Substack’s #1 Living Abroad Publication

Hey, I’m Kaila. I’m a Canadian woman in her late 30s who’s lived abroad for over 16 years, in Japan, England, Thailand, Scotland and Mexico. I now live on a tropical island (Koh Phangan) in Thailand with my husband and five-year-old son Hudson. You can learn all about me and a synopsis of my life abroad here.

Having lived my entire adult life abroad, having experienced so many milestones and learned so many life lessons on foreign soil, and being a professional writer myself, I have long had the itch to record my stories in blog and book format.

And I use this blog to share those stories with you!

What can you expect from this Substack?

Introducing a new feature! Tuesday Threads, where we discuss aspects of living abroad, sharing our top tips, hacks and hilarious stories with one another as a community. New topic every Tuesday. Read about it here.

Every Friday, I’ll post a new article about living abroad. Topics will range from raising kids abroad to staying healthy abroad, to finding a new social circle and learning a new language in a foreign country. The articles will be based on my own and other women’s experiences, as well as the research findings from the reading list.

I’m trying to be more regimented about this, so most months, the Friday articles will include:

1 Living Abroad Ledger where I delve into all the latest, most interesting and significant news about living abroad, from remote work opportunities, to visa information, digital nomad-friendly legislation and tools, and more. Here’s an example from March 2024.

1 Downloadable Guide to a topic that's widely applicable and of interest to those who live abroad. Here’s an example of a guide, The Complete Guide to Dengue 2024.

1 Life Update where I share the inside scoop on where I’m at in my life abroad. I may update you on our villa build, my new career as an artist, take you through a day in my life, or something else altogether. Depends what inspires me that week. Here’s an example of a day in the life post I wrote in 2023.

1 Guest Post or Repost of a Past Popular Article: You’ll either hear from someone new, living in a different part of the world doing something totally different from me — like this day in the life of a hustling home designer in Japan, or I’ll re-share a past article that performed well and breathe new life into it.

I make 50% of my articles free for anyone, and the other 50% are available only to my paid subscribers.

Memberships cost just $5/month, or $50 for the year.

You don’t have to subscribe to read this blog. But if you like what you read and would like to support me for my work, you can subscribe to a free or paid membership below. Each subscription is like a vote in favour of this blog, and encourages me to keep going and write more.

I appreciate each and every one of you!

A word of caution

As someone who’s lived all of her adult life outside of her home country, I need to be super real with you before we go any further. Living abroad is not all sunshine and rainbows (though, if you move to a sunny destination, you’ll certainly get more of those). 

Because the fact is that choosing to live your life abroad means you’re not taking an easy path. (Stay with me…)

You’ll no longer be within a five-minutes’ drive of your high school besties. 

You’ll probably be in a different time zone to your parents, which can make regular calls more challenging. 

You’ll (likely) need to learn a new language. 

You’ll need to get used to the unusual (to you) ways your new home countrymen do things. 

You’ll need to operate in a new currency. 

You’ll have to learn and abide by new and sometimes strange laws. 

You may need to learn to drive on the other side of the road. 

You’ll often have to give up modern conveniences like your weekly grocery delivery and bill-splitting apps that connect to your bank account. 

If you have kids or decide to have kids while abroad, you won’t have the crucial family support that so many rely on to help them through the most difficult infant phases.

But the biggest challenge that I’ve personally experienced living abroad after all these years is this: feeling lonely and disconnected.

The harsh reality is that you’re one of the small percentage of people like you with the spark to make such a huge leap. And this fact means that you will likely have a small number of people like you living in wherever you decide to live. 

Now, of course you don’t only want to be friends with people like you. Of course you want to branch out, make friends with the locals, learn to speak their language, get drunk and sing karaoke with them (I don’t know what it is, but every place I’ve lived abroad except for the UK loves karaoke). 

And of course you’ll want to make friends with fellow expats who are nothing like you. After all, you moved abroad to open yourself up to new experiences, right? 

But here’s the thing: most people need to find kinship with friends who speak their own language. And I’m not talking a verbal language necessarily here (though speaking the same native language is really helpful for connecting). I’m talking about people who come from a similar background to you, and with whom you can relate to on a much deeper level. 

That’s where the loneliness and disconnectedness comes in. 

And man, it can be haaaaaaaard. 

Which is precisely why I decided to create this community and start this blog in the first place: so that we can plan for and live our lives abroad with all their vibrant, funny, frustrating, inspiring richness that we left home to experience.

Because there is something terribly therapeutic about knowing that you’re not the only one experiencing this thing. That you’re a part of a community of women who get it and will support you through it. And having guides for navigating every aspect of life abroad is something we could all use, isn’t it?

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