Holding the Fort Abroad

Synopsis: Kate is British, married to a Frenchman and they currently live in France. She is a Facilitator, Certified Coach and Mentor. Her husband has been travelling Monday-Friday for about a year now. We talk about her family’s experience with this lifestyle, and what she has put in place. In This Episode: How Kate came to end up in France and the kind of coaching work Kate does How learning to...

Synopsis: Angelic is a Holistic Health Practitioner, Mindfulness Coach and author from San Diego, CA. She is also a volunteer with the Myositis Support and Understanding organization where she moderates mindfulness conversations on clubhouse and advocates for myositis, a rare auto immune disease that has affected her own life. She also knows what it is to live as an expat. In this interview, she t...

Synopsis: Mariam Navaid Ottimofiore is a Pakistani expat author, writer, researcher and economist. She has lived in ten countries as both a TCK and an expat adult: The Kingdom of Bahrain, the United States, Pakistan, the United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, Ghana and Portugal. She is the author of the expat guidebook This Messy Mobile Life: How a MOLA can hel...

Synopsis: Carole Hallett is an expat expert and host of the Expat Ability Chat podcast and founder of Expat child. After having lived as an expat, she is now living in her home country while her husband moves on assignment. In her coaching practice she has often seen that frequent business travel is a part of the expat experience. In This Episode: Carole explains about her various moves as an...

Synopsis: Today my guest is Colleen Higgs. She and her husband have five children. As a professional turned mum, she knows what it is like to be frustrating when parenting is efficient! In her blog Unpacking Parenting, she challenges us to stop using measures used for efficiency and look at parenting in a completely different way. Colleen also knows what it is like to live abroad and have a travel...

Synopsis: In this episode I share my acronym GREAT which helps to remember the five strategies to make business travel work for you and your family. Whether your partner is gone Monday to Friday, or months at a time. Resources Mentioned in this Episode: Workbook - How to ask for help and get the help you need. Take the time out to figure out: what stops you from asking for help what help you need...

Synopsis: Today my guest is Arlette Chatlein. She is no stranger to living far from her partner. Born in Curaçao, Arlette moved to The Netherlands when she was 19 years old to study Economics at the University of Rotterdam. Little did she know that it would only be her first move. Her and her husband have lived apart at three different times. Listen to her share what they have learned. In This Epi...

Synopsis: Wiebke Anton is a relationship coach for people living abroad. In this episode, we talk about being a couple who moves and how we can prioritise our relationship. In This Episode: Typical scenarios that Wiebke sees in her work with couples who move abroad What Wiebke focuses on during relationship care sessions, exercises that she uses, and how these apply to couples who are geographical...

Synopsis: Becky Grappo is an educational consultant. She works with families throughout the United States and around the world on planning their children's education. Her husband was a career foreign service officer for 27 years in the US Diplomatic Service. During that time and with three young children at home, she went back to school and got her graduate degree in education. She taught in sever...

Synopsis: Today my guest is Richelle Futch. Richelle has built and scaled multiple ventures across technology, education, nonprofit and service based industries. She is a sponsorship specialist, an author, a public speaker and a trainer. Richelle is a former Marine, current military spouse and advocate for military employment, preventative mental health care and reform. She has worked with congres...

Synopsis: Today my guest is Bruna Toubia. She is multicultural, multilingual. She has lived in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. And she is trained in  impressive array of holistic, process-orientated and goal-orientated methods. First she is going introduce systemic constellations and then she will help us see how they can be a powerful tool in situations where you are geographically separat...

Synopsis: Dr Neeta is a US licensed psychologist living, practicing, and consulting internationally. Her online private practice includes therapy and coaching services for expats, first gens, interculturalists, digital nomads, diplomats, humanitarian workers, military veterans, third culture kids, and globally mobile folx. Her approach is integrative and humanistic, with a focus on solutions for g...

Synopsis In this episode, I share a little about my burnout in January 2021, the panic attacks I experienced and the exhaustion that set in after a series of difficult situations accumulated. I share how I recovered and the lessons learned from that incredibly difficult time. If you feel that you have been stressed for a long time, this might be worth a listen. If you are experiencing panic attack...

Synopsis: International adoptee, born in Sri Lanka and holder of a French passport, Florence Chabert d’Hieres specialises in cross-cultural training and coaching from 6 years old kids to top management. In 2009, she created Coach4expat. She is the author of “I'm a citizen of the world” for parents and children to help them succeed in their expat adventure. During the pandemic, she created Expat Vi...

Synopsis Shellee Burroughs is a UK Registered Art Therapist. She has 10+ years’ experience counselling within the education sector, specialising in trauma and sexual abuse therapy. She is an experienced child and adolescent counsellor using a range of approaches from Creative Arts and Play/Sand Tray Therapy, Child Accelerated Trauma Therapy, Narrative Therapy, and Strengths Based Psychology. She a...

Synopsis For many years, Matthijs de Rave worked as Sales Director for well known, worldwide insurance companies and was also an author of children’s books. One day, he had an airplane epiphany and founded Expat Valley. I talk to him about being the first Ombudsman for International Children, and what it was like being an travelling dad. In this Episode What is an Ombudsman for International Child...

Synopsis Kerry is a researcher, collaborator and entrepreneur in aging, care and connection. She is the Founder of The Long Distance Grandparent, a mission driven business, helping grandparents build strong bonds with their grandchildren – no matter the distance between. In this Episode The Long Distance Grandparent Society (1:10) Nurturing the relationship: similarities in maintaining connection...

Synopsis Sharoya Ham is a behaviour change specialist and founder of Embrace Behavior Change. She is also a licensed teacher with over 25 years of experience working with at-risk students and their families. Her favourite career, however, was as a stay-at-home mom. She attributes her three amazing sons who are now 18, 20, and 23 for teaching her endless lessons about parenting. Sharoya is an Ameri...

Synopsis Vivian is the founder of Expat Nest, an online counselling service for internationals. She is a registered psychologist with Master’s degrees in both Child & Adolescent Psychology and Health Psychology. She was recognised in 2020 as one of the 100 most influential women in the world by Women appreciating Women. She is bicultural with family all over the world, Vivian is familiar with...

Synopsis: Robert has many different skills, he’s been in the military, he’s been a teacher, he is trained as an engineer and he is the dad of two wonderful girls. He gives us his perspective as a Holding the Fort Dad and gives some fantastic tips on parenting too ! In This Episode:       Robert’s life before becoming a Holding the Fort Dad Being the only dad in M...

Synopsis: Claire Hauxwell is a professional badass (accompanying supportive spouse), writer, and coach. A trained Supply Chain professional and ex-spreadsheet lover, she now puts her Type A personality to work by deconstructing the nuances of expat life. With more than a decade of global living experience, Claire shares her wisdom on the blog – My Theory On Blooming, and coaches fem...

Synopsis: Helen is NOT an expat, she is the mother of expats, a long distance grandparent and the author of a series of books on distance relationships between grandparents, distance sons and daughters and distance grandchildren. One of Helen’s children was an expat with a travelling partner. This episode is a conversation being a distance grandparent when your expat child is solo parenting. In Th...

Synopsis In this episode I talk about what you can expect from this podcast and why I am doing it. Extract from the book Holding the Fort Abroad : “Holding the fort, or, in American English, holding down the fort, is an expression that means taking care of things during someone’s absence. In March 2019, as my husband prepared to live in Afghanistan for two years while I stayed in Switzerland, I re...

Synopsis: Margaret Ghielmetti knows what it is like to be home alone when she thought she was moving abroad with her husband and not moving abroad waiting for her husband to come home. She talks about her journey from thinking she would be fine to the reality she encountered to finally being open about needing help and creating a life for herself on her own terms. In this Episode: The metaphorical...