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Rounding out our junior year

Writer's picture: rachelle1360rachelle1360

As we complete our 3rd year living in Singapore, we are finally feeling like the upperclassmen of expats instead of the freshman class, lost on campus and putting on 15 pounds to distract us from our anxiety and homesickness.


I still have a hard time believing that we’ve been in Singapore for that long, even with all we’ve experienced, where some days feel like Groundhog’s Day and others pass at light speed.


Although the overall experience has had plenty of challenges & unplanned turns, I continue to appreciate how much of our kids ’ childhoods have now been shaped by living in another country seeped in very different cultures.


And how many incredible friends we’ve each met throughout this time. Some of whom I now consider some of my closest friends.


It gets stranger each year to go back to our “old lives” for a few weeks in the summer, as we are getting less and less sure of which one of these lives is “real” and which is the dream state.


I remember this feeling from college when you go home but find that where you feel most at home now is in a dorm room back on campus.


This is similar but even more jarring for the kids who now have more vivid memories of Asia than America.


Can we live two lives at the same time? Of course not. Yet, sometimes it feels like we are.



What’s changed for us?


We’ve all grown within these three years, yet it’s hard to measure each change definitively.

For the kids, their physical growth and change from year to year in school is the easy way to mark their growth.  I think the most exciting changes lie in their understanding of the community around them and their friends.


Community: They each have a distinct personality now, which starts to show up in their choice of clothes, food, music, and movies, but it also shows up in how they relate to the community around them.


The changes in their style are coming fast. What was cute on Tuesday is utterly passé by Saturday.  They don’t care that their favorite T-shirt is getting too small, as long as it’s in their preferred style.


They’ve grown more adventurous in their palate and can try new cuisines, but they have a strong understanding of what they like.


Yet, while their personal style and food choices are getting sharper and more distinct, their ability to widen their community of friends and neighbors is getting bigger.


They are much less focused on this one way of living or “being normal” than I was as a first-generation American just trying to fit in. Surrounded by families with many different customs, food, and traditions, they are freed from the idea that our family needs to operate “just like everyone else,” as there isn’t just one model to admire or revere.

I was impressed that the kids knew who in their class had an allergy, who ate only Halal, and who celebrated what holiday and why.


Both kids have been “welcoming partners” this year for new expats joining the school. They remember vividly how hard it is to be the new kid in a new country and school and sometimes not fluent in any of the host country's languages.   


Their ability to be sensitive to their classmates, not because it is the right thing, but because they are aware of differences and want to make sure that all are welcome as they are, makes me so proud and hopeful that their lives will start with this awareness.



The relationships that have allowed us to grow


Friends:  The friend circles for each of us have grown deeper. Friendships within expat circles can sometimes feel like they happen almost too fast.  Way faster than in the “real world,” and much of that has felt intoxicating at times, especially when you are lonely, but also strangely deceptive, as most relationships need time to mature, marinate, get tested, fall, and repair.


Our initial expat friendships remind me of a quote I read (probably in a parenting book!) about trees that people tried to grow in a biosphere that kept falling once they hit a certain height.


Scientists in the biosphere didn’t factor in that trees need wind to push them from side to side while they grow, so their roots grow more robust and allow them to withstand the impact of a long, tall life.  While this tidbit was about how you shouldn’t shield your kids from the stress of life, I think it is also vital to building solid relationships.  How do you grow stronger and see all of a person if you don’t encounter a minor disagreement or fallout and build back closer?


The closest friends we each made in Singapore are the ones who have seen us struggle to find versions of ourselves in this new context, understood our imperfections, listened to the parts of us that weren’t sure if we would thrive here, and allowed us to be there for their vulnerable moments.


What has been so uncomfortable to go through but has been crucial to our current happiness is finding friends who only know this part of our lives.  Not caring about where you went to school, where you grew up beyond the country you came from, or what you did or did not accomplish there.


It was more in the now.


What are you doing with your time today?  Are you happy?  Are you up for an adventure or able to sit with me in my vulnerable state?  We were all used to making friends in a particular way, but now it’s not about your hero’s journey to how you got here; it is about who you are right now.  Do we connect or not?  Are you willing to put in time or not?


Even the kids had these experiences, as they have a much shorter schedule with friends than we do.


It’s all about the now.


It’s about this year and making friends today, not shying away from new people to wait and see if it works out but diving right into the messy middle and working their way through or out.



The community of mothers:


Mothering solo is a bizarre concept, as you are meant to lead while you are unsure of your steps and have no other women to lean on.  (I don’t know if I’m missing a mother’s instinct gene or what, but none of it seems to just “come to me.”)


The community of women I've been lucky to be apart of has helped me find sanity and direction when everything felt upside down. Despite coming from countries and cultures far from our lived experience, they each understand the most crucial challenge of holding a family together, especially when one partner is often away.


So many of us (surgeons, judges, lawyers, dentists, marketers, finance directors) have had to drastically change our careers or put them on pause. We are all teeming with energy and experience and some of the most intelligent and thoughtful women I've had the pleasure of meeting. They are fellow risk-takers, open to making massive life pivots to make an opportunity work for their whole family.


Having them in my life has made all the difference.


My husband


We continue to find new ways to support one another and new arguments to have and solve. Even after knowing each other for 20 years, there is still so much of ourselves to uncover, and this kind of assignment can be a pressure cooker for relationships.


At times, it can feel like it’s pushed us to get closer and even more on the same page, and other times, we couldn’t be further apart in our daily realities.


This kind of pivot requires you to be much more intentional and requires more talking & listening than I think either of us thought we would have to do when we said: “I do.”  I think we are both in a better place because of it.  I am better prepared to handle the next pivot…I hope.



Our children


Not until we introduced this significant change in our lives did I see how much the kids needed the emotional & psychological support that could help them navigate all of life’s challenges.


I needed to be mom, a bit of dad while he was away, and also the village of support that we had been buoying us before.


It was more than I thought I could handle, and at times, I really crashed under the weight of their expectations for me and those that I held for myself previously in my corporate life.


I was in a role where I didn’t feel as capable, yet the stakes were so high.  I didn’t have a team to call in to help (or I thought I didn’t) and had the added pressure of being more physically present now that my husband’s role took him away so much more.


Part of me was resentful that he got away from the emotional pulls as he has been my safety net in that department.  (The thought was if I screwed up the kids too much, he’d help save them)


Two things happened this year to get us all in a better place:


  1. I began to work on myself, focus on my physical health, own up to what wasn’t working, create gratifying projects and opportunities, and find a sense of wholeness.

  2. When my kids started to deal with much more complicated life challenges, I suddenly felt less unsure and more capable of helping them navigate what was happening to them and within their own heads.


I was finally finding my strength as a parent and seeing unique value in what I offer them.


It was still challenging, but I was more confident I could sit with them through it.


Leaning in…


Life in Singapore has a certain rhythm, and the unchanging weather can make you forget what season you’re in.


You have to proactively introduce changes to one’s environment by traveling and attending concerts, plays, or exhibits that help keep things from feeling too familiar.


I’ve gone deeper into the organizations we joined last year, taking on more of a leadership role now that we weren’t complete newbies.


I led and played in the beginner’s tennis bowl, am now leading our school’s book club for parents, worked with charity groups to serve the food insecure, read to Singaporean children in local schools who want to increase their reading skills, and helped the Women in Media plan events.   


The kids have also started to cut down their activities to only focus on the ones they love.


Only in this 3rd school year do we feel like we are part of our communities instead of onlookers hoping to be let into the party.


But friends & family back in the U.S. keep asking, “Are you ever coming back home?”


At the end of last summer, we had to decide whether to move back or stay for longer.


I was hyperaware that we finally felt a little comfortable after the upheaval of moving. It felt too cruel to have us leave right when we were starting to feel a sense of belonging.


Whether we made the right call is anyone’s guess, but I think we are going into this next year abroad with more direction and a sense of meaning, both in terms of the work we are doing, the relationships we’ve formed, and the intention of what we hope to receive.



Now it’s time for more goodbyes…


As the school year winds down, you start to hear about all the friends planning to leave for new schools or new countries.

  

We’ve attended many farewell parties for the kids and our adult friends this year.


While it’s so tempting to be annoyed that you have to say goodbye to another great person, I’ve tried to find a way to be grateful for what this person brought to your life while here.


You come from such different places and experiences, and at any other time, we wouldn’t have had the opportunity to meet, let alone become so close.  And yet we did meet and now have a bond over an experience that very few others will understand.


What has stayed as a consistent drumbeat is how much the people leaving and the people getting left behind want to capture the beauty of the relationship somehow, as if it were a firefly in a glass jar.  Everyone wants to hold onto that special light that only blinks briefly during the summer night.


No one is interested in big presents or long teary goodbyes, but everyone tries, in some way, to hold onto what we had for just a bit longer.   


How else do you admire the magic of that blinking light?




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