What Happens in an Expat* Orientation Session?
There’s a moment that happens somewhere around year four, or ten, or twenty-three of long-term life abroad.
You’re in the middle of a sentence — in your adopted language, the one you’re now fluent in — and there’s that tiny pause. You know the word. You know exactly where you are. And still... there’s a pause.
Or you visit “home” and someone tells you you’ve developed an accent. In your first language. The one you were born into.
You laugh. And underneath the laugh, something slightly heavier: a recognition that you’re not fully fluent anywhere now... apparently.
You’re not in crisis.
You’re not falling apart.
You’ve built a life in your new “here” — businesses, families, friendships, decades.
Some days the in-between feels lonely. Some days it feels like the most honest place you’ve ever stood.
But there’s a constant hum underneath all of it.
Buzzing away below the surface.
And most conversations — even the deep ones, even with people who love you — don’t have quite enough room for all the parts of you from “here” and “there”, or for how your body has learned to carry both.
*Not sure if “expat” is the right word for you? I wrote about that here.
The people who love you try. And you know how to receive what they have to offer — you’ve had practice. You nod, you say thank you in their language, you might even agree in the moment.
But later, when you’re alone, the hum continues.
It’s not that they’re wrong. It’s that this hum doesn’t respond to perspective or solutions or comparison. It’s not a problem to fix.
It doesn’t resolve once you’ve been here long enough, or made enough friends, or learned the language almost fluently — which you have. More than once.
The low-grade hum of long-term life abroad isn’t a sign that you’re lost. It means you’ve stepped into the in-between.
There comes a point where you just need someone to sit there with you — in that in-between.
Someone who hears the invisible hum because they’ve lived with it.
Someone who sees the bracing you lead with, daily, to prove you belong.
Someone who knows that “home” is no longer a place but an abstract feeling.
That’s what an Expat Orientation Session makes room for.
What is an Expat Orientation Session?
It’s a 60‑minute conversation. One‑to‑one, just the two of us. No intake form with fourteen questions. No homework. No framework you have to learn before you arrive — the structure comes from the patterns and questions I bring.
This isn't a clinical session — I'm a counsellor-in-training, not a licensed therapist. What I offer is structured conversation, not treatment.
You come with whatever is present. The thing you’ve been carrying around for weeks and haven’t said out loud yet. The question that doesn’t quite fit into a therapy session or a call with a friend. The version of yourself in your long-term life abroad you haven’t had space to introduce properly.
We start with where you are. Not where you want to get to — where you actually are right now.
What the hum sounds like this week. What it’s attached to.
From there, we slow down together. Not to solve it. To look at it. To find the words for it, because sometimes that’s the thing that’s missing — not answers, but language.
What most people leave with:
By the end of our 60 minutes, many people walk away with:
Words for something you’ve been feeling for years but couldn’t hand to anyone
A clearer read on what’s actually yours to carry — and what’s the weight of the context and conditions you’ve been living inside
One thing to move toward — or one thing you finally have permission to put down
A little more room inside yourself, even if nothing outside you has changed yet
It’s a space to finally say the thing out loud — with someone who already knows what those unsaid things cost.
This is for you if you’ve been abroad long enough that you’re no longer “just landing” in your new home — and you’re asking yourself, “Why haven’t I gotten used to this yet?” If you’re functional, fluent, tired and still carrying something you can’t quite name. If you’ve tried talking about it and left the conversation feeling slightly more alone than before.
It’s probably not for you if you’re in acute crisis, navigating a clinical diagnosis, or looking for someone to tell you what to do next. This is a space to think out loud with someone who’s living a version of this in-between, too.
If something here named what you’ve been carrying
There are usually three Expat Orientation Session spots open each month. If you’d like to sit with speak to me before booking a session: