About

Welcome! Thanks for joining me as I explore what it means to be an ex-pat wife and mother of a young child in China. I left a marketing career in the US to follow my husband to Asia to experience a new culture and expose our son to a new way of life. Our experience has been amazing, frustrating, surprising, confusing, and as unique as it is similar to all other foreigners living here.

Like myself, many of the mothers I meet through my son’s activities had careers in their home countries, but decided to give their careers up for the experience of exploring life in a new country. This change also comes during another time of enormous upheaval, becoming a mother. Whether you always wanted to be a stay-at-home mother or the opportunity came along as part of the ex-pat package, the loss of individual identity can be strong when you become a “trailing spouse.”

We “followers” have been given the enormous task of settling our families into a foreign country, often without assistance. We are navigating a new world not just for ourselves, but to settle our small children, our spouses, and ourselves. How can we replicate the cadence of life back home? How can we integrate ourselves into this new society? How can we find friends, not just for our children but also for ourselves?

Once these initial problems resolve themselves (with no small effort, by the way!), what are we left with? Is booking the next vacation or playdate enough for us? What if we yearn to have our own identity again? What can we do here that fulfills our souls, our need for fulfillment and our happiness meter? What will we have to show for our time here when we return to our home countries?

These questions, and many more, I will attempt to explore and explain as I seek other like-minded women to dialogue with and learn from. I hope you join me on this journey and take something useful from our conversations so that your time here is both enjoyable and fulfilling!

Connect with me on LinkedIn as well to see more of what I’ve been up to:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/lizodanderson

Hope to hear from you!