I've moved abroad!

It’s safe to say a lot has happened in my life over the past three months. The biggest change is that we’ve moved to the beautiful Mediterranean island of Malta!

We’d been planning the move for almost two years, but it only started to feel real about ten weeks before we left, when we gave notice to our landlord of ten years. We’d been renting a big old farmhouse in Fife since 2016. It sat on top of a hill, on a remote farm, with our nearest neighbour two fields away. It still makes me laugh that we used to measure distances in fields!

I expected to miss the farm once we moved, so it’s surprised me that I don’t. I loved our time there. My daughters were ten and six when we moved in, and they grew up in that house. We lived through the pandemic there, and it was where I learnt to slow down and find some peace. We also built and ran two businesses from the farm that paid our bills for the past nine years. One of them still does!

Those final few weeks were surreal. Packing up almost a decade of our lives and deciding what to keep and what to let go of was hard. The hardest part, though, was scattering our dog Diego’s ashes in the garden.

Our beloved lurcher, Diego.

He’d spent nine of his thirteen years in that house, and we’d only lost him in May. We scattered his ashes before spending our final night there. It felt as though we were saying goodbye to him all over again, while also saying goodbye to that chapter of our lives.

I hadn’t cried like that since the day I brought my eldest daughter home from hospital after giving birth to her. I couldn’t tell whether I was feeling relief, anxiety, happiness or sadness. Probably all of them at once. The tears just wouldn’t stop.

We still had a couple of days of cleaning and tying up loose ends ahead of us, but with all the furniture gone, we wouldn’t sleep there again. When we went back the following day, I felt as though I’d cried every tear I had. The house felt strange. It didn’t feel like ours any more. I could feel that our time there was over, and I was ready for another family to make it their home.

The timing of our departure wasn’t ideal for my PMDD, though. We left the UK on day eighteen of my cycle, about ten days before my period, putting me firmly in my luteal phase. If you live with PMDD, you’ll understand why moving your entire life to another country at that point might feel particularly daunting! Sometimes life simply doesn’t fit around your cycle, and you have to get through it as best you can.

My PMDD symptoms have improved significantly over the past two and a half years since I started HRT and stopped drinking alcohol. This month, however, was rough. The stress, worry and lack of sleep made my symptoms harder to manage, and I found our first ten days in Malta incredibly tough.

We’d booked an Airbnb for the first two weeks while we looked for a permanent home, and I found that uncertainty difficult. It didn’t help that the Airbnb was a mess. Beds were broken, lights didn’t work and doors wouldn’t lock. The list went on.

Thankfully, we found a permanent home within a week and received a full refund from Airbnb. By then, though, the stress had taken its toll.

My new work station at my kitchen table in Malta

Moving abroad is stressful in its own right, and my husband was finding it difficult too. He was dealing with the upheaval while I was feeling extremely low and agitated. It put a strain on our relationship. We were both struggling to find our feet.

Then my period arrived, and my mood began to lift. We started to feel more settled and had a proper heart-to-heart. I’m happy to say we’re back in a good place together again.

Now we’re making a conscious effort to slow everything down, eat good food and get plenty of sleep. A slower pace of life was one of our reasons for moving to Malta. Back in Scotland, we always seemed to be rushing somewhere, driving here and there, with another thing to get done.

Life feels different here, although slowing down still takes a conscious effort. I’m hoping it will begin to come more naturally as we settle in. One thing I do know is that those blue skies make me happy!

I can’t wait to feel properly settled in our penthouse and start enjoying this next chapter in Malta.