What globally mobile folks and long-term expats carry has a clinical name: migratory grief. This is where it gets language.
Some people move abroad and eventually feel at home. This space is for the ones who haven’t — and are starting to wonder if that’s actually the point.
If you’ve been living abroad for five years or more and you still carry a low-grade hum you can’t quite name — not crisis, not unhappiness, just something that hasn’t settled — this space is for you.
You’re in the right place if:
You’ve integrated everything on paper and something still feels off
You’re high-achieving, functioning well, and quietly exhausted by your own resilience
You don’t need fixing — you need someone to witness what you’ve been carrying
The word “home” has become a philosophical question, not a geographic one
What you’ll find here:
Weekly essays on identity, belonging, and what sustained expat experience or long-term life abroad actually does to a nervous system. Written from inside the experience, not from above it. No quick fixes. No belonging hacks.
What this is NOT:
Therapy, clinical advice, or a community for people who just moved abroad.
Who I am
I’m Kay — Filipina American TCK (Third Culture Kid), 17 years in Spain, and a counsellor-in-training (CPCAB, UK). I spent over a decade working in inclusion and cross-cultural strategy, helping organizations bridge cultures. I was good at it. I was also slowly burning out from being the bridge.
Now I’m training to offer something different: recognition-based support for expats and global citizens who are done being told they should feel lucky to be here.
I write about what I’m learning — from the research conversations I’ve had with people who’ve lived abroad long-term, from my ongoing counselling training, and from my own arc.
If you’re just landing here, start with where you are:
There’s a fair bit in the archive now. Here’s where to start, depending on what’s present for you right now.
If you want language for the hum you can’t quite name:
If home doesn’t feel like a place anymore:
If you’re back “home” and it’s not landing the way you expected:
If you’re not sure what to call yourself anymore:
If you’d like to go further
Talk it through one-on-one with someone who gets it: If something you’ve read here has named something you’ve been carrying, I hold a small number of Expat Orientation Sessions each month — 60-minute, one-to-one, non-clinical conversations for sense-making and orientation.
Read about how a session works or go straight to Work With Me.
Sit with it more regularly: Paid subscribers receive one guided audio reflection each month and a quarterly Field Notes pattern report from my ongoing research interviews — a monthly place to keep making sense of long-term life abroad. $8/month or $70/year. You’re welcome to upgrade anytime.
Note: The essays will always be free. The rest is here if and when you want it.
Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter, members-only monthly guided audios, long-term life abroad resources, and publication archives.
If this work is useful and you’d like to support it another way, you can buy me a coffee.
I’m grateful you’re here.
