Women Who Walk

In this final episode of Women Who Walk, I bid farewell to podcasting (for now). Throughout the three seasons and 48 episodes, I’ve had the honor of interviewing globally mobile women, who shared stories of courage, adaptability, and resiliency moving multiple countries for work, for adventure, for love, for freedom. The podcast has not only connected me to the women and the worlds they inhabited at the time of the interview, but also brought to life the vivid landscapes, streets, and cultures in which they were immersed. To help me reflect on the significance of the past 2 years and how meaningful this creative journey has been, Fiona Marques, a podcaster and fellow Australian also living in Portugal, interviews me.

Jo Francis Penn is English, currently living in Bath. As an 11-year-old, she lived in Malawi, Africa; in her teens she lived for a short period in Israel; and as a young adult she lived in New Zealand and Australia. Once back in the UK, she made a career change, moving from tech into writing fiction and non-fiction. Her international relocations and ongoing travels inform her trove of fiction thrillers, and dark fantasy stories, and her entrepreneurial savvy with the business side of  writing informs her collection of non-fiction books. Jo is also an avid walker, often solo-hiking long distances. And in this episode we talk about the circumstances that lead Jo to walk three ancient way walks, including the Camino from Porto in the north of Portugal, to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, and her recently-released, aptly titled memoir, Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned From Walking Three Ancient Ways.

Joyce Agee is originally from the US. Currently she lives a couple of hours southeast of the Australian city of Melbourne. Her childhood was peripatetic with her family moving every couple of years. As is often the case with individuals who moved frequently as children, Joyce continued to move, relocating internationally once she'd graduated university in the mid-70s, building a successful career as a freelance photographer in London. She says, "Freelance photography is the perfect career for anyone accustomed to moving frequently. It follows the same learned pattern. We arrive, we do the job, and then we depart." From London she moved to Australia, and then back to the US, and then back to Australia. From her website: "Moving internationally four times has tested my newcomer survival skills. Fortunately, words and images can surmount different time zones and cultural shifts." With that in mind, this past year, Joyce released her first book, The Newcomer's Dictionary, which she describes as the A to Z of words that explore aspects of relocation.

Founder of The Black Expat and The Global Chatter Podcast, American Amanda Bates, talks about her cross-cultural experiences growing up in an immigrant community in the US and moving in her tweens to her parent's West African passport country, Cameroon. She explains how and why as an adult she was in the perfect position to change perceptions of black and brown global mobility, especially for folks of color who historically, have not been afforded the opportunity to see themselves represented as expatriates.

Wiebke Anton is German – from a city that was formerly part of the communist state of East Germany. She’s a PhD in Political Science and her dissertation is on the Discourse of Russia in the European Parliament. But Wiebke deviated from academia into a career as a Mediator-cum-Certified Relationship Coach for Expat Couples. In the following interview, she explains how her heritage inspired her interest in Eastern European & Soviet history and how her skill as a political discourse analyst informed and encouraged her transition into work as a relationship coach, and how living in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan – part of Soviet Union until 1991 – was the motivator and inspiration behind her co-creating the Expat Couples Summit. 

British-Italian-Brazilian, @JaiaSowden, references three generations of her family moving countries as a "tradition," even proposing that moving countries is "in their blood," and that putting down roots "would feel claustrophobic." Jaia is the daughter of my Episode 41 guest, Tabitha Sowden, and certainly there are overlaps in their stories, such as relocating from Milan, Italy to the UK at around 17, where both mother and daughter finished secondary school. But from the UK, Tabitha ultimately went South, falling in love with Brazil, and a Brazilian, Jaia's father. In contrast, Tabitha went north from the UK, falling in love with the Nordic countries Denmark and Sweden, becoming proficient in the Swedish language. Jaia says it was her grandparent's move from the UK to Italy, when Tabitha was two-years-old, that put this family in motion.  And "It's one of the best legacies," she says. 

International mobility is in many ways a privileged one. Yet there is a price to pay and that is the sadness and grief that comes with having to say goodbye, whether you're the one that's staying, or the one that's leaving. Recently, a young woman who was my Episode 25 guest, and who has been my right-hand helper and support person for upward of 5 years, emigrated to the US, where her extended Ukrainian family lives. Elisabeth's departure from Portugal opened flood gates of grief because I was losing someone who had become like family. Her leaving also triggered an acute sense of loss, which I'd never fully processed, over the many friends I've made here who in recent years, have moved onto new lives in other countries.

Tabitha Sowden's story of country hopping is reminiscent of today’s Gen Z digital nomads. But Tabitha’s a Gen X’er, born in 1966, and as a young adult in the 1980s, she was moving with ease between countries, not with her laptop and IPhone, since there wasn’t the technology that’s available today, but with her handcrafted jewelry, which she made in Brazil, and sold at markets in London, Milan, in Germany and back in Brazil. She says it was all a bit hippy’ish, but in-keeping with the time. Now living in Lisbon, she says she's too used to upping and moving to put down roots, but nevertheless, she's not feeling the urge, even after 7 years in Portugal, to move again, well, not yet, anyway.

Originally from Massachusetts, Elizabeth (Liz) Shick began her international journey as a young college student when in the mid 1980s, majoring in Africana Studies, she spent a year at university in Tanzania. Thereafter, she went on to obtain a Master’s of International Affairs in Economic and Political Development at Columbia University. This opened the door to a career in humanitarian affairs and development with country postings in The Gambia, Angola, Mozambique, Italy, Malawi, Myanmar, and Dhaka, Bangladesh, where Liz, along with her Italian-Australian husband, is currently living and working. While living in Rome, she took a creative writing course. A year later and living in Malawi, she began her first novel. Liz’s Malawi novel was not published, but her second novel, The Golden Land, inspired by six years living in Myanmar, won the 2021 Association of Writers and Writing Programs Prize for The Novel.

Rosemary Gillan grew up in India in the 1960s. A child of mixed-race parents, she was called “Anglo-Indian.” At 13, her family immigrated to Australia where she was called "small and dark." In her late 20s, Rosemary's international relocations began when she married. Over a 16-year period she moved 12 countries with her then hotel-manager husband. Along the way they had two children. But when her marriage ended, and her children had launched, with her IT work, she moved two more countries. Rosemary has documented the highs and lows of her peripatetic life in her writing, including contributions to a number of expat anthologies. In this episode we talk about her heritage, the discrimination her family encountered in India and the discrimination her family then encountered in Australia in the 1970s, and how feeling different, like an outsider, was somewhat diminished as a result of finding her tribe and a sense of belonging as an expat.