I moved abroad at 40 to escape loneliness. I didn't expect how hard it would be to go home.

"My late 30s were hard. Living alone in Cape Town, South Africa, I was holding out for a partner and children while my friends moved through weddings and baby showers without me. My parents and sisters (including my twin) lived in another province, freelance writing work was drying up, and as 40 approached, I felt stuck - single, lonely, and unsure what came next."

"So I made a deal with myself: If the picket-fence dream hadn't happened by 40, I'd leave. I didn't have a family of my own, but I had freedom, English, and nothing to lose. I packed up my life and accepted a yearlong EFL teaching job in Vietnam. I took a one-way flight to a city I'd never heard of in a country I'd never visited. The move was disorienting"

"Vietnam's humidity, population density, and traffic overwhelmed me. In Haiphong, the industrial port city in northern Vietnam that I now call home, foreigners are rare, and not many locals speak English. Some older locals don't take kindly to outsiders, so I had a few terse encounters with taxi drivers and traders. But after three months, the adventure took hold. I went from living and working alone to having housemates, socializing the way I had back at university, learning a new language."

My late 30s were hard. Living alone in Cape Town she held out for a partner and children while friends married and had babies. Family lived in another province and freelance writing work dried up. Approaching 40, she made a deal to leave if single, accepted a yearlong EFL teaching job in Vietnam, and flew one-way to Haiphong. The initial move was disorienting: humidity, traffic, language barriers, and some hostility. After three months she found housemates, a social life, learned Vietnamese, connected with students, stayed through COVID, traveled the country, taught hundreds, and developed belonging, yet now feels torn between two homes.

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