For me, this living and investing overseas thing has never been either-or.
When I moved from Baltimore, Maryland, to Waterford, Ireland, some 26 years ago, I wasn’t looking to cut the United States out of my life.
I didn’t run from the States. I dove toward opportunity.
It’s been a journey of more than two-and-a-half decades that has seen Lief and me reinventing our lives in series. Along the way, in each place where we and our children have landed, we’ve put down roots, and become part of the community…
From Ireland to Paris to Panama to, as of this year, Woodstock, Illinois.
Our ever-evolving plan now has us back in the States, at least some of the time.
We’ve navigated our journey to accommodate our children’s best interests… our business agendas… investment opportunities… and, at this stage, aging parents… perpetually adjusting as circumstances continue to evolve.
It hasn’t always been easy to manage the competing agendas…
And, in truth, our family and friends haven’t always understood.
They might even suggest that you’ve flat out lost your mind.
My family still doesn’t get it.
As I share in my memoir “At Home In Ireland,” when I announced nearly 30 years ago that I was making plans to relocate from the East Coast of the United States to the southeast coast of Ireland, they humored me at first by saying nothing.
Then, when they realized that the planning stage was moving into the moving stage, they got vocal.
My mother cried.
My sister wondered if a move like this could possibly be in the best interest of her niece, my 8-year-old daughter Kaitlin.
My aunt asked how I could be so heartless as to take my mother and father’s grandchild so far away from them.
Our first year in Ireland, we heard little from my family. Then I became pregnant with my second child, Jackson, and my mother and father put their misgivings about our international relocation aside and finally came to visit.
Years later, when I called my mother to tell her we intended to move again, this time from Waterford, Ireland, to Paris, France, she responded at first, again, with silence.
Then, after an awkward pause, “Don’t the French hate Americans?”
Many phone calls and months later, my mom finally came to visit us in the City of Light. The morning we escorted her to the airport for her return flight to the States after she’d spent 10 days with us in Paris, she turned and said, “I was wrong not to have come sooner. You’re right. The French are fine, and this city is beautiful.”
Then, four years later, another phone call…
“Mom, we’re moving to Panama!” I called to exclaim one morning.
Silence.
Followed by…
“But I thought you loved Paris? Why would you move again now? Where will Jack go to school? Isn’t it miserably hot in Panama? What about your lovely apartment in Paris? You’re not going to give that up, are you?”
Lief and I are on a different track than many, and we long ago gave up on the hope that others would understand.
The lifestyle we’ve chosen doesn’t have to make sense to everyone else. It makes sense to us.
By the same token, your plan need make sense only to you.
We’ll do our best to support you as you work through it.
Until next time,
Kathleen Peddicord
Founding Publisher, Overseas Opportunity Letter
