The outgoing president of Families in Global Transition, Matt Neigh, opened the eighth FIGT conference in Houston on March 29 with the words: "We are a universe of strangers. You can feel closer to people here than you do your own relatives."
It was a sentence that summed up both the expat family experience and the work that FIGT does in helping to cope with it. The three objectives of the conference were to "educate, equip and empower" those who came to make "healthy choices".
Executive Director Joyce Blake predicted that the conference would be "filled with serendipitous meetings". And by the end the delegates I talked to felt energised by what they had learned from a raft of renowned speakers who simply shared what they knew.
It can be hard keeping things fresh in a conference's eighth year. Around a third of the attendees were newbies, but the rest were returners. It was vital that new topics were found, which is why it was so refreshing to see Marian Weston, Expat World contributor and author of a new book, Alone At Home , speaking about short-term assignments.
Write stuff: expat authors (from left)
Marian Weston, Jennifer Patterson
and Toni Summers Hargis at the FIGT conference
In addition, the cross-sector dialogue panel saw representatives of the five major expat "groupings" - corporate, military, mission, diplomatic and academic - discuss how their sector handled unexpected repatriation due to evacuation, divorce or death.
And when the "teen panel" were asked what two to three things they wished adults would understand about how it feels to keep moving, a hush descended on the parents in the room.
"I wish that other adults without global experience would understand that the US is not home," said one. "Home is a concept, not a place."
"But I want roots, I'm sick of home being just a concept," interjected another. |
