Ten years, four countries, two businesses, and a journey I did not plan but would not trade.
Moving abroad is for anyone a character and life changing moment. It can be an exciting fresh start but equally a very challenging new beginning.
You leave behind everything you know as normal and familiar and dive into a completely different reality, language, habits, values, and way of doing things.
No matter how far you move, something always changes.
And when you do it enough times, willingly or not so willingly, you arrive at a point where you have a rich story and a culturally aware character but also you might start to feel more international than a citizen of any of the countries you have actually lived in.
That is what living across different places, countries, and job titles does to you over time.
More than anything, living across four countries has built my character and resilience for pretty much anything, but I also genuinely think it gave me a better life in absolute terms too.
So what I wanted to write about in this one is something I wish I had read ten years ago when I first moved away from my home country.
This is not an expat guide, but more like an honest account of what building a life across four countries actually looks and feels like from the inside:
What the disorientation does to you and what it slowly builds in you at the same time.
What it actually takes to build a career, start businesses, and create something real in places and markets that are not yours.
And after enough years on the go, what comes next. Is this the lifestyle now or is there something else on the other side of it?
This is for anyone who has ever felt in between.
In between cities, countries, job titles, or versions of themselves, and especially for that 20 year old moving abroad for the first time without much of a grand plan.
The shock nobody prepares you for
First things first: moving is always emotional in one way or another and it forces you to grow.
What the amazing pictures, stories, and movies never disclaim is how hard the identity shift can be when everything familiar disappears and every person you would normally call in a moment of doubt is suddenly thousands of kilometres away.
When thinking back to the first time I moved abroad for university to the Netherlands, I think I handled it pretty well.
Well, I gave myself no other choice than to make it work tbh.
Genuinely though, that first year living alone without any support around you, the shock is real and I do not think anything or anyone could have prepared me for it.
It is just something you need to go through on your own.
A bit out of context but I think there is a funny analogy that actually applies here:
Moving abroad is like starting a Substack. At the beginning you have no clue how it works, you know no one, and you just have to figure it out and show up day after day even when there is no guarantee you will eventually succeed or start to feel at home.
Completely different thing, yet the underlying lesson is the same for any personal breakthrough: you have to live through the hard times (sorry no easy way out here).
It will feel lonely and disorienting, and you will have to build your home, your network, and your habits from scratch in a completely new environment.
And if there is one thing that experience has taught me though, it is that one day you arrive on the other side of it, proud of yourself for doing it, realising how much it built you.
So for the beginning, that is the thing to keep in mind. Just keep going.
Building without belonging
Okay so you moved to another country for a job, love, or pure change of scenery and then day two arrives and you actually have to do something with it.
It will not feel easy at first and you will not feel immediately at ease, which is just the reality of it and no amount of preparation really changes that first stretch of disorientation.
I have moved four times and tried a fifth (did not work out because I did not get the job I needed for the visa), and every single time I had to build the foundations from scratch without being a local, without an inherited network, and without anyone who already knew me or owed me anything.
And every single time the thing that moved things forward was the same: daring to ask for help.
Ask for the job, ask for the referral, ask for the introduction, because people are far more open than you think when you are direct and genuine about what you are trying to do.
That applies to finding work, building a business, and finding your people.
The ones who struggle longest abroad are almost always the ones who wait to be found rather than going out and asking (been there).
I really think that is the biggest secret to successfully building anything.
What I have also learned is that not being a local is not the disadvantage it feels like.
Nobody knows you yet and not even you know yet who the version of you in this new environment is going to be, which is actually a clean sheet of paper and rarer than it sounds.
Take advantage of it and be bolder than you would be at home because the social stakes are lower and the upside is everything.
Ten years, four countries, two businesses, none of it built with the support I had when I left home, which just goes to show that you can keep building even when you keep moving as long as you are willing to ask for help and keep going anyway.
Reminder: difficult is not same as impossible.
What comes after?
And then there is the part of the story that every auntie asks about at the Christmas table:
when are you coming back home.
That one is a tricky question because home is a subjective concept, especially when you have lived and created a sense of it in so many different places.
Having spent years abroad and constantly on the go, you arrive at a point where you genuinely do not know the answer anymore.
Whether to return, go somewhere new, or stay where you are.
And I think that is actually okay, because what all of it teaches you is to find your home and your purpose in the moment and the place where you currently are, even when it is not perfect in every possible sense.
So what I would say to the 20 year old who wants to know how the story will be written is this:
focus on doing the thing you genuinely want to do and on becoming the person you want to become. Say no when you want to say no, but dare to go where you want to go and do what you actually want to do.
When you make decisions that feel right today you cannot end up completely wrong, because you can always course correct and you know by now that you can survive and make it work.
After all, it is not as serious as it feels in the moment. Enjoy the ride, and that is when the nonlinear global story starts to make sense, because if you always did what you genuinely wanted to do, what crisis could there really be?
You are just being true to yourself. And isn’t that the whole point?
x Maria