The Expat Mom Podcast

Of all the things we could give our children, self-confidence ranks at the top of the list for most parents.  However in a world of comparisons on instagram, high stress levels for everyone in the family, and unusually high expectations, it can be challenging.  Jamie Edelbrock, an award-winning author, expat, mother, and mental-health advocate, shares with us a few ways we can increase our childre...

After 11 years living away from the mainland US, our family moved back to the US for a year a couple of years ago.   Most people expect going abroad to be hard, but they don’t expect returning home to be as challenging.   And, they particularly underestimate the challenge kids will have; kids often struggle more than adults to re-patriate.  One study found that 87% of repatriated kids felt differe...

If you've ever felt like you can't stand the country you're living in for another moment, you're normal.  If you've ever been in the middle of a transition and felt like you wanted to abandon it all, you're normal.   In part 2 of our culture shock series on the podcast, we’ll cover 3 tools you and your family can use as you transition to another country.  These tools...

There are 5 stages of culture shock, and each one is driven by neurotransmitters in the brain.  Stage 1 The Honeymoon Stage: On arrival-2 weeks to 3 months long  Everything feels exciting and novel and wonderful Stage 2 The Rejection Stage: Around 3-6 months You are irritated, frustrated, and overwhelmed with cultural differences Stage 3 The Transition Stage: Around 6-12 months You are getting use...

Today, my podcast guest, Kailyn Fullerton, who is an teacher, a bonus-mother, an EdD candidate in social and emotional learning, and an expat, shares her insights on the emotional shift many have experienced post-COVID, and shares some practical strategies about how we can learn to regulate emotions better for ourselves and our kids.  For some, the COVID-19 pandemic was a chance to slow down a lit...

It's easy to put our confidence in fancy doctors, professionals, or books to know how to improve our children's mental and emotional health.  And those things can be fantastic!  Sometimes though, it's harder to trust simple routines and practices at home which can actually be as powerful or MORE powerful than more complex solutions.  One of the most powerful tools we have at our dis...

TCKs emotional cup is full a lot of the time--meaning they are at the threshold of keeping it together.  When an additional stressor is added, sometimes that cup just overflows.  One of my favorite tools to help TCKs and Expat Families with is "The Debrief."  This is a tool developed by Lauren Wells, and TCK Training.  Last year I certified to learn how to conduct debriefs for families. ...

Part 1 of the interview with Tanya Crossman explored recent research on TCKs which showed pretty dire outcomes.  However, Tanya Crossman offers hope to Expat parents how we can prevent mental health issues in our TCKs.  It's amazing, the solutions aren't complex, but they do require that we be deliberate and consistent.  As an adult TCK herself and having done years of research she'...

Many books have been written about TCKs and some of the challenges and benefits of expat life for kids.  But recent research puts numbers and specific outcomes to some of these factors, and the results might surprise you.    In a study done on Adverse Childhood Events, TCKs had significantly more ACEs than their counterparts in their home country.  These are predictive of a number of issues both m...

Each of us have a desire to be noticed, cared about, and understood by our partner.  Gottman calls efforts to get this kind of connection is called “an emotional bid.”  I love this name, because it brings up an image of an art auction with someone at the front looking around the room to see who is willing to pay money for this item.  Someone in the audience might raise their finger to indicate the...

Our brain naturally makes assumptions.  It's an essential skill for our survival.  Without this skill, we wouldn't be able to make decisions unless we had ALL the information--which is rarely the case.   However, assumptions can also be detrimental to our relationships and happiness.  They can cause us a lot of suffering and ruin our connections.  On this podcast, we talk about when assu...

It's really common for families in the expatriate community to be separated sometimes--either because one partner travels frequently, or one partner has an assignment and the rest of the family doesn't go.  These situations can be challenging for everyone in the family.  It can be especially hard on the spouse who is at home "holding the fort" as Rhoda, my podcast guest, descri...

Most of us were given the advice when we got married, “Do everything you can to make your spouse happy.”  This sounds like such lovely and good advice.  I agree that we should be loving and kind and sacrificing.  But when we do these things with the expectation that it will make our spouse happy, very often we undermine our happiness and the happiness of our spouse.  In other words when we do this...

One of the blessings of living in a developing country as an expat, can be having a household helper.   It can be a wonderful way to learn about the host culture, and language, as well as have assistance figuring out new things like bleaching fruits and veggies, figuring out how to get around, paying your bills, and more.  And then, there is the incredible blessing of having help around the house...

Has someone in your family ever gotten a cold?  Within a few days, everyone in the family has one?   Just like germs are contagious, so are emotions.  Obviously, we don't pass microparticles to each other like bacteria, but we do have biological structures that cause us to mirror emotions in each other.  On the podcast, we explore how this can be SO useful in our relationships and how it can...

Cows spend 7-8 hours a day chewing, swallowing, regurgitating, re-chewing, and re-swallowing their food.  That's a lot of time!  Humans spend a lot of time ruminating as well.  Rather than ruminating on food, they ruminate on thoughts:  they love to chew on thoughts over and over again, swallow them, regurgitate them, and chew on them some more.  While rumination can be helpful to cows in dig...

Have you ever noticed that sometimes the very things you love about someone are also sometimes the things that drive you crazy?  Often our strengths and our weaknesses are two sides of the same continuum.  We're constantly late but it's because we're optimistic about how much we can get done.  We're compassionate, but when we care too much, we might neglect ourselves to solve o...

Do you ever feel like you have a CNN line ticker constantly moving across the bottom of your brain listing all the things you have to keep track of from whether you've run out of toilet paper, to order the soccer uniform, to making dinner, to exercising etc.?  This is your mental load.  Studies show that women carry significantly more of the mental load around home life than men do.  In react...

What do you say to yourself when you look in the mirror?  Do things like, "Ugh, why am I so fat?"  or "I hate my body" sound familiar?   Many of us internalize messages starting at a young age that can lead to a negative body image.    It may not seem like a big deal.  But actually, what we say to ourselves about our body has a tremendous impact on our emotional AND physical he...

In gardening and agriculture, it's clear that you'll reap what you sew.  If you plant corn, you won't reap wheat.   The law of the harvest is also true in our emotional health.  However, sometimes it is less obvious.  Gratitude is one type of seed we can plan that can help us grow and cultivate happiness and emotional health.    Gratitude has physical and emotional benefits, particu...

Regardless of whether you’ve moved several times or this is your first move as a couple, there are invisible changes that happen to both partners during transition.  My guest, Karina Lagarrige—an international psychologist who specializes in expat couples—discusses what these changes are and how to deal with them in a way that brings you closer, not farther apart as a couple.   In this episode you...

Just like you wouldn't try to find a new place in a new city without a map or a GPS or a guide, you won't want to navigate a midlife transition without a guide either.  You aren't usually at your best in "crisis" so it's even more essential to have a guide.  This podcast will walk you through seven helpful ways to navigate a midlife crisis.   Download Podcast Roadmap...

When we reach midlife, it is often accompanied by a variety of changes.  Those changes can often trigger a midlife crisis.  The way we think about and respond to that experience to make a tremendous different in how we navigate a midlife crisis.  It can make the difference of suffering and prolonging a midlife crisis vs. a midlife crisis being the impetus for us to become who we were meant to beco...

One of the questions I get frequently is, “Am I having a mid-life crisis?”  The way a mid-life crisis is portrayed in the media often does us a disfavor.  We assume it looks like buying a Porche or quitting your job to travel the world alone.  The truth is that mid-life is the intersection of some important shifts intellectually, emotionally, physically, and intellectually.  These changes often ca...

Do you ever look at other people and wonder how they got where they are now?  On this episode, I'm excited to share a little of my journey starting out as an expat mom as I and my kids struggled with the challenges of expat life.   I share some of the tools I discovered that helped me totally change my emotional health, my mothering experience, and our life abroad.  I'm excited to share...