finding my way again while living abroad

I’d originally postponed our staycation because I needed to return to my parents in Northern Ireland earlier than planned. Then, when I finally came home again ready to pick up where we’d left off, I became ill. That first week disappeared almost completely. By the second week, we were able to go out for a few hours, first to Limburg and then on to Bad Camberg, which gave us at least some sense of doing what we had intended to do, even though it was nowhere near a full day. When we came home, though, Dennis had acquired another minor injury.

That seemed to be how the week unfolded. We would go somewhere together, and then the next day would be spent at home because he was dealing with one injury or another. I understood it. I’ve walked and hiked all my life. Walking is my thing. Dennis has always preferred cycling and doing more walking in his 50s than he’d been accustomed to was bound to affect him differently.

The third and final week we’d set aside for our staycation was forecast to bring a heatwave, with temperatures reaching the mid to high 30s. Dennis doesn’t cope well with hot weather. He appeared perfectly content to remain at home.

I could see our staycation falling apart before my very eyes. The difficulty was that when I’m at home, I nearly always work. Dennis is currently unemployed and looking for another job, which means our days were open in theory, although the openness doesn’t yet seem to be leading us very far beyond the apartment. I needed a holiday. Instead, I could already see myself reaching the end of those three weeks having spent most of them ill, working or waiting to see whether Dennis felt able to go somewhere.

There was another part of it too, one that had been sitting subtly behind the immediate frustration and was connected to the temporary nature of so much of our life abroad. Once Dennis finds another job, our circumstances might change again. Our time in Frankfurt will probably come to an end sooner than we expect, and yet there are still towns, cities, forests and walking routes around us that I want to experience. We’d already moved enough times for me to know how quickly a place could become somewhere we used to live, somewhere full of things we had assumed we would get around to and never did.

I still wanted to visit the towns and cities with Dennis. That part mattered to me. I didn’t want to turn everything we’d hoped to share into something I simply did alone. Walking in nature, though, felt different. Dennis enjoys some walking, although he’s never got as much from it as I do. Around and not too far from Frankfurt, I’d found several multi-route trails I wanted to explore, and I doubted he would be able to complete all of them with me. We had already started walking sections of the GrünGürtel-Rundwanderweg together, the route that passes through the green spaces and forests surrounding the city, and although it was reasonably well marked, Dennis regularly checked a map app as we went.

I’d let him do that from the beginning. He was more confident with the route, more confident with the technology, and more confident in general when it came to finding the way. It had become natural for me to follow while he checked where we were going, even though there’d been a time when walking alone had been one of the most ordinary parts of my life.

When Walking Alone Stopped Feeling Ordinary

In Switzerland, yellow walking signs seemed to be everywhere. You could walk out of a train station and easily find them. You could get off at a bus stop and they’d be there waiting for you. They appeared through the countryside and along the routes in a way I’d never experienced anywhere else. Even there, however, it still took me around 18 months before I began walking alone regularly. Once I did, there was no stopping me. At weekends, I would walk for four, five or six hours, often from one train station to another, through forests and countryside. I never once got lost.

When we moved to Salzburg in September 2020, I assumed the walking routes would be similarly well signposted. Before I knew the area properly, I followed the Almkanal out and round towards Hellbrunn. When I reached a road near Hellbrunn, though, the signs simply stopped. I didn’t yet know where I was, and I had no idea which way I should continue.

I soon realised that signposting in Salzburg, elsewhere in Austria and even around the mountainous area of nearby Berchtesgaden was less reliable than I had expected. So, after that, I stopped going out for solo walks.

There was also an older memory behind my reluctance too. As a teenager, I completed the bronze, silver and gold levels of the Duke of Edinburgh Award. Each level included an expedition, and during one of them, an instructor asked me to identify the route I would recommend taking. I answered confidently, pointing to it on the map. He smiled and asked why I thought it would be better to walk over the top of a mountain rather than around it. I hadn’t realised that was the route I had proposed.

I’ve often suspected that that single exchange affected my confidence in my map-reading ability far more than I understood at the time. I remained physically capable of walking. I had years of experience. I had completed long routes alone in Switzerland without getting lost, and yet when a map needed to be read, or an app followed, or a route worked out in a place where the signs could not be relied upon, something in me stepped back.

In Salzburg and then in Frankfurt, Dennis stepped forward. Nothing unusual had led to that. There’d been no conversation in which I handed that part of my life over to him. He was simply more confident, so he found the route and followed the map while I walked beside him. Over time, I stopped thinking of myself as someone who’d go walking alone.

The Independence I Hadn’t Noticed Losing

That was the part I hadn’t really noticed. Living abroad can alter independence in ways that are easy to miss because so much of life remains entirely functional. I could manage work, illness, travel, family responsibilities and all the ordinary practical demands of living across countries. I wasn’t incapable of going out alone, and Dennis had never prevented me from doing so. However, one particular part of my life had gradually become organised around whether he was available, whether he felt able to come and whether the conditions suited him.

By the final week of our staycation, the choice had become uncomfortably clear. I could stay at home, where I would almost certainly work, while waiting for a better day, cooler weather, fewer injuries or another opportunity. Or I could begin exploring the natural areas around Frankfurt by myself.

For me, there often needs to be a line drawn in the sand before I throw myself onto the other side and take action. This was one of those moments. The possibility of Dennis finding work, our circumstances changing again and Frankfurt becoming another place I’d left without fully experiencing had become harder to ignore.

I still wanted us to explore towns and cities together. I didn’t suddenly decide that sharing experiences had been a mistake, or that independence meant doing everything alone. There were things I wanted to keep as ours. Walking, however, was different. It had belonged to me long before I met Dennis, long before Switzerland, Salzburg or Frankfurt, and somewhere along the way I’d stopped trusting myself to do it without someone else managing the route.

For many women living abroad, dependence can develop in much the same subtle way. It may exist in only one corner of life while everything else continues to look capable and self-sufficient. One person becomes the one who drives, navigates, makes the bookings, speaks the language, deals with certain officials or decides when an outing is practical. It’s often easier to let the person who feels more confident continue taking the lead, especially when the arrangement works well enough and the experiences are still being shared. It’s only later that you might notice how much waiting has gathered around that arrangement, or how many things you’ve deferred because the other person was busy, tired, working, unwell or simply less interested.

That recognition is one of the things women sometimes bring into their Personal Support sessions. It’s rarely about one decision or one missing skill. More often, it’s about noticing a pattern that developed gradually and trying to understand what has been put aside, what still matters and what you may be ready to reclaim without pretending the change is emotionally simple.

I hadn’t suddenly become confident with map apps. I hadn’t forgotten the road near Hellbrunn where the signs disappeared, or the instructor smiling as he asked why I wanted to walk over a mountain. I still knew I could take the wrong turn. I still knew I might become uncertain about where I was. None of that had changed.

What had changed was that the thought of leaving Frankfurt without exploring more of it had begun to feel worse. So, I made the decision to take that first important solo step - not because I was certain I would never get lost, and not because I no longer wanted Dennis beside me, rather because continuing to wait had started to cost me more than the possibility of having to find my own way.