Synopsis:

Illness, grief, ageing parents, dangerous situations and mental health struggles are part of life and will eventually touch most couples — including those living apart because of work. In some professions, such as humanitarian work, foreign service, military or high-travel careers, these pressures are not exceptional but part and parcel of the lifestyle itself. This episode explores some of the deeper, often overlooked realities faced by couples trying to remain connected and resilient through seasons of crisis and separation.

Other situations can arise in travel: riots or security issues in-country of travel, that ‘makes the news’, visa issues and night in jail, travel to where insurance will not cover, travel outside of zone of communication.

8 lessons from Chapter 4 ‘When Storms Come’ of the book Holding the Fort Abroad

Build a “Crisis Agreement” Before You Need One

Don’t wait until someone is sick, stranded or grieving to decide how you will function as a couple. Discuss practical questions in advance:

• What would trigger an evacuation?
• When does work stop being the priority?
• Who flies where in an emergency?
• What happens if one partner cannot travel home quickly?

Couples often assume they are on the same page until a crisis exposes very different expectations.

The Travelling Partner Is Still Part of Caregiving

Distance does not remove responsibility.

Holding the Fort Abroad, Chapter 4, p101-102

Even when one partner is abroad, they can still:

• monitor ageing parents through regular calls
• notice emotional or cognitive decline
• coordinate care remotely
• emotionally support the caregiving partner
• help carry the mental load

Care is not only practical. Emotional presence matters too.

If you are living something difficult while apart at the moment, how can the travelling partner be involved, even at a distance?

The “Holding the Fort” Partner Needs a Team, Not Hero Status

One of the hidden dangers of expat and travel-heavy life is becoming overly self-reliant.

In crisis, the strongest couples are usually the ones who already built:

• neighbour relationships
• school connections
• church/community ties
• emergency childcare options
• trusted medical contacts
• Paid help: parenting coaches, financial adviser, associations that offer help for free, home organiser, home help, administrative assistant

Isolation turns manageable crises into overwhelming ones.

Who is in your team? What support would be helpful other than home help or babysitting/childminding?

Re-Entry After Crisis Matters

When a travelling partner finally comes home after illness, grief or emergency, couples often assume relief will instantly follow. Instead, re-entry can be surprisingly tense.

The partner at home may have developed survival routines and emotional armour. The returning partner may arrive exhausted and unsure how to step back in.

Couples need to consciously make space for reintegration instead of assuming it happens naturally.

Trauma Travels Home Quietly

Dangerous jobs do not only affect the person travelling. Trauma often enters the home silently through:

• withdrawal
• irritability
• emotional numbness
• hypervigilance
• difficulty reconnecting

Many globally mobile families normalise this because “the mission matters.” But unprocessed trauma eventually affects the marriage and children too.

Holding the Fort Abroad, Chapter 4, p106-107

Long-Distance Families Need Different Definitions of Strength

Strength is not always:

• coping alone
• never crying
• handling everything perfectly
• pushing through exhaustion

Sometimes strength is:

• calling a helpline at 3am
• admitting you are overwhelmed
• postponing big relationship decisions during crisis
• asking someone to pick up your children
• seeking outside help before things collapse

Watch for “Compressed Pressure”

In globally mobile life, crises rarely arrive one at a time.

You may simultaneously be:

• solo parenting
• caring for ageing parents
• dealing with medical systems
• grieving
• navigating international logistics
• managing work travel
• supporting children emotionally

The problem is not always one dramatic event. It is cumulative pressure with no recovery time in between.

Don’t Make Permanent Decisions Inside Temporary Storms

One of the wisest insights in the chapter is that extraordinary stress distorts perspective.

Couples often question:

• the marriage
• the expat life
• the travel arrangement
• themselves

during seasons where nobody is functioning normally.

Holding the Fort Abroad, Chapter 4, p99

“Don’t take drastic action if exceptional circumstances strain your couple and bring difficulties between you,” cautions Béatrice de Carpentier. “These difficulties, although real, are exacerbated and may not reflect you as a couple in ‘normal’ circumstances. Wait until things calm down.” Stephen Covey writes in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People of the moment that changed his life. He was perusing books in a library when he came across this statement: “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” It is also a useful principle when responding to a crisis. Pause, just pause, even for a fraction of a second. Remember, in that time, to include yourself in the response-scenario.

In the next episode

Chapter 5 is on Parenting Together. (Chapter 5) The RC has a workshop about that too.

Contact Rhoda: [email protected]

Receive news regularly on new episodes of HTFA Podcast and on new events and resources. Subscribe to my newsletter.

Buy the book: Holding the Fort Abroad

Your partner's job opportunity in another country seemed like an exciting idea, but lengthy work assignments mean you're holding down the family fort - alone.

OR Your partner is working and living in another country, and you feel like you are shouldering all the home responsibilities alone.

You may be wondering:

• How can we be a family when we're miles apart?
• Can I cope, alone, when troubles arise?

I believe there are answers to the above questions, and the answers start with you. In this context, it's more important than ever to invest in yourself, to care for yourself, to set your own goals and to watch yourself grow. Equally important is to nurture your relationship with your partner and learn to parent together.

"In our response lies our growth and our freedom. It's also a useful principle when responding to a crisis. Pause. Just pause, even for a fraction of a second. Remember in that time to include yourself. In the response scenario."

Welcome to Holding the Fort Abroad, the podcast for families where one parent works away and for those who support them. I'm Rhoda Bangerter, here to help you build connections across the distance.

I'm in the middle of a podcast series based on my Holding the Fort Abroad book. Starting at episode 91, we looked at the emotional load for the home-based parent. Then episode 92, the professional side for the home-based parent, because the book really was based from the home-based parent point of view because that's what I was

touch most couples.

Including those living apart because of work. And in some professions such as humanitarian work, foreign service, military, high-travel careers through high-risk locations, these pressures are part and parcel of the, the job. This section explores some of the deeper, often overlooked realities faced by couples trying to remain connected and resilient through seasons of crisis and separation. The difficulties, the

storms if you will, that can happen when just as part of life, and then there's things that can happen because of certain professions or being in professions that take you to high-risk situations. Other situations can arise in travel like riots or security issues in the country of travel, maybe something you couldn't plan for, something that makes the

news, It could be visa issues. One of the participants in, for my master's, he'd grown up, it was a study on children who'd grown up with traveling parents. And he said his father spent a night in jail because of some, not customs, but visa issues. And their parents hadn't told them at the time.

They only found out much, much later. There could be travel to where insurance will not cover. There could be outside a zone. There could be travel outside a zone of communication, which happens less and less these days, but it can still happen where suddenly there is no communication with the parent or the partner who's gone. So you

might be able to tap that in Google and say, okay, what do we do? And you might get some generic advice or some ChatGPT advice. These are 8 lessons specifically pulled from chapter 4, When Storms Come, of the book Holding the Fort Abroad, and it's lessons that really have been confirmed over the years of me doing this and speaking to people who live it.

Number 1 is— and I'll also be reading snippets of chapter 4—

number 1 is build a crisis agreement before you need one. Don't wait until someone is sick, stranded, or grieving to decide how you will function as a couple.

Discuss practical questions, for example, if you're in a situation where things are escalating, maybe, or your partner is in a place where things are escalating, what would trigger an evacuation? You may be part of an organization that will trigger the evacuation. You may want to think, okay, is there something like a red line that will be crossed that means that we will take that decision? When does work stops being the priority? Who flies where in an emergency? What happens if one partner cannot travel

home quickly, right? It's different scenarios. It doesn't mean bad things are going to happen. But think about what potential crisis could happen. It could be something at home. It could be a parent has a crisis. It could be the traveling partner who maybe falls sick, needs to come in. Just see if you've got the numbers, see if you've got what you need, see if there's anything you need to agree on before it happens.

Number 2, the traveling partner is still part of caregiving, and that's a big one. I think sometimes, especially— so I had it with aging parents, or if you're looking at taking care of children, you think, oh, the traveling partner's busy, which they are. Traveling partners gone, which they are, but does that mean that they have no responsibility about what's happening? Let me read here from page 101, 102 of Ageing Parents. Quote,

to care for those who once cared for us is one of the highest honors, end quote. Tia Walker. We will need to keep an eye on my parents, says Olivier to me as he is about to board a plane for his next business trip. I will need to keep an eye on your parents, you mean, I reply, smiling, gently correcting his assumption that we would both be taking

care of them. As we discuss his parents' declining health and what we would need to watch out for, I realize that he's right.

We need to do this together. Being miles away from his parents doesn't mean that he can't make sure they're well and that we can't work as a team on this. We agreed there and then that I will visit my parents-in-law every 2 weeks with the boys, and he will call them once a week to talk. He will tell me if he felt there was something that I needed to follow up on. As it turns out, he called his parents one Sunday morning only to be

passed to a neighbour who told him the situation was bad and we needed to intervene immediately. My mother-in-law had weakened so much in the few weeks since I had last seen her that she needed help at home, my father-in-law having not been able to help for years. As I also help my own mother from far away, I'm learning that there are

plenty of things you can do to help an aging parent even from abroad. Play online games, sit by the phone while they fall asleep.

I got all teary-eyed on that role reversal. Call during the hardest part of their days, order any special items or foods they need, or so much more. My mom was having trouble falling asleep. As I know that she grew up by the sea, I bought her a noise machine so she could listen to the waves. She loves it so much she bought herself another one so she can listen downstairs too. " So just a reminder here to think, what could the traveling partner be involved with in maybe the care of a loved one or in

a crisis situation if you are in as something difficult.

Lesson 3, and these lessons will be in the show notes if you want to take notes, but if you're in a car or something. Number 3, the holding the fort partner needs a team, not hero status.

One of the hidden dangers of expat and travel-heavy life is becoming overly self-reliant. In crisis, the strongest couples are usually the ones who have already built neighborhood relationships, school connections, spiritual community ties, emergency childcare options, trusted medical contacts, paid help. Now paid help, often we think of babysitting, childcare, home help, but there's also parenting coaches that can help us maybe with a child who's struggling and they can help us see our approach and how we're doing things And we could have a financial advisor. We can find associations that often help for free. And that actually could be part of lesson number 1 about having

some sort of crisis agreement, but also like a crisis list. We thought, okay, who would we call if I felt sick as the home-based parent? Because sometimes I felt like I don't know anybody. And if I fall sick and he's gone, Who do I call? What do we do? That can be sometimes difficult, but there are associations that offer help in some countries, in some cities. It's worth finding out about them.

You could find a home organizer, someone to help you organize boxes from. if you've

like we, when we moved, we had, oh, we had so many boxes and he was gone.

5 years ago, 6 years ago, I would have said I'll do it all myself. This time I

was like, no way, I am getting help. So I found someone, thank goodness. Home help, an admin assistant maybe. There are some amazing ones online who can help you sort out paperwork. Sometimes paperwork in another language can be very difficult. Finding maybe somebody who can help with that. It takes courage to ask for help, and also

sometimes finding the right person who will help and not sort of force something down that you don't want, or things like that can be tricky.

But I think whether you're, I would say, just holding the fort, a home-based partner, Or whether you're in, especially if you're in a crisis or, um, something that is very, very

intense emotionally, um, just for help. I always liken it to, um, carrying boxes. You know, we never expect ourselves to carry more, more than a few boxes, and then we just pile on another one and another one, and we're like, why, why, why is it going all over the place? Well, yes, because we need to maybe delegate a box or put a box down for now,

or ask someone to help, uh, with a box. And I think also what's helped me is asking someone to kind of brainstorm with me, even if it's someone on the phone who's not necessarily with me, um, in the same location, but someone I'm close to. And I'll say, listen, this is what was going on. I don't know this, I don't know that. Can you just help me see clearly a little bit here? Because I, I'm trying to Figure this out. And usually then a few of us can come up with some good ideas.

So have a crisis agreement, involves the traveling partner and the traveling partner getting involved, getting a team together. Number 4, re-entry after crisis matters. So if there's been an illness or grief or an emergency and the traveling partner finally comes home, Couples often assume relief will instantly follow. Instead, reentry can be

surprisingly tense. The partner at home may have developed survival routines or emotional armor. The returning partner may arrive exhausted and unsure how to step back in. Couples need to consciously make space for reintegration instead of assuming it happens naturally, and just remembering that it's going to take time. You've been through some upheaval.

And it's going to take some personal processing and maybe some spaces where you'll be able to talk. We talk very well as a couple when we go for walks, and you'll have, I'm sure, your specific way of processing as a couple as you need to talk.

Number 5,

Dangerous jobs. If your partner, or if you're the one who's traveling and

you have a job that involves seeing a lot of suffering, a lot of trauma, or something has happened, maybe an act of God, as we say, something like a natural disaster, you may find it hard to come back home. You might want to withdraw, be irritable.

There might be some emotional numbness, some hypervigilance, some difficulty reconnecting. Many globally mobile families normalize this because the mission matters, but unprocessed trauma eventually affects the marriage and the children too. And here I'd like to read from pages 106 and 107. "When Olivier was doing

humanitarian fieldwork, we would often host dinners where a dozen or so seasoned humanitarian workers would share stories of their times in various countries. Some stories were funny as they recounted their silly blunders in an overseas location. A vegetarian in the group recalled how once she had purposefully arrived late at a festive meal she had been invited to so that she wouldn't have to decline eating meat, only to

find that they had waited for her. Other stories were harrowing.

I remember the time they reminisced about being teleported on the top of a mountain and having to hike the rest of the way in the freezing cold. with heavy supplies of blankets and food in order to help inmates in a prison, or in war-torn countries when mothers pleaded with them to take their children and tried to physically force them into

the car as the time came for the humanitarian workers to leave. It amazes me that Olivier and his team were never debriefed by a mental health professional on their return from difficult trips, or at the very least offered the opportunity to speak to one. If they were having trouble processing the violence and the inhumanity they were

experiencing, It seems they would offload amongst themselves. It was naturally often difficult for Olivier to adjust on his return from these kinds of trips. He would often be silent, withdrawn, sad, and wouldn't necessarily want to burden me with his stories. When he did open up, sometimes I had to stop him as I just couldn't handle the trauma

he would recount seeing. He would hold his children that much closer to tell them how much he loved them."

There were so many stories he wasn't allowed to tell or couldn't bring himself to. The humanitarians and those working in difficult war-torn countries carry a heavy burden and have earned my utmost respect.

Number 6, long-distance families need different definitions of strength. Strength is not always coping alone, never crying, handling everything perfectly, pushing through exhaustion. Sometimes strength is

calling a helpline at 3 AM, Admitting you are overwhelmed, postponing big relationship decisions during crisis, asking someone to pick up your children, seeking outside help before things collapse.

Number 7, watch for compressed pressure. In globally mobile

life, crises rarely arrive one at a time. You may simultaneously be parenting apart, caring for aging parents, dealing with medical systems, grieving, navigating international logistics, managing work travel, and supporting children emotionally.

The problem is not always one dramatic event. It is cumulative pressure with no recovery time in between. So if you feel like you're struggling because it was already hard and then something happened and you didn't have much margin, just know that I understand and that it is a compiling of multiple things. That's why it's so important to

have more margin, as much as you can allow yourself and if possible

when things are even, so that when something does happen— it's hard enough to get that margin in, um, but so that if, if there is something— for, for us living abroad and apart, it does It basically adds in logistics, in emotion, in trying to stay grounded. It's going to take more effort. And

Number 8, don't make permanent decisions inside temporary storms. So during a crisis, what normally happens is there's a crisis and the

life that we know is different. Then there's some sort of reorganization that happens to be able to cope with that crisis, and then there's some sort of leveling out.

And one of the wisest insights from the chapter that was told by one of the therapists I interviewed, she said extraordinary stress distorts perspectives. And during seasons when nobody is functioning normally or there's something abnormal, something not

very normal going on, couples often question the marriage, the expat life, the travel arrangements, and themselves. And I'll just read here the quote from page 99. "Don't take drastic action if exceptional circumstances strain your couple and bring difficulties between you, cautions Béatrice de Carpentier. These difficulties, although real, are

exacerbated and may not reflect you as couple in normal circumstances. Wait until— normal in quotation marks, normal circumstances. Wait until things calm down, end of

quote. Stephen Covey writes in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People of the moment that changed his life.

He was perusing books in a library when he came across this statement, quote, Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. End quote. It's also a useful principle when responding to a crisis. Pause. Just pause, even for a fraction of a second. Remember in that time to include yourself in the response scenario.