The 6 Phases of Immigration
A personal look at the emotional stages of starting over abroad — from the thrill of arrival to the quiet work of belonging.
Nate and I started researching moving to a European country in early 2022. We were planning a European vacation, and after spending weeks outlining our dream trip, we realized we wouldn’t be able to do it more than once.
We didn’t want to be an American family who visited Europe once and maybe, if we were lucky, be able to go again when we were older.
We wanted to travel more in Europe. We had already traveled the U.S. for a year in our RV with the kids, exploring national parks, small towns, and stretches of open road. But Europe had a different kind of charm… one we couldn’t shake. Through our research, we realized it could offer us so much more: a slower pace, deeper history, affordable healthcare as we age, affordable school for the girls and a chance to live differently.
Nate traveled more than I did as a child, I didn’t leave the U.S. until 2021. He’s given me so many firsts in my life, and visiting Europe was one of them.
We started researching what it could look like to move to Europe—where we’d go, how, and when. What would it take from us to make that happen?
We were in the process of getting our documents apostilled when Russia invaded Ukraine. In the months that followed, we got a little spooked. This was summer 2022, and we decided to put our plans on hold.
Then the election happened, and we asked ourselves what we were waiting for.
We wanted to travel more in Europe.
We wanted our kids to have a better education than what they were getting or could get in the U.S.
We wanted to live our values more closely to what we had in mind.
So we did it. I contacted the attorney I had previously engaged and started the process again.
We had no idea what it was going to be like once we landed, but in the years between our initial decision and booking our plane tickets, we consumed a ton of videos about the Netherlands. We found people who had done the same thing and did our best to read between the lines of what they were saying.
Some people online are inherently negative. Others are overly positive. So when consuming content about this kind of move, we tried to read down the middle.
We knew things wouldn’t be all roses and sunshine because we had hired professionals to help us—to give us the good and the bad.
I was recently reading a post from Clare O’Dea about the stages of immigration to a new country, and I couldn’t help but see myself in them.
The Honeymoon Phase
When we arrived, it was a rainy morning, and we were freezing. Having just come from a desert warming into summer, it was a shock to the system. It was early, and we were starving after a 13-hour journey, surviving mostly on airplane food and what snacks we could fit into our bags before takeoff.
Everything looked so different. Unlike visiting another American city where the same businesses line every street—the same big-box stores, the same signs, the same strip malls—The Hague looked and felt different.
We went from sand and things that wanted to kill you, to what felt like a small forest in the middle of a city. The greenery here is lovely. I’ve written about it before, but I still love how Dutch cities prioritize planting trees and laying grass-lined tram tracks. It makes the city feel softer, cooler, more alive.
Everything just felt novel, despite having watched hundreds of hours of walking videos of Dutch cities.
The U.S. is an infant compared to Europe, and the architecture here was something I was really looking forward to living amongst. The U.S. has its beauty, but the only places I found true beauty were the oldest cities—Philadelphia, New York, Boston, D.C. as well as the wild spaces and parks. Most towns in the U.S. are ugly, plastered with cheap strip malls and ads on anything you can put them on.
The honeymoon phase was bliss in many ways. We kept asking each other, “Did we really move to the Netherlands, having never been here before?”
The walkability, the bike lanes, the strawberries so fresh and sweet it’s hard to believe we’d been eating anything else. It all felt like the reward for every risk we’d taken.
The First Wobble
The first ripple appeared the minute we stepped into our new apartment. Built in the early 1900s, with no ventilation and having been closed for months, we were greeted by the smell of mold.
The landlord, while phenomenal, hadn’t had the place professionally cleaned before we arrived, and it wasn’t clean to a standard I’d ever accept.
The smell was odious, but the black mold under the sink was concerning.
We only had one bed, and it was too small for Nate and me to share comfortably. The girls slept on the couch for about ten days because we missed our IKEA delivery.
Top that off with the cold we picked up from travel and the jet lag—we were utterly miserable.
We pay $1,000 more in rent here than our mortgage in Tucson, and we had a bit of a “What have we done?” moment.
I knew the apartment was temporary. I could clean the mold, clean the place to my standards, but it was hard to watch the kids fall into sadness as they realized they wouldn’t see friends or family for a while. That wobble still shows up for me every day. We’ve gotten better, but it lingers.
Reality Bites
We booked a vacation for June, leaving almost a month to the day after arriving in the Netherlands. We hadn’t taken a vacation in two years, and the last one hadn’t ended well. We needed a break especially after the months of selling off our life again and moving across an ocean.
I worked my tail off getting everything ready for June and July so we could leave and disconnect.
But when we came home, reality hit hard — especially for me.
Nate enrolled in summer classes. The girls disappeared into Roblox, and I threw myself into work.
The bitter side of reality came when I started moving my business affairs over to my Dutch company.
The accountant I hired had an assistant who kept sending me VAT invoices for €450 a month—for nil filings. I may be American, and we may annoy some people, but no one in their right mind should pay that. I broke at that point. For two weeks in July, I barely slept. Panic set in and stayed for a while.
Between banking changes, bureaucracy, visas, and healthcare, it was overwhelming.
I threw myself into work while trying to balance everything else.
As a family, we started exploring The Hague more with beach trips, exploring new bike paths, joining a gym.
It took a while, but we found a rhythm.
Frustration
This is where we have been and may still be. It’s not all frustration and honestly, most of the news from the States only makes me more grateful we’re here.
Most of my frustration is about VAT (yes, still) and learning the language.
I get frustrated when I can’t find an item, or when it’s across town and takes half a day to track down because stores stock it but are out of stock. The big-box culture is still in my bones. It’s going to take years to unlearn.
Dare I Label This Next Phase Transition?
Once the kids started school in September, things began to shift toward routine. Nate and I both need that to feel grounded.
We’ve also met new friends and started cultivating those relationships.
People often say the hardest part of moving is the lack of community, and I can see why. We know making Dutch friends will take time, but we’ve met one kind couple whose kids are in our youngest daughter’s class. They’ve lived abroad too, so their children don’t yet speak Dutch either.
Tonight, I group-texted the women in my new friend group, inviting them out for drinks in a few weeks—just us, no kids, no husbands.
This feels like the start of the transition phase, even though Clare describes it differently. Maybe that’s the thing about these stages—they aren’t clean, or linear, or black and white.
So for now, we’re somewhere between frustration and transition headed eventually to comfort zone. Definitely not there yet, but closer.
Moving across a city is hard.
Moving across a state is hard.
Moving across a continent is hard.
Moving across an ocean? Not for the faint of heart.
I’m going to make tea and keep planning that night out with my girlfriends. You have no idea how happy it makes me to say that.
Until next time,
Heather
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