09. The hat of being an expat
What does it mean to be an expat?
I am an expat, I guess even a double-expat :-).
An expat, or expatriate, is a person who does not live in their original home country anymore, where all their family lives in. I was born in Poland and while my mom was pregnant with my sister, we moved to Germany when I was 1.5 years old. I grew up in Cologne, moved to the US for half a year and then with 26 I moved to Sweden for my PhD. Ten years later I still live in the North of Sweden in Umeå and to be honest, I feel that I will die here :-), and it makes me very happy.
What does it mean to wear the expat-hat?
First of all, it means that I did not grew up with my grandma, grandpa, uncles and aunts or cousins in close proximity. My parents did not have easy-access babysitters when needed and I wasn’t constantly spoiled by my grandma ;-).
It also meant that we spend the majority of our summers in Poland. We went there for six weeks at once regularly and it was always a great adventure to spend such a long time on the farm of my grandma. She had chickens, ducks, turkeys, rabbits, dogs, cats, fruit trees, a tomato greenhouse, fields of wheat surrounding the house and neighbor kids in the same age than we were. It meant constant play, exploring, adventures and all of that without our parents. We had my mom’s sister who in a way became our second-mom, as she did not have children yet at that time.
It also meant to learn how to travel alone very early on. We often traveled with the bus, my parents sat me and my sister into a traveling-bus who collected people in Germany and drove them to Poland. When kids were on board, they would sit in the front, the closest to the drivers and a co-pilot, who was usually a lady, always took care of us. Whenever the bus stopped, she went go with us to the restaurants or the toilettes and made sure we were safe. In those days, flying with planes was not a common way to travel yet.
My sister and me also had our rules, the one I felt most strongly about was that she was supposed to sit at the window & I was sitting next to the aisle. Like that I would always know if she got up to the toilette or tea and my Big-Sister Hat and the responsibility I felt was taken care of. I always felt very protective over her and didn’t want anything to happen to her. On those trips we also never fought, which was a rather uncommon occurrence, as we were fighting a lot when we were younger ;-).
Now being a double-expat, it means that I have two “home countries” with family to visit. You can imagine that a lot of vacation time is spend in either Poland or Germany and it can become exhausting, because if I live abroad and come for a visit, everyone wants to see me and spend time with me and vice versa.
So its often tightly scheduled vacations to make sure we all make the best of it and spend time with each other. It is quite normal to feel a bit exhausted after those vacations and I used to become very tired and even sick afterwards. Energetically speaking it was draining me, cos I did not have much me-time.
However, with time I got better, now I know when enough is enough, I dont put too much pressure on me and I plan for breaks and easy activities, so I can make sure that I get the rest I need. I love to visit my families in both countries because I feel that this time with them is extra precious. And we keep very good contact with each other, I get plenty of visits here in Umeå too :-)!
What I also realized is, that I needed to move away from my family for my own personal growth and development. This doesn’t mean that I don’t love them, but living far away means that I was not bound to social conventions so much, I was more free to do what I truly wanted, without feeling bad about potentially others who could be hurt by it. Not that I want to hurt them, but often people take things personally and I am a very considerate and empathetic person, so I used to rather compromise on myself than others.
This changed since I live in Sweden. The spacial distance helped with all that and now I am better at setting boundaries when I am with my family and friends and I feel that I became the person who I was supposed to become through living abroad.
It also makes my friends here in Sweden feel like family and I also have the feeling that my relationship with my family overall improved. It’s not that it was bad, but a different type of appreciation exist when you don’t see each other all the time. It is less likely that we take each other for granted and special occasions like round birthdays become even more special when everyone gets together!
All my family members and friends from anywhere in the world also have a vacation location to visit here in Umeå. The arctic is an exotic place to be and I can tell you that I have at least 1-2 visits every year, either from my family or my friends.
It is truly possible to build and maintain very strong family bonds and relationships even though living in three different countries as a family. What it needs is a strong base, care and love, respect and appreciation, an open mind and willingness to make it work.
Love,
Daria