To be honest, I feel a little unqualified to be giving this advice. I have been with my partner for over a decade, and I have followed him (& his career) many places. However, Vienna is our first multi-year diplomatic posting. Regardless, I will share what I’ve learned.

I met my husband in our hometown, Winnipeg, while I was in limbo. I had been hired as a Landscape Designer in Hong Kong, and I was waiting for my HK work-visa to be processed. All this to say, when we met I was the one who was travelling for work. In fact, I was planning to move to Hong Kong indeterminately for a job at an International Landscape Architecture firm. I certainly never imagined I’d be the trailing spouse! Fast-forward 10 years and I am living abroad again, but not for my own career. I know everyone is different, but for me the most difficult part of being a diploSpouse is knowing the career advancements I make in a design firm or agency will be forfeited when it comes time to move on. Some spouses are lucky to also work in international organizations, or embassies but regardless they are always expected to give up their jobs when it is time to move to a new posting. Such is the reality of the trailing spouse, and although we are also privy to an interesting life of adventure it is at the cost of some of our personal aspirations.

I’ve always been fiercely independent, and although I can be a bit of a career chameleon it is difficult to always have to start anew at every new posting. Diplolife looks amazing on instagram, so it is hard to find friends that understand these feelings, and that can add to the isolation already felt from living in a foreign land. Which is why it is important to have coping mechanisms or systems to help find your place and community every time you move. So, below are my top five tips for trailing spouses:

1. Find a hobby/goal/passion to pursue (outside of career aspirations): I need to feel productive in my days. When employed there is an external entity validating your activities by paying you. It is a challenge to find this same validation when you aren’t able to work due to language or visa restrictions. Therefore it is really important for me to have activities and goals of my own to accomplish. When we moved here my first goal was to run a 1/2 marathon. This was a terrific goal as it allowed me to learn the lay of the city whilst training, I enrolled in various run-clubs and met new people, I had structure to my days due to training schedule, and in the end I completed my first 21km run since I was 17 years old.

On top of running I also took Deutsch classes four times a week, where I met all sorts of people and learned to speak some of the local language. I opted for taking classes outside of the diplomatic community so I could meet a larger demographic. These courses were invaluable in introducing me to Austrian culture, meeting various women I’m still in touch with, and providing me with the language skills I need to call our internet provider when the service is down, or understand the announcements on the Ubahn intercom etc.

I was also in the midst of creating my MFA Thesis animation, so I spent many hours building sets and puppets, and then animating them. Although this medium is quite transportable to our various postings, I don’t think I would start a big project upon arrival again as it was very isolating and depressing taking thousands of stop-motion pictures alone in a dark room! Regardless, it was good for me to be working towards finishing my thesis, as this fulfilled my need to be continuing on with my own career aspirations.

2. Make friends of you own: A fellow diplowife once told me, “when you land, fill you schedule. Make sure you’re meeting someone new everyday. Do that for two weeks, and then you’ll have people to call on later and the start of a community.” I did in fact take her advice when we moved here, and I have remained close friends with one out of the 14 people met in those first two weeks (however she moved to Munich). This is proof that her method does work, although as I get older I am less interested in having friends of consequence, and more interested in having close friends with similar interests or world views. I don’t want to be in a mirrored bubble of people exactly like me of course, but it is nice to have people around that can see you and understand the things that bring you struggles or joy. I have invented my own method of meeting new people, that I will share in a future post. For now, understand the importance of having your own peeps around, someone to ask questions like, “where can I buy kale?” “Do you know any english speaking dentists?” or any other insider information that may be helpful to a newcomer.

3. Stay in touch with your global community: This one is hard, because you’re the one always moving, your friends and family will get used to life without you… they’ll move on and make new friends to fill your spot, and although you too will make new friends it will be harder for you to make the deep relationships that you had with them, as you just don’t have time to build those bonds when you’re moving every 2-5 years. This is why the brute of the responsibility to stay in touch with friends will fall on you. It takes a lot of energy to always be the caller/facetimer/texter, but it is important to maintain relationships with the people that know the “real you,” or “knew you when…” Those are the friends you can fall back on, that you can count on, and that will hopefully meet you at various halfway points around the globe for all sorts of vacation fun.

4. Appreciate expat life, but know it is okay to sometimes feel sad/isolated/homesick. I think this one goes without saying… but I’ll say it anyway. Even though your instagram feed may look like a glamourous travel brochure, it is okay to feel lonely and wonder how the hell you ended up following someone else’s career around. Allow yourself to acknowledge these feelings, and then find a solution for alleviating them… I suggest one of the above points 1-3 as a starting point!

A NOTE about identity & relationships: I sometimes get the impression that people consider me, as trailing spouse, a boring shell of a human with no interests of my own and totally dependent on my spouse’s career. At many diplomatic parties I see their faces glaze over when they realize I’m the +1, and not the guest of honour. For a long time this really bothered me, but I now realize that it is not because they think me boring, but their usual work banter flops with me. I am multi-facetted and have to be to survive in the ever changing landscape of international relocation. For this reason I prefer the term Diplomuse to Diplowife, indicating that I have some agency and interests of my own outside of my husband. I have wondered if I should refer to myself as “diplo” at all, as diplomat is not my personal vocation. However, every aspect of my life is certainly affected by our diplomatic postings, and for that I think it is fitting.

For the purpose of this blog, my husband’s identity will remain confidential. It is probably best for his own career if he isn’t placated all over my website. I can assure you though, he knows I have my own aspirations and dreams and does what he can to support me in attaining them. While I do sacrifice a lot to accompany him, he spends a lot of time assisting and supporting me in my own endeavours and dreams (ie: countless trips to art supply stores, forfeiting large areas of our homes to be animation studios, years of long-distance while I pursued my studies or artist residencies, etc.) As in every strong relationship, ours consists of give and takes, and we are both conscientious that the other feels supported.

One last thing before I wrap up this rambling… This life, of moving around, is not for everyone. It’s funny the reactions you get, “…but where will you move after Vienna” and the look of sheer panic when they find out we won’t know until 6 months before moving. Some people wouldn’t like all these unknowns, the difficulties operating in foreign languages, the sacrifice of developing your own career or community, being so far from friends and family… and I do struggle with these things too. However, it is also a fabulous adventure that I get to share with my favourite guy (+ our dog), and that makes me feel super &^@#ing lucky.

xo meg

• photo 1: our luggage for an international move
• photo 2: my moving truck bound for Montreal (www.joelkphotography.com)
• photo 3: dragging my belongings across Berlin

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