pack your bags... we're on the move

For someone who’s lived in six different countries to date, you might mistakenly believe that I enjoy, indeed relish, change. However, you’d be wrong.

Granted, it was different when I was younger. I saw moving as something exciting, an adventure, a voyage into the unknown. That was especially true when I moved for the first time to a country where English wasn't the first language, The Netherlands. I can remember, as if it was yesterday, learning my first Dutch word, ‘uien’, meaning ‘onions’. I had wandered into the local supermarket for a browse around and, being a lover of onions (I basically put onions in every meal I cook), I was intrigued by this three-vowel word that had caught my eye, never mind how you would ever go about pronouncing it. I still struggle with that one. Back then, so much about living somewhere new felt interesting simply because it was new. Even a supermarket could become a small adventure.

Skip forward some 13 years and it was time to leave The Netherlands and move on to my next non-native-English-speaking country. Switzerland. That move felt different. Not simply because I was older, and not because some mysterious point had arrived where moving had stopped being exciting and started being difficult. By then, life had given me more experience. I'd also developed Crohn’s disease a number of years earlier, and I already knew that stress could affect how well or unwell I felt.

The move from The Netherlands to Switzerland took a serious toll on my health. I left The Netherlands in pretty good shape, with my Crohn’s well controlled and in remission after years of finding a combination of medication that worked for me. Then I moved. And not long afterwards, I found myself unable to leave my new home because my Crohn’s had become very active again. At the same time, I was working with a new consultant who felt the medication combination I'd previously been taking was too risky and didn’t want to put me back on it. It took months before my health became manageable enough for me to begin living something closer to a normal life again.

Eventually, somewhat ironically, my new consultant admitted defeat and put me back on the drug combination he had been so vehemently opposed to. Gradually, I rebuilt my confidence. I started with short walks. Then slightly longer ones. And eventually I reached the point where I could go out for a six- or seven-hour walk on a Sunday and feel as though I had some freedom back.

By then Switzerland had also become somewhere I deeply loved. It wasn’t simply the place we'd moved to anymore. It was home. Or, at least, it had become one of those places that had settled deeply into me. And then, just as I had reached a point where my health felt more stable and life felt more like mine again, my husband told me he had been offered a new job.

That new job required another move. This time to Austria. My reaction was nothing like the girl wandering around a Dutch supermarket fascinated by the word for onions. I didn’t feel excited. I didn’t see an adventure. I dug my heels in and didn’t want to go. I cried. I felt resentful. I was scared. And I'd already decided I didn’t like Austria before I had barely set foot in it.

At the time, I could easily have described that reaction as me being bad at change. Now, I think it makes far more sense than that. This time I wasn’t frightened simply because I didn’t know what Austria would be like. I was carrying the memory of what had happened after the previous move. I knew how much the move to Switzerland had affected my health. I knew what it had taken to get back to a place where I felt I could live more freely again. I knew how much effort had gone into rebuilding confidence in my body and in everyday life.

So when another international move appeared, my response wasn’t coming from a blank page. My mind and body already had something to refer back to. They knew, from experience, that relocation could be difficult. That doesn’t mean Austria was destined to repeat Switzerland. It simply means I wasn’t approaching it with the innocence of somebody who had never been through something similar before.

And there was another layer too. I loved Switzerland. The move to Austria wasn’t only about going somewhere new. It was also about leaving somewhere I didn’t want to leave. Years of living abroad had already changed what home meant to me, and Switzerland had become one of those places I wasn’t ready to leave behind. That mattered. I wasn’t just imagining unfamiliar roads, a new home or another country I'd have to get used to. I was also anticipating the loss of a life I'd already built and a place I'd fallen head-over-heels in love with. That made this move emotionally very different from the earlier ones.

Sometimes we talk about fear of change as though it is all about the unknown. However, there are times when what makes a change frightening is exactly what we already know. You know how hard the last move was. You know what it took to rebuild. You know what you had to leave behind before. You know what it feels like to start again somewhere unfamiliar. And because you know all of that, the next move arrives carrying more than boxes, paperwork and practical arrangements. It arrives carrying memory.

This is something that can be particularly difficult about moving countries more than once. The first time, there can be a certain amount of curiosity simply because you don’t yet know what moving abroad will ask of you. Later, you may know far more. You may know how lonely a new place can feel before connections form or how exhausting it is to work out unfamiliar systems. You may know what it feels like to miss people, places and routines you took for granted before you left. You may also know that you are capable of building a life somewhere new, while still wondering whether you have the energy to do all of that again. And that can create a very different emotional response.

If you’ve built a life abroad and now find yourself facing another move, reluctance doesn’t automatically mean you’re closed to change or unwilling to grow. Perhaps you're thinking about what happened last time, you're aware of what you stand to lose where you are now, you have a clearer idea of how much rebuilding a move can involve or perhaps part of you is simply wondering whether you can face becoming new somewhere all over again.

That isn’t quite the same thing as being afraid of the unknown. Sometimes it's fear informed by experience. I can see that more clearly now when I look back at the move from Switzerland to Austria. My fear wasn’t random. My resistance wasn’t simply me being difficult. And my sadness didn’t mean I had the wrong attitude. I was responding to a change that resembled something I'd already lived through, and that earlier experience had left an impression. At the same time, I was grieving a life I wasn’t ready to leave.

Those things were real. And none of them needed to be argued away before the move happened.

Living in several countries has taught me that each relocation changes the way I arrive at the next one. I don’t move as the same person each time. I bring previous moves with me. The ones that were exciting. The ones that were difficult. The places I loved. The things I lost. The parts I had to rebuild. And perhaps that is why another move can feel so different from the first. It isn’t only about where you're going. It's also about what your previous experience has taught you to expect.

So now, when I think about how strongly I resisted that move to Austria, I’m less interested in asking myself why I was so bad at accepting change. I’m more interested in asking what I already knew by then. What had the move to Switzerland taught me? What was I afraid of repeating? What was I sad to lose? What did I know I might have to rebuild again? Those questions don’t make the move easier. They simply make my response to it easier to understand.