International Mobility: Saying Goodbye & Confronting Loss, with host Louise Ross [Ep 42]

International mobility is in many ways a privileged one. Yet there is a price to pay and that is the sadness and grief that comes with having to say goodbye, whether you're the one that's staying, or the one that's leaving. Recently, a young woman who was my Episode 25 guest, and who has been my right-hand helper and support person for upward of 5 years, emigrated to the US, where her extended Ukrainian family lives. Elisabeth's departure from Portugal opened flood gates of grief because I was losing someone who had become like family. Her leaving also triggered an acute sense of loss, which I'd never fully processed, over the many friends I've made here who in recent years, have moved onto new lives in other countries.

Transcript

Welcome to Women Who WaIk. I'm Louise Ross, writer and author of Women Who Walk the book, the inspiration for this podcast. And just as I did for the book here, I'll be interviewing and unpacking the journeys of impressive, intrepid women who've made multiple international moves for work, for adventure, for love, for freedom reminding us that women can do extraordinary things. You can find a transcript, with pictures, to each episode, and my books on my website, LouiseRoss.com.

Hello listeners. Welcome to Episode 42 of Women Who Walk.

Today, I'm recording a solo episode, which has been prompted by a sense of loss. Living in a community of mobile internationals, over time it becomes startlingly obvious just how transitory the community really is. Particularly as new people arrive, but especially as old friends leave.

In the early days of my arrival in Portugal almost 10 years ago now, I was invited to join a women's personal growth group, made up of about a dozen members from the UK, the US, Australia, Canada and Germany. The women are what I call long-termers, having lived in Portugal for upwards of 25 years, as a result of marrying Portuguese men and then having families here. I was excited to be amongst these women: two artists, a massage therapist-cum-Vedic astrologer, a psychotherapist, a pilot, a musician, an academic, a business owner, a life coach. Creative, clever women with impressive collective wisdom.

I imagined becoming fast and furious friends with them all. Yet, at my first meeting, I overheard several of the women talking about a mutual friend of theirs who had recently left Portugal. Her husband worked with NATO and they're posting here was for two years. One of the women said something along the lines of, 'that's why I don't make friends with newcomers, so many end up leaving.'

It struck me as kind of a harsh thing to say. After all, I was a newcomer and I wanted to be friends with this woman. But obviously if that were going to happen, then I would need to stick around until she trusted that I wasn't going to just up and leave after a couple of years. Well, I didn't leave and so we are indeed good friends these days.

During the pandemic, our women's group fell apart. The physical distance imposed upon us by the various lockdowns interrupted our facility to connect. No one suggested Zoom meetings. I think our personal coping strategies with the pandemic threw us all back into our most immediate connections, such as family, intimates, close neighbors, et cetera. Four of us did end up on a WhatsApp group together, yammering it up once a week. But somehow that wasn't the same as meeting in person. And as we came out of the pandemic, the WhatsApp group disbanded.

In the year since, people's lives have changed dramatically. Or rather people in my life here in Portugal, made very big changes, I think precipitated by the pandemic. There have been divorces with one of the couple returning to their home country. Retirements, with couples moving countries, now that they're no longer employed here. Friends who are parents have moved closer to their adult children who live outside of Portugal.

But for whatever reason, bottom line, many people I was lucky enough to call 'friend' have gone. They've moved away, which helped me come to understand the resistance my one friend has to allowing herself to get close to newcomers. Their moving away also meant I've had to face feelings of loss.

The most recent loss and perhaps the most emotionally triggering for me, was my young guest from Episode 25, Elizabeth Belous. A beautiful, incredibly capable young woman who for the past five years has been a constant in my life, coming by my apartment a couple of times a month, for an afternoon at a time.

And during those hours, Elizabeth worked as my home helper, personal assistant, translator, and all-round support person, creating a level of order in my life, in this somewhat chaotic Southern European country, that always left me feeling blissfully peaceful. She would alert me when I was out of cleaning agents, garbage bags and so on. Or that my balcony garden needed more regular watering, or that it was time to replace a part of my vacuum cleaner, and that the tiles in the bathroom needed to be sealed.

Because it's too difficult for me to grasp and respond to rapid speaking Portuguese on the phone, particularly when the conversation is something to do with the water, the gas, the electricity, Elizabeth would make those phone calls on my behalf.

I don't have a car, but Elizabeth did. And when I had major dental surgery a couple of years ago, knowing I'd be too out of it to organize an Uber, it was Elizabeth who happily agreed to pick me up and bring me home.

A year later, I sold an apartment I owned and rented in Lisbon. But for some strange, bureaucratic reason at the closing at the bank, I was not allowed to have my realtor with me. Something to do with conflict of interest, which to this day, I do not understand. Anyway, it was Elizabeth who I called at the last minute saying,' Help! Can you come with me? I need someone who can read and translate all these Portuguese documents.' And bless that girl. She was on board just like that.

Over the years we talked about her life and her dreams. And because her many skills and fluency in five languages, seemed so underutilized to me, at times I encouraged her to apply for jobs that she never seemed to feel she was quite qualified for. Nevertheless, I nudged her. Helping her write a resume. Penning a reference for one interview she went to, though nothing came of it. I think she didn't believe she could do the job and thus subtly sabotaged the interview. Though, I might be wrong because Elizabeth is also a single mum to a nine-year-old son she adores. And who she wanted to be available to, should he need her during the school day. And as a home helper-cum- personal assistant, setting her own flexible hours, she could always be there for him. And indeed she was.

I've been privy to many women, including on this podcast, processing the emotional fallout of their children launching. And as they've talked of having to let go, I understood their mixed feelings, their grief, but from a somewhat detached position because not having children of my own parenting and empty nesting is somewhat abstract to me.

But then Elizabeth, who grew to be family, like a niece, perhaps even the daughter that I don't have, came by about a month ago in mid-January. She'd been to Germany for Christmas, to stay with extended family. I was dying to hear about her trip. She was so happy and bubbly telling me all about it. And then she dropped her news: Oh, and by the way, in a couple of weeks, I'm moving to the US."

If you listened to Episode 25, you know that Elizabeth is Ukrainian. However she was born in Germany, we're after the collapse of the Soviet Union, her parents had immigrated, looking for work opportunities and a place to raise a family.

In 2004, when Elizabeth was nine, the family moved to Sacramento, California, to be with extended family who had moved there as refugees in the early 1990s, and where Elizabeth's parents found further the work opportunities. But in 2007, when she was 12, her parents moved Elizabeth and her brother again. This time to Portugal, to work as missionaries on behalf of the evangelical church.

By the age of 17, Elizabeth was a teen mum to a little boy, Justin. She continued living with her parents. But when they decided to move back to the Ukraine, before another move back to the US, Elizabeth, her son, and Justin's father moved in together. By the time she was in her mid-twenties, her relationship with Justin's father had significantly deteriorated. But Elizabeth stayed in Portugal, rather than join her parents in the US, because legally she could not take her son outside of Portugal without the father's consent, which he would not give.

Her relationship became so untenable that during the pandemic, she found a pro-bono lawyer who helped her legally separate and, gain primary custody of Justin, a complicated and bureaucratic process in Portugal that took almost two years. And then in the spring of 2022 members of Elisabeth's family fled the war in Ukraine, arriving in Portugal to live with her.

Suddenly her home was absent her former partner, but now filled with family: her cousin, her cousin's new baby, and her cousin's mother, Elizabeth's aunt. It is still difficult for me to understand this, but Elizabeth's aunt, her cousin and the baby, returned to the Ukraine late last year, about seven months after they'd arrived in Portugal. When I asked her Elizabeth why, she said they missed their husbands and felt the pull to return, believing it to be safe enough.

But do they have a home to return to? I asked. Apparently they do. But they were returning to a winter with no heat, no running water, and thus extreme hardship. Elizabeth attempted to placate my jaw-dropping disbelief with, 'but they have each other and they have the community and everyone is helping each other to survive,' she said.

And so Elizabeth's house was empty of family again. But now with sole custody of Justin, she was free to travel outside of Portugal, hence her trip to spend Christmas with relatives in Germany, and in the town where she was born, and where she hadn't been since she'd left with her parents as a child of 10. And though I didn't ask, I'm guessing that somewhere in the midst of all of this, her parents, who live back in Sacramento, might've suggested that she leave Portugal and come to California. And because she has a Ukrainian passport, and because she was able to get all her paperwork in order, and because the US has been processing Ukrainian nationals due to the war, the door opened so she could leave.

When she told me about her pending departure, my heart tugged. A twinge of pain registered. I suddenly knew exactly how the mothers with launching children felt. Including my own mother, who never quite resolved her grief at my leaving her, and Australia, around the same age as Elizabeth.

But unlike my mother, I pushed through my feelings, and holding back tears, I took a deep breath and burst out with all the enthusiasm that this news deserved, "Oh, my God, Elizabeth, this is fantastic!" After all, this is exactly what I wanted for her. An opportunity to advance and grow, perhaps return to school. Even college. A chance for her to become all that she can be. And as such. It was an opportunity not to be missed.

For days after our conversation, I didn't feel quite right. In fact, I felt grumpy and out of sorts. I kept looking around my apartment and seeing Elizabeth's imprint of order and cleanliness. Her sense of the ascetic in the way she always created beauty. Some paperwork had arrived in the mail and I needed to understand it and Google translate was useless. It was making an incomprehensible mess of it. Elizabeth would know what to do with this," I said out loud as I tossed the paperwork down in a huff.

I wandered into my bedroom, where I noticed a bag of mix and match winter clothes that I'd pull from my wardrobe earlier in the month, and which I'd forgotten to give to Elizabeth who is much the same size as me. Pre-pandemic, when she was prepping to go to the job interview, I mentioned earlier, we'd had a fun few hours in my bedroom putting together an interview outfit for her, with clothes from my wardrobe that I no longer wore: a mid-season dresscoat in tones of burgundy, dark blue and black that emphasized her long, blonde locks and grey-blue eyes. Underneath, a tight black skirt and colored tights, and on her feet, grey leather flats that fitted her perfectly. She looked fabulous and very professional.

I always imagined Elizabeth enjoying wearing the things I passed forward and if not, I trusted that she'd pass them forward to someone she thought could wear them. It was a familial thing, based on my experience of my older sister who'd had a career in fashion and textiles, bringing with her on her visits from Australia, gorgeous designer pieces that she'd pass forward to me.

And then I started to cry. Heaving sobs. I told myself to just let it out, that it was grief. Grief at losing this girl who had meant so much to me over the years. A young woman who had become family. But it was also grief that I hadn't allowed myself to feel over the loss of so many friends who have moved on to new lives in other countries. Because just, as I said, at the very beginning of this episode, living in a community of mobile internationals, over time it becomes startlingly obvious, just how transitory the community really is. Particularly as new people arrive, but especially as old friends leave.

This life of international mobility is in many ways a privileged one. Yet there is a price to pay: and that is the sadness and grief that comes with having to say goodbye, whether you're the one that's staying, or the one that's leaving.

I sent Elizabeth a short text the morning she was due to fly to the US. 'Bon voyage, Elizabeth.' I said. I didn't want to be overly demonstrative and long winded the day she was leaving. I knew it would probably be an emotional day for her, filled with mixed feelings.

A few days later, I received a text back: "Thank you very much, Louise. You have been a very positive person in my life and I will take good examples from you. Maybe I will one day also start writing. Thank you for so much kindness and for the many small gifts that you always gave. I admire your work and strength greatly. Wishing you many blessings, true love and goodness in life. God bless."

Of course, I cried again. And then I pulled myself together and messaged back: "Thanks for the lovely message, Elizabeth. I'll, miss you terribly. But this is such a wonderful opportunity and I can only imagine good things coming to you. Send me your Insta account so I can follow your pics of beautiful California. Big love to you, my dear." Followed by lots of huggy, kissy emoticons.

I haven't heard back. I'm guessing she and Justin are with her parents in Sacramento, slowly acclimating to their new life in sunny, California.

Thank you for listening today. So you don’t miss future episodes, subscribe on your favorite podcast provider or on my YouTube channel @WomenWhoWalkPodcast. Also, feel free to connect with comments on Instagram @LouiseRossWriter or Writer & Podcaster, Louise Ross on Facebook, or find me on LinkedIn. And finally, if you enjoyed this episode, spread the word and tell your friends.