Reconnecting in a different way

I am re-igniting my blog. I began blogging 11 years ago in Paris to document my life abroad.  You can check out my old blog below.  Since then I lived and worked in Abu Dhabi, and then returned home for 5 years.

I don’t want to get into the past 7 years in this first post, and so I’ll start with where I am: a tapas bar in Principe Real, Lisbon. It’s warm, sunny, and a little windy. I’m sitting outside with a glass of white wine. Bread with tomato and Serrano ham is on the way. This is a rare break from what I’ve experienced in the past two and a half weeks since arriving in Lisbon.  We (meaning my husband and two kids, aged 4 and 20 months) have been on the go: apartment and house hunting; exploring parks and different parts of the city and villages outside of the city; going to beaches; trying to find our Iberian rhythm (which means that my kids have rarely been in bed before 10pm). It has been exciting and exhausting. So today when my husband decided to take the kids for the day, I knew where to start with this freedom: connecting with my best friend in Chicago.    Two and a half hours later, I’m out of the house to write.  This is the way I know how to process.  Talking it out is a close second, but nothing feels as good as just writing out my thoughts, ideas, fears, and wishes.

So while I left blogging behind to re-immerse myself in my career, marriage, starting a family and what I thought was returning to my roots, I realize that I also left a part of myself on the sidelines.  I feel better when I’m writing.  And now that I’m in a new country, with two kids, surrounded by a new language and an uncertain future, it only makes sense to return to writing. I want to write about this life as a (for the moment stay-at-home) mom, as somebody who doesn’t yet speak the language, as somebody who doesn’t have a single friend, who gave up (I speak with righteousness, I realize) her career, being close to her family, and her friends, to live in a place that’s not my own but I’ve come to like.  And may come to love.  Or leave.  Like everything in life. If you’re reading this, I hope you’ll join me on this adventure.  To uncover, realize, contemplate and ruminate, and process these life choices—some of which make perfect sense, others which defy logic.