If you’re an expat mum, even if you’ll only be abroad for a couple of years (which then turn into 20), you’ll be faced with the challenge of learning your new community language. You could play it easy and only mingle with people who speak your mother tongue because ‘you’ll be going back home soon’. Just bear in mind that you may very well not be going back home as soon as you thought andRead More

Becoming an expat mum means facing many challenges that you never even considered before. In this series, I’m trying to gather good advice on these topics into clear guides that can help you navigate these issues. Have you ever feared that your kids are not in tune with your birth culture? Do you wonder how you could nurture that connection so that they feel they share your culture as well as that of the hostRead More

Note that I did not write “Dad” on the title. This is to underline that I will be talking about the father of your children as part of your support system, and not as a father. Of course, them being great dads is also great and very important, but in this piece, we’ll discuss how they can help you in your expat mum journey. This post was born because my husband started reading my postsRead More

We’ve reached the end of the 5-post series. And I couldn’t be happier! The series has been viewed 6000+ times, with “Why being an expat mum is the hardest job you’ll even have” being by far the most  popular. Until now. Because in this post, I’ll be showing you what I developed over the years as an expat mum to be able to live serenely and happy: my own expat mum support system. The expatRead More

We’re reaching the end of the series and we’ve been through a hell of a journey together. We went from reaching inside of us and seeing all the things that made our expat mums lives difficult, to putting on some rose tinted glasses and realising that there is a lot of beauty in what we do. We also tried to see our lives in context with the rest of the world and discovered that weRead More

So far we’ve talked about how hard being an expat mum can be, and yet how many great advantages it has with respect to our non-expat counterparts. Today we’ll talk about why we need more expat mums in the world. This third post in the series will look at expat mums in relation to the rest of the world (we’ve looked at ourselves long enough – time for the big picture). I believe being anRead More

What an interesting week it’s been! Since I published and shared my last post on “how being an expat mum is the hardest job you’ll ever have”, it has been viewed about 2700 times in 140 countries and it has got 400 Facebook engagements. I must admit I did not expect such a fiery reaction. I enjoyed engaging with the comments it received and how it open up a parallel discussion about the definition ofRead More

Being an expat mum is the hardest job you’ll ever have I’d like to take you through the journey I went through when I became an expat mum, so I am starting a new 5-post series on expat motherhood: how being an expat mum is the hardest job you’ll have and   yet how ridiculously important it is, and how you should be proud of it. And I was a seasoned expat by the timeRead More

Bringing up a multilingual child (or children) is hard work. It requires a plan, discipline and patience (a lot of it). To spice things up, there are some potential disadvantages to multilingualism. They may speak a bit later (my first did, my second is ahead of her age, so I doubt it’s the multilingualism), they may mix the languages (yes! Especially if they’re similar as in our case) and if you are striving for fullRead More

Kids teach you all the time, anywhere I’ve seen several blog posts where mums list a few things about life that their kids have taught them. Usually, they’re touching things about rediscovering themselves and their marriages. All of which is true! But I think that expat kids teach you even more. Not only do they introduce you to a new dimension of yourself. They also teach you how to relate to others, the world, andRead More