Abroad Life Actually

(Date night in my 530s! Found the green cape in a local shop for $60, it’s become my go to jacket.)

I ran into an amazing sample sale this weekend. It was filled with crazy markdowns of different local and foreign designer brands. I riffled through the racks totally in my element enjoying the thrill of the hunt, while trying on beautiful quality clothes. For me, paying as little as possible for relatively expensive things is intoxicating. I’m not necessarily drawn to big designer brands; I gravitate more toward attainable luxury but have a real appreciation for unique clothing and personal style. Alas, I walked away with nothing. Not because I didn’t find pieces I loved, but because I couldn’t justify the spend. I was already pushing past purchases from previous sample sales and pop-ups, to grab comfy tees and joggers to bring Sunbeam to playgroup. I just didn’t have a reason to wear these clothes.

Once upon a time I would just shop, with no specific event in mind. I could do so knowing I’d always find an occasion to wear something, because at some point I would be going out with my girls. We were always getting into something that called for getting dressed.  While I do not miss the club, and have no desire to be in a club like environment, I do miss the ritual of “going out”: The shopping, pulling my look together, hair, makeup, getting ready for hours with music and wine. Better yet, meeting up with the crew and getting dressed together. The pregame. The photos. The confidence. Looking back, it felt like an afternoon of selfcare. But as you outgrow the club and the thrill of being on the scene, the flashiness tied to it all gradually fades, as you move from clubs to bars, to restaurants, before happily choosing evenings in. Weddings become the closest thing you get to that vibe.

When I peruse social media I see all these fashionable stylish moms and women over 40 showing off their daily looks. I find it so inspiring, but also sooo far from my reality. This could just be one of the drawbacks to being a SAHM, but I would never be able to pull off any of those looks. Shoes with my toddler!? I need footwear with grip, my child gleefully runs in the opposite direction when she finds something to put in her mouth, and is intensely working on jumping, everywhere. Sunbeam gets all my style energy, while I just try to stay dry. I thank God New Balances are back in style, because I wear my 530s OUT.  I wish I could throw caution to the wind and just wear what I wanted. Show up to playgroup in a nicely layered ensemble, but kids are sticky and I’m usually sitting on a floor.

Now don’t get me wrong, my husband and I go on lovely dates where we occasionally get done up (see my birthday post. I bought those pants several months earlier at a sale, score!). But usually when we get an evening to ourselves we like to keep it on the casual side so we experience the city uninhibited, hopping on and off trains, exploring wherever we land. While keeping in mind we have to get back home before 11:30 pm to relieve the babysitter because trains stop running at midnight (crazy right!?). I’m also a member of a social club that has events of various dress codes all the time, which we have gone to in the past, but not regularly enough to justify buying random things. These days, all my purchases need to have an intended purpose or be versatile enough to be worn casually. Which seems fair given that style overall has generally become more casual—but mostly because my life has too. 

My friend group out here is great, but trying to coordinate an evening out with everyone is nearly impossible. We’re all juggling hectic schedules, both locally and internationally. When we do manage to finally get out, we prefer a low-key evening, —after all, we’re all busy raising kids. Trying to expand my circle to find friends who share my interests in fashion or shopping is a whole job (see previous post). To be honest, I’m exactly sure what I’m looking for—maybe someone who occasionally enjoys getting a bit more dressed up then usual, but no pressure. Someone who’s okay with going to nice restaurants or events, but no clubs or anywhere too loud. I also prefer not to be out too late … so maybe just brunch!? I wonder if I might just like the idea of dressing up and going out, more than the reality. Besides, trying to find friends in your late 30s or 40s who want to go “out” is very difficult —even in a bustling city with endless options— because we’re at home, and for good reason. It just makes meeting people with similar interests harder, leaving me to awkwardly approach cool looking moms at Gymboree while not looking very cool myself.

As someone who LOVES to shop, and who is living in the fashion capital of the East, it is hard to resist cool finds. Maybe I’ll start sharing them here —at least that way, others can appreciate the treasures I find even if I have to leave them behind.

Over the last several years my birthday has been a week-long celebration. My 30th was spent relaxing on a beach and partying in Aruba with my best friend, which ushered in the trend to always do something lavish for my birthday. I maintained this tradition with vacations and spa treatments over the years. However, things started to change when I turned 40. One, I was pregnant, and two, it was during the covid years, thus severely altering how I could celebrate.  Last year we took a trip to the Philippines as a 40th redux, and to give me much needed R&R since our move abroad earlier that year was pretty rough. It was an amazing trip, but it wasn’t the “all about me” birthday vacation I had gotten used to. Sunbeam had just started to ween off breastfeeding, so I was pumping for relief and doing my best to maintain her schedule while we were away. On our return home Sunbeam got sick in the airport leaving us quarantined in a tiny hospital room for 2 days with all our luggage, no wifi, cell phone service, or drinking water, and a toilet leaking all over the floor. But that’s a story for another time. 

This past birthday the realization set in that the old days of sipping champagne all day aren’t returning; but it’s okay because my life is evolving, and change is a natural part of growth. At first I felt the need to cling to my old bday tradition to hold on to my “bad b*tch” aesthetic. Being able to splurge on myself and luxuriate for several days made me confident and independent. However, now I’m in a place where trying to uphold those traditions along with my new responsibilities is much harder. It’s not impossible, but definitely requires a lot more effort and planning, which can feel like a lot.

So what does a good birthday look like now? Earlier this year we took a family vacation to the Maldives, and were planning a visit back west around the holidays, so traveling was not an option. I thought about what brings me joy now, as a woman with a family. Hearing the happy squeals of my child brings me life, so I opted to bring Sunbeam to an indoor play gym in the morning, since she’s still a little too young to really enjoy Disney.  We had the place to ourselves. Later that evening, my husband arranged for our nanny to come so we could enjoy the evening out. He planned a beautiful evening. We ate a 6 course meal in a private room at the top of a building with a breathtaking view of the city. I was all dressed up and felt beautiful. I thoroughly enjoyed spending the day with my family.

As my life continues to evolve, my birthday celebration has to take other factors into account. This encouraged me to reexamine my perspective on what makes my birthday meaningful, and embrace what comes with evolution. I’m grateful for the way my life is progressing and all the new experiences it brings, which makes these changes all the more welcome.

Now on another note….this birthday also indicated that an ex situationship has FINALLY moved on. I met my husband back in 2016, and with any new relationship it may take some time for ex lingerers to officially cut ties. But when I was done or over a person, I would totally disappear, they’d never hear from me again.  So when Hubby and I met, I may have gotten a rogue text here or there, but for the most part we just moved forward uninterrupted.

But there was one. An ex? Not sure you could call him that, it really never got that serious, so I’ll just say someone I dated briefly. This person would send happy birthday texts every year to no response. This shockingly went on for 6 YEARS. There were no other messages exchanged in between, because we weren’t in contact. But every year without fail I’d get a random text filled with bitmoji. One year the text came with 6 different Bitmojis…. I thought about responding a few times just to say I’m married, or I’m married and pregnant, or I’m married with a kid and don’t even live in the country anymore. But I couldn’t figure out how to bring that up with a happy birthday text, and also didn’t feel conversing, so opted for cold silence instead.

These messages were especially surprising because he was the “i’m so busy” type. He made it very clear he was suuuper busy with all of his goals, so he needed to be focused. He was the type that presented as if he had it all figured out, while he questioned my ambition. The reality was, we just had different goals. But somewhere between my mid twenties and early thirties I fully accepted that I wasn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea, which allowed me to stay grounded and not take negative things men said to me seriously. It was usually them, and not me. I’m not claiming to be perfect, but I stand by that assessment. I also didn’t try to change anyone’s mind, so when our communication gradually faded, it was all good. 

At first, the birthday messages made sense, right?  We were cool, there were no hard feelings. So the first time I got a text after all communication completely stopped I responded “wow, I can’t believe you remembered, thank you”. The following year, “thank you!!!” But in 2018 I decided, I wasn’t going to respond anymore messages, to send the message, MOVE ON. But he continued, he sent birthday texts year after year, to no response. I was slightly amused, but more so confused. Like, what was the reason!?!  We weren’t friends. I’ll never know what his motivations were, but for the first time in seven years the birthday texts finally stopped. I think he’s finally got the hint and moved on, good for him.

I find myself contemplating what the “soft life” really means? During a conversation with one of my good friends from back home she said “girl, just embrace the soft life”. I was stunned for a minute, because nothing about my life at the moment felt soft. Is this the soft life!?!?Because it didn’t feel very soft. It hadn’t even occurred to me that it could be labeled that way.  I was a full-time housewife who’s free time was spent cleaning. I started looking into what exactly constituted a “soft life”. Quickly I realized, that label was being used very generally for vastly different ways of life. For example, there are stay at home moms (SAHM), and there are stay at home moms with nannies and/or housekeepers, and those two moms are living very different lives. At the time I was living the former.

When we first moved into our apartment, I was the main caregiver of Sunbeam, with help from my husband who is a very active dad. I was also solely responsible for all of the house upkeep, luckily my husband likes to cook and grocery shop so I had help with that part. This was the most grueling work I’ve ever done, and I worked in PR in NYC, and at a non-profit with what felt like 60% turnover. There were no breaks, no downtime, and you are plugged in 24 hours a day. The only time to myself was in the bathroom, which had to be quick because the Sunbeam is very active, and eventually that became similar to an open floor plan. I was exhausted and would crash immediately after Sunbeam went down. Nothing about that felt soft to me. There are people out in the world who would love this life, but being a housewife was never my dream. As a former professional woman, I found it much more challenging than any office job I’ve ever had.

After a few months of living in a haze, we finally sought help. A friend advised us to tear numbers off flyers on the grocery store bulletin board to find a nanny/help, which sounded crazy to me. Turns out it’s a legitimate way to find help here, so we did. We also joined facebook groups and put up help wanted posts. Eventually we found our nanny/housekeeper who changed my life. She works part-time so I’m still with Sunbeam most of the time, but now I have someone to help with the upkeep of the house, and allows me to go to appts, run errands, etc without having to pack a bag and drag my stroller onto trains and busses.

I will admit this is definitely a “softer” life, and affords me the flexibility in my life to do more self-care and things such as blogging, and working out, which is nice and necessary. However, my life does not look like what Tik Tok demonstrates as the soft life. There are no trips to chanel, or champagne brunches. My cupboard is not neatly laid out with monochromatic jars, and no matter how much we clean the apartment is always covered in toys, crushed cheerios, and whatever Sunbeam gets into. I’m still not convinced that I am living the soft life, certainly not as shown on social media. So maybe I’m living a slightly cushioned life??

I am grateful for the life that I have now, and I realize that flexibility is very privileged and that I live a life that some may desire. I love being home with Sunbeam and I wouldn’t change that for the world, but there are always challenges. Being a SAHM doesn’t feel like less work or soft work, but different work. And it’s very easy to lose your identity and feel bored and lonely, especially when living abroad. Daily meal planning (three healthy meals and two snacks) and creating an educational environment for a toddler all day with no attention span is not easy. The closet that I passionately curated over the course of several years now sits still, and is quickly being replaced by shirts with built-in bras, birkenstocks, and jogging pants. You dress for comfort and stains, which leads to fewer excuses to indulge in shopping like I would have previously. I can only speak for my experience, which might be different since I live abroad and my nanny only works part-time. But when I check-in with the fellow expat housewives in my little cohort, they all express similar sentiments so it’s not just me.

Friends are the single most important thing you need to survive living abroad, and you need to make them fast.  Living abroad can be very isolating (doubly so if you’re a new mom), I imagine it contributes to why many people end up moving back to wherever they are from. Especially where I am, because there is NO small talk. It might be a cultural thing, or it might be that I’m a foreigner who probably doesn’t speak the language, I’d say it’s 90% the former. The introvert in me lives for the fact that I can just be in my head, chuckle at my podcast, and daydream uninterrupted. But on the other hand, it severely hinders your ability to meet people.

My friends and family are half a day away, so when we first moved, my husband was the only person here I could talk to. We were living in a hotel at the time, so whatever alone or privacy we got during covid was eradicated.  I was still breastfeeding, so I wasn’t all that motivated to leave the house, which meant the only people besides my husband I talked to, was our realtor, and an interpreter who took me to the Driver’s License Center to sign up for a driving test. Instantly, I became an oversharer. They both knew how I met my husband, anecdotes about my single life, and my breastfeeding schedule all within minutes of meeting me. I only met the interpreter once, I try not to think about what her impression of me must be because it makes me cringe. I ended up turning to Facebook…yes, Facebook.

Facebook is a really good resource for people in this situation. There are tons of Facebook groups that cater to different audiences, and I joined them all. Surprisingly enough, the Facebook groups were able to sustain me for a little while. I never posted anything, but my history as a long time lurker of various messageboards finally became useful, and kept me somewhat entertained. One thing I found interesting was that sometimes people would make posts looking for friends. I agonized over whether I should do something like that, but I just couldn’t do it. I wasn’t good at making dating profiles, I realize this wasnt that, but it felt similar.  I’m not good at describing myself, and certainly not in writing. I don’t think I have a photogenic personality, if that makes sense, I think I just come accross better in person. So a post looking for friends was out, but I figured I would try to go to at least one social event advertised…I didn’t. To be fair, the social events I saw that seemed like they might be fun, also made me feel like I’d be the old b*th at the club. I had to find another way.

Making friends as an adult is hard. Most adults find friends at work, or through their kids, which applies in this situation as well. Since I don’t have a school age kid, and the only job I can easily get abroad is teaching (which was a non-starter), I had to increase my social media activity. I started following a bunch of instagram pages of groups, businesses and people in my area just in case there were opportunities to connect. A lot of the stuff I saw definitely catered to a younger crowd, which makes sense, since that would most likely be the crowd that would be able just up and move to this side of the world. Now don’t get me wrong, the fashion loving/ party girl in me would love an evening out, but 1, we didn’t have childcare which meant going alone which is something I hadn’t done in YEARS, and 2, the idea of anything remotely clubish exhausts me. My watch starts flashing that the noise decibels are too loud… and it is too loud. Those days for me are long gone.

Eventually, at the suggestion of my husband’s colleagues we joined a private social club. I realize that this sounds extremely privileged, but it’s a great landing place for families like mine, new to the area, that might not speak the language yet, or know how or where to find things they need. It softens what can feel like a crash landing, especially for kids and trailing spouses, as we’re called. They host lots of events and opportunities to meet other expats and locals, so we joined in the hopes we might meet some other couples. They also had in-house sitting services so on Fridays, my husband and I would go to the bar for happy hour. Except, the sitting service closed at 5pm, so we went at 3pm and left just before 5pm, missing any actual HH crowd or specials. We were often there basically alone. It was still nice just to get out of the house and have adult time. 

One Friday, after 5 months of extreme family bonding, we met who I can only describe as an angel. A brotha walked into the bar. In general I was happy to see him because we weren’t sure we’d meet any black people at the club when we joined. He immediately came right over and said hello, which was also shocking because up until that point any black folk we saw in passing would avert their eyes. My husband and I came up with a theory that, if we saw a black person and they smiled or acknowledged us, they must be tourists (that hypothesis hasn’t changed much). The heaven sent brotha chatted us up for a bit, and then he invited us to an event for Black families the following day. There we met what is now our family. It was such a sigh of relief. We met a few other black expat families that would be here for the same time frame. Our lives changed from that day on (we had also just found our apartment which felt like a miracle after a long hunt). Our friend group is amazing, we now spend holidays and vacations together, we celebrate each other’s wins and birthdays, and offer support however we can. They make living far away from home enjoyable. 

Where do I begin? I decided to start writing down my thoughts, reflections, and candid stories because I’m at a crossroad, and I’m hoping that writing will lead me to new revelation and help me figure out my new path.

Just to give a little background, I’m a 40 something expat housewife that feels very blessed to be in my position, but it came with its own set of challenges and a lot of change all at once. They say living abroad can be isolating, the same is said about being a new mother. Add both those things together, and you have what I was living.

I am lucky enough to have an amazing loving husband, and the most beautiful joyful child. But, before I became a wife and mother, I “did my thing”. I had a great job in a cool creative industry that people are dying to get into. I traveled around the country, interacting with famous people, staying in 5 star hotels on an expense account. I look back on that life fondly, even though, if I’m being honest, it was also filled with various degrees of sadness off and on, for a variety of reasons. I was confident, fashionable, surrounded by people who loved me, and was able to not only take care of myself, but also save money. At the time, I lived in a tiny apartment in a neighborhood that will probably never be gentrified. It allowed me to get on my feet since starting out in my industry meant low wages, and it was what I could afford. By the time I left I was making very good money, had a stacked 401k and a decent savings. Think off-rack Carrie Bradshaw, from around the way. 

Side bar, the apartment was in a tiny co-op, and my neighbors were all something out of a Tyler Perry movie. There was the old lying gossiping lady who you had to be nice to because she was the unchallenged president of the board of the last decade, and was able to pull strings to get things done for you. The successfully educated woman with the husband with a long criminal past (and at the time present) that made everyone uncomfortable. Two pastors (one of which I got into a cold war with…), and a bunch of families and good hearted people just trying to feed and take care of their families. I’m pretty sure the property management company was robbing us, and when I spoke up and tried to bring attention to it, I was accused of being messy (sigh). There wasn’t enough parking for the amount of cars of the people who lived there. The running joke was, any time a single woman purchased an apartment, it was a matter of time before her boyfriend moved in, adding to the strain on parking. It was a mess, but it was home and I lived there for a decade.

After many years, and I do mean many years of being single (which provides me with a wealth of stories), I finally met my husband. He was my manifestation list come true. I met him on an app…. which back in 2016 was unimaginable to me. I signed up with the encouragement of a friend because I was bored, and tired of traveling to the neighboring state (where I worked) to date what I deemed were men on my same page, so I decided to see who was single in my sleepy area. I found a damn needle in a haystack. I credit my years of dating for giving me the knowledge to know a good thing when I found it, and to push through the self-sabotage to snag him. We dated for 2 years, got engaged, and then had a very small destination wedding. 

With marriage came a lot of change. We were both so used to living alone, that our coupling was a huge adjustment.  We didn’t live together for the first two months of our marriage. One, because of our job locations, and two, because frankly, neither of us was jumping at the idea of giving up our spaces. We just visited each other on the weekends, and talked until we fell asleep every night like high schoolers. We finally moved in together (which is a story in itself), and after 3 1/2 years of marriage, and a baby that we worked really hard to conceive, my husband was offered a position in an Asian country. So while I was on maternity leave, 3 months after the baby was born, we moved, and I became a housewife.