Day 33

After being here for 33 days I have realized a few pretty significant things about relocating to a new country. No one I know has ever done this but my husband, so I figured it would be worth it to mention what I am learning about myself in this transition.

All of the things that we acquire in our daily lives, the experiences, the cars we drive, the houses we purchase and call home, the clothes we wear, the people we spend time with and even where we spend time together are all personal identifiers. All that stuff becomes how you identify yourself in your world. When you relocate to another country under the circumstances we did (the only experience I have) you lose all that. So, I have felt vulnerable and naked.

I also realized something I knew all along (because I am wise beyond my years) that you only grow during times of struggle. We have been struggling (my husband and I) for years now but since we remained in our safe space, I am not sure we grew as fast as we needed to. We did take a huge risk and jump by leaving it all behind and starting over in Mazatlán but that just meant we knew that what we were going through had to be worse than the unknown. It rang true and honest. We are breathing a bit easier. We are eating less. We are drinking less. We are exercising more. We are sleeping through the night. We haven’t slept through the night in MD in two years. We would take turns tossing and turning and waking up exhausted.

I am still struggling. Different struggles. I am not fluent in Spanish yet and I am missing everything that I identified as ME before we moved. I am in the process of redefining who I am and what is important. I am in a growth spurt. No way to evaluate how I am doing until I am all in. Even the definition of ‘home’ has changed for me. Everyone I love (my children and husband in this example) said home is where I am. I blindly trusted that as I spend the most time decorating and cleaning it but what I am realizing is that home is where my family is and where we have roots. My family is in MD 3,800 miles away and we do NOT have roots here yet. So only time will tell…and it’s only been 33 days.