I walk a lot. And while I walk, I make lists in my head. One of them is a list of the things that I wish I'd known before I left South Africa about what life would be like here. What would've helped me. Yes, hindsight is 20/20. Yes, there's no handbook for life. And there's certainly no instruction manual on how you and your partner drag your kids across the world and make familiar with foreign. It simply doesn't exist. Perhaps this is so because the experience is different for everyone and we all have our own ways to cope? But I wouldn't be me if I didn't
1) Use Facebook as a force for your own good. It's not just good for flowery family photies, although it is for that too. Join the local parents groups on Facebook and ask questions about areas, schools, doctors, parking, municipal services. Ideally before you leave. Also join the "Saffa Mums in the UK" Facebook equivalent in your country. There will be one. If there isn't, start one. It's a great platform to bring together mothers from the motherland who're going through the same and in true South African style will tell you all about it.
2) Your children's school is your foundation for building a social network in real life. Get involved. Host playdates. Meet other parents. Parenthood is a great leveller. We're all the same really. Kids make us see that underneath it all, there's more that unites than divides us. And then - and this is a biggie - lean on the friends you make. You simply cannot do it all. And you certainly cannot do it all alone. No one can.
3) Don't try and replicate your South African life in another country. It's not possible. Your new life is here. Your new life is now. Don't look back. Focus on forward.
4) Your kids are just fine. They will cope way better than you. They're wired for resilience and their settings for survival haven't had any interference from self doubt.
5) These things take time. Finding a house, a job, a group of friends. And then finding the right house, the right job, group of friends. It's a process. Don't rush it.
6) Watch your other half. He'll hide his strain while you both look after the little ones. Talk about stuff. All of it. Even the stuff that sucks. Or it festers. And then it's a freak show.
7) Nothing is forever. You will not be the new people for long. You will soon be old news. And there will be new kids on the block. Feeling alien won't last. You will all settle. It will all work out. Not always how you think. But exactly how it should.
8) It's ok to have doubts. It's ok to fall apart. You've made a massive move. You're going to feel the repercussions of the change. For a long time. But you'll learn to adapt. We're built to do that.
9) It all carries on back home. Without you. And that's ok. I've said this before, but it's something I really battled with. Your friends in your homeland will continue to have their bi-weekly breakfast brunches, they'll do dinner and host New Year's parties. Your families will enjoy Christmases, they'll have braais and get togethers. It sounds the most arrogant of all assumptions that because this way of life has stopped for you, that it'll stop for everyone else too. Not true. Obvs. It carries on regardless. You're just not a part of it. And it's fine to feel bleak about that.
10) The missing never ends. You just learn to deal with it better.
I read this once on Facebook, "If you don't like where you live, move. You are not a tree." Well, I think we're a lot more like trees than we realise. We grow roots. We branch out and intertwine with those alongside us. We need nurturing to thrive. Uprooting is traumatic for us. Uprooting a family is a bloody shit storm. A tree weeps when you cut it. So do we. We're severing the roots that bind us to...well, everything. But we do it because we believe it's the right thing to do. We do it because it's life. And we're humans doing life. The best way we know how. And most often, the best way we don't know how.
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