Welcome to Go Wander, Beehappy! I’m glad you’re here. First an introduction.
Let me step back a little. My name is Diana and I am a life-long immigrant and an expat mombie. I am a Belorussian-Jewish-Israeli-Canadian resident of California. If that sounds like a mouthful that’s because it is. I moved to Silicon Valley in California with my husband and first child in the summer of 2015 from Toronto, Canada. Toronto is the place that I have called my home for almost 20 years. My family immigrated to Canada from Israel where we lived for 7 years, in a beach town called Hadera. I have very fond memories of growing up in Israel and still have a lot of extended family there. We immigrated to Israel from Minsk, Belarus. I have very few memories of Belarus itself. I was 6 when we left, I almost finished first grade there. Most of my memories are of family and friends, not really of the place.
Fast forward to now. Becoming a new mom is a huge adjustment. Moving to a new place as a parent is (obviously) very different than moving as a child. We made the move to California because my husband got a dream job opportunity he could not pass up. I gave up my career when we moved – at least for the time being. I’m hoping I will be able to pick it back up eventually. We have also welcomed another baby into our lives and now I am the proud mama of two little girls. One of whom is already a dual citizen herself. Our family has experienced a lot of important and huge life events in the past few years which resulted in a lot of excitement but also some identity crises. Still, I’m very proud of us and how we have all handled these scary changes.
Having lived in so many places and being so many things, sometimes I feel like an outsider. I am not from any one place. The place where I was born is not the place I call home. The country where I was born, USSR, no longer exists. Often times when people ask the seemingly simple “Where are you from?” I am rendered speechless. In that moment I am evaluating whether the appropriate move is to answer with a simple “Toronto” or whether my relationship with that person warrants unloading my entire life story on them.
At other times I feel like a citizen of the world. In a way, the more you move around the more you realize that most people just want the same things in life: They want to do meaningful work. They want to keep their children safe and happy and healthy. They want to have food on the table and a bed to sleep in. They want to have friends and family with whom to share life’s ups and downs.
So now I want to share a little bit of my life with the world. This is the story of multiple-immigrations. The story of motherhood. The story of my journey from working-mom to domestic-management-engineer(TM). This is my story.
P.S. Follow me on instagram @6eehappy
love it 🙂