The Hidden Grief of Leaving: Expat Edition

It’s that time again. The countdown begins for our next move. The purging has begun. The planning has commenced. And living in two places at once is my current reality. PCS season is upon me.

I remember my first like it was yesterday. As a young family of 3, my husband, my 8-month-old son, and I boarded a plane from Virginia to Niger. I left behind my best friends. I left behind my community. I left behind my career. I left behind the version of myself that I spent the last 4 years curating into who I had become. While I was excited for what this adventure had in store, I was sad for what and whom I was leaving behind.

Fast forward 11 years, and here I am again. Preparing to leave behind the community, routines, and person I created specifically for Malaysia.

I use the words “curate” and “create” because these moves take effort. Within the embassy, oil and gas, military, and other expat communities, we know we are working with limited time. The intensity with which we make friends, establish routines, and build our empires is nothing short of a whirlwind and nothing less than survival. The sooner we have those things in place, the sooner we can thrive.

Friendships

We are lucky if we arrive at post at the same time as someone we click with, because that revolving door shoves people out every summer. Adults and kids say their goodbyes every 12 months while simultaneously welcoming new families to take their still warm spots.

Loss and grief are common within expat communities, specifically ambiguous loss. Pauline Boss, PhD, describes ambiguous loss as loss without closure. One way the expat community experiences ambiguous loss is when we move away, or our friends move away. We know they are still alive. We have an idea of where they went. Social media, messaging apps, and phone calls might help us stay in touch. But at the end of the day, we are no longer together.

We miss out on milestones – birthdays, weddings, kids walking/talking/graduating. We are no longer bonded by the experiences of living in that country together – the walks we took, the adventures we went on, or the after-school parent bonding by the pool. We know they are out there, somewhere, doing something, but we aren’t there to share it with them. That thread has been cut. We hold on for dear life, but it isn’t the same. We aren’t the same.

Purpose

The expat community also experiences ambiguous loss through our purpose. I refer to spouses like me as trailing spouses or EFMs (the US government calls us “eligible family members”). As a child, adolescent, and even college student, I did not anticipate nor plan to follow my husband around the world while attempting to find purpose outside my home and kids. Before our first move, I had earned a master’s in sport management and planned to work in a college athletic department.

Our first move slammed that door shut. Those 2 years, I cared for our first son, led fitness classes at the embassy and in my home, and took French lessons. While it was fulfilling at the time, it wasn’t what I had planned. Our follow-up tour held more of the same. This time, I was caring for a newborn, a 3-year-old, leading fitness classes, and playing slow-pitch softball when it was season. Good enough.

After 4 years of living abroad and knowing I had 17 more years to go, I knew I needed to find something more stable. I decided to earn a second master’s in clinical mental health counseling while my husband was gone on an unaccompanied tour. I am fortunate that this profession allows me to live abroad and work consistently.

My friends and other EFMs are not as fortunate. The struggle is real, and the purpose is fleeting. We, the trailing spouses, are some of the most overeducated and underemployed people on the planet (might be an exaggeration, but honestly, I won’t be convinced otherwise). I have sipped coffee midday with a legitimate rocket scientist, an oral surgeon practice owner who sold her part of the company for millions to move overseas, an anesthesiologist who travels back and forth to maintain her license, a professional soccer player, an architect, artists, breadwinners, and so many other admirable women and spouses who have sacrificed their professional careers and dreams.

Don’t get me wrong – we all made this choice. We all intellectually knew what we were doing and giving up. We just didn’t know in our hearts and souls how challenging it could be and the amount of grief we would carry.

Sure, we could work at the embassy – in the mailroom, as a rover, the CLO, or other positions within the building. But we aren’t guaranteed open positions during our time at post. We aren’t guaranteed stability, especially during government shutdowns. We aren’t guaranteed security clearances that come in time before we must leave. And we aren’t guaranteed paychecks commensurate with our experience and education. Every 2-3 years, the application process starts all over. It’s exhausting and sometimes demoralizing.

What Ifs

Which leads us to the scary question of, “What if we hadn’t chosen this lifestyle?”

What if we stayed in Texas, both finished our master’s, I worked at a university, and he ran a golf course (this was his first plan)? What if we’d lived in the same place for the last 15 years instead of moving all the time? What if our kids had grown up with stability, around their extended families, and been able to say one day, in their future, “I’ve had the same friends since elementary school!” This ambiguous loss of a grieved, hoped-for future will never have closure. There will never be an answer to these questions. But that doesn’t mean we don’t feel the loss.

And while anyone can have these thoughts, doubts, and questions, it seems like the universe presents itself with the option to back out every time it’s time to bid again. Do we keep going? Do we stay out? Do we go back home? Do we quit altogether?

And honestly, there’s no right or wrong answer. There’s only the answer we choose. We might always question our decisions, but at some point, we must settle for the choice we make and embrace the life we are currently living. Life is a real choose-your-own-adventure book – there are so many ways you could live it out, but you can only pick one at a time. Follow it through and see what happens.

Who am I?

It’s a funny thing coming home.

Nothing changes.

Everything looks the same, feels the same.

Even smells the same.

You realize what’s changed is you. 

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Oh man, I’ve “moved back home” twice now – once to Texas and the other to Virginia. As much as I love Texas and have “Texas Forever” tattooed on my heart (figuratively), when I moved back in 2019, I have never felt more out of place. I hadn’t lived in Texas since 2011. There were so many familiar places. I still knew people who lived there. But everything seemed a little bit off. It was me. I was changed.

The second time I “moved back home,” we ended up in Virginia in 2021-2023 because Myanmar had a coup, and we couldn’t go as a family. I was so excited to be reunited with my friends from 2015, to return to my CrossFit gym, and rejoin the Bible study ladies I met with each Wednesday. The longer I held on to the person and routines I had had 6 years before, the harder it was to embrace everything this new go-round.

We are not the same people we were when we left America. We’ve seen too much. We’ve learned too much. We’ve experienced too much to return to who we were.

Life will never be the same. And maybe that’s the point.

If you are a trailing spouse or EFM who resonates with any of that, please know you are not alone. While I can’t offer solutions to our employment problem, I can provide a safe place to be sad, angry, and grieve. This lifestyle is hard. You don’t have to do it alone.