You are just moving to another country, not leaving the planet. With the email, Skype and Facebook, it’s easy to keep in touch with friends and family. Since I didn’t live in the same town as my daughter or my family, visiting them was always a plane ride away. Now, when I return each winter to work, I get to spend more time with my family than I did when I had a regular job and lived in Florida.
If your friends and family really object more than just missing you, remember each person has their own agenda and perhaps, your happiness is not be tops on the list. Some will be afraid for your safety, but don’t let others fears become your fears. Use the same precautions you would living anywhere in the USA, especially as a single woman.
As for security, I believe is it a myth. No matter how much planning, how much insurance or how much or lack of money you have, life still happens. Life is unpredictable. Good and bad things are going to happen regardless of where you live. People change, jobs come and go, the stock market can crash and people die. One of my favorite quotes is from Steve Jobs of Apple, “Remembering you are going to die helps you avoid the trap that you have something to lose.”
After my fiancé died, I felt like I had nothing to loose. My wall of resistance was like a crack in the sidewalk. If you believe that the life you have right now is as good as it is going to get, then your resistance to change is different. Once the pendulum swings and what once want comfy like an old shoe, now looks worn out and dumpy, then your resistance level changes. Always in life, we need consistency and inconsistency to be happy. Too much routine becomes boring and too much in consistency becomes frightening. A little of both is just right.
As for responsibilities, you are responsible for yourself first, and then friends and family second. Your job as a parent is raise independent productive members of society. Taking it past this teaches them that they can’t survive without you and that in some way they are handicap. If you have chosen to help out in a pinch that is one thing, but each person must stand on their own and live with their means. Some who have been given so much destroy it and others who have been given nothing thrive. Often, they are siblings; so parenting had nothing to do with it. If you have small children, of course you can take them with you and homeschool, I met many doing that while I liked on the sailboat. With the Internet it is quite easy and lots of on-line programs to help.
Wither you take action or not, choices will still be made and life will march on. There will never a perfect time and you will probably never think you have enough money, but there are many already many people living extraordinary lives abroad and each one of them just too the leap of faith and went. My motto, Keep it light and keep moving. Playing it safe is a dangerous game.
