Living the REALITY

Who are these peo­ple? “Im­mi­grants tem­porar­ily or per­ma­nently re­sid­ing in a coun­try other than the one[s] in which they were raised.”

This to me is a much bet­ter ex­pla­na­tion than the word expat (or ex­pa­tri­ate), which I dis­like, and so does Car­rie Frais the ed­i­tor of a new book ti­tled “#Liv­ingThe­Dream: Expat Life Stripped Bare.” Her pre­ferred de­f­i­n­i­tion of her­self and the other 10 women who con­tributed a chap­ter each is stated in her in­tro­duc­tion, in­side a pub­li­ca­tion with a cover photo of bro­ken sun­glasses. (It re­minded me of Yoko Ono’s album cover for “Sea­son of Glass” show­ing John Lennon’s blood­ied specs after his mur­der in New York in 1980.)

The book ex­plores “grief, lone­li­ness, Brexit, moth­er­hood, iden­tity, be­long­ing, sin­gle par­ent­hood, root­less­ness and in­te­gra­tion” but these are just some of the is­sues that are ranged over. The neb­u­lous con­cept of “home” is also touched on in var­i­ous dis­tinct ways.

As an au­thor, Frais fo­cuses es­pe­cially on the emo­tional bag­gage of her re­lo­ca­tion. Her time­line of the last decade and a half jumps be­tween Lon­don and Cabrils (not Cam­brils) in Cat­alo­nia and moves be­tween themes of parental ill­ness and death, the power of mem­ory and ul­ti­mately the Covid 19 pan­demic. Wisely, she both recog­nises and rec­on­ciles her sta­tus as an out­sider: an ad­ven­tur­ous one, open to chal­lenges.

Deb­o­rah Gray, Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of Canela Pub­lic Re­la­tions in Barcelona has some spe­cific ad­vice. She fin­ishes her chap­ter with a title taken from a cen­tury old quote from Max Ehrmann’s Desider­ata, say­ing “ex­er­cise cau­tion in your busi­ness af­fairs, for the world is full of trick­ery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is: many per­sons strive for high ideals, and every­where life is full of hero­ism.”

Her own life ex­pe­ri­ences in­clude man­ag­ing a pri­vate life (in­clud­ing chil­dren) and run­ning of­fices in Madrid and Lis­bon as well as the Cata­lan cap­i­tal. She has been nav­i­gat­ing the rough seas of Eu­ro­pean busi­ness con­di­tions since 2006. Gray states: “Don’t de­fine your­self by what you do for a liv­ing be­cause it can all dis­ap­pear overnight through no fault of your own.” Mil­lions across Cat­alo­nia and the rest of Eu­rope could re­late to that.

Mother of three, teacher, writer, de­signer and As­so­ci­ate Di­rec­tor of Mum­Abroad.com, Jane Mitchell lives in El Mas­nou on the Maresme coast just north of Barcelona. Her part of the book is called “Be­com­ing Me (Again)” and talks about how she made hap­pi­ness a pri­or­ity ahead of her ca­reer. She be­lieves her pre­vi­ous years in Cairo taught her about ac­cep­tance and adapt­abil­ity but didn’t fully pre­pare her for a new role as a mother in Cat­alo­nia.

Sue Wil­son of the Bre­main in Spain or­gan­i­sa­tion is an­other high­light, writ­ing about the legacy of Brexit for her, liv­ing in Va­len­cia.

A great strength of this book is that it avoids most of the clichés that sur­round those who re­lo­cate. In sev­eral places it con­fronts them face-on to dis­pel fan­ci­ful dreams and wa­tery eyed ro­man­tic pro­jec­tions of Eu­rope as a land of sunny, easy plenty. I, too, think this needs to be done.