Back home and having serious doubts
 

Hi,
I know its probably too early to call it but we have returned to England and after the first month we are so unhappy. I have horrible anxiety all the time (not at all my normal state) and feel very disconnected from our family. Rentals seem impossible to find with our big dog and my two girls cry every night to go home. My heart is breaking. The mountain of stuff we have to get done to be here seems insurmountable. Managing my relationship with parents and dealing with everyone's big feelings has got me spinning! We came back to spend time with the old's and let the kids have time with their grandparents but the reality is they drive us nuts and aren't much fun to be around. I was under no illusions coming back but its been an uphill battle the whole month. I am going to the GP for something to help me deal with things but that in itself tells me that something is not right. Husband still works for his Canadian company and I could go back to my old job right away.
Any advice welcome for this Momma who is spinning out of control x

re: Back home and having serious doubts
 

It will get better when you find your own place..... how big is this dog that you cannot find rentals because of him?

In earlier posts you said you were looking in Scotland ?

re: Back home and having serious doubts
 

Hmmm, yeah that happens to some people, which is why the advice commonly given here on BE is to secure a "way back" whenever possible, i.e. citizenship of the country you emigrated to, before returning to the UK, as it is far from unusual, and predictably so, to find that you cannot just return to the UK and pick up your relationships with family and friends where you left them years earlier.

re: Back home and having serious doubts
 

If spending time with your ageing parents was the only reason you moved back and now you don’t want to because they’re not “fun”, then why hang around?
Were there other reasons for leaving Canada?

re: Back home and having serious doubts
 

Parents are lovely don't get me wrong but we came because they are getting too old to do the journey and we wanted to be closer so we could support them. Now I think I realize that my kids would rather be with friends and the reality that we can't afford to live close enough to my parents (live in Hampshire) because of affordability to be helpful make the decision seem null and void. They will never move and I think we could move back to Canada and find a bigger house now the market has softened so they can stay for a few months and we could also come visit for a few months a year. We can move back as we have citizenship. Its feeling like a post Covid "we missed visiting so much" hasty move but can be reversed but not without heart ache.

re: Back home and having serious doubts
 

Good luck with whatever you decide. Sounds to me like you’ve already made up your mind! At least you’ve had an adventure.

I do wonder whether people planning to come back are fully aware of just how difficult the rental situation is in many parts of the country. I’m assuming if we move back, our stuff will be in storage for months and we’ll be in an Airbnb. I deliberately didn’t get another cat when ours died recently because, as you’ve discovered, having a pet just adds another layer of complication.

re: Back home and having serious doubts
 

In earlier posts you were looking at Scotland and then Devon and Yorkshire area - never down south.

I'm not surprised that your parents don't want to move from their home if they are getting on in years, and wonder why they think they would.

A re-think is definitely on the cards here.....

re: Back home and having serious doubts
 

Sounds like a bit of the curse of the expat. Having children that are used to another life is certainly a complicating factor. My advice is to except there will be compromises, some may be significant, no matter which country you settle in. Now you’ve made the move, give it some time before jumping ship again.

re: Back home and having serious doubts
 

re: Back home and having serious doubts
 

I love doughnuts:getcoat:

re: Back home and having serious doubts
 

When I first saw the title I thought it was about water shortages.

re: Back home and having serious doubts
 

It does sound like it's quite early days, presumably your children haven't been at school yet so haven't yet made any friends? It must feel quite 'nomad like' for them, without routine etc. Living with your parents must not be fun either, I adore my parents but I'd want to kill them within about 3 days if I moved in with them. You say going back home and getting a bigger house would mean they could come out for several months at a time, but if you're saying they're not much fun to be around then would you really want them to? And would they want to?

re: Back home and having serious doubts
 

They have said that they would come and stay longer if they had their own space but I realize its going to be us going to them from now on more and more. Our old house was small with one bathroom. Rebuilding our lives here, from renting, rebuilding our credit to new jobs, new school system, new friends with this big old ball of anxiety inside me feels very overwhelming. I don't think I want to give up our old way of life to live in a terraced box to be closer to family and that's all we can afford. Trying to get a rental in all the places I would like to live in is soo hard! Everything goes so fast and not all agents will do virtual tours and want to meet you in person. It is doable but i dont want to do it. I love them but I love my family too!!

re: Back home and having serious doubts
 

It comes to many of us, especially but not exclusively among the expats and emigrants, that we would like to do what's best for our parents in their twilight years, but that may be incompatible with doing what is best for our own family/ children and their future. It's tough and there are no easy decisions for many of us as we don't have the luxury of abandoning our job/ career when there are other considerations that will have an impact long after our parents have gone - much as I would like to live closer to my mother at this time, I cannot in good conscience uproot my daughter half way through her high school career and dump her into an entirely different education system, and who knows what sort of employment Mrs P and I would be able to find? .... And in many cases, including my own, we cannot simultaneously "be there" for both spouses, parents simultaneously as they live 3½ thousand miles apart, so we are left with the difficult discision that we need to do what's best for our future, while do "the best we can" for our parents.

re: Back home and having serious doubts
 

Totally agree. I knew when I settled in the US decades ago the day would come when my parents’ health would start declining, that that time has arrived. I’ll be shortening the gap between trips from now on, but moving back to the UK will never be an option for me, and my US born and raised family have no desire to live in the UK either. Keeping in touch regularly on Skype and visiting when possible are as good as it’s going to get, and it might be difficult to time visits when things become more serious or I may unable to be there when they pass due to the distances, but it’s what I signed up for.