M.A.S.H. game played out like this:

       – 2 kids

      – we lived in a house

      – 0 pets ← yeah yeah we don’t like animals. We don’t go around kicking kittens, it’s just not our thing.

We live in suburbia Spring Hill, Tennessee (south of Nashville) where churches outnumber gas stations and a cultural outing is Tex-Mex in a strip mall. Which I love btw and have participated in many hours of happy! No judgement, I just think that these realizations, coupled with our kids ages (6 and 8), and our employment situation, created the perfect storm for us. We have lived in Spring Hill for 11 years and sucked all of the marrow out of the the attractions and offerings in our area. We’re hoping that a new culture will broaden their horizons and shape their little futures.  

However, to come to that realization was not easy, it was an internal struggle for about 8-12 months, and I still panic a bit. I briefly lost my mind too. It was the quiet losing your mind where you don’t tell anyone, you just think about it incessantly and it erodes your soul – nbd. I didn’t want to tell people “I’m moving to Europe” and then be the ass hat that chickened out, so I just quietly grappled with it and, at one point, I literally remember Googling “when to move abroad with a family”. Good idea Kate.

After tormenting myself, Paul and I decided that there is no answer to the question: When are you ready?

I mean, I don’t think we’re ever fully ready to do anything.

Nothing will ever be just right. You’ll never have enough money, enough energy, time, the right job, ample storage space, westerly lunar tides, and all the other excuses that you’ll come up with that really are just fear in varying forms. 

So my advice: just jump. The adage is “the step out the door is always the hardest” and it’s true. Other than the crazy nightmare that is your visa – getting the “cajones” to just do it is the hardest part. (Didn’t know you were going to learn Spanish here too?!)

I can’t speak to your situation but I know that fear and doubt will bubble up many many times throughout the process. Often I think:

“Am I ruining my kids life?”

“Is Paul just doing this because he knows it’s important to me?”

I realized that both of those questions are valid on a regular Tuesday morning as a mom, so I focused on what this experience would be instead of what leaving would be. Those are drastically different things. 

I also wanted to show my kids that DOING something is a great way to create the life you want. As a high school teacher for 10 years, I always told my students: “Do you expect to wake up and have a plane ticket to Europe under your pillow from the ‘life experiences’ fairy?!” Of course not. I wanted them to understand they had to create their life instead of expecting things to fall in their lap.

As I approach 40, I’ve started to give less f*c3s about what could go wrong. With good health and family – nothing’s a risk. It’s all just gravy baby! We have wonderful family and friends and we know that they will be there for us despite the area code.

That said, I’m following my own snarky advice. I want my kids to know that the scary and hard stuff is also the most rewarding. 

Sooo…..my advice on deciding if this is right for you: I don’t know, but you do. Trust your gut.

I hope you find solace in our conflicted means to arriving at this decision. If you’re feeling torn, you’re probably doing something right;) It’s what you do with that feeling that will determine if you remain in your comfort zone or venture beyond.  Best of luck creating your life and the big and little decisions that will make it your own version of fabulous.

Thanks so much for reading. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

“Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear”. G. Addair