Trailing

This article in the New York Times reminds me about how complicated it is to be a trailing spouse. It's no small compromise to give up your job (or even your career) to move across the world for your partner's professional opportunity. It's hard to find a job in a new city, country and culture. If your field doesn't exist (for example, informal Jewish education), you have to either get extremely creative or find something new. Your identity shifts. Your circle of friends shifts. Now it's really about having couple friends and being seen more as a unit. You are somewhere because of a job or professional opportunity. Your family is somewhere else. Your best friends are all somewhere else, yet you're chasing something professional. That says a lot about what's important to you (I struggle with this a lot), at least at this moment.

Four years on, when someone asks what I'm doing in Singapore, I never say that I work in Diversity and Inclusion at a big bank. I say, "well, I came here for my husband's job. Since I was here I got an MBA and found a job, and now I work in D&I in a big bank." I do not internalise this move as my own. I don't resent Matt for this, but if I hadn't found a job that I like, and if I hadn't found a good support network, and if I hadn't had all of the other great opportunities we have taken advantage of here (traveling, diving, etc), I would be.

It's complicated. The next move is mine!