Nomadic Diaries - Mastering

Dig Here: Story Archaeology and the Expat Life Well Lived

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 17:01:14 GMT

Dig Here: Story Archaeology and the Expat Life Well Lived

Doreen Cumberford — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 14:00:00 GMT

About Lisa Liang

Lisa Liang, known formally as Elizabeth, with a Z - is an intercultural storytelling coach, solo performer, and TCK who grew up across Central America, Southeast Asia, and the United States. She has spent decades helping globally mobile people do one of the hardest things there is: turn a life lived between worlds into a story that actually lands. She works with memoir writers, keynote speakers, and anyone who has ever felt that the people back home simply couldn't understand what their life abroad had been. Her warmth and precision in equal measure make her one of those rare guests you want to listen to twice.

What You'll Walk Away With

Lisa introduced me to a concept she calls story archaeology and I have been mulling this over since we recorded. The idea is that the emotional threads running through our expat lives are often traceable to a single moment in early childhood, sometimes as far back as age five. That moment of needing to feel seen, safe, or guided doesn't disappear, it simply resurfaces every time life gets big again. Like, say, when you move to a country where you don't speak the language and can't find a pharmacy.

We also got into the storytelling mistake that almost every returning expat makes, and it's one I am guilty of myself. Lisa's reframe is so simple it's almost embarrassing, but it works. And if you've ever had someone's eyes glaze over mid-story, you'll want this one in your back pocket.

There's a beautiful moment too where we talk about telling your story not just backward but forward, using hindsight to project foresight, and arriving, somehow, at present-moment insight. It's a idea that sits close to my heart, because it's one I've wrestled with in my own writing.

In Unsettled, my book on repatriation, I explore how the stories we carry from our global lives can actually become a compass for what comes next, not just a record of where we've been. Lisa brings that same thinking to her storytelling workshops, and hearing her articulate it so clearly reminded me why this matters. For those of us cooking up the next chapter of our nomadic lives, this conversation hits differently.

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If this episode stirred something in you, I'd love to know — share it with someone whose story deserves to be heard.

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You can map the move. You cannot map the metamorphosis. Nomadic Diaries explores the interior journey of expat life — the belonging, the identity shifts, the repatriation, and everything that travels with you that can't be packed in a suitcase. This episode may be part of our Re-Entry Series (30 episodes on coming home) or The Belonging Project (29 episodes on belonging across cultures). Browse the full catalog at nomadicdiariespodcast.com and please share or leave a review if this episode resonated.

Caught in a War Zone: How to Support Someone Who's Just Been Evacuated

Doreen Cumberford — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 16:39:42 GMT

Dear Reader,

I don’t usually write in response to the news cycle. But what is unfolding in the Middle East right now is something I have watched, lived alongside, and written about for most of my adult life. I felt I couldn’t stay quiet.

This piece is for two kinds of people: those who have been suddenly displaced and are trying to make sense of what has …

What If You Learned How to Stay? Pia Mailhot-Leichter on Belonging, Creativity and Extinction Moments

Doreen Cumberford — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 10:00:00 GMT

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About Pia

Pia Mailhot-Leichter is a self-described "recovering nomad" who has lived in more places than most people visit, from Manhattan to Sri Lanka, London to France, and eventually dropping anchor in Copenhagen after decades of following the nomadic pull. Born to a French-Canadian mother and a New York City father, she grew up crossing cultures before she had words for it, and spent years searching for belonging before discovering it lived inside her all along. Today she's an author, creative coach, and founder of Kollective Studio (yes, the Danish spelling), where she helps visionary rebels and unconventional dreamers birth their boldest projects into the world. Find her at kollective-studio.com

What You'll Walk Away With This conversation is a love letter to everyone who has ever felt like a stranger in their own life and a gentle nudge to remember that you are the creative director of every scene. Pia shares the moment a therapist stopped her mid-"I'm moving to Paris" and offered her a genuinely radical idea: what if you learned how to stay?

That one reframe changed everything. We talk about what she calls "extinction moments", those are the uncomfortable in-between spaces where an old version of you has to dissolve before something new can emerge, and why that void is actually the most fertile creative territory you'll ever stand in.

We also explore why expats are already more creative than they give themselves credit for, and what to do when the honeymoon wears off and bureaucracy swallows the adventure whole. Pia's answer? Ask yourself how you'd creatively direct your next scene, as if you were a play or a movie director. Costume, soundtrack, mood, energy - all of it.

Your Next Scene Starts Now If this episode lit something up in you, please share it with a fellow nomad, a recovering expat, or anyone in the middle of their own extinction moment — they need to hear this one.

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What If You Learned How to Stay? Pia Mailhot-Leichter on Belonging, Creativity and Extinction Moments

Doreen Cumberford — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 10:00:00 GMT

About Pia

Support the show

Nomadic Diaries explores expat life, repatriation, belonging and global living. This episode may be part of our Re-Entry Series (30 episodes on coming home) or The Belonging Project (29 episodes on belonging across cultures). Browse the full catalog at nomadicdiariespodcast.com and please share or leave a review if this episode resonated.

Belonging Everywhere and Nowhere: The Expat's Identity Puzzle

Doreen Cumberford — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 19:00:00 GMT

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About Daniela

Daniela Draugelis didn't just study cultural intelligence, she lived it before she even had a name for it. Born in Argentina to a Lithuanian immigrant family (her father fled Europe as a war refugee), she grew up speaking Lithuanian at home, celebrating cultural traditions on weekends, and navigating between worlds long before anyone called it "code-switching." Twenty-plus years of globally mobile life across China, Indonesia, the US, and now Pakistan, she's a certified Cultural Intelligence facilitator who helps executives, diplomats, and globally mobile individuals not just survive the crossing — but genuinely thrive. Find her at culturalpathways.com

What You'll Walk Away With

This is one of those conversations that gives you language for things you've always felt but couldn't quite name. Daniela walks us through the four pillars of Cultural Intelligence, including Drive, Knowledge, Strategy, and Action - and explains why having just one or two isn't enough. You can read every guidebook about your new country and still find yourself eating lunch alone in your car, wondering why nothing is clicking. We also get into the fascinating difference between tight and loose cultures, and what it costs us, both emotionally and practically, when we find ourselves leaping between them. And in true nomadic spirit, Daniela shares the moment she asked her Pakistani hostess for the "restroom" and was shown to a bedroom. Even after 20 years, culture has a way of keeping us beautifully humble!

Be Curious, Not Judgmental

Daniela's parting wisdom comes straight from Ted Lasso , and it might be the most portable cultural intelligence tool you'll ever carry.

Do you know someone navigating a new culture right now? This episode is for them. Share it, and let's keep the conversation going.

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Belonging Everywhere and Nowhere: The Expat's Identity Puzzle

Doreen Cumberford — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 19:00:00 GMT

About Daniela

What You'll Walk Away With

Be Curious, Not Judgmental

Daniela's parting wisdom comes straight from Ted Lasso , and it might be the most portable cultural intelligence tool you'll ever carry.

Do you know someone navigating a new culture right now? This episode is for them. Share it, and let's keep the conversation going.

Support the show

One Next Best Step: Dr. Joy Wiggins on Moving Abroad Solo, Raising a Teen in Lisbon, and Building a Global Career

Doreen Cumberford — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 14:00:00 GMT

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Dr. Joy Wiggins

Meet Dr. Joy Wiggins, we chatted about Raising Kids to Boardroomsshe is a cultural agility expert, former professor, and single mum who packed up her life in Texas and moved to Lisbon, Portugal with her teenage daughter Ruby. She's spent decades living and working across cultures, from Germany to China to Jordan, she also now helps globally mobile women build careers and lives that don't fit neatly inside one country's borders.

What You'll Take Away:

There's a world of difference between being culturally competent and culturally agile, one is going along to get along, the other is knowing yourself well enough to walk into any room, anywhere in the world, and read what's really happening beneath the surface
Moving abroad as a single mum with a teenager is not for the faint-hearted, Joy shows us that when you take it one "next best step" at a time, and you keep the conversation honest with your kid, the adventure is absolutely worth the wobble
The biggest blind spot Western women carry into cross-cultural spaces is mistaking their own confidence for competence. Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do in a new culture is to stop talking, watch who speaks, and learn the unwritten rules before you try to rewrite them
The women who thrive globally aren't the ones who hustle hardest — they're the ones who get strategic, build real solidarity with other women, and understand that sometimes opening a door just a crack is how you eventually walk through it fully

Connect with Dr. Joy Wiggins: 🌐 joywiggins.com 💼 LinkedIn: @DrJoyWiggins

If this episode stirred something in you, whether you're mid-move, mid-career, or mid-life or wondering what's coming next, please share it with a woman who needs to hear it today. And if you haven't already, subscribe to Nomadic Diaries wherever you listen. Your story belongs here.

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One Next Best Step: Dr. Joy Wiggins on Moving Abroad Solo, Raising a Teen in Lisbon, and Building a Global Career

Doreen Cumberford — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 14:00:00 GMT

Dr. Joy Wiggins

What You'll Take Away:

There's a world of difference between being culturally competent and culturally agile, one is going along to get along, the other is knowing yourself well enough to walk into any room, anywhere in the world, and read what's really happening beneath the surface
Moving abroad as a single mum with a teenager is not for the faint-hearted, Joy shows us that when you take it one "next best step" at a time, and you keep the conversation honest with your kid, the adventure is absolutely worth the wobble
The biggest blind spot Western women carry into cross-cultural spaces is mistaking their own confidence for competence. Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do in a new culture is to stop talking, watch who speaks, and learn the unwritten rules before you try to rewrite them
The women who thrive globally aren't the ones who hustle hardest — they're the ones who get strategic, build real solidarity with other women, and understand that sometimes opening a door just a crack is how you eventually walk through it fully

Connect with Dr. Joy Wiggins: 🌐 joywiggins.com 💼 LinkedIn: @DrJoyWiggins

Support the show

The World Is On Fire Again. Here's What I Know.

Doreen Cumberford — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 17:47:58 GMT

Last week, I wrote to you from the quiet that followed the storm, the morning after El Mencho’s killing sent shockwaves across twenty Mexican states. One week later, I’m watching another beloved location on fire again. This time, the headline is Iran.

On the morning of February 28th, I woke to news that the United States and Israel had launched coordinated strikes on Tehran. By Day 4, the Strait of Hormuz was effectively closed, embassies were evacuating, and the death toll was climbing past a thousand.

And my nervous system remembered.

I lived in Saudi Arabia for fifteen years. I raised a child in a region where geopolitics wasn’t something you watched on the news, it was the air you breathed, the sounds of F16s making sorties over our house three times a day, are still embedded in me. Anxiety can move through expat communities like a weather system, invisible yet threatening.

I know this feeling in my body. And I want to talk about what we might do with it.

Don’t react. Respond.

Reaction is our central nervous system speaking before our mind has even caught up, frequently there is the urge to cancel plans, issue declarations, write off entire countries in the heat of a news cycle.

Response is something a bit slower. Wiser. It asks: *what do I actually know right now, versus what am I feeling?*

Both are valid. But only one leads us to somewhere useful.

When the Mexico story broke, some of my connections declared all sorts of thing. That they’d either never visit again, or question why we are still here. I do understand that impulse. But in that same moment, my neighbour was sweeping her step. The continuity of ordinary life was doing what it always does: quietly insisting on itself. After all it’s all about the daily life.

Iran is not a news ticker. It is eighty-eight million people going about their lives, or trying to, in the middle of something they didn’t choose and can’t easily escape.

Tend to your central nervous system.

When we are flooded with catastrophic news, and right now, the news seems genuinely catastrophic in some regions, our bodies register threat whether or not we are personally in danger. We doom-scroll because the anxious brain mistakes information for safety.

It isn’t.

Here is what I do, and have done for fifty years: I go outside. I walk. I notice the jacaranda trees in San Miguel right now, they are beginning to bloom, they are extraordinary, and they do not care about geopolitics.

I put my feet on the floor. I do my best to breathe.

You cannot think clearly about complex global events from inside a body running a five-alarm emergency response. Regulate first. Understand second.

Talk to people on the ground.

My friends in the Gulf, my colleagues who work across the Middle East, what they tell me, in every crisis, is that ordinary people are doing what ordinary people do: getting their children to school, opening their shops, calling their mothers to say they’re all right.

The Iranian woman who taught me something profound about hospitality is not the Iranian government. The Palestinian family who shared their Iftar feast with is not not actually Hezbollah. Individual people are not their power structures. I wrote that last week in the context of Mexico. I’ll write it again this week in the context of Iran.

The thread

The world didn’t get more dangerous between last Wednesday and this one. But the headlines did.

Cultural intelligence, or the real essence of cultural intelligence, can be about holding both truths simultaneously. Yes, this is serious. Yes, ordinary life continues. Yes, people are suffering. Yes, people are also making dinner and laughing at something on their phones.

All of it is true. All of it, at once.

Fifty years of international living has not made me numb to crisis. If anything, it has made me more tender. But it has also given me ballast, like a deep knowing that the world has always been on fire somewhere, and that the people living inside the flames are almost always more than the fire.

Breathe. Call someone who is there. Hold the headline in one hand and the humanity on the ground in the other.

That’s the work. *And it never really ends.*

*Doreen is an intercultural trainer, author of Life in the Camel Lane, and

host of Nomadic Diaries. Her next book, Unsettled: The Expat’s Guide to Moving Home, is forthcoming.*

When the Smoke Clears:

Doreen Cumberford — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 23:43:14 GMT

We were about 75 minutes from home when I noticed a post saying that the local mall was closed, everyone was being ushered to leave.

We were curious - but not worried.

About three hours later we discovered the reason. The killing of El Mencho, the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and one of the most wanted men in the world, had triggered a wave of violence across 20 Mexican states. Roadblocks. Burning vehicles. Shelter-in-place warnings from the US, Canadian, and British embassies. Flights cancelled. Tourists stranded.

Yet, nothing seemed amiss in our locations that day.

This is the thing about living cross-culturally for fifty years. You develop a different relationship with news. Not a dismissive one, I take risk seriously, I always have. But you learn to hold the headline in one hand and the truth on the ground in the other, and you learn that they are rarely the same weight.

Mexico is not Jalisco. Jalisco is not Guadalajara. Guadalajara is not every street corner in Guadalajara. Context doesn’t excuse complexity - it simply illuminates it.

And illumination is what cultural intelligence is really about.

It’s really critical to get the news from the boots on the ground, as close as possible to the action.

We talk a lot in intercultural work about legal systems and social systems, how they differ across cultures and how we need to learn to navigate them as outsiders. But there is a third layer that doesn’t appear in many training manuals, even though it shapes daily life in communities across the globe: the informal power structures. Parallel systems. The organisations that step in where the official state has stepped out.

In Mexico, that’s the cartels. And before you recoil, stay with me, because this pattern is far older and far wider than Mexico.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah has for decades operated schools, clinics, and social welfare programmes in regions where the Lebanese government was either absent or corrupt. Communities that received their children’s vaccinations from Hezbollah, whose roads were repaired by Hezbollah, whose disputes were mediated by Hezbolla, those communities don’t experience the organisation the way we, as mostly Western news consumers do. That’s not endorsement. That’s context.

In Sicily, the Mafia didn’t emerge from thin air. It filled a governance vacuum in a region that felt abandoned by the northern Italian state for generations. It provided order, employment, dispute resolution, and a form of identity. Again, understanding this is not the same as approving of it.

In Northern Ireland, the IRA policed communities that had lost all faith in official institutions. I remember walking to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London in the 1970s and avoiding the post boxes, for fear of another parcel bomb exploding while I was nearby. That felt real. And this happened in a context of profound institutional failure and sectarian injustice. Both things can be true.

In Brazil’s favelas, drug factions enforce rules, fund community celebrations, and provide a form of belonging in neighbourhoods the state enters only with armed force. In parts of Central America, gang membership is less a choice than the only available structure of protection and identity for young men with nowhere else to go.

The common thread, and this matters enormously, is that these systems almost always emerge where the official state has failed its people. They are, in the most uncomfortable sense of the word, rational responses to abandonment.

Does that make them acceptable? No. The violence this weekend was devastating. Twenty-five National Guard officers lost their lives. Ordinary Mexican families sheltered behind locked doors, terrified. A hotel security guard in Guadalajara had no bus to take to work, no way to cross her own city. That fear, that disruption, that loss of life — none of it is abstractly interesting. It is genuinely terrible.

But here is what fifty years of living across nine countries has taught me: the people are never their power structures. Never.

The Lebanese mother taking her sick child to a Hezbollah clinic is not endorsing terrorism. She is taking her child to the doctor. The Sicilian shopkeeper paying protection money is not a gangster. He is trying to keep his family fed. The Mexican street vendor wondering if customers will come today is not complicit in cartel violence. He is just trying to survive the week.

These are the regular people I have lived alongside, in Saudi Arabia, in Cameroon, in Japan and in Mexico. Good-hearted, resilient, generous people navigating systems they didn’t design and can’t easily escape. People who, if you sit with them long enough, will feed you, make you laugh, show you a completely different way of understanding what it means to be human.

So what do we do with all of this, as expats, as global nomads, as interculturalists?

We develop what I’ve come to think of as reality literacy. Not naivety, I am not suggesting we ignore risk or pretend that parallel power structures are benign. But a willingness to understand before we judge. To ask why before we conclude. To read the locals before we read the headlines.

When I arrived in Saudi Arabia decades ago, I encountered systems that baffled and sometimes appalled me. Over time, I came to understand the internal logic, the history, the human texture of a society that looked nothing like the one I’d grown up in. That didn’t mean I agreed with everything. It meant I stopped being a tourist in other people’s realities.

That’s the work. And it never really ends.

The smoke from Jalisco has cleared. The roadblocks are down. San Miguel’s market vendors are at their stalls. My neighbour has finished sweeping her doorstep and is now chatting over the fence with the woman next door. The next day all was calm.

Mexico carries on. As it always has. As its people always do.

If you’re asking whether I’m okay , yes. And more than okay. Because moments like last weekend remind me exactly why this work matters. I don’t believe that Cultural intelligence is a soft skill or a corporate training box to tick. It is the difference between fear and understanding. Between reaction and response. Between seeing a country and actually knowing one.

I choose knowing. Every time. Go out there and fall in love with another country if you can. You might be surprised by how it can change you!

Doreen is an intercultural trainer, author of Life in the Camel Lane and host of Nomadic Diaries. Her next book Unsettled: The Expat’s Guide to Moving Home is forthcoming.

https://www.nomadicdiariespodcast.com/

https://www.amazon.com/Life-Camel-Lane-Embrace-Adventure/dp/0578607352/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1589076461&sr=8-1

Finding Our Place

Doreen Cumberford — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 03:19:22 GMT

Originally published in Atencion News, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico

A few Fridays ago we went to Don Lupe’s for an event. As I sat down Monica said “Guera Your Usual”? She was on her way to place the order before I could answer. It somehow stopped me in my tracks. It was such a small moment but when did I beome someone with a usual at a country grill in San Miguel?

Belonging is a peculiar thing when you’ve chosen to live far from where you were born. We don’t often talk about it directly—it feels too vulnerable, perhaps, or too complex. But for those of us who’ve made San Miguel de Allende home, understanding the different ways we belong here might be the key to feeling truly settled. For the month of November my podcast is producing thirty, yes thirty, podcasts on the topic of Belonging so it has been living at the top of my mind.

The Geography of Belonging

There’s a physical belonging that comes simply from knowing a place. It’s when your feet know which cobblestones are loose on your street, or you’ve memorized which vendors have the ripest aguacates at Tuesday market. This is the belonging of muscle memory and mental maps. You belong because the place has literally shaped how you move through the world.

I remember my first months here, constantly lost, constantly consulting my phone. Now I navigate by landmarks only locals would recognize, the house with the blue door, the corner with the dog on the roof, the spot where the sun hits perfectly at four o’clock. This physical knowing is belonging’s foundation.

The Community We Create

Then there’s social belonging, that web of relationships we weave. Your Spanish conversation group, the friends you meet for games, the person who helped you navigate Permanente visa. In SMA, we have a remarkable opportunity to belong to so many communities: volunteer organizations, arts collectives, charitable initiatives and weekly gatherings.

This belonging is active. It requires showing up, contributing, remembering people’s names and their stories. It’s reciprocal - you belong because others include you, and you include them in return. However, it’s important to remember that not everyone is experiencing the same sense of welcome and connection. Some people are surrounded by potential connections, but don’t reach out or let others in.

Cultural Fluency

There’s yet a deeper layer: cultural belonging. This is trickier for expats. It’s understanding why the whole town shuts down for certain saints’ days, catching the subtle humor in conversations, knowing when silence is more respectful than words. It’s learning that “ahorita” exists in a different time dimension than “right now.”

Cultural belonging doesn’t mean becoming Mexic,anthat would be both impossible and inappropriate. Rather, it’s about cultural literacy, respect, and engagement. It’s learning enough to participate authentically rather than remaining a permanent observer.

Purpose and Contribution

We also belong through what we give. Whether you’re teaching English, volunteering at the biblioteca, creating art, running a business, or simply being the neighbor who waters plants when people travel, contribution builds belonging. When your presence matters to the place, the place matters more to you.

Most of us newcomers transform from tourists to residents as soon as we find our way to contribute. Purpose is the engine of belonging.

The Emotional Architecture

Finally, there’s emotional belonging. Not a psychologist here, and this can be the hardest to describe but perhaps the most important. It’s when San Miguel appears in your dreams. When you say “home” and mean here. When you worry about the community’s challenges as if they’re your own. When leaving for a trip feels like a departure rather than return.

This belonging isn’t about paperwork or language fluency. It’s about where your heart has decided to invest itself.

Belonging in Layers

Three thoughts on belonging: you don’t need all these layers to belong. Some people belong primarily through community, others through place, still others through purpose. Belonging isn’t binary, it’s not something you either have or don’t have. It accumulates in unexpected ways.

The gift of San Miguel is that it allows these multiple belongings to coexist. You can belong here while also belonging to where you came from. You can belong partially, messily or imperfectly and that is life lived well.

So where do you belong most? I’d love to hear your answer.

Packed Your Bags But Forgot Your Mind? The Emotional Side of Expat Life

Doreen Cumberford — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 22:00:00 GMT

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What if the hardest part of moving abroad isn't finding a house, but finding yourself?

In this episode, Doreen Cumberford sits down with Vivian Chiona, founder of Expat Nest, an online counselling platform offering psychological support in nine languages to expats, repats, and global nomads worldwide.

Vivian brings warmth, wisdom, and 12 years of experience helping internationally mobile people navigate the emotional terrain that logistics can't fix. Together they explore the invisible side of expat life including the culture shock, identity shifts, and loneliness that can ambush even the most seasoned global citizen.

In this episode you'll discover:

Why saying goodbye well is a skill — and why it matters for how you arrive
The most common blind spots expats have when they think moving is "just logistics"
Warning signs your mind and body are telling you to seek support
How transgenerational patterns shape your expat experience (and why your grandparents' journey might be living in your bones)
Why loneliness is really about disconnection — and practical ways to rebuild belonging
The secret to a happy repatriation: building your global village back home
Vivian's mantra for every expat: "This too shall pass"

About Vivian Chiona:

Vivian is a psychologist, intercultural expert, and founder of Expat Nest offering e-counselling in nine languages including English, Greek, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Chinese, and Arabic. Services cover individuals, teenagers, couples, and families. A free 15-minute consultation is available, and direct billing with many insurances is offered.

Connect with Vivian at:

📧 info@expatnest.com

| 🌐 www.expatnest.com

Connect with Doreen at:

https://www.nomadicdiariespodcast.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/

https://doreencumberford.substack.com/publish/home

Book mentioned: It Didn't Start With You by Mark Wolynn

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Packed Your Bags But Forgot Your Mind? The Emotional Side of Expat Life

Doreen Cumberford — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 22:00:00 GMT

What if the hardest part of moving abroad isn't finding a house, but finding yourself?

In this episode you'll discover:

Why saying goodbye well is a skill — and why it matters for how you arrive
The most common blind spots expats have when they think moving is "just logistics"
Warning signs your mind and body are telling you to seek support
How transgenerational patterns shape your expat experience (and why your grandparents' journey might be living in your bones)
Why loneliness is really about disconnection — and practical ways to rebuild belonging
The secret to a happy repatriation: building your global village back home
Vivian's mantra for every expat: "This too shall pass"

About Vivian Chiona:

Connect with Vivian at:

📧 info@expatnest.com

| 🌐 www.expatnest.com

Connect with Doreen at:

https://www.nomadicdiariespodcast.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/

https://doreencumberford.substack.com/publish/home

Book mentioned: It Didn't Start With You by Mark Wolynn

Support the show

When the Story You Hid Becomes the Story That Helps Everyone

Doreen Cumberford — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 18:26:51 GMT

I’ve long admired Ruth Van Reken’s work, but sitting down with her, even though it was across a screen, reminded me why her voice matters so much in our world. Ruth is the co-author of Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds, now heading into its fourth edition, and quite possibly the person who gave language to what so many of us had spent years living but couldn’t name.

What struck me most in our conversation wasn’t the landmark research, impressive as that is. It was the downright honesty with which Ruth talks about her own journey. She didn’t set out to become an expert. She set out to understand herself.

“I thought I was the only one”

Ruth was born and raised in Nigeria, as a TCK before the term even existed. She loved her life. Yet something sat quietly beneath it all. A kind of silent depression she couldn’t explain, because, as she put it, “I had this perfect life and yet there was something that was there.”

It was only at 39, when she began journaling, that she started to understand what it was. “I began to understand that it was the very goodness of my life that gave me grief when I lost the world I loved.”

That’s a sentence I think many of us whether we are TCKs, expats or repats, need to sit with. The grief isn’t in spite of the beauty of the life. The grief is because of it.

When she eventually connected with Dave Pollock and his work on third culture kids, something shifted. She wasn’t alone. And when her own journaling memoir, Letters Never Sent, was published, opening with a six-year-old crying silently in her boarding school bed, the response was overwhelming. People wrote to tell her they had cried in the dark too, certain they were the only ones.

“Why didn’t we all get together and cry together? But all of us were in secret, hiding our shame that we were such crybabies.”

The part she was most ashamed of

One of the most powerful things Ruth said in our conversation was this: “The part of my life that seems to have been used the most was the part I was the most ashamed of before. It was the part I kept hidden.”

That’s worth sitting with, too. For those of us who’ve spent years feeling like our complicated, multi-country, multi-layered identity was something to edit out of the conversation, to stop talking about so we’d fit in, Ruth’s words are a quiet permission slip.

When she was in high school back in the States, she stopped mentioning she’d grown up in Africa. It sounded like bragging. Or it prompted questions she didn’t have the energy to answer. So she kept quiet. And in keeping quiet, she kept herself apart.

The cross-cultural kid concept she later developed was, in many ways, born of that same desire to expand the circle, to say, you don’t have to have ticked the exact same boxes to belong to this story. If there’s a cross-cultural piece, you’re part of this.

Belonging isn’t one thing. It’s not one place.

When we talked about what belonging actually means for TCKs, Ruth was characteristically precise. She doesn’t let the word do vague work. Belonging, she argues, is more internal than we think, and more layered than the question “where are you from?” ever allows for.

She talked about a revelatory moment in Kenya, sitting among people with “very esoteric jobs” by Indiana standards, talking about where they’d been and what they’d done while also thinking, I know this world. I belong here. Not because she knew those people, but because she knew that experience.

And then she came home to Indianapolis and looked at her neighbour and thought I don’t know what he does either. She has no idea. And that was oddly freeing. You don’t have to know someone’s whole story to belong alongside them.

Her father’s words have stayed with her: “Wherever you are, unpack your bag and plant your trees, because otherwise you’ll never live.”

But, and this matters, Ruth is equally clear that belonging isn’t only about place. Her deepest connections are global, many of them on Zoom, many of them in rooms like ours. And she’s made peace with that. Not as second best. As just the shape of her life.

I raised the double-edged sword of adaptability, that ability to walk into almost anywhere and say I could belong here, which can keep us skimming the surface rather than putting down real roots. She acknowledged it. But she also gently pushed back. There’s a difference between saying I could belong here as avoidance, and saying it as genuine capacity.

What still drives her

Ruth turned 80 last year. And she is, by her own admission, still driven slightly crazy by how much useful knowledge exists in the TCK world, and how many educators, counsellors, and CEOs still don’t know it.

“It drives me crazy that there’s so much we know and so many people who should know it, that don’t know it.”

She is particularly concerned about the kids showing up in schools in Indianapolis or in cities everywhere, who are navigating complex cross-cultural identities without a single adult around them who understands what they’re carrying. The shame of not knowing the social rules. The sense that there must be something wrong with me because everyone else seems to know how this works.

That’s shame, she’s been naming it more explicitly in recent years. And in naming it, she says, is where the healing starts.

This was Part 1 of our conversation with Ruth. In Part 2, we go deeper into the “Where are you from?” question, how to answer it with grace, and what the latest edition of Third Culture Kids is bringing to a world that’s grown considerably more complicated since the first edition came out in 1999.

You can listen to the full episode here Nomadic Diaries. We will publish Part II next week.

Doreen Cumberford is an intercultural trainer, author, and host of Nomadic Diaries. She co-hosts The Belonging Project with Megan Norton-Newbanks. She lives in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

Long-Distance Grandparenting: Staying Close When Abroad

Doreen Cumberford — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:49:49 GMT

Originally published in Atencion News, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico

Expatriate living offers wonderful opportunities for personal growth, though it can challenge family bonds – especially with grandchildren. Fortunately, modern technology and thoughtful approaches can help us remain an active, loving presence in our grandchildren’s lives, regardless of distance. There are even advantages to this arrangement, such as having grandkids visit us in SMA for extended stays and unique cultural experiences.

I recently interviewed Helen Ellis, author of “Being a Distant Grandparent, A Book for All Generations,” where we explored the complex dynamics of long-distance family relationships between grandchildren and grandparents, and how to maintain meaningful connections across time zones and borders.

Today’s digital tools have never been better. Video calls through WhatsApp, FaceTime, or Zoom have become a lifeline for international families. My granddaughter, now studying at the University of Colorado Boulder, and I stay connected through LinkedIn! These platforms allow us to share both important moments and everyday experiences.

Embracing technology can be the first step to building meaningful relationships abroad. Scheduling regular “virtual tea-time” or “digital dinner dates” with grandchildren can have far-reaching effects. Reading bedtime stories can support tired parents while creating lasting memories that both generations will cherish.

For younger children with short attention spans, simple interactive games work best. Keep them brief and engaging. Playing “I Spy” or Simon Says, or singing nursery rhymes with hand motions can be effective. Show-and-tell sessions with toys or artwork keep them excited about connecting, even if only for a few minutes. These activities help maintain that special grandparent-grandchild bond despite the miles between.

Older children enjoy more structured activities like drawing contests, virtual cooking sessions, or homework help using screen-sharing features. With teenagers, you might discuss books, practice Spanish together, or work on family history projects. These shared activities create meaningful connections while supporting their interests and development.

Physical in-person visits are vital, but it’s important to discuss expectations and ground rules with adult children. Understanding their household routines helps us support rather than disrupt family dynamics. Remember that when visiting, we’re there to enhance, not override, their parenting. This respectful approach strengthens relationships across all generations.

During visits, plan meaningful activities without overwhelming everyone. Focus on genuine connection through small adventures rather than packed schedules. Consider creating a special “grandparent activity” that happens only during visits – perhaps making a particular recipe or visiting a specific park. These traditions become treasured memories for everyone involved.

While technology is invaluable, physical tokens of love make relationships more tangible. Send occasional care packages with local Mexican treats or handwritten letters. Creating a shared journal or scrapbook with photos, drawings, or small mementos helps grandchildren understand and appreciate your life abroad, building a bridge between their world and yours.

Belonging in 2026: Home is a Feeling, Not a Place

Doreen Cumberford — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 13:29:35 GMT

Where do you feel like you belong after you’ve lived in so many cultures? When home is both everywhere and nowhere at the same time how do you choose? When your children ask, “Where are we from?” and you pause before answering?

These are the sort of questions that kept Megan Norton-Newbanks the author of Belonging Beyond Borders, and myself up at night. These questions I’ve heard throughout my life as a decades long expat, intercultural trainer, author, podcaster and coach. None of these titles would have been adopted if I had not taken some pretty giant risks early on. In our conversations with , TCKs, expats, global families and even nomads who are constantly knee deep in navigating transitions. Across the globe we are all beginning to feel an uneasy sense of isolation that is gripping our world.

So we did what any two curious global nomads would do: we started asking other people what they thought about these topics from A to Z.

How The Belonging Project Began

To be honest, Megan and I started tentatively. At first we thought we would do ten then twelve episodes, but it blew up and expanded to 30 podcasts produced over the 30 days in November.

We weren’t sure where these conversations would lead. But with each interview, we gained confidence and clarity. The more we talked to people about belonging, the more we began to understood the complexity and its universality, we kept getting deeper and wider.

Over these 30 episodes, we explored belonging with 18 guests from 10 countries, including Patrick Kadian, Lois Bushong, Ruth Van Reken, Camie Fenton, and Andrea Schmitt. The guests are a combination of writers, film makers, newspaper publishers, teachers, coaches and artists.

Creating this series had its challenges. We had tech issues. Time deadlines flew past traveling during production, and finally both of us getting sick simultaneously during November. Life happened! Nevertheless,

But there were also moments of magic that are now built into this series too and those are the ones I will always remember. During one interview, we glimpsed an international school classroom. Both Megan and I became emotional, instantly transported back to our own international school experiences, with posters, beanbags and spaces that reconnected to formative parts of both our identities. In another we laughed and giggled about girly topics, and more than once tears welled up in my eyes as we asked the questions and heard the pain and suffering that not belonging can bring up.

What We Heard Guests Say About Belonging

The wisdom that our guests shared stays with us. Ruth Van Reken said something profound: “When we share the things that are secret in those places that we think nobody feels like this, that’s when people put their hand up and say, but I do. I had no idea anybody else felt like this.”

Lois Bushong helped us understand authentic belonging: “It’s when you can be real with somebody... You experience a connection, an intimacy with one another. You feel like they understand you.”

And Carolyn Grant articulated what so many global nomads feel: “Change brings loss. Loss brings grief. And in that grief is this recognition, too, that, what if I don’t belong anywhere anymore?”

But she also reminded us that: “The beauty of normalizing any emotion or any process is just helping people feel—oh, it’s not just me.”

These are just a taste of the various things we discussed.

Topics We Explored

Throughout the series, we dove into:

Belonging across cultures and between two worlds, countries or situations
Celebrations, holidays, and how they anchor us to our experiences
Finding connection through film, art, and food - in fact everywhere
Third culture kids finding belonging in school
Building belonging bridges across generations from millenials to boomers
Navigating transitions and the in-between

Join Us

The Belonging Project is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and everywhere you listen to podcasts. All 30 episodes are ready for you to explore.

Want to stay connected?

https://www.nomadicdiariespodcast.com/contact/

Subscribe to the podcast:

Whether you’re an expat, returnee, HR professional, or cross-cultural trainer, all these conversations are for you. Belonging isn’t just about finding one place to fit. It’s about understanding how we carry home within us, even as we move through countries, cultures, and life stages.

The Messy, Beautiful Reality of Cross-Cultural Living

Doreen Cumberford — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:36:04 GMT

🌍✈️ What does it really take to build a life across cultures? Intercultural trainer Kathy Ellis joins Doreen on Nomadic Diaries for an honest conversation about the messy, beautiful reality of cross-cultural living—from her small-town Midwest roots to seven countries, multiple languages, and decades helping others navigate global transitions.

“It’s tearing down the walls. We have people that build walls and then we have people who want to tear down those walls—and those are two completely different guidelines of living.” Kathy Ellis

💡 You’ll learn:

Why cultural awareness is just the tip of the iceberg—and what it really takes to dive beneath the surface
How to build genuine friendships abroad (and why it’s harder than anyone warns you)
Why coming “home” after years away can be more disorienting than any international move
Real-world strategies that actually work: humor, curiosity, and finding cultural “bridges”
Why even high-achieving professionals struggle to connect when they move internationally

If you’ve ever wondered what it truly takes to thrive across cultures—not just survive—this is the episode for you.

Welcome to the Messy Middle - International Lifestyles

Doreen Cumberford — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 19:46:05 GMT

If you’ve found your way here, chances are you’re living between worlds - or you have been, or you’re about to be.

Maybe you’re an expat who thought “home” would feel like home again (spoiler: it doesn’t).

Maybe you’re raising Third Culture Kids and wondering if they’ll ever feel like they belong anywhere.

Maybe you’ve moved so many times you’ve lost count, and you’re tired of people asking “but where are you really from?”

This is your space.

I’m Doreen - Scottish by birth, internationally mobile for 50 years, currently in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. I’ve lived in nine countries, spent 15 years in Saudi Arabia, and I’m married across cultures (40+ years and counting).

I know what it’s like to rebuild your life from scratch. Multiple times. In multiple languages. While trying to explain to people why you can’t just “settle down.”

Here’s what you’ll find:

Repatriation reality - I’m finishing my book Unsettled, which explores the nine predictable struggle points where returnees get stuck. I’ll share excerpts, insights, and the stories people don’t usually tell about going “home.”

Podcast conversations - I host Nomadic Diaries (200+ episodes, 11,000 listeners across 103 countries). I’ll bring those conversations here - the ones about grief, identity, belonging, and what it really costs to keep moving.

Monthly musings - I write for Atencion News in San Miguel de Allende about expat life. You’ll see those pieces here too, along with whatever I’m thinking about that doesn’t fit anywhere else.

The Belonging Project - Co-hosted with Megan Norton-Newbanks, we’re exploring what belonging means across cultures and generations through 30 episodes of deep conversation.

What I won’t do:

I won’t tell you international life is all adventure and privilege.

I won’t pretend repatriation is easy if you just “stay positive.”

I won’t give you five quick tips for anything, because global life doesn’t work that way.

What I will do:

I’ll be honest about the hard parts.

I’ll validate what you’re feeling when everyone else says you should be grateful.

I’ll help you see patterns in your chaos, so you stop thinking something’s wrong with you.

A bit about where I am now:

I’m in my Third Chapter - what I call rewirement, not retirement. I’m writing, podcasting, playing competitive pickleball, exploring Mexico. Living actively, on my own terms.

I take three coaching clients a year. I’m choosing depth over volume, working with people ready to do the real work of making sense of their global lives.

Subscribe to follow along as I finish Unsettled, share podcast stories, and explore what it really means to live between worlds.

This isn’t the glossy expat life. This is the real one.

Welcome.

Beyond Culture Shock: Kathy Ellis on What It Really Takes to Build a Life Across Cultures

Doreen Cumberford — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 19:00:00 GMT

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What does it really take to build a life across cultures? In this episode, intercultural trainer Kathy Ellis joins Doreen for an honest conversation about the messy, beautiful reality of cross-cultural living. From her small-town Midwest roots to seven countries, multiple languages, and decades helping others navigate global transitions, Kathy brings both personal experience and professional expertise to the table.

In this conversation:

The Cultural Iceberg: Beyond Tourist-Level Understanding
Kathy explains why cultural awareness is just the tip of the iceberg—the real work happens when you dive beneath the surface into ambiguity, unspoken rules, and deep cultural integration. We discuss what it takes to move from observer to participant in a new culture.

The Friendship Challenge: Building Real Connections Abroad
Making friends as an adult is hard. Making friends as a newcomer in a foreign country? Even harder. We explore the complexities and unexpected joys of building genuine friendships across cultures, the role of shared experiences, and why humor and emotional adaptability matter more than you think.

Repatriation: The Hardest Move You Never Saw Coming
Coming "home" after years abroad can be more disorienting than any international move. Kathy and Doreen dig into identity shifts, reverse culture shock, and practical strategies for reintegrating into a place that no longer feels quite like home—or maybe never did.

Your Survival Toolkit: What Actually Helps You Thrive
Forget generic advice. We share real-world strategies that work: leading with humor, staying genuinely curious, finding cultural "bridges" for connection, and maintaining positivity without toxic optimism. Doreen shares examples from her relocation coaching work that bring these concepts to life.

The Executive Friendship Gap: Success Doesn't Equal Connection
Even high-achieving professionals struggle to build meaningful relationships outside of work when they move internationally. We explore the subtle cultural and generational factors that make this harder than it should be, and what you can do about it.

Change vs. Transformation: Understanding the Deeper Shift
Living overseas isn't just about managing change—it's about transformation. We reflect on the difference between adapting to new circumstances and fundamentally evolving as a person through cross-cultural experience.

About Kathy Ellis:

Kathy holds a Master’s in Education, various Intercultural Communication and Language certifications, and serves on the board for the International Language Coaching Association (ILCA). Kathy is a Qualified Administrator in Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI). In addition to her educational endeavors, Kathy has published three poetry collections, available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Connect with Kathy:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathy-ellis-9b79191/

https://www.instagram.com/kat.ellis/

Connect with Doreen:

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