Tirytory

Hi all,

It’s been a while. I needed to bounce my thoughts off people and who better than a lot of expats. We have been here nearly 8 years, I have a son in Grade 11, one in grade 6 and one in grade 1. We applied for Citizenship in April this year.

As some of you are aware, I’ve been homesick for a lot of my time here, not consistently, mostly coming
in waves but seems to be getting more frequent. COVID has not helped this at all. Knowing that for the most part you can’t get home has felt horrible.

I’m feel like it might be time to move home, but I’m scared of taking them from what appears to be a lovely life here to back home and they all hate it.

I’ve spend a lot of my time here being dissatisfied with my work like here, and it was further amplified recently when I had a temp role working for public health as part of the immunization team. It was amazing, it reminded me of how it used to feel working as someone with skills and doing something really useful. I felt really happy all of a sudden and I realized that I hadn’t felt like that in such a long time. I felt really part of the team, really enjoyed the nurses I worked with, although was still conscious of the discrepancy of our different titles.

Now it’s over, and I’m back to the same old job which I dislike (family medicine), and the only option to regain my old title is either going back to school for four years to get the SAME qualification I held in the UK, or and 18month course in York university, which will take me 4 years while I have to reapply to be assessed all over again. I can’t quite stomach it. The alternative is a Return to Practice course in the UK where we used to live of a part time 21 weeks, paid for course, which part of the course will go towards my degree.

I live in a small town, and I thought I had solid friendships but have found one of the close ones really fraught recently. I miss my old faithful friendships, and they still remain, I just miss being able to interact with them in person. We still haven’t made a Will here either, because in part we can’t agree on what would happen to the kids if we died, I want to send them home because there is no one here I would want to leave them to, and Steve thinks that would be horrible for them, but agrees that there isn’t anywhere that would be satisfactory for them to go to. Alternatively, in the UK I can think of at least three friend families where I would leave them.

I’ve thought about leaving many times, and I’ve talked myself out of it because it’s better for everyone else, and it hasn’t been horrible here at all. However, I think this may be the last time we can make this decision for many years. My husband can go home to work at this point with relative ease ie he needs to be under 10 years away from UK practice, but I can’t find any information on what happens after that point, and then we would be into my daughter starting high school which would tie us here for another how ever many years. It feels like now or never.

We would probably leave my husband and my son here to finish high school, my husband to see out his contract at work and find a replacement, and the best solution I can see is to take my daughter home to start comprehensive school with everyone else next September, and take my youngest with me. I could start my nursing course a year November, or we all move at the same time in two years time but would be a little bit harder for my daughter to get into the school we would want.

If you have managed to sift through this, well done, if you are able to offer me any great pieces of advice from my jumbled thoughts they would be appreciated.

Partially discharged

I can't give any advice on the work aspects. For your children I gather they were about 7-8, 4 and not born when you moved here. Realistically only the oldest child has any distinct memories of life in the UK other than occasional visits and maybe reminders of life in the UK from you and your husband and relatives visiting. Being away for 8 years at that age would mean that any childhood friendships are not easy to pick up again and even the connections with cousins etc will be quite distant I would think. I moved here when Grade 12 started and by the time I was through university here the strong connections I had with cousins had gone. I have 6 cousins and quite honestly keep in touch with one of them and even visiting in the following years they had moved on and so had I. Sometimes, I wonder how my life had been if we had remained in the UK. Seeing some of the life choices some cousins have made, I'm grateful for my parents decision to leave.

I would think that your younger children won't be crazy about the move. Is there no opportunity to switch careers or am I dreaming in techni-colour.

Tirytory

Career wise- not really. I live in a small town with no university and the only other career is real estate which everyone does, and which is not wholly conducive to family life.

Our eldest wants to go home, and has pretty much said he intends to return home to study there. It’s the middle one I worry about, but we still have very strong ties to all our friends there. Where we live now is a great place for little kids, but they will realistically have to leave to find careers elsewhere.

scrubbedexpat091

Kids complicates things, as do spouses, but seems you may never find Canada a good fit, seems you gave it a shot, tried what you could but simple fact is not everyone will adapt or fit into Canadian society, and will always have that empty feeling of needing to go back home.

I can only say from my experience if the homesickness and feeling of empty and desire to go back home doesn't go away after a few years, it probably never will, 17 years in for me, and I still have frequent and sometimes difficult to get through homesickness, I feel like I have been on a 17 year vacation in Canada, like there is a big empty hole inside me.

I can't advise on your situation as kids I know complicate decisions, but I do know that feeling you seem to have of missing home and its not a fun feeling and really does make each day harder.

scilly

Things change with the years.

I found that things and people had really moved on, or maybe I /we had moved, but there was no real connection after only 6 years of being away. We were lucky, had managed to accumulate 6 weeks holiday and that really allowed us to see things a bit more clearly than only 2 weeks might have done. That is, the relations and friends who were delighted to see us in the first week or 2, but really weren't interested in making any effort to see us any more. To see that the things we didn't like about the UK or our situations there had not really changed.

Any chance that you could go back for a longer period of 6-8 weeks????

Is your husband really willing to go back, or would he go only because you might be happier?

What would happen if you find that you really don't like being back in the UK, that all the things that caused you to leave are still the same, that the friends or family have also moved on?

What happens if your younger 2 kids are really really unhappy and unsettled?

mikelincs

The UK you left is a world away from the UK now, The UK now is a world away from the UK 10 years ago or even 5 years ago.

bats

Have you considered moving nearer to a city? You could study at Trent for example and your husband could easily find a job near there. It sounds more like your missing work and nursing than the UK.

Tirytory

God no, I couldn’t even fathom starting again here. Everybody would probably prefer to move home than elsewhere in Ontario.

i didn’t mention it because my post was already several paragraphs deep. I miss everything. That sense of belonging to a place. As idyllic as this place is, it’s so white, so waspy, so entitled, so privileged. I find it hard to stomach sometimes and it seems like an odd thing to complain about.

I miss the proximity to Europe, and being able to show the kids some culture, art, history, and being able to do it while not missing out on seeing family and friends. The kids only ever want to go back to the UK when there is a holiday choice.

To answer Scilly’s point, I’m not worried about friends/family moving on. I would treat the move back home the same way I treated it here; the need to make new friends, immerse myself etc. Although I also know that these friends would still be around for us too. My peer/friend at work offered me a job the other day, even though I can’t take it, it just reassures me that the positions will be there, and I can start a new/different chapter in my life there.

HGerchikov

I really feel for you, I know, from your posts, how much you have struggled on and off over the years. I know what reaction I would have received from my kids if I suggested returning to the UK after 8 years. I think your plan of letting the eldest finish high school is a good one, maybe he could study at a UK University (assuming he is planning on further education) and then having tried the UK for a finite time (rather than a permanent move) he would be able to make his choice. I think you do owe it to your kids to get citizenship, you bought them to another country, let them consider it to be home and now want to take them away from that, I think they need to have the option to make a choice for themselves in the future. I wish you all the very best in making what will be a difficult decision, and I hope you ultimately find 'your place'.

scilly

I'm sorry, but that last phrase sounds really selfish to me.

What about your husband starting a new phase in HIS life?

What about your kids??

This sounds like just you???

scilly

Another point to consider is the fees that your son (or you!!) will have to pay at university in England for at least the first year. He will be counted as an international student.

Tirytory

I’ve spent the last eight years putting everyone else’s needs before my own- that’s why I’m still here. Regardless, you can’t pick one word out of there and assume this is all about me, or that the reason I’m considering this for the hundredth time is because every time I’ve made the decision for them. Presumably, you think as a mother I should just give up my right to happiness?

My husband will have a job there, and all his friends, and be closer to his mother and brother. My children will be closer to their cousin, and people I would actually want to leave them to should something happen to us. We won’t need a mortgage going back so there won’t be so much pressure on him, especially as I will be able to work too. I won’t have to stress about all the transatlantic flying we’ll need to do if we stay here as my kids world burns around them. We would actually be able to take environmentally friendly holidays to Europe, rather than Canada’s approach to climate change. I could maybe rise out of this low level sadness I consistently feel- maybe that would be good for them too?

Edited to add; my husband is currently negotiating what type of car would be worth it to move back to the UK.

bats

I knowand understand what you mean about white and waspy and privileged.
It sounds to me that you know what you have to do, just be careful of splitting the family albeit temporary. Is there anyway your husband can buy out the rest of his contract And you can al move together?

Tirytory

It would be perfect to move together, the hubby could move earlier, it’s the eldest that would need to stay to get his high school diploma. The only reason for us to move earlier is for the middle to have the ability to start new at a school the same as everyone else and get her place of course, but it’s more about everyone being new at comprehensive so she wouldn’t feel such a sore thumb.

bats

Is the eldest on track to get the grades needed for a UK university? If not he might benefit from starting A levels there. He might anyway