What I Learned By Living Elsewhere

WHAT I LEARNED BY LIVING ELSEWHERE

The words came to me right after we moved back to the US from Geneva; a title well before there was even a book. My husband and I had been living abroad for 25 years off and on, in east and west Africa and in Europe. In a moment of calm between unpacking boxes in our new home in Seattle, when I finally had a desk to sit and write, I pondered where to begin again. 

The thought of digging into another rewrite of my unpublished novels didn’t thrill me. I also had a handful of short stories and a dozen journals that detailed the joys and challenges of living and raising children in foreign settings. The idea came to me that I could write about what I had learned, loved and regretted while living overseas.

When I was young, I had longed to leave home and re-invent myself by living elsewhere. Maybe it was less about re-invention and more about exploring different aspects of myself while discovering who I was in relation to others outside my family. As the second oldest of seven children, I’d been burdened with family responsibilities at an early age and realized that I could only come to know myself by moving far from home. 

I managed to get myself to Austria and England for graduate school, and didn’t want to stop wandering when I was working as a journalist in Washington, D.C. The lure of the foreign was still strong, and perhaps added to my attraction to a man who had studied in Europe and worked in Africa too.

I knew he aimed to live and work overseas even before we were married. But when he asked me to move with two small children to a West African country with high rates of malaria and HIV in the 1990s, it required a leap of faith to override my fears and trust that things would turn out okay. He pushed me beyond my comfort zone at a pivotal time—when I was a new mother just finishing my PhD and without a clear path ahead of me. I agreed, thinking that I could stand anything for a couple of years. Going on faith—in myself and in my partner—and trusting my instincts helped me settle in a foreign place and make myself at home there. 

I needed people more than I cared to admit when we lived in east and west Africa. I wasn’t as brave or intrepid as younger generations of women who had the courage to move abroad on their own—as Peace Corps Volunteers, health professionals, and foreign correspondents. I wished I could have been more like that myself. 

Starting over in a new city was never easy; but what made it smoother was that I didn’t have to do it alone. I had a devoted partner, and I expended a lot of time and energy cultivating friendships. I had the courage to relocate time and again because I knew how to make friends.

It’s what I wished for my children, who moved every few years until they were eighteen and kept moving of their own accord into their thirties. I hoped that they’d find trusted companions through the many changes that life would bring, including unforeseen circumstances like illness and accidents, pandemics and climate disasters. 

After years of living overseas, I learned that connecting with people instead of focusing on differences was the most fulfilling way of being in the world. Bonds with people around me have mattered most in life, and I’ve been richly rewarded by connecting with people from many countries. It was a gift and facility that I developed early on—relating to people of other cultures and backgrounds—and such people have had a huge impact on me.

I’ve also concluded that resilience and perspective were our biggest gains from living elsewhere. We needed both to process the many changes life would bring. My children and I came to view ourselves as part of a larger world after living in other countries; after seeing the splendid landscapes in Tanzania, for example, alongside poverty and disease. We witnessed the daily struggle to survive in Ivory Coast and Tanzania by coming to know the people who worked around us. My husband and I may have deprived our kids of a fixed sense of home, yet they gained perspective and resilience in navigating the world with confidence and connecting with people who weren’t like them.

For all of us, the concept of “home” would keep evolving. 

The challenge was to find stability and a sense of ‘home’ inside myself instead of in a physical place. I didn’t yearn to be in a certain city or house as much as I longed for a sense of belonging and being connected to those around me.

For my children, discovering who they were meant having to accept the discomfort of feeling foreign. There was only so much we could do to protect them from the sense of alienation and rootlessness that accompanied relocation and change. The best thing we could do—and did—was to give them a safe place to land and open arms when they needed them.

My biggest regret is letting fear and worry rule my mindset in those early years when we were living elsewhere. If only I’d embraced Kierkegaard’s pronouncement early on, that “Our life expresses the result of our dominant thoughts.” Less worry would have freed me to enjoy the present more; and to walk in a state of wonder and stay open to the people who crossed my path.

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TERRY REPAK worked as a reporter for several years before going to graduate school at the London School of Economics and Political Science and earning a PhD at Emory University. She and her partner lived in East and West Africa and in Europe, where he directed AIDS projects and she wrote and raised their children.

She has published two other non-fiction books, numerous travel articles for newspapers and magazines, and her research in academic journals. She lives in Seattle where she continues to write and to teach English to foreign language learners (ELL) and to garden, hike, and swim.

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CIRCLING HOME: WHAT I LEARNED FROM LIVING ELSEWHERE, Terry A. Repak

When Terry Repak and her husband moved to West Africa with two small children at the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 1990s, she seized the opportunity to connect with people of other cultures and bear witness to the ravages of the disease.

Circling Home chronicles the adventures and challenges of raising children to be global citizens and trying to find home in countries as diverse as Ivory Coast, Tanzania, and Switzerland. Her memoir spotlights the complexity, struggles, and profound lessons at the heart of the expat journey.

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Category: On Writing