On why things can still feel hard even when your life abroad works on paper and what long-term expatriation does to your nervous system according to our research.
I am French and I have been living in the US for the last 19 years - and I feel this tiredness so much. I tried to resolve it by spending more time in the garden, with my chickens, creatures that allow us to slow down and not speak.
No matter how I miss France. And I miss myself as a French person. I am trying to find myself back but I am not able to. At time I feel so lost.
Elsa, 19 years in and still missing yourself as a French person is such an honest way to put it. The chickens and the garden make complete sense as a way to find quiet without needing language at all. And I hear you on feeling lost — that's such a real place to be, even after this long.
This is so interesting Kay, but I was wondering, as you talk with plenty of expats, what do you know about not feeling as comfortable in your original country when you visit it? I have lived in England for more than 12 years now and I feel at home here, to the point that when I go back to Spain, I feel overwhelmed there and I'm looking forward to being back in England. I don't know if this is just temporary, as I only go there for short periods, but it worries me because, despite being comfortable here, I am fully aware of my status as an immigrant here. It's this feeling of never feeling from here, but neither from there anymore.
Cristina, this is such an important question, and you're naming something that comes up again and again in my research: non-belonging is often sharpest not abroad, but at home. Several long-term expats I've spoken with describe exactly what you're describing, feeling more "at home" in their adopted country while visiting their country of origin leaves them overwhelmed or out of step. These returner stories showed up so frequently that they inspired all of the essays I wrote in June, including the one I've linked here: https://kayfabella.substack.com/p/youre-not-the-same-person-who-left
This non-belonging doesn't necessarily fade with time either. What tends to shift is less the feeling itself and more your relationship to it, understanding that belonging fully to both places, or fully to neither, isn't a failure. It's actually a pretty common shape long-term life abroad takes.
Thank you for trusting this space with something so personal, and let me know if the essay resonates.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply, Kay. I'll read those essays from June, starting with the one you have linked. This feeling is heavy and learning more about it will help, for sure.
Dear Cristina, That feeling of being a foreigner in your own birthplace is the quietest kind of displacement. You change your internal operating system while living abroad, but when you return, the environment expects the old version of you.
I am a Cuban, Spanish, and German. And I feel that I dont fully belong in neither of those.
The collection of experiences we gather along our way, specially when one lives in different countries will always be with us. I am too Cuban for Spanish folks if I live in Spain, I am too Latina if I am in Germany. And in Cuba, I am too European.
I was writing about it couple of daya ago: you can be good at adapting and still not belong.
Thanks for your comment, Isabel. Definitely, I am too Spanish in England and too British in Spain. But glad to know that I'm not the only one and that it doesn't mean that I'm not able to adapt myself.
Wow, Kay, this is so well written and names so much of what I feel. My family lives as American expats in Nigeria. It is a very scary place to live as a foreigner. The cops are very corrupt and pull people over for no reason other than the car is not falling apart hence they know they can get money.
I DO feel that Im often on the verge of fight or flight and sometimes get sucked into one or the other. Its a wild life and one day I look forward to repatriation.
Thank you for trusting this space with something so raw and real. What you're describing goes beyond the quiet disorientation I often write about — that constant fight-or-flight readiness is a different, heavier layer, and it makes complete sense that repatriation feels like something to look forward to rather than dread. I'm glad you're still here, even in the wild of it.
Kay, this is so good! Thank you for creating the language and space for what most long-term expats feel. This really resonates with me, especially the idea of the “low-grade hum.” When you’ve lived abroad for a long time, so much of the adapting becomes automatic that you stop noticing how much energy it takes. I also love the distinction between something being “wrong” with us and simply understanding the context we’ve been living in. There’s something very relieving about having language for an experience you’ve carried for years without quite knowing what to call it.
Thank you, Clarice! "Something being wrong with us" versus "understanding the context we've been living in" is the whole shift, isn't it? One asks you to fix yourself. The other just asks you to notice what you've carried, and why. Glad we connected today :)
Kay, thanks for this article and your research and insights. I have to admit that when we lived in The Bahamas, then China, then Spain at different times I definitely felt the exhaustion you describe. Since we've been in Portugal, though, I haven't had that same feeling- it's felt more like 'home' for me and for my husband than anywhere else, even the U.S. Is there any information on the possibility that we've somehow moved past the nervous system issues this time?
That's such a great question, and honestly one I don't have a fully settled answer for yet.
What I'm seeing so far is less "moved past it" and more "found a genuinely better fit" — some places do seem to ask less translation and recalibration of a given person's nervous system than others, for reasons that aren't always predictable in advance (culture, pace, language distance, even light and climate).
It's possible Portugal simply asks less of you and your husband than Spain or China did. I wouldn't rule out that the hum could resurface in some other form down the line, but there's also real research on "goodness of fit" between a person's nervous system and a given place, so what you're describing may be exactly that.
I'd love to hear more about what feels different there, if you're open to sharing. Either here or as a research interview, whichever you prefer :).
On paper, I'm just living my life but from the inside it never feels like enough because you don't feel fully "settled" yet. The first few months are incredibly hard, even after years of living abroad your nervous system still works overtime.
That gap between "on paper" and "from the inside" is one of the truest ways I've heard this described. And you're right that the nervous system doesn't get the memo just because you've done this before. Each new place still asks a lot of it, even when you're more practiced at moving.
The “translating yourself” part especially caught me.
We treat relocation as a logistical one time event but it's really a full system update.
I think we are looking at the same problem, just from different angles: you from the qualitative, nervous-system side of long-term expatriation, and I from the systems and data perspective over at The Belonging Hub.
"A full system update" is a sharp way to put what I've been circling with the nervous-system language. Sounds like we're looking at the same terrain from different entry points :). The collaboration idea is genuinely intriguing — let me actually sit with what that could look like before I say yes to any specific shape of it.
So much of this resonated, especially the idea that you’re often doing “a little bit more than the room requires.” I’ve felt that acutely at certain thresholds of life abroad: getting married, buying a property, having children, navigating (un)employment and French bureaucracy. There have definitely been moments when it’s left me completely frazzled! But I think I experience another side of it too. Some of that friction is also part of what makes living abroad an adventure: you’re continually learning, adapting and showing yourself you can navigate things that once felt completely foreign. I’ve been thinking about this from a different angle in a recent essay about what makes a place home. Maybe that’s part of it too: a place can become home even while you’re still discovering and forming a relationship with it.
Carly, I think you're naming the other half I didn't fully land in the piece. The extra effort isn't only cost; sometimes it's proof you're building a capacity you didn't have before. And I like that idea of home forming while you're still mid-discovery of a place, rather than only after. I’ll be sitting with that distinction today — and in a future essay :). Thank you for naming it.
I love that framing.... the extra effort as capacity-building. Maybe that’s part of what I was reaching for too: you’re not only learning a place, you’re becoming someone who knows how to live there.
I’ve had a surprisingly different and actually lovely experience upon moving to and living in a country where almost everything is completely different than all I’d experienced in many decades of “homeland.”
I came because despite years of frequent moves and extreme measures, my complex health issues had begun winning again — and I was completely out of options that might lead to survival.
Super surprisingly, once the months of disoriented “everything’s different” had shifted to somewhat familiarity, I began noticing that, here, my entire organic system — autonomous and unconscious — felt so much safer here in a way I’d never expected nor thought I might need.
Before, I’d thought my twenty years of weekly therapy and healing had finally been enough to not only survive severe PTSD and dissociation, but begin really living again. No more triggering, no more insurmountable difficulties. I thought I’d made it as far as I needed.
But here, in this very different country, I began noticing I was triggering a lot less — and I hadn’t even noticed that I’d continued triggering in my home country. All those people who looked and thought and acted and spoke in ways that had apparently continued to remind my system of trauma — gone.
So, while I do have an ongoing sort of background adjustment, it’s been much more than compensated by the lack of all the continuing alertness my system had needed in that other, much more familiar place.
Lisa, thank you for trusting this space with something so honest. The part about not realizing you'd been triggering the whole time until it stopped — that kind of retrospective clarity is rare.
What you're describing lines up with something I keep hearing in the research: that adaptation to a place isn't only mental. Sometimes it's the nervous system finding a different baseline entirely.
Glad you've found a place where yours could finally exhale a little.
Exactly all of THIS 🙏🏽 Australian living in Switzerland (a land of 4 languages none of which are my own) for over a decade and after a lifetime of country hopping humanitarian work. It’s like always straddling a fence or living on the edge - wanting to feel I belong completely but not wanting to dive right in and turn my back on everything that makes me me. I often wonder if my inability to fully integrate is a subconscious resistance to leave from Australianess behind. And the constant ‘proving’ to the authorities of being visa / work permit worthy is DRAINING.
Donna, thank you for sharing. The "constant proving to authorities" is such a precise addition to what I shared in this essay; the part that rarely gets named alongside the identity questions.
That wondering about resistance vs. something else — I don't think it has to resolve to be worth sitting with. From what I've heard in the research, the wondering itself often doesn't fully go away, even after twenty-plus years.
If you’re ever open to contributing to my research corpus on long-term life abroad, I’d love to interview you.
This gives me a lot to think about as Nigel and I consider making France our next home base. Slow travel lets us step into a place, then return to our small U.S. base when we need a reset. Moving abroad would be different—the language, bureaucracy, cultural codes, and distance from family would become the background hum of ordinary life.
I’m still drawn to it, but this helps explain why a life that looks wonderful on paper can still ask more of the body than we realize. Maybe choosing a home base isn’t only about where we want to live. It’s also about understanding what we’re asking our nervous systems to carry there. 💛
Kelly, as always, thank you for sitting with this so thoughtfully. That distinction you're drawing, between stepping into a place with the option to return versus making it the actual background hum of daily life, is exactly the shift I keep seeing in my research.
Slow travel and long-term relocation ask genuinely different things of the nervous system, even when they look similar on paper. Your reframe at the end, choosing a home base as also choosing what you're asking your body to carry there, shows the level of care you're bringing to the decision. Wishing you and Nigel clarity as you consider where (and how) you land next.
Thank you, Kay! That means a lot coming from someone who’s spent so much time researching this. One thing slow travel has taught us is that there’s a big difference between visiting a place and asking it to hold your ordinary life. We’re in no rush, and conversations like this remind me that the decision is as much about how we want to live as where. 💛
Thank you, Tom. It's been the phrase that keeps showing up across nearly every conversation I've had on this, which tells me it's naming something real rather than just a nice turn of phrase.
Interesting article, Kay. I have to admit that I often recognize some of these feelings as an expat/immigrant in Portugal, although I can't see myself ever returning to the U.S. to live.
Over time, I've come to accept that life happens wherever you choose to live. Every place has its joys, its frustrations, and its unexpected challenges. Moving abroad doesn't eliminate life's difficulties—it simply changes their shape.
Even so, there are moments when living as an expat/immigrant can feel like carrying an extra layer of mental and emotional weight. Most days it's barely noticeable, but sometimes it can be a real struggle. - CW
Carol, thank you for reading and sharing this reflection, especially the honesty of "moving abroad doesn't eliminate life's difficulties, it simply changes their shape." That encapsulates this experience so precisely.
What the research has also shown me is that many people who choose to move abroad long-term often lead high-responsibility lives coupled with a tendency toward high achievement — so instead of sitting with the layers underneath the gratitude of life abroad, they often power their way through or ignore the hum, which ends up being to their detriment over time.
The extra layer you named, the one that's barely noticeable most days until suddenly it isn't, is something I hear echoed constantly in my research conversations. It's part of why I started writing about this in the first place: that layer deserves its own name, even when the life abroad around it is genuinely good.
Great article! I’m just curious regarding the use of the term ‘long- term expat’. To me, that’s just an immigrant, though I’d love to hear your thoughts!
For context, I'm a daughter of people who were assigned the word immigrant, but as someone abroad, I get called either expat or immigrant depending on the room. In my research, the people who I’ve interviewed identify as both, but don’t tend to Google “immigrant problems” at 4AM…
Woof - you nailed it. I lived in Colombia for four years. The first 3 months I came home from work exhausted and headachey. The next 3 months, the headaches subsided, but I was still too exhausted to DO anything but sleep. (And sleeping in Colombia - I moved 6 times in those 4 years…they are a LOUD people with no understanding of quiet night time hours nor neighborly awareness - I became an expert on the best ear plugs!)
I had to have help with doctor’s appointments the first year. Then I could do it on my own…but still, one time I had to fast to have blood taken. I didn’t know the word adesayuno (to fast). I kept thinking the nurse was asking if I had eaten breakfast (desayuno). I said NO and we went round and round for ten minutes with her telling me I would have to make another appointment until someone in the clinic said, “adesayuno - no comes este manana?” (Fast - you didn’t eat this morning?) OH.
Because of one vowel. I felt like an idiot.
Also - I wan’t “funny” in Spanish until year 4 when I was on my way to Ireland.
I tried to tell a guy I dated my first year there that he didn’t KNOW me at ALL because he didn’t speak English and I couldn’t totally be MYSELF around him.
Then, I thought moving to Ireland to go to the university there would be EASY because we all speak the same language. Um, NO. The Irish are VERY “close to the chest,” opposite of Colombians. I was accused of being a “dirty Yank” a few times because I didn’t get how to be low key and less aggressive. I thought they were just being machismo…but even the guys I met were SO shy and quiet. I did not fit in at all. Seemed I was always making a spectacle of myself.
I had written a couple of blog posts back in 2020 talking about “Re-entry shock” when I returned to the U.S. - everyone denies your feeling of despondency, stress, “weirdness” because they just think it was a vacation.
Then, the customs you did get down, once you’re home and no one greets another with a kiss on the cheek (Colombian style), you feel isolated. You miss the food (Arepas and Pan de bono and Huevos Pericos) or your favorite smoothy place, “Cosechos” (Where I could get Guanabana, Lulo, Maracuya, Guayaba, Uchuva, Mango…you name it!)
In Ireland, I missed the drizzly morning coffee (I lived in Galway), Black Rock where I swam with other brave souls in the bay (The Irish are HEARTY AF and continue to swim into the winter months - without wetsuits!!!), the GREEN, the smell of the ocean, and the quiet.
So, yeah - if you haven’t lived abroad, you don’t get it. For those who haven’t - be easy on us when we return. It feels as if our heads are on backwards.
This is incredible, Tristen, thank you for laying it all out so vividly. The adesayuno story is such a perfect, specific example of the kind of exhaustion that doesn't show up as "not knowing the language" so much as knowing it well enough to almost get it right, and how much that near-miss can cost you.
And the shift you're describing between Colombia and Ireland — going from "too warm/aggressive" to "too much" in the opposite direction — is such a clear illustration that this isn't really about fluency at all, it's about an entirely different social operating system each time.
Your point about re-entry shock and having your head "on backwards" when no one else can see what you're carrying is exactly the kind of experience I keep hearing from returners, and it's rarely taken as seriously as it deserves. It’s why all of my essays here last month were about the experience of returners, who often don’t have words for what they’re living through.
And thank you for saying it so plainly — "if you haven't lived abroad, you don't get it" is blunt, but so true for those who’ve lived it. My hope is that more of us sharing the not-so-glamorous sides of life abroad openly can create a more honest dialogue for us and those we seek support from.
I am French and I have been living in the US for the last 19 years - and I feel this tiredness so much. I tried to resolve it by spending more time in the garden, with my chickens, creatures that allow us to slow down and not speak.
No matter how I miss France. And I miss myself as a French person. I am trying to find myself back but I am not able to. At time I feel so lost.
Elsa, 19 years in and still missing yourself as a French person is such an honest way to put it. The chickens and the garden make complete sense as a way to find quiet without needing language at all. And I hear you on feeling lost — that's such a real place to be, even after this long.
This is so interesting Kay, but I was wondering, as you talk with plenty of expats, what do you know about not feeling as comfortable in your original country when you visit it? I have lived in England for more than 12 years now and I feel at home here, to the point that when I go back to Spain, I feel overwhelmed there and I'm looking forward to being back in England. I don't know if this is just temporary, as I only go there for short periods, but it worries me because, despite being comfortable here, I am fully aware of my status as an immigrant here. It's this feeling of never feeling from here, but neither from there anymore.
Cristina, this is such an important question, and you're naming something that comes up again and again in my research: non-belonging is often sharpest not abroad, but at home. Several long-term expats I've spoken with describe exactly what you're describing, feeling more "at home" in their adopted country while visiting their country of origin leaves them overwhelmed or out of step. These returner stories showed up so frequently that they inspired all of the essays I wrote in June, including the one I've linked here: https://kayfabella.substack.com/p/youre-not-the-same-person-who-left
This non-belonging doesn't necessarily fade with time either. What tends to shift is less the feeling itself and more your relationship to it, understanding that belonging fully to both places, or fully to neither, isn't a failure. It's actually a pretty common shape long-term life abroad takes.
Thank you for trusting this space with something so personal, and let me know if the essay resonates.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply, Kay. I'll read those essays from June, starting with the one you have linked. This feeling is heavy and learning more about it will help, for sure.
Dear Cristina, That feeling of being a foreigner in your own birthplace is the quietest kind of displacement. You change your internal operating system while living abroad, but when you return, the environment expects the old version of you.
I am a Cuban, Spanish, and German. And I feel that I dont fully belong in neither of those.
The collection of experiences we gather along our way, specially when one lives in different countries will always be with us. I am too Cuban for Spanish folks if I live in Spain, I am too Latina if I am in Germany. And in Cuba, I am too European.
I was writing about it couple of daya ago: you can be good at adapting and still not belong.
Thanks for your comment, Isabel. Definitely, I am too Spanish in England and too British in Spain. But glad to know that I'm not the only one and that it doesn't mean that I'm not able to adapt myself.
Wow, Kay, this is so well written and names so much of what I feel. My family lives as American expats in Nigeria. It is a very scary place to live as a foreigner. The cops are very corrupt and pull people over for no reason other than the car is not falling apart hence they know they can get money.
I DO feel that Im often on the verge of fight or flight and sometimes get sucked into one or the other. Its a wild life and one day I look forward to repatriation.
Thank you for trusting this space with something so raw and real. What you're describing goes beyond the quiet disorientation I often write about — that constant fight-or-flight readiness is a different, heavier layer, and it makes complete sense that repatriation feels like something to look forward to rather than dread. I'm glad you're still here, even in the wild of it.
Kay, this is so good! Thank you for creating the language and space for what most long-term expats feel. This really resonates with me, especially the idea of the “low-grade hum.” When you’ve lived abroad for a long time, so much of the adapting becomes automatic that you stop noticing how much energy it takes. I also love the distinction between something being “wrong” with us and simply understanding the context we’ve been living in. There’s something very relieving about having language for an experience you’ve carried for years without quite knowing what to call it.
Thank you, Clarice! "Something being wrong with us" versus "understanding the context we've been living in" is the whole shift, isn't it? One asks you to fix yourself. The other just asks you to notice what you've carried, and why. Glad we connected today :)
Kay, thanks for this article and your research and insights. I have to admit that when we lived in The Bahamas, then China, then Spain at different times I definitely felt the exhaustion you describe. Since we've been in Portugal, though, I haven't had that same feeling- it's felt more like 'home' for me and for my husband than anywhere else, even the U.S. Is there any information on the possibility that we've somehow moved past the nervous system issues this time?
That's such a great question, and honestly one I don't have a fully settled answer for yet.
What I'm seeing so far is less "moved past it" and more "found a genuinely better fit" — some places do seem to ask less translation and recalibration of a given person's nervous system than others, for reasons that aren't always predictable in advance (culture, pace, language distance, even light and climate).
It's possible Portugal simply asks less of you and your husband than Spain or China did. I wouldn't rule out that the hum could resurface in some other form down the line, but there's also real research on "goodness of fit" between a person's nervous system and a given place, so what you're describing may be exactly that.
I'd love to hear more about what feels different there, if you're open to sharing. Either here or as a research interview, whichever you prefer :).
Hi Kay, thanks for that! Sure, I'm definitely open to a research interview if you like. Please let me know how to get contact info to you.
Sarah
Awesome, Sarah, thanks! I'll DM you now :)
On paper, I'm just living my life but from the inside it never feels like enough because you don't feel fully "settled" yet. The first few months are incredibly hard, even after years of living abroad your nervous system still works overtime.
That gap between "on paper" and "from the inside" is one of the truest ways I've heard this described. And you're right that the nervous system doesn't get the memo just because you've done this before. Each new place still asks a lot of it, even when you're more practiced at moving.
Thank you for naming both pieces so clearly.
Kay, I loved the article!
The “translating yourself” part especially caught me.
We treat relocation as a logistical one time event but it's really a full system update.
I think we are looking at the same problem, just from different angles: you from the qualitative, nervous-system side of long-term expatriation, and I from the systems and data perspective over at The Belonging Hub.
I actually wrote about this a couple of days ago, exploring why adaptation doesn't automatically mean belonging -> https://thebelonginghub.substack.com/p/what-if-culture-is-a-mental-operating?r=8wzm3r
I would love to collaborate on a common piece and see how our angles fit together.
Get in touch if this sparks your curiosity!
"A full system update" is a sharp way to put what I've been circling with the nervous-system language. Sounds like we're looking at the same terrain from different entry points :). The collaboration idea is genuinely intriguing — let me actually sit with what that could look like before I say yes to any specific shape of it.
I'm a PhD in Computer Science, so my mind thinks in data and systems. Thats the heart of my writing here. ;)
So much of this resonated, especially the idea that you’re often doing “a little bit more than the room requires.” I’ve felt that acutely at certain thresholds of life abroad: getting married, buying a property, having children, navigating (un)employment and French bureaucracy. There have definitely been moments when it’s left me completely frazzled! But I think I experience another side of it too. Some of that friction is also part of what makes living abroad an adventure: you’re continually learning, adapting and showing yourself you can navigate things that once felt completely foreign. I’ve been thinking about this from a different angle in a recent essay about what makes a place home. Maybe that’s part of it too: a place can become home even while you’re still discovering and forming a relationship with it.
Carly, I think you're naming the other half I didn't fully land in the piece. The extra effort isn't only cost; sometimes it's proof you're building a capacity you didn't have before. And I like that idea of home forming while you're still mid-discovery of a place, rather than only after. I’ll be sitting with that distinction today — and in a future essay :). Thank you for naming it.
I love that framing.... the extra effort as capacity-building. Maybe that’s part of what I was reaching for too: you’re not only learning a place, you’re becoming someone who knows how to live there.
I’ve had a surprisingly different and actually lovely experience upon moving to and living in a country where almost everything is completely different than all I’d experienced in many decades of “homeland.”
I came because despite years of frequent moves and extreme measures, my complex health issues had begun winning again — and I was completely out of options that might lead to survival.
Super surprisingly, once the months of disoriented “everything’s different” had shifted to somewhat familiarity, I began noticing that, here, my entire organic system — autonomous and unconscious — felt so much safer here in a way I’d never expected nor thought I might need.
Before, I’d thought my twenty years of weekly therapy and healing had finally been enough to not only survive severe PTSD and dissociation, but begin really living again. No more triggering, no more insurmountable difficulties. I thought I’d made it as far as I needed.
But here, in this very different country, I began noticing I was triggering a lot less — and I hadn’t even noticed that I’d continued triggering in my home country. All those people who looked and thought and acted and spoke in ways that had apparently continued to remind my system of trauma — gone.
So, while I do have an ongoing sort of background adjustment, it’s been much more than compensated by the lack of all the continuing alertness my system had needed in that other, much more familiar place.
Lisa, thank you for trusting this space with something so honest. The part about not realizing you'd been triggering the whole time until it stopped — that kind of retrospective clarity is rare.
What you're describing lines up with something I keep hearing in the research: that adaptation to a place isn't only mental. Sometimes it's the nervous system finding a different baseline entirely.
Glad you've found a place where yours could finally exhale a little.
Thank you. Retrospeciive clarity is something I've spent time looking for over at least the past three decades.
Hi Kay so true… even as a long term expat everything is a little harder - not much but a little bit.
Exactly all of THIS 🙏🏽 Australian living in Switzerland (a land of 4 languages none of which are my own) for over a decade and after a lifetime of country hopping humanitarian work. It’s like always straddling a fence or living on the edge - wanting to feel I belong completely but not wanting to dive right in and turn my back on everything that makes me me. I often wonder if my inability to fully integrate is a subconscious resistance to leave from Australianess behind. And the constant ‘proving’ to the authorities of being visa / work permit worthy is DRAINING.
Donna, thank you for sharing. The "constant proving to authorities" is such a precise addition to what I shared in this essay; the part that rarely gets named alongside the identity questions.
That wondering about resistance vs. something else — I don't think it has to resolve to be worth sitting with. From what I've heard in the research, the wondering itself often doesn't fully go away, even after twenty-plus years.
If you’re ever open to contributing to my research corpus on long-term life abroad, I’d love to interview you.
This gives me a lot to think about as Nigel and I consider making France our next home base. Slow travel lets us step into a place, then return to our small U.S. base when we need a reset. Moving abroad would be different—the language, bureaucracy, cultural codes, and distance from family would become the background hum of ordinary life.
I’m still drawn to it, but this helps explain why a life that looks wonderful on paper can still ask more of the body than we realize. Maybe choosing a home base isn’t only about where we want to live. It’s also about understanding what we’re asking our nervous systems to carry there. 💛
Kelly, as always, thank you for sitting with this so thoughtfully. That distinction you're drawing, between stepping into a place with the option to return versus making it the actual background hum of daily life, is exactly the shift I keep seeing in my research.
Slow travel and long-term relocation ask genuinely different things of the nervous system, even when they look similar on paper. Your reframe at the end, choosing a home base as also choosing what you're asking your body to carry there, shows the level of care you're bringing to the decision. Wishing you and Nigel clarity as you consider where (and how) you land next.
Thank you, Kay! That means a lot coming from someone who’s spent so much time researching this. One thing slow travel has taught us is that there’s a big difference between visiting a place and asking it to hold your ordinary life. We’re in no rush, and conversations like this remind me that the decision is as much about how we want to live as where. 💛
A low-level hum is the perfect way to describe it
Thank you, Tom. It's been the phrase that keeps showing up across nearly every conversation I've had on this, which tells me it's naming something real rather than just a nice turn of phrase.
Interesting article, Kay. I have to admit that I often recognize some of these feelings as an expat/immigrant in Portugal, although I can't see myself ever returning to the U.S. to live.
Over time, I've come to accept that life happens wherever you choose to live. Every place has its joys, its frustrations, and its unexpected challenges. Moving abroad doesn't eliminate life's difficulties—it simply changes their shape.
Even so, there are moments when living as an expat/immigrant can feel like carrying an extra layer of mental and emotional weight. Most days it's barely noticeable, but sometimes it can be a real struggle. - CW
Carol, thank you for reading and sharing this reflection, especially the honesty of "moving abroad doesn't eliminate life's difficulties, it simply changes their shape." That encapsulates this experience so precisely.
What the research has also shown me is that many people who choose to move abroad long-term often lead high-responsibility lives coupled with a tendency toward high achievement — so instead of sitting with the layers underneath the gratitude of life abroad, they often power their way through or ignore the hum, which ends up being to their detriment over time.
The extra layer you named, the one that's barely noticeable most days until suddenly it isn't, is something I hear echoed constantly in my research conversations. It's part of why I started writing about this in the first place: that layer deserves its own name, even when the life abroad around it is genuinely good.
Great article! I’m just curious regarding the use of the term ‘long- term expat’. To me, that’s just an immigrant, though I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Thank you! And I’ve broken down my thoughts here: https://kayfabella.substack.com/p/expat-immigrant-migrant-and-why-the
For context, I'm a daughter of people who were assigned the word immigrant, but as someone abroad, I get called either expat or immigrant depending on the room. In my research, the people who I’ve interviewed identify as both, but don’t tend to Google “immigrant problems” at 4AM…
Thanks for the response and for explaining! :)
Woof - you nailed it. I lived in Colombia for four years. The first 3 months I came home from work exhausted and headachey. The next 3 months, the headaches subsided, but I was still too exhausted to DO anything but sleep. (And sleeping in Colombia - I moved 6 times in those 4 years…they are a LOUD people with no understanding of quiet night time hours nor neighborly awareness - I became an expert on the best ear plugs!)
I had to have help with doctor’s appointments the first year. Then I could do it on my own…but still, one time I had to fast to have blood taken. I didn’t know the word adesayuno (to fast). I kept thinking the nurse was asking if I had eaten breakfast (desayuno). I said NO and we went round and round for ten minutes with her telling me I would have to make another appointment until someone in the clinic said, “adesayuno - no comes este manana?” (Fast - you didn’t eat this morning?) OH.
Because of one vowel. I felt like an idiot.
Also - I wan’t “funny” in Spanish until year 4 when I was on my way to Ireland.
I tried to tell a guy I dated my first year there that he didn’t KNOW me at ALL because he didn’t speak English and I couldn’t totally be MYSELF around him.
Then, I thought moving to Ireland to go to the university there would be EASY because we all speak the same language. Um, NO. The Irish are VERY “close to the chest,” opposite of Colombians. I was accused of being a “dirty Yank” a few times because I didn’t get how to be low key and less aggressive. I thought they were just being machismo…but even the guys I met were SO shy and quiet. I did not fit in at all. Seemed I was always making a spectacle of myself.
I had written a couple of blog posts back in 2020 talking about “Re-entry shock” when I returned to the U.S. - everyone denies your feeling of despondency, stress, “weirdness” because they just think it was a vacation.
Then, the customs you did get down, once you’re home and no one greets another with a kiss on the cheek (Colombian style), you feel isolated. You miss the food (Arepas and Pan de bono and Huevos Pericos) or your favorite smoothy place, “Cosechos” (Where I could get Guanabana, Lulo, Maracuya, Guayaba, Uchuva, Mango…you name it!)
In Ireland, I missed the drizzly morning coffee (I lived in Galway), Black Rock where I swam with other brave souls in the bay (The Irish are HEARTY AF and continue to swim into the winter months - without wetsuits!!!), the GREEN, the smell of the ocean, and the quiet.
So, yeah - if you haven’t lived abroad, you don’t get it. For those who haven’t - be easy on us when we return. It feels as if our heads are on backwards.
This is incredible, Tristen, thank you for laying it all out so vividly. The adesayuno story is such a perfect, specific example of the kind of exhaustion that doesn't show up as "not knowing the language" so much as knowing it well enough to almost get it right, and how much that near-miss can cost you.
And the shift you're describing between Colombia and Ireland — going from "too warm/aggressive" to "too much" in the opposite direction — is such a clear illustration that this isn't really about fluency at all, it's about an entirely different social operating system each time.
Your point about re-entry shock and having your head "on backwards" when no one else can see what you're carrying is exactly the kind of experience I keep hearing from returners, and it's rarely taken as seriously as it deserves. It’s why all of my essays here last month were about the experience of returners, who often don’t have words for what they’re living through.
And thank you for saying it so plainly — "if you haven't lived abroad, you don't get it" is blunt, but so true for those who’ve lived it. My hope is that more of us sharing the not-so-glamorous sides of life abroad openly can create a more honest dialogue for us and those we seek support from.