Anyone Emigrated? How did you deal with guilt of leaving family behind?

[Arsenal123]

Has anyone emigrated with their partner and kids? Specifically a significant distance from family e.g. UK to Australia.

If so did you have concerns about leaving family and friends behind?

Any regrets? Did you stay or go? How did it pan out?

We did been away 15 years now! Although it’s great where we live I have spent the majority of this time missing family. Also with children can be very difficult! My eldest returned to the UK to live with her boyfriend (now husband and child). My youngest was luckily persuaded by Covid to also return to the UK after university - had she remained here it would have been a nightmare with 2 children in different countries. We will be returning when my hubby retires 3-4 years, and I cannot wait!

It is great to live abroad and experience new things but in reality you will miss a lot! Family events, births, Xmas, illnesses etc….

I can luckily fly back a couple of times a year but we are only 8 hours away….
you will usually make friends quickly enough but they have a different culture and it’s in no way the same.

hope this helps.

It has just passed two years since leaving the UK. Our DC are 6 and 10 now. We're only an 8 hour flight away, so not exactly the other side of the world (although early on in our marriage we did consider New Zealand...).

Did we have guilt? No. We didn't move on a whim, it was absolutely the right thing to do and both our families agreed with it (although the one side didn't like it, they couldn't fault our decision-making and were very supportive).

Has it been easy? No. My husband's last living grandparents, his dad's mum and his mums dad both passed away (not unexpectedly and from old age) while we were here and between COVID and cost he wasn't able to be there for either funeral, which was very sad for him and for his family.

Our only nephew (age 5) is growing up very quickly and we're missing more of his childhood than we'd like. Our DCs love him to bits so that part has been challenging. But technology has helped quite significantly. Video calls mean we can hang out with my nephew while he plays in the garden, or open Christmas presents "with" Gran and Granda on Christmas morning. It's not the same obviously, but it does go a long way to helping. The same with things like WhatsApp. We text family literally every day.

On both sides of the situation we're in a position to be able to afford to travel to see each other, so I think that's worth taking into consideration. And it depends on why you want to move and what moving will benefit you. Our quality of life here has improved in almost every other way, both for us and the DC. So while there is always sadness about being so far away, there are no regrets.

Hi, yes we emigrated from Uk to Oz. Have been here 17 years now. DS was 6 and DD was 2 We decided to make the move while the children were younger as we felt it would be easier for them. I felt and still ferl
guilt at taking them away from close family. My parents speak to them weekly although as they’ve got older that frequency has dwindled as they are out with friends or working etc.We go over when we can , parents visit when they can, we do what we can to make it work, same with my brothers and sister. Everything considered I feel we made the right decision for us as a family, though I appreciate it might not be right for everyone. DC see Australia as home, and UK solely as a trip to see family, though I see both places as home obviously.
The hard times are yet to come, when illness or worse happens. I’m absolutely dreading that. Recently my Mum was ill in hospital I felt a palpable guilt that everything was left up to my sister to deal with and on top of helping my Mum she had to keep me up to date with regular messaging.
As I said, I feel we made the right decision and wouldn’t change it, but I’ve known a fair amount that have packed up and gone home. It’s hard if you are especially close to family, as FaceTime is great but it’s not the same as physical presence. Also with young children the lack of emotional support and logistics of not having any practical help ( babysitting etc)can be hard

We are an Aussie family in Europe. It was an easyish decision for us initially. The children were small, we were financially ready and there were some good job opportunities. It was made easier by having a sister in a near-by country (has now gone back to Australia) and by the fact the fact we are not particularly close to either of our families.

I did at first have the desire to stay in Australia and work on the relationships between us, our siblings and their kids, but our siblings had their own lives and weren't really interested. That was reinforced everytime we returned for a home visit. My PIL visit regularly, which we enjoy, and my parents don't, which I also enjoy.

Overall, it works for us. Our kids have integrated well, as have we, and we now see ourselves staying here long-term now, as in, until retirement.

It is difficult with family deaths, and we have lost a few family members whose funerals we didn't get to, but that is one of the sacrifices you have to be aware of and willing for.

Overall, we are happy we made the decision. Expat life doesn't work for everyone, and certainly have seen a few young families go back or go to another country for various reasons (cultural differences, relationship problems, lack of local support, missing family) after a year or so. Overall, I think it is worth trying, giving yourself a time-limit and reasonable expectations of what you all want and expect before you go. Better to try and come back than have regrets about not doing it.

We left to move a long way away. Didn't expect a pandemic to mean we wouldn't get home for three years. In terms of guilt, leaving home was the most stressful thing I have ever done and it took me a while to get over it, especially as where I have moved to is in many ways a nicer place to live, and in choosing to live here I left behind much of my family, including cousins. It was heartbreaking, looking back.
But it's been the right decision for us career wise and a wonderful experience with more opportunities to travel and a good quality of life and more privacy and a more peaceful existence. But there is a price to pay in terms of what you miss at home. There's a quote that sums it up, I'll see if I can find it.

“Motherlands are castles made of glass. In order to leave them, you have to break something – a wall, a social convention, a cultural norm, a psychological barrier, a heart. What you have broken will haunt you. To be an emigré, therefore, means to forever bear shards of glass in your pockets. It is easy to forget they are there, light and minuscule as they are, and go on with your life, your little ambitions and important plans, but at the slightest contact the shards will remind you of their presence. They will cut you deep.” - Elif Shafak.

I think most people who have moved countries in search of something new will understand this feeling.

Moved as a child, so not my decision. Came back as an adult as I missed family, felt very isolated. Another sibling moved back before me and the last of us should be moving back next year leaving our parents overseas.

Better to try and come back than have regrets about not doing it.

I wholly agree with @Spanisheomellletttes on this, assuming it won't ruin you to try. I had a job lined up, a place to stay and visas well in hand when we moved. None of it is cheap or easy, and I think a lot of people underestimate the hard work and expense of an international move.

There were a lot of threads in the past few months where people were talking about wanting to the leave to the UK due to how much of a mess things are, and I was surprised at the number of people who didn't seem to understand that most normal people can't actually just up sticks and move to whatever country they want to.

Is there something specific you're looking at @Arsenal123 ?

I moved overseas, initially it was great. But the waves of homesickness were something else, and I did not have children at the time. I felt constantly like I was on the outside looking in. Everything was carrying on at home whilst I was living a different kind of life. I was there for so long, pre SM and lost so many friends in the process. Fortunately for me, my closest friends remained. I had lots to come back to. I did come back, because in the end it does not matter how amazing somewhere is, if you love your family and friends they are irreplaceable. If you are not close to any family and don't have many friends at home, then it can work - you have nothing to lose or miss really, but for anyone that is close to others it will be a wrench of epic proportions.

I missed the mist and the winter fog, the cozy lights of the cottages and houses in the darkness, the familiar, the feeling of belonging and being able to voice my views (I never did overseas, it was not my place) The brimming supermarkets and fireworks night, Christmas and the rolling green fields and wild flowers of summer. I missed absolutely everything. Roast dinners, family occasions and warm crackling fires. I missed so many things. In the end it was not enough to see my family twice a year. And it happened quickly and out of nowhere, the decision to go home.

You have to be a certain type of family/person for it to work. Emotionally independent with not many ties to their homes and communities.

I moved from Canada 8 years ago and husband and myself are in the process of preparing to move to Canada (he's English so he'll be the one away from family).

It can be really hard at times, especially when you're not able to see family as much as you would like (thanks pandemic). But social media and facetime etc make that gap so much smaller. My mum moved across the country from her parents when she finished uni and she said it feels like less distance with me being in England.

I think you need to be honest with yourself as to what you would leave behind and if you're okay with that. Part of the reason we want to go back to Canada is quality of life when we have children. My parents can't wait to become grandparents and will be part of our childcare.

When I met my husband I made sure very early on that moving back would be something he was open to, and have been preparing him for some of the little things that get you when living in a country with a shared language and similar culture. My first 2 years were hard because I didn't know many people and found it frustrating trying to figure out how to get things from shops or getting used to teaching in a slightly different education system.

Another reason we want to move is because we don't agree with the high stakes testing in schools that starts from a young age.

I'd lived away from home since boarding school in England, and then working there. But it was so easy to go back home to Northern Ireland whenever I wanted, even for a few days for any special event. I would have liked to work in my home area, but it's one of the worst places in Europe for any decent tech jobs.

We moved to the west coast US for a decade. It was a mixture of job opportunity, adventure and necessity (economic downturn). It was a wonderful experience, and lots of family came to visit it, and we went home for two weeks most years. But during that decade, I missed so much at home as well. People growing up, funerals and all the things you can imagine.

Overall, it worked out great, but of course we missed things. I'm back in my home area now, and it's nice, but I'm delighted to have had the experience abroad. However, West Coast US is just an 11 hour flight from LHR. Australia just seems sooo far away, but an adventure too (I've never been there!)

We both have jobs in the health service which are currently in demand in Australia. That being said it will be a hugely costly process to move. Some opportunities feature sponsorship however you probably pay for that in lower wages from the agencies.

Oh gosh that's perfect. I'm in my seventeenth year in the UK (married an Englishman, had two kids here) and that so sums up the feeling. It doesn't really get any easier - in some ways it gets harder as parents age and small nieces and nephews grow up far away.

We left for 2.5yrs. 14yrs later….. I’ve lived away from my family for over 25yrs. It’s H’s family we left, he doesn’t seem to care one jot.

i feel bad for my Dc that they don’t have the upbringing with my family, loads of cousins and fun times they’ve missed out on.

Yes, we did but never felt any guilt. H and I both had quite toxic families which made the decision a lot easier for us. We’ve never looked back.

It's really difficult because over time you lose the relationships you once had.

They don't know the people you know and you stop knowing the details of their lives. Things that might be significant to you like your best friend having triplets has less interest to them because they don't know them. So you stop telling each other things and then you run out of things to say.

This is probably exacerbated by the time difference and the seasons. They are putting on their woolly hats to go out for bonfire night and you are waking up to plant some spring bulbs. You aren't doing the same things and sharing the same experiences so you grow further apart.

We stayed in Oz for 3 years and while it was a great adventure and easier work the loss of close contact with my parents was too much.
That and relationships took ages to establish and I would say only after 18months would I say I had close friends that I would leave my dc with.
I felt enormous guilt taking my then young D&V away from their grandparents and no amount of videos could make up for that lost time.
I came back as I wanted to spend as much time with my elderly parents as I could. I had another 4 years with my darling father before he passed away. I knew I would never forgive myself if I had exchanged that time for essentially sunshine on tap.
I don’t buy the easier life more money etc as I was a reasonably high earner here anyway.
I do t regret going but it did cost me the better half of £15000 that I’ll never get back.