The Qatar Professional Women’s Network became desperate, they needed a speaker, and after scraping the bottom of the barrel, up I popped, in a sparkly top with jazz hands, okay so I had a sparkly top, but my jazz hands didn’t make an appearance (it was a dry event).
It was one of those great Doha nights, a sea of headscarfs, suits, saris and abayas. Thank you for smiling and giggling at the right spots, apologies to those who had a mascara malfunction.
I’ve been asked if I would post the talk I gave that evening, which provides me with a “cut and paste” opportunity, and being Australia Day….it is a holiday. Right?
Here it is:
Thank you for the introduction:
When I started thinking about what I was going to say tonight (which may have been this morning) I typed “thank you for the introduction” and that was about as far as I got…..but as my mind began to wander I went back and read the sentence again, “thank you for the introduction”.
Have you ever thought about how you introduce yourself?
Or how many times you’ve had to introduce yourself throughout your life?
As a child it starts at school. My name’s Kirsty will you be my friend? My name’s Kirsty will you play with me? As a teenager, the terrifying my name’s Kirsty, would you like to go to the movies with me? Remember waiting to see if the guy you considered as “your boyfriend” was going to his introduce you as “his girlfriend”. During your College or University years it was my name’s Kirsty, and I’ll be your waitress this evening, your barmaid, and then finally after a big night out (for those of us who enjoy a drink), after waking up in the morning……………. my name’s Kirsty and I’m an alcoholic.
When I think of others introducing me, I immediately think of family, “Hi, I’m Lizzie’s Mum” or “I’m Greg’s wife”. My mother, still to this day, will remind and introduce me to people as “this is our baby”.
When I was in my Twenties I started my career in Human Resources with an International firm called Kelly Services, or simply KELLY. I became “Kirsty from Kelly”. It’s quite hard to say that a lot, Kirsty from Kelly. Each time I picked up the phone “Kelly Services, this is Kirsty” Or “Hi, I’m Kirsty, from Kelly”. It was worse for a couple of the girls I worked with though, particularly Shelly. Shelly from Kelly, always got a giggle. But the surprise favourite was Jenny, in our open plan office, there was nothing better than hearing a tongue tied Jenny, mix her words up and become Jelly from Kelly. Hi Jelly.
As my career progressed with Kelly, the job title was thrown in as well. I was this our “Account Manger Kirsty” and then when I thought I’d really hit the big time I was “our Major Account Manager Kirsty”.
BUT, what happens when it all disappears? What happens when we suddenly become just Kirsty.
There are all sorts of women in the room tonight. We have women who have relocated on their own, for their own career. Women who have relocated solely for their partner’s career, leaving a career behind, hoping they can piece something together when they get here. We also have local women who have watched Qatar amplify and thrive, transforming into an International city.
All of us have something in common. We are all surrounded by foreigners, and with that, actions that are foreign to us.
When I entered what was a very foreign expat world to me, I was 6 months pregnant and had left a career, that I loved. On arriving in Jakarta I knew the decision made financial sense, I knew that we were about to have an experience of a lifetime, but I still felt a little lost. I was jobless, friendless, homeless and really FAT. None of these things, will build your self esteem.
Every single one of you who has relocated, has been through a similar process. We’ve all had to attend that dreaded introductory coffee morning or company function. Usually you arrive late because you’ve managed to get lost, you’re looking disheveled and out of breath because you’ve run to make up time. You’re possibly living out of a suitcase and discovered you’ve packed none of the right clothes. You can’t find your favourite brown eyeliner. You’re in need of a good haircut, because you didn’t quite manage one in the rush of packing up at your previous location. Then you find yourself approaching a table full of strangers who are all mid conversation.
For me, that’s when for the first time, in a long time, I became “just Kirsty”.
It’s the opportunity we all get given when we relocate. We get a fresh start. Many of us mourn the loss of the life we left behind, but some of us are blissfully happy to say goodbye to it.
Some of us do it with ease, some struggle for months trying to find our niche, others can be floating along for years and then suddenly realize that they’re not really sure how they got there.
I learnt in a very tragic and disturbing way, that I had to keep sight of what was right for me as an expat and as a woman. I had to be happy with my introduction.
The company my husband and I had previously traveled with, has an incredibly huge and helpful spouses association, I believe its one of the largest in the world. Through this association I met a woman, a German woman who had been married for around 20 years. I would have said we were acquaintances more than friends, we were at different stages of our lives but we ran in to each other often at the usual venues.
After meeting in Jakarta, we then, by coincidence, ended up then living in KL at the same time. When I met her there, I noticed the change in her immediately, she was drinking heavily, she’d lost weight. She was a different person.
A few months later, on a trip to her home country she received a phone call from her husband, he told her he was relocating, but she wasn’t. He wanted a divorce.
She immediately hopped on a plane, she wanted to talk to him face to face. She arrived at their apartment in KL and found his girlfriend. A woman he had met in Indonesia, he had been having an affair for some time. It was the typical cliché, she was half his age.
She left the apartment, devastated, but she came back later on her own.
Their apartment was located directly across from the office, there were people working in the office that day who knew the woman, they watched first with interest and then with horror, as she put on her eye mask, inserted her ear plugs and jumped to her death from their highrise apartment.
I guess she couldn’t imagine an introduction that didn’t involve him. She didn’t know who she was if she wasn’t with him.
The impact of her death on the expat community was initially huge. The news seemed harder on the younger women. Conversations like “I’m not going to follow my husband around for 20 years only to be traded up or discarded for a newer model” were had. Couples asked to be relocated home.
A lot of the older women saw it simply as the tragedy that it was. They had the wisdom and the experience to see just what an idiot the husband was.
I was shellshocked, it wasn’t that I ever felt like the situation could happen to me, but I wondered how I was going to keep a little piece of myself. I seemed to be perpetually pregnant or breastfeeding and my career was a distant memory. Meanwhile my husband’s career was skyrocketing. I wondered if I was ever going to get back to work?
For the next few years I did what a lot of traveling women or women at home do. I avoided the question of “what do you do” at dinner parties. I despised those horrible forms at the airport that asked you to fill in your occupation. I refused to write “housewife” and “home duties”.
So, I started making things up, we’ve all done it. If I was feeling arty I decided the dance last night at the kitchen table qualified me as a “dancer” There’s the other ones, the more serious Mummy ones, Life coach, Domestic Engineer, Parent rights advocate. My husband would learn over my should to see who I was going to turn into each flight, lover was his favourite, castrator had him cautiously handing me the butter knife.
After a few more moves and a few more children, I found myself in a position to go back to the office, firstly part-time which quickly turned in to full time. My life changed drastically to early morning meetings and high speed chases to make it to school concerts and field trips. I guiltily hopped on flights, hoping that cough wasn’t going to need a doctors appointment. I traveled at least once a week. I didn’t need to make up anything for the airport forms, I had my title back, I had my business card.
If I hadn’t have been walking around in a guilt ridden sleep deprived haze, life would have been perfect.
After 2 years of the balancing act of managing 4 children and a full time job, I realized something had to go. I was going to have to sell 2 or maybe 3 of our children……..unfortunately that was wasn’t going to work, I needed a solution.
But of course, for all expats, the solution for every problem is the same. Just wait long enough and you’ll be relocated. Sure enough, a move came and I had to resign. The result was a much more relaxed Kirsty and a Kirsty that knew that her career would always be there, although the 8 til 6 at the office wasn’t going to work right at that point in my life, there would be a time when it would. And for the first time in a long time, I relaxed and enjoyed the present and stopped worrying about the future. I was very happy with being “just Kirsty”.
Having worked in the business of HR, I know that women have a higher emotional intelligence than men. It’s a proven an indisputable fact. Having a higher emotional intelligence often means that women are far better managers, socially it means, what we as women have known for years.
We make much better friends.
There’s nothing like a really good girlfriend.
This being the case, it is our job as women to USE this emotional intelligence. Particularly in the expat world, it is not only our job, but it’s our responsibility to look out for each other. I’d like to think that if I met the German woman now, I’d be a bit more useful.
It is a “career” on it’s own to pack up a house and start a new life in a new country. Particularly if it’s your job to find the supermarket, the insurance office, the school, the friends (and the good quality cheap handbags). If you’re at a stage of your life that you can also fit in a job outside the home, you then have the added stress of the job, the new boss and the new rules and regulations. Finding the balance is something we as women, struggle with on a daily basis.
My new career as a writer, allows me to have that balance. It took me 11 years to find it. If I had to introduce myself, to me, now, I think I’d have some advice. Just relax, it’s okay to just be you. Just enjoy the ride.
Kirsty, this is the first time I’ve read your blog and this was a wonderful intro! Love the post.
So true…
lx
what a fascinating insight, Kirsty. As a SAHM, tho not an expat, I totally identify with not knowing how to introduce myself right now. We move a lot because of my husbands’ career — so far always within Australia — I can only imagine the problems compounded by distance from home, not speaking or reading the language, not understanding the culture, etc etc.
So very true!! Your posts always hit home for me! 🙂 When we first moved to Germany, I hated to refer to myself as a “hausfrau”… But, two and a half years later, I’ve learned to relax and (like you said) enjoy the ride! 🙂
Ah, Kirsty, my post of the week. Just brilliant. You are a legend. I can’t imagine what that poor woman was thinking. I’m not surprised it shook you up so much. Good for you for working out what works best for you and your family. J x
Great speech Kirsty. Hope the night went well x
Talk about hitting the nail on the head! There are so many questions that I’ve started asking myself since I relocated with my husband. It’s a very different experience to choosing to move somewhere of your own accord, which I’ve done too. I guess its a chance to appreciate a clean slate and relax. A lot of deep breaths help too I think! 😉
He he, had to giggle, I’m a Jennie & often it comes out as Jelly.
Really interesting to me, as someone who has to move to a completely new location with my husband’s work every couple of years (not overseas but vastly different states & territories in Austalia). I started a business after Uni but between children one & twins (children two & three) so when i rock up with 4 children & i’m 35, people assume i’m just a mother or just a breeder. I happily call myself a housewife, i let it pop up in conversation later than i’m a designer. It’s kind of relevant to the situation.
When i worked in the oil industry everyone thought my husband was the oil baron & i was his young blonde trophy wife. It still surprises men & women, that some of us have brains & a bunch of children, but what i loathe the most is when people say “oh you’ll go back to pharmacology when the children grow up”. We want seriously early retirement, that freaks people out, especially with private school fees. I have enough confidence to not worry about what people really think of me. I get so many compliments about my design work or what a nice mummy i am, from real people who want to know me, i never got a “gee, your chemistry analysis was amazing” in the old days, why would i want to return to that??
Great speech, the suicide was scary, clearly she lost her sense of self. She could have taken her replacement with her on the way down??
Happy Australia Day, love Posie
I feel this way too as a SAHM. Whenever I go to BBQs at my neighbours house where her family are all young professionals – pharmacists, accountants, doctors – I suddenly lose my self. I am ‘just Karen, from next door’. I find it hard to say what I do, and because they see it – my three kids – they don’t ask.
I’d like to say I’m a writer – I’m working on that one.
I wish I didn’t feel so weird about being a SAHM. I am proud, but with an audience I feel apologetic, like its something vulgar and ordinary. I guess it is ordinary, but its also beautiful and has a rhythm that you can’t find anywhere else but within your own home with your own people. Where you all have the same smell, and sing along to the same jingles and get the same jokes.
You’re a champ. 🙂
Really enjoyed this post. Very clever introduction. I’m not an expat living in a different country and I don’t have kids, but as someone ‘between jobs’ I can completely relate to the importance we put on labels aspect of this piece.
Fantastic. I especially like the part about the airport customs forms and not wanting to write housewife on them. I always write “volunteer” because I do some charity work from time to time.
I tried to write unemployed once (less humiliating than housewife I guess??) but the guy at Heathrow wouldn’t let me because our work visa doesn’t allow us to be eligible for public funds and if you’re unemployed then you can sign on for assistance. So volunteer it is!
Just brilliant. I am terrified of approaching people in a room full of strangers, so I am full of admiration for you having to do it over and over again.
A friend here is having a really tough time at the moment, especially with being away from home ….
when I have been down, friends, especially this special lady, have made all the difference.
You know who you are when you can make that difference and just be YOU!
Thanks for reminding me of that…..
What a fantastic post.
I want to be Kirsty, she sounds fun.! 🙂
Kirsty this is brilliant. I love your writing and I love your insight into an experience I’ve never had (though my parents have). You’ve certainly found your calling. xxx
Hearing that talk would have resonated with everyone there and even us non-expats. We all struggle with titles and, at the moment, being a work-from-home-writer doesn’t have the cachet of my previous job as a unit manager in a large government department. But, as you say, we all juggle and struggle and need to find that contentment in ourselves and also be alert to anyone around us who is struggling.
Very nicely said.
A Wonderful article, Kirsty. I will bookmark it, as we are moving to Singapore at Easter and revisit it when culture shock gets to me (as it inevitably will).
Thanks again, Kirsty.
I almost cried reading this (but I laughed, too!)
I am now that sleep-deprived stressed woman you say you were a couple years ago. Can’t wait to arrive in Doha (by April, hopefully!) and be me again. Or anew.
ETA: LOLZ! “manterms” is the verification word?!?!?
First time I read your blog
Very nice article.
I so resonate with that – at a party I was in a group of three, all men. They were all introduced by name, title, company by the hostto each other – then he turned to me and did a little dismissive wave and said ‘Oh and this is Louise, Phils wife!’ They – the men all drew in towards each other, including my husband and started talking ignoring me completely – I had words later for my husband! BUT the reason for writing this is to say – its other peoples perceptions of us that just reinforces out feelings sometimes of inadequacy as expat wives who do nothing! I have my own business and do loads… if he’d just asked! You are SO right, as the accompanying partner we do do loads and we are often the support network that gets our partners through their often tough, demanding and stressful work lives – so chin up, stand tall and be proud!!
This was an intense post and has given me a lot to think about. I think your identification of the identity problem is relevant to almost all mothers today.
Great post Kirsty! I’m only just starting to figure out who I am after moving abroad and having kids. That poor German woman, I hate the idea of ever being so dependant on someone to define me that I can’t live without them.
I’m not an expat, but as with so many others, still finding an identity after a highstress, travelling career is gone and its ‘just’ the children. Learning to appreciate it, day by day.
I’m an expat working with the teen children of expats in Beijing, China. I spend a lot of time thinking about how these kids live with (and between) multiple labels. Sometimes I forget that their parents are dealing with labels (both gained and lost) of their own. Beautifully written; thanks for sharing!
A great read Kirsty and, I am sure, a well-received speech. Funny. Honest. Anecdotal. Just lovely.
I totally envy you the travel and cultural experiences that come with being an ex-pat but not the constant ‘starting over’.
I’m really glad you are comfortable with your current incarnation as ‘Kirsty, writer’. It suits you 🙂
I would have loved to have been in the room when you spoke this. This is exactly what women need to hear. Whether you are a SAHM, part-time SAHM, professional,…. so long as you are happy with who you are, and have balance in life, that is all that matters.
Hey there
Remember “Sarah from Kelly?” now married to Todd from Kelly?
Its been a long time. Great to see what you are doing here and to see the amazing voice you bring to women, expats, mothers around the world.
I work with postnatal depression in the English speaking community here in Paris, many of whom are expats or lifers (as we call them here) and your speech and blog are valuable resources for us all. Have just shared your latest blog on the site of Message.org (membership site for English speaking parents in France) – where it will speak to the many women who have had similar experiences to us all.
thanks for the voice, thanks for speaking out. great work Kirsty.
hug
Sarah
Finding your post came at the perfect time in my life. I am a single, female expat who just relocated from the US to KL 3 weeks ago. I understand completely what you are saying, and I empathize totally with the perception of expat wives. I only wish I had someone to have relocated with me because besides having a fulltime job which includes opening an office here and staffing it I’ve had to manage the getting settled part, too. All on my own. It’s exhausting and I often wish I had someone to come home to after a terrible day of standing in lines to get a bank account or a mobile phone, or lugging groceries for blocks or anything else that has to do with building a life in a new location. Even though I have a job to go to, I have still lost my identity somehow. There seems to be no place for single females here. But having read all these posts, I realize I am not alone (as least in spirit!) and all expat women struggle with life and identity regardless of their family situation. I will make the best of it. The upside to the stress and lonliness is I have lost 11 lbs in the past 3 weeks. I’m going to call it “transformation”! Hugs to all you expat women out there. I would love to meet you someday if you are in KL. Melissa
What an outstanding post Kirsty. You write like a dream 🙂
Finding your post came at the perfect time in my life. I am a single, female expat who just relocated from the US to KL 3 weeks ago. I understand completely what you are saying, and I empathize totally with the perception of expat wives. I only wish I had someone to have relocated with me because besides having a fulltime job which includes opening an office here and staffing it I’ve had to manage the getting settled part, too. All on my own. It’s exhausting and I often wish I had someone to come home to after a terrible day of standing in lines to get a bank account or a mobile phone, or lugging groceries for blocks or anything else that has to do with building a life in a new location. Even though I have a job to go to, I have still lost my identity somehow. There seems to be no place for single females here. But having read all these posts, I realize I am not alone (as least in spirit!) and all expat women struggle with life and identity regardless of their family situation. I will make the best of it. The upside to the stress and lonliness is I have lost 11 lbs in the past 3 weeks. I’m going to call it “transformation”! Hugs to all you expat women out there. I would love to meet you someday if you are in KL. Melissa
Hey there
Remember “Sarah from Kelly?” now married to Todd from Kelly?
Its been a long time. Great to see what you are doing here and to see the amazing voice you bring to women, expats, mothers around the world.
I work with postnatal depression in the English speaking community here in Paris, many of whom are expats or lifers (as we call them here) and your speech and blog are valuable resources for us all. Have just shared your latest blog on the site of Message.org (membership site for English speaking parents in France) – where it will speak to the many women who have had similar experiences to us all.
thanks for the voice, thanks for speaking out. great work Kirsty.
hug
Sarah
First time I read your blog
Very nice article.
A Wonderful article, Kirsty. I will bookmark it, as we are moving to Singapore at Easter and revisit it when culture shock gets to me (as it inevitably will).
He he, had to giggle, I’m a Jennie & often it comes out as Jelly.
Really interesting to me, as someone who has to move to a completely new location with my husband’s work every couple of years (not overseas but vastly different states & territories in Austalia). I started a business after Uni but between children one & twins (children two & three) so when i rock up with 4 children & i’m 35, people assume i’m just a mother or just a breeder. I happily call myself a housewife, i let it pop up in conversation later than i’m a designer. It’s kind of relevant to the situation.
When i worked in the oil industry everyone thought my husband was the oil baron & i was his young blonde trophy wife. It still surprises men & women, that some of us have brains & a bunch of children, but what i loathe the most is when people say “oh you’ll go back to pharmacology when the children grow up”. We want seriously early retirement, that freaks people out, especially with private school fees. I have enough confidence to not worry about what people really think of me. I get so many compliments about my design work or what a nice mummy i am, from real people who want to know me, i never got a “gee, your chemistry analysis was amazing” in the old days, why would i want to return to that??
Great speech, the suicide was scary, clearly she lost her sense of self. She could have taken her replacement with her on the way down??
Happy Australia Day, love Posie
Hi Kristy!I am writing on behalf of Women’s Web, an online women’s magazine based out of India. We have launched a travel series, profiling some interesting women bloggers from across the world.
I came across your blog recently and find it quite impressive. Would you be interested in contributing a guest post for us on some fun things that a mom and kids can do in Qatar?
If you are, then please drop me an email at anne.john@womensweb.in and I’ll get back to you with further details. Hope to hear from you soon!
Regards,Anne.
wow kirsty! Following you on twitter now! Your posts are toooo real… and this one I’m in love with just like the others 🙂 You do speak for almost every woman out there. Cheers!