It feels like we left SA for our new home only a few months ago. This Saturday, however, saw us mark a full year in our new home in Canada. As I said on Twitter, it’s been the shortest long year ever, filled with ups and downs – albeit more ups than downs.
The journey has pushed both CF and I emotionally and intellectually. There’s nothing like coming to grips with the reality that, in many ways, you’re starting your adult life over again. Like being 21, but this time with experience, and habits (good and bad). Learning new systems, bureaucracies, jobs, and cultures, and having to reconcile all the differences between these and what we knew.
I can describe those differences to you in detail, and I know you’ll be able to appreciate them and understand them intellectually. Quite simply, unless you move elsewhere in the world, you’ll never be able to truly internalise them though. They need to be lived experiences. And that’s one of the reasons moving countries needs bravery – no matter how intellectually prepared you might be, the day-to-day reality is always different from the expectation.
Bravery or no, you also need support. Support from your family and friends in making the move. Support from new friends in the country and town you move to. Support from your partner. Without putting words in CF’s mouth, we’ve been amply blessed with all of these. From our families’ wholehearted support of the move, to the weekly (video) calls with them and our friends to help keep us connected with SA. The support from our new friends all over Alberta, from friendship, to advice, to answering all of the questions we have on living in Canada. To our support of each other in the ups and downs, the small moments that make up each day.
I’ve been asked a few times whether I regret making the move, and if I’d change anything. My answer is simple: I don’t regret making the move, and I wouldn’t have done anything different. Our move happened when it was supposed to, the way it was supposed to. Speculating about how things might have been different is a waste of mental energy – the only way is forward.
We miss our families and our friends in SA. We miss the comfort of known routines, known anxieties, known unknowns. We have to learn all these things again. And that’s where the growth, the excitement, the newness is.
Should you ever get the opportunity to move to another country, be brave. Take the opportunity. Embrace it and don’t look back. It’s an experience like no other, and we’re fortunate to be where we are.