Visas, Baby & Moving Home - What Happens When We Stop Resisting

Day 4 - Morning Musings

In six weeks, when I will be 21 weeks pregnant, we officially move across the world to call New Zealand home. It is technically my home, but I haven’t lived there for more than a few months since I was 13, and for Ben, it couldn’t be further from home.

I cannot wait.

I was once told by someone that they believed your karma was attached to the land on which you were born. Every time my feet touch the ground in New Zealand, I feel this. It is the land where I was brought up barefoot on a farm, where I spent my days roaming across fields and playing outside. It is the land I remember having bonfires at night and walking down the end of our driveway to watch the glowworms in all their glory. By today’s standards, I lived a very simple childhood, and I hold that simplicity in my heart. It has formed the basis of who I am, and I am proud of the person I have become.

I have spent much of my adult life open to the possibility of adventure, allowing myself to be curious about where I want to be. I didn’t know if I would ever return to New Zealand to live, but in my happy curiosity, I have been fortunate enough to travel around New Zealand twice as an adult. Once in a camper van and once camping. Both times, I was not only blown away by the beauty of the country, but I was touched by the generosity of the people, and I was able to appreciate that this is my home.

As someone who has lived in multiple countries, I have spent many years feeling like I am without a home. Constantly navigating visa systems and figuring out what I am entitled to do based on the visa I have been granted. I have lived 15 years as an ‘alien’ in the places I have chosen to call home. You don’t truly appreciate or understand the complexities of visa systems until you become part of one, and whilst I have loved the adventures that my choices have led me on, I am ready to plant my feet firmly on the ground. Thank God I have a partner willing to navigate the visa system so I don’t have to. Ben, you are a dream.

Our move to New Zealand has also been a beautiful reminder that sometimes life gets to be easy. I am someone who often commits to the struggle over ease, overcomplicating or creating more work for myself, but when I trust my intuition, like I have with our move, I am reminded that we get to live in flow. Once we decided this is where we wanted to be, a series of beautiful events unfolded around us. Ben was able to navigate the visa system with ease, we found out we were pregnant, and we were able to sign a one-year contract on a beach property in our dream location. We trusted the process and were reminded that it gets to be this easy.

I feel like we can spend so much of our lives resisting, yet when we surrender, we are rewarded. I resisted this move for so long, telling myself I had to be in the UK. I created every story possible for why it had to be the UK. I battled the UK visa system and held on so tightly to this story I had created as it dismantled around me. My company liquidated, and with it, my visa to stay in the UK expired. It was only then, when I was on my hands and knees, that I began to listen to what I actually wanted. The story I had been creating had been taken from me, and despite feeling like the victim at the time, I realise now it was the biggest blessing. It gifted me the opportunity to ask, ‘What do you want?’ And what I wanted was pretty clear. I wanted to live somewhere that aligned more with my values. I wanted to live somewhere I could spend my afternoons hiking, kayaking, and being in nature. I wanted to move home.

From this place of surrender, I was able to speak my truth to Ben, and he agreed to spend several months in New Zealand to see what it was like. So, last November, we packed up and travelled to the other side of the world for what would turn out to be one of my most cherished adventures. We spent two months driving around the country, camping, hiking, swimming, and for both of us, it felt so aligned. We got engaged at one of my favourite places in New Zealand, Milford Sound, and we got to spend cherished time with my family. I was not so subtle in hoping Ben would fall in love with New Zealand, and he did.

He returned to the UK a few months before me and applied for his visa. It gets to be this easy.

It reminds me of a quote from one of my favourite books, The Surrender Experiment by Michael A. Singer: “I am so grateful that surrender had taught me to willingly participate in life’s dance with a quiet mind and an open heart.”

Where are you resisting participating in life’s dance?

I cannot quite describe the feeling of knowing that we are returning to the place where I was born, a place where I am accepted in my entirety. All I can say is that it feels like a homecoming, and I cannot wait for our little girl to call New Zealand home.