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Life transitions

Moving Abroad Journal

A journal for remembering what it felt like to leave, arrive and slowly build a new sense of home.

Before you start

There is no right way to complete this journal. Write a sentence, fill a page, skip a question or return to it later. Use it to notice what you don't want to forget.

I’ve moved country twice: once at twenty, with no money and no real idea what I was doing, and once at thirty-five, with work already arranged and everything organised in advance. I expected the second one to be easier. In the part that mattered, it wasn’t.

Both times I told myself I’d be back soon. Both times I pictured the best version of what was coming and never once the worst. And both times, what surprised me most was how much I ended up doing alone, even when I wasn’t literally alone.

This journal follows the arc of a move rather than a calendar: the weeks before you leave, the first days, the first months, and the point a year later when you can finally see what shifted. A few of the questions are uncomfortable on purpose. Those are the ones I’d most want to be able to read back.

You can read every prompt here and write on screen, or print the PDF and fill it in by hand. The questions are the same either way.

What's inside

  1. Before the move

    Three questions to answer while the outcome is still unknown. The one about coming back is the one most people say out loud and almost nobody writes down — which is why it is worth having in your own handwriting a year from now.

    3 prompts

    • Why am I moving?
    • Whose decision was this, and do I agree with it?
    • When do I think I'll be back?

  2. What I'm leaving

    The list you make before leaving is never the list you would make afterwards. Writing it now is the only way to keep the first one.

    1 prompt · 2 short lists

    • What will I miss most?
    • People I want to stay connected with
    • Places I want to remember

  3. Expectations

    Most of us picture the best version of what is coming and rarely the worst. The second question is uncomfortable on purpose — it is the one memory refuses to reconstruct later.

    2 prompts

    • The best version of this I'm picturing
    • The version of this I'm afraid to picture

  4. Arrival

    The things that startle you in the first days become the things you stop noticing. You have about a fortnight to catch them.

    3 prompts

    • My first impression
    • The first thing that surprised me
    • Something about life here nobody warned me about

  5. First weeks

    Two of these are easy to answer and one is not. Practical difficulty and practical relief both fade fast once they are behind you.

    3 prompts

    • What feels unfamiliar?
    • What has been harder than I expected?
    • What has been easier than I expected?

  6. On my own

    This is the section most journals leave out. Arranging work in advance, having family waiting, knowing the language — none of that decides how much of this you end up carrying by yourself. "Very little" is a real answer here, and worth having on paper either way.

    3 prompts

    • How much of this am I doing on my own?
    • Who would I call if something went wrong tonight?
    • What do my evenings look like now?

  7. People and routines

    The first signs that this is becoming a life rather than a stay. They are small enough to miss entirely unless you write them down.

    1 prompt · 1 short list

    • People who have become part of this chapter
    • Something that has started to feel normal

  8. Three months later

    Far enough in for the novelty to be gone and the reality to have arrived. The last question deliberately repeats the earlier section, so you can compare rather than guess.

    3 prompts

    • What has changed since I arrived?
    • What do I understand now that I didn't understand then?
    • How has being on my own — or leaning on others — changed since the first weeks?

  9. Home

    Home is rarely the moment everything is resolved — more often it is the moment you notice you could resolve whatever turns up. Whether that is what home means to you is the page's actual question.

    1 prompt · 1 full page

    • What makes this place feel more like home now — if it does?
    • What can I handle now that felt overwhelming when I arrived?

  10. One year later

    The payoff of everything above. By now the hard parts look smaller than they were, which is exactly why the earlier pages exist.

    3 prompts

    • What did this move change about me that I didn't expect it to change?
    • What turned out to matter much more than I expected?
    • What would I tell someone arriving next week?

  11. Looking back

    Read page two again before answering these. The first question is the one people rarely say out loud; the second is the reason to have kept the journal at all.

    2 prompts

    • If I went back now, is there anything I would find difficult to explain?
    • What would I tell the version of myself who was about to leave?

Print it

The full template as a clean PDF, laid out for writing by hand.

Download the PDF

Free. No email required.

What to do with these pages

  • Keep these pages somewhere you'll come across them, not somewhere you'll file them.
  • You are not finished. Come back at the first weeks, at three months and at a year.
  • Before you answer the last page, read page two again.

Keep the story going

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