I had just finalized the name of my blog when my husband comes home with a rumor of a new move for our family to another continent.
“It’s a great opening sentence for an article!” a fellow student in our writing group chat told me.
I was back home after a few days in The Hague attending the annual Families in Global Transition conference.
I swallowed the news and did a Google search for Cross-Cultural Coach in the new destination: the result was 100 competitors already practicing. I was left with a gloomy mood.
From that moment, my husband’s interview process started. I kept following my routine: working as a Relocation Consultant in the morning, full-time mum of two kids, Life Coach and Cross-Cultural Trainer squeezed in the calendar time slots. No sense in starting to plan a move until a signed contract was on the table.
And so it happened, a few months later my husband and I were beelike busy, working on paperwork, school and home hunting, following up reliable recommendations from friends and acquaintances.
I started my new career four years ago around an old passion of mine: cultural diversity.
I’ve worked to create my portable job, trained as a Coactive Coach and a Cross-Cultural Trainer. My biggest asset was my personal experience which started abroad as first-time expat in Thailand in my 30s.
My aim was to help other families in transition, supporting them in the delicate phase of settling in a new country, where everything seems foreign.
And so I have recently started facilitating cultural integration workshops for the new-comers in the multicultural country where I have lived for four years. An amazing tiny country, rich in diversity with big economic growth, attracting many families from all over the world.
Now it’s my turn to assist myself and my family, to face a change in life. To help my children settle in a new community and a new school. To keep the balance between the challenges of the unknown – and the setbacks of an emotional nostalgia for family and friends left behind.
As for my job: I will have to start over again. I was not prepared for a change happening so quickly! But the train is leaving and I have to catch it. I will learn on the way, the place I will call home again.
With this blog I want to tell about all the amazing cultural encounters we will make, and be connected to the global nomad families out there.
