If you’ve ever grieved people who are still alive, this story might feel familiar.
Before I did it, I thought that moving abroad was mainly about learning about a new country. It turns out it was more about unlearning people.
Nobody tells you that one of the hardest parts isn’t the paperwork, the language, the loneliness, holidays spent alone, or building a new life-no.
I’m not trying to claim an eternal truth; I suppose the most challenging part varies from person to person. For me, the hardest part was witnessing my faith in people change.
You leave with the feeling that those who love you will always stay nearby; true bonds withstand distance. The relationships you’ve built over the years are likely to remain a natural part of your life, and while some do, many don’t.
The friendships you were certain would survive become birthdays forgotten, messages left unanswered, conversations that slowly disappear without anyone ever saying goodbye, and somehow, the people you expected to drift away often become the ones who show up the most. Life has a strange way of introducing you to your future family long after you’ve left your first one behind.
With faith in people and genuine connections, the naïveté disappears too.
You stop believing the world is fair. You stop believing that good people always win. You stop believing that effort is always rewarded. There’s something heartbreaking about looking back with nostalgia at your own innocence. It was beautiful to believe the world made sense. It doesn’t. But it does become more honest, in its cruel, raw, obvious, painful way.
You’ll also discover that other expats understand you in ways few people can. They know what it’s like to grieve a country that’s still there, to belong everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
They’ll become your first home, and that’s okay; just don’t let them become your only one.
When you begin forming friendships with locals, the city transitions from a place of mere survival to a place where you truly feel like you’re living.
Never apologize for your accent. An accent does not indicate that you do not belong; instead, it shows the courage it took to start anew in a language that isn’t your native tongue. It means you speak more languages than the person correcting you. It means the world is open to you; it means you are free, and you can build a home anywhere you want to.
Moving abroad won’t make you a new person, but it will reveal who you are when everything familiar has been taken away, and eventually you may discover that you are stronger than you ever imagined.
Although you’ll lose people you never thought you could, you’ll also find people you never knew you needed.
There is one more thing nobody tells you about moving abroad.
One day you’ll wake up and realize there isn’t a single person you can call, because oceans have a way of stretching relationships into different shapes. People who once felt close in every way are now suddenly separated by time zones; they don’t even live the same day as you.
Different mornings, different nights, different lives. You realize you have no one to call, so you don’t call anyone; you sit with yourself, again and again and again, and when you sit with yourself long enough, then something extraordinary begins to happen.
You discover what you’re capable of when there is nobody coming to save you.
You survive things you were absolutely certain would break you. You survive grief that makes breathing feel optional. You survive paperwork that feels endless and find yourself crying over the 17638393rd form at 3 am.
You survive loneliness that echoes through entire apartments, trauma, loss, disappointment, fear. You survive days that turn into nights, when you genuinely wonder whether you’re falling apart. You think you’re dying, and, in a way, actually, you are.
That woman who arrived with high hopes and dreams, and so much love, well, she doesn’t survive, but something else does. You don’t notice it at first, because, as usual, you’re too busy trying to make it through another day.
But then one afternoon, you go to your coffeeshop, where the barista greets you with a smile and starts making your favorite drink before you even ask for it, with oat milk, no sugar, and with pistachio, if they still have.
It’s an ordinary Tuesday early afternoon; really, there is nothing special about it. While enjoying your pistachio oat milk latte, a drink Jim Allen, your paid subscriber, funded for you, you pause briefly, gaze at the wall, and suddenly realize… you have friends. You have actual friends who miss you when you are out of the city, and you have built an online community through your writing. You have online supporters; you are making a difference, and your research is starting to reach the people it is meant to reach.
You built a life. You actually built a fucking life. Alone, from less than nothing. You solved problems nobody else could solve for you. You figured out taxes, housing, cultural differences, NYC slang, and yes, you even have a bed now, because since you take Wegovy, sometimes you even sleep now. Weird.
You built a life. You carried your own groceries, your own grief, your own future. You became your own emergency contact, and while being there for yourself and your mega-anxious doggie, you help strangers. They feel less alone because of you, while you’re still learning how to carry your own loneliness.
I don’t think I’ve ever learned as much about myself as I have while being completely alone, abroad. I discovered a lot about my strength, my limits, my resilience, my courage, my ability to keep going long after I thought I couldn’t.
Nobody ever hopes for that kind of education, but once you’ve lived it, no one can ever take it away from you.
Moving abroad gives you many things.
A new address, a new language you slowly master, skills, friends, and enemies; it takes away your dreams, but it gives you new ones.
But its greatest gift isn’t a place. It’s the moment at the coffeeshop when you look at yourself on a random Tuesday and realize “I had no idea I could survive all of that, but wtf, it seems I did.
Sometimes surviving is what gives you the credibility to become someone else’s hope, more than your 6 degrees ever did.
Because if you built a life from less than zero, if you stood up from the floor bruised and still bleeding, if you found somewhere to go when you had nowhere to go, if you learned to hold your own hand when there was no one else’s to hold, if you built a business, a community, and a future while grieving, terrified, and uncertain, then maybe someone reading this today will believe that they can too.
I’ve been thinking about getting a fourth tattoo, as all three of my tattoos were born from pain and from grief, chapters of my life I never asked to live through.
Now I’m looking for something different — not just to remember what happened, but to reflect on who I’ve become because of it. It took me a long time to choose these words. I wanted something simple and concise, yet strong enough to hold onto for a lifetime.
Sitting in the coffee shop on that random Tuesday, I just suddenly knew.
Do it for the women who couldn’t.
I’ll have those words tattooed on my left wrist because I want to remember that strength has always been there, even when fear was louder.
I want to see those words every time I walk into another room where I’m the only woman at the table. Every time I have to defend an idea before people willing to hear it. Every time I have to work four times as hard to be considered half as capable as the men in science. Every time someone mistakes my kindness for weakness. Every time someone believes they have the right to control me, silence me, or hurt me simply because they’re physically stronger than I am.
Love has never been an excuse for violence; power has never been permission, and yet, too many women spend years being taught otherwise.
The world has become quite skilled at encouraging women to doubt themselves rather than holding those who harm them accountable. I refuse to live silently in such a world. Instead, I aim to help create a different, better reality—one where compassion is never seen as a sign of weakness. That is the meaning behind this tattoo for me.
I can’t wait to look down at those words while defending my PhD and continuing research that I hope will help shape a healthcare system that is more human, more sustainable, and kinder—for patients and clinicians alike. While continuing to speak the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable for some. While continuing to build a life that once felt impossible. While watching justice unfold, knowing that someone else’s actions will never define the rest of my story, and maybe, one day, while realizing my heart has become capable of trusting and loving again.
Do it for the woman who couldn’t.
Every time I move forward, I carry a little piece of every woman who couldn’t. And if my story helps another woman believe she can survive, speak, build, heal, learn, dream, smile, love, leave, or begin again, then none of this pain was wasted.
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Much love,
About the Author
Nora Árvai is a clinical health psychologist, lifestyle medicine practitioner, science communicator, and PhD candidate in Medical Foresight. She investigates how psychology, healthcare, technology, and the future intersect, turning complex concepts into practical tools to help people navigate an increasingly uncertain world. Through Nora in New York, she shares essays, research, behind-the-scenes insights, and resources for curious minds who see the futures as something we can actively influence, not just passively wait for.
