Unemployed.

4 lessons from a period of non-work

This year has been a year of "redirection," a year I decided I would stop taking short-term contracts in areas I liked to try and pursue a vocation I love. Anxiety, fear, and low self-esteem promptly ensued. But I have stayed at it, and I feel like I'm actually learning some things. 

Here are 4 of my big lessons this year.

1. We are incredibly loved and supported.

Over the last year, we have struggled financially. Taking time away from work because E was born, and then taking time away from work because of my decision to redirect my career have taken a toll on our budget and bank account. And yet we are making it. Last year, in a particularly strained month, our good friends casually gave us an envelope with $400 in it. This past week, in the aftermath of our home invasion, friends and family have graciously and unceremoniously given and sent us money to help cover the losses. We have also received incredible words of comfort and encouragement and have felt our entire community lift us up in prayer and support. As I have struggled to find my way in a new career path, our supporters have been patient and they and our wider community have loved me so well through all my uncertainty, impatience, and tears. Like never before have I felt the beauty and comfort of my village.

I hope I do not take it for granted.

2. We are incredibly privileged.

Even though we have struggled financially, we know for a fact that we will be ok eventually. We will make money eventually. We are taking money from our line of credit this month to buy a car, confident that we will pay it back pretty soon. We are both well educated, we have a vast safety net (as evidenced above!), we buy international health insurance, and we have a privileged notion that hard times are temporary. And it is clear as day that this is not how the majority of the world lives. And so, even though we’re in a “dry” patch right now, we are still stewards of our income and possessions, and ever humbled by the privilege we have luckily inherited.

I hope I use my privilege to build up others.

3. Taking time away from work really does give you room to think.

The idea I had at the beginning of the year of what type of work I would pursue is a little different from what I am gravitating towards and pursuing now. And that evolution happened because I actually took time away from working. I made the decision to not take any contract that came my way, but to be “picky” and, as of August, only apply for full-time work. As much as this caused me anxiety, it also gave me room to think, network, and ask myself (and others) the tough questions about how I want to engage in the development sector. And the answers have led me in a different direction than I was expecting but am now incredibly excited about.

I hope I can remain reflective as the process continues.

4. My worth is not in my work.

Yes, I am guilty of placing far too much of my self-worth in the job I have and my professional/academic achievements. I have been to some dark places this year where I have felt like I was drifting because I wasn’t employed and didn’t know when I would be (I’m still there, but not feeling so dark). Meanwhile, Charlie got an amazing promotion and is feeling more fulfilled than ever in his career. I am so proud of him and my heart is so full seeing him so passionate. Although I’m not jealous, it was a stark contrast to my seemingly aimless professional period. And then my Mom reminded me that we are not in Cambodia just “to work” and that work is not who I am. This year I got to spend tons of time with my kids, went on play dates and coffee dates with friends, and I got to know a beautiful and supportive community of stay-at-home moms. I also have a lot of friends who are figuring out their own career paths, and I have felt a deep sense of purpose when chatting with them about similar issues we are wrestling with.

I hope I can hold true to a deeper sense of purpose when I become employed.

Have you ever felt adrift in your professional life? How do you balance your sense of self when it  comes to "work/life balance"? Any tools or resources to share in this areas?

Ode to a BFF

I sat on my four-year-old's bed yesterday while she pounded her fists into the mattress and her own legs, her tiny but powerful voice angrily seething, "It's not fair! It's not fair! It's not fair" over and over again. I remember feeling that way as a kid: so angry and frustrated that you feel like it's going to explode out of you and words just aren't enough.

She wasn't having a tantrum. She wasn't being a brat. She was trying to work through the utter heartbreak of her best friend moving back to Canada from Cambodia. They met when she was 2 and a half and now she's 4 and a half and she can't remember when they weren't best friends. I remember. Because this isn't the first time she's been torn away from her friends.

When I was 12 years old, my lifelong best friend moved to California. It was awful. We spent every waking moment together for the 2 weeks before they left. It was an important event in my young life. Our 4-year-old daughter has now gone through that 3 times. The first time she was just 2 and didn't really understand what was going on, kept asking where her friend was. The second time was when we were coming back to Cambodia after a 6-month home leave and she was very sad to leave behind our close friends' daughter who we had spent a lot of time with that winter. This time it feels different. This time she's not a toddler, but a little girl who is starting to truly understand the distance, time, and "apart-ness" of living on the other side of the world. And she's angry about it.

I'm starting to understand the burden of responsibility for the impact of our decision to live overseas on our children's lives. We chose to do life in Cambodia. We chose to live far away from our family. We chose to live in a transient community where goodbye parties are our most frequent event. They didn't chose this, we chose it for them. We believe in the blessings, advantages, and opportunities this will give them, both now and later in life, but today, having said goodbye to both one of my best friends and my child's best friend, I understand her anger about these decisions.

So I sat on her bed yesterday and I pounded my fists into the mattress beside her, and I said, "I'm angry, too" and I affirmed her frustrations and grief and sadness. And I pray that that affirmation will be what she remembers, not just the anger and sadness at losing another friend, but that those feelings are valid and real. And that she won't bury the feelings and herself, but will keep expressing herself and opening herself up to other friends and people who come in and out of our lives. Because my 4-year-old is a great friend! She throws herself into friendship and loves wholeheartedly and passionately. And I never want her to lose that part of herself. 

3 Things that Scare me About Taking a Leap of Faith

It's time. Time for a leap faith.

After dedicating much of my work time over the past few years to Chab Dai projects, I've decided, after a lot of prayer, discernment, conversations with mentors, family, and friends, tears, dreaming, and anxiety...

I have stepped away from contractual work with Chab Dai and am working on building up my skills and experience to work in something I feel a strong passion and calling for. It's hard to know what to call it, because it could take many forms, but basically I am pursuing my calling in economic empowerment. Whether that is community economic development, social enterprise, economic resilience and reintegration programming, or research and model testing, I'm not sure. I'm open to all of it! 

A few weeks in, and I am pretty evenly split between utter excitement and talking myself out of a panic attack. Because it's scary. I'm scared. And this is what scares me most:

1. Financial uncertainty: after writing a research report on the subject, I self-diagnosed: Hello, my name is Julia, and I suffer from financial anxiety. Making the decision this year that I won't take work unless it is in the economic development and research realm has meant we're living really tight. And that's OK (that's Charlie talking). We're able to cover our basic expenses every month. And of course that leads me to feel incredibly guilty that I even feel anxious because we live in a country where many people can't say that. But there you have it: I worry about eeking it out every month.

2. What if I'm not good? What if up until now I've taken the easy road and excelled because I wasn't pushing myself and now that I go after what I really truly want to do, I fall flat? What if I'm all talk and can't deliver? What if I'm a fraud? No matter how much someone (*ahem*Charlie*) can tell me logically why I'm ready for this, that little voice is there, telling me I'm not.

3. What if I can't actually balance work/parent life? Since S was born, I've worked, quite a lot, but never in a full-time, 9:00-5:00 job. I've been able to make my own schedule, which worked great, because I wanted to have the flexibility to take a morning here or a day there to be with my babies. I think I'm ready for full-time work, but I haven't tried it yet, so what if it doesn't work? 

So that's it. My three biggest fears this year. Welcome to my panic attack.

Here's my antidote to fear and anxiety: prayer. I'm 100% serious. When I feel the fear creeping in, the anxiety taking over, I try to sit down and meditate, focus on communing with God, and most often it calms my spirit. It doesn't mean the fear and anxiety go away forever, but sometimes it's just enough to get me through the day. And not only does it calm the anxiety, but I often end meditating being reminded of the excited part of this journey. I'm going after my dream! I'm following a calling! I live in Cambodia and it's pretty awesome!

And I think, "See you later, fear and anxiety!" (And I do.)

...if only in my dreams

Charlie and I have missed a few Christmasses in Canada. This year will be the fourth Christmas we'll have spent in Cambodia (2008, 2012 & 2013); but also, because we're from different corners of Canada, we've also sometimes had to miss holidays with one of our families.

Our first Cambodian Christmas in 2008, when we dirt biked up to Ratanakiri

Christmas 2012, which was also Sam's first Christmas

Christmas 2013, when my sister Christa and her then-boyfriend/now-husband
spent the holidays with us!

Last year, Christmas in Montreal was very near perfect. My sister had just gotten married, we were over the jetlag, I was huge but not yet overdue (Christmas 2011 with Sam at 40 weeks + 5 days was another story!) and my parents pulled out all the stops to give us a holiday season we had dreamed of for years. In some ways, I'm carrying the high of last year with me into this coming December.

Last Christmas in Montreal, near perfection!

 Every year we are away for Christmas, Charlie and I always have a moment. We listen to Sarah McLachlan's "I'll be Home for Christmas," catch each other's eye, and share a few tears. It's almost become comical, because it always happens the same way. This year, our moment happened on November 1, when Charlie surprised me by putting on my beloved Christmas music weeks earlier than he normally allows. It's a beautiful version, have a listen!

I am really looking forward to Christmas in Cambodia this year. It's Ella's first Christmas, so that will be special. A number of our friends are staying in town this year, so we'll spend lots of time with them. I am singing in our church's Christmas choir, we'll do a Christmas Eve sleepover with our home group, we plan to go skating at the mall, turkey will be eaten on at least one occasion. We've been here for long enough that we feel we have our own Christmas traditions in Cambodia. We even brought a Christmas tree home with us from Canada (thank you, IKEA!)

But that song. That song reminds me that no matter who lovely Christmas is here, what I love most about this season is family. So I will cling to my beautiful little family here and grieve over missing out of the larger family back "home."

Yes, I walked there once.

In 2006, I spent my last undergraduate summer in Rwanda on my first overseas internship. It was a difficult and amazing experience in many ways and some memories have stuck more than others. 

On one occasion, my friend and I had the amazing opportunity to cross the border into Eastern DRC and fly in a little bush plane to a small town inland. It was exhilarating! And perhaps a tad ill-advised, in hindsight - we met the pilots the evening before at dinner and the town we flew to we found out later was controlled by a warlord-type. Oops.

The flight was awesome. We flew for about 30 minutes, over nothing but dense jungle; it looked like tightly packed broccoli heads. We even each got the chance to "fly" for a couple minutes. And all of a sudden we were descending and a longish dirt path appeared onto which we landed. We didn't stay long, just walked around a bit while the plane was unloaded, and off we went again. What an adventure!

A short while later, I was sitting in the office of the small faith-based organisation with which I was interning. A pastor was visiting from his town and we were chatting casually. I ended up telling him about our little DRC jaunt and how beautiful the flight was and the village we ended up in, which was called Wali Kali. 

And then he said, "Ah yes! Wali Kali. I walked there once."

In 1994, when his country was being torn apart from the inside out, he gathered up a few provisions, and he and his wife and their small children had gotten out of Rwanda and walked through that broccoli head jungle. With the poisonous snakes and dangerous animals and even more dangerous rebel groups and armies.

I think that was the first time in my life I started to understand what it means to be a refugee. The lengths someone will go to and the risk they will undertake if it means they might save their children. The resilience and strength, physically, psychologically, and spiritually, it must take to make that long and uncertain journey. The desperation of needing to get out and the faith that you can find something better, something safer.

That pastor humbled me. I will probably never have the firsthand experience of having to place my child on a boat into the unknown. I am humbled by privilege. So I pray. And I try to act. 

If you're interested in getting involved in refugee support, here are some links (Canada-specific):

• Overview of International agencies you can support who are involved in the Syrian refugee crisis: http://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/how-to-help-syrian-refugees-1.3215006
• Learn how you can sponsor a refugee: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/refugees/crisis/syria-iraq/sponsor.asp#blended
• Learn about how you can become involved in Collective Sponsorship of refugees in Quebec: http://www.immigration-quebec.gouv.qc.ca/en/immigrate-settle/refugees-other/collective-sponsorship/index.html

Expats Suffer From G.O.M.O.

One of my best friends here just gave birth, and it was a huge surprise. She was supposed to leave this past weekend for Bangkok, where she would hang out for a few weeks, waiting for the wee one to make his entrance at a Thai hospital. Well, wee one decided that 36 weeks was enough baking, thank you very much, and rushed into the world early one morning last week at a hospital here in Phnom Penh.

It has been an immense privilege to be close to our friends through this. I've mentioned before how friends become family in the expat community, so we truly feel like we are welcoming this new baby into the family! 

I think part of why I am so excited to be around for this is that we are missing so many things, big and small, that are happening with friends and family in other parts of the world. Instead of suffering from F.O.M.O. (which I also do, in general, to some extent!) I think many expats suffer from the Grief of Missing Out. We know we're missing things - births, parties, holidays, even deaths sometimes - and even though I would say we've made our peace about what it means to live overseas, we're still sad to miss out.

Missing all the people.

I'm in a What's App group with some of my Montreal friends, which they mostly use to make weekend and evening plans with each other. I haven't gotten around to leaving the text group since we came back from home leave, and I don't think I want to. I've made my peace about not being able to go to the pub after work or go hiking in the Laurentians this weekend, but I also like being a "fly on the wall" of their plan making. It helps with my grieving over these small missed events.

I have a few girlfriends in Montreal who are due in the next months, and it kills me a bit that I won't meet their babies for quite a while, that I won't be able to bring them frozen dinners, that I won't be able to drop by and hold the fort for a few minutes so they can, I don't know, go to the bathroom or something. I'm not afraid of missing out, I know I am, and I'm not sure it gets easier.

Do you suffer from G.O.M.O.? How do you handle it? 

5 Reasons We Do What We Do

This year we got 2 Thanksgiving dinners! One with dear friends, cozy chats, and amazing food, another at a good friend's restaurant, where we met new people, had equally amazing food, and almost got blown away by a tropical storm! Take a look at our stormy meal here!

Thanksgiving makes me reflect on the providence and blessing that has been our calling here in Cambodia, and recently got me thinking about all the many reasons we "ended up" here, doing what we do.

Sometimes when our parents tell people who don't already know us what we do, a common follow-up question is, "Do you fear for their safety?" And the answer is (mostly), "No, not really." And it's not because our parents are cavalier about our safety (there's a reason I don't show my Mom pictures of our whole family on a motorbike), but it's because the type of work we do in anti-trafficking is not really of the "unsafe" variety.

We're not directly doing investigations, rescue operations, or survivor aftercare. Charlie works in human resources, volunteer management, and organisational development, while I do a lot of research, strategic planning, and program support and development. 

We could be doing something else, somewhere else (yes, we are hoping our skills are transferable!) Why this? Why here? Why now? So here are 5 of the reasons we have chosen to do these things in anti-trafficking, in Cambodia.

One of the many gorgeous views from our apartment in Phnom Penh

1. We're not social workers, police officers, or counsellors

• In order to do direct work with survivors of trafficking, one usually needs a background in one of these or related areas. But there is a need for so many types of skills in the anti-trafficking movement. A movement needs all kinds of people to make change. So we have found a way to use our own skills to join the movement against exploitation, slavery, and abuse.

2. We are skilled, and are committed to using those skills to participate in change-making

• Through a long road of education, internships, mentoring, reading, and other work experience, we came to Cambodia and found we could apply skills learned elsewhere to contribute to the anti-trafficking mission. We love being part of something big, and we hope we're a part of making change in the world for the better.

3. We believe in doing with, not doing for

• One of our favourite writers is Bryant Myers, who wrote Walking with the Poor, and we are challenged to look at why and how we participate in development and human rights championing in ways that empower and strengthen our Cambodian colleagues. This often means doing more "behind the scenes" work, rather than frontline work.

4. We're passionate about how development and human rights are intrinsically linked

• We love discussions about human trafficking in the framework of human rights and development, and using our development background to understand the issues within the big picture of human capabilities. It is helpful to have people from many walks of life and work sectors come together to form a holistic view of community transformation.

5. We're excited about change and hope in Cambodia

• We don't know for sure how long we'll be in Cambodia, but we are both so in love with this country and find it incredibly exciting to be here during this time in its development. There is a lot to do, but there is also hope for the future, and it's exciting for us to be part of that.

We feel so thankful for being where we are, being challenged and contributing to something we believe in deeply.

Why do you do what you do? What are you thankful for?