26 Nov 2024
Expat Support
Community Expat Support Health Mental health

Holding it lightly

Lately I have found myself comparing the process of an international relocation to that of childbirth. You forget how intensive it is and how much it hurts. And so, months or years later you merrily embark on the adventure again. I’m sitting in my car outside yet another apartment, waiting to go in for a […]

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Expat Support Health Mental health

Surfing between the known and the unknown

I’ve just uploaded twenty mediocre and imperfect selfies to an artificial intelligence app. It promises to take this base material and turn it into professional gold; sixty headshots worthy of a LinkedIn listing. I am hoping AI will professionalize these slightly scruffy and big nosed ‘Lysannes’ into the therapist you’ve always dreamed of employing. It’s […]

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Expat Support Health Mental health

Breaking free from toxic anxiety syndrome

Our inbuilt survival system doesn’t care whether you’re happy or sad. It just wants to keep you alive. And that’s hard work when we are floating in a collective fear-soup and our brains are overwhelmed. We have two smoke alarms in our brain. These ‘amygdala’ are constantly on the lookout for life-threatening danger. They don’t […]

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Expat Support Health Mental health

Navigating Life’s Transitions with Mental Well-being

Being in transit can be hard. I am letting go of one organised and happy existence, the result of hard work and adaptation, to once again move towards the unknown. I am heeding an inner call that trusts the process with more conviction than my own little ego-self feels right now. As I sit here, […]

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Finance Parenting Pregnancy & Baby Work & Money

Maternity & Paternity Leave in Sweden

Sweden has one of the most generous parental leave (föräldraledighet) systems in the world. Parents are given 480 days of leave per child, and 390 of these days are paid at a rate of 80% of your salary up to a capped limited of 1006 SEK a day. If you are coming from the USA, […]

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Expat Support Featured Parenting Pregnancy & Baby Services

Why a Doula is a Must for Birthing Abroad

Having moved from the UK to The Netherlands at the age of 22 with no job, nowhere to live, and a partner who’d never even visited the place, I figured that moving to Sweden thirteen years later would be easy. Sure, I didn’t speak much of the language, but I could understand some, and yes, […]

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Community Parenting

Hoping and coping with cancer – the story of Helene Rennervik

It is a true revelation every time I get the chance to meet people and listen to their life stories. Everyone has been struggling in life, some more, some less. Life doesn’t spare anyone, not even the children. What’s the meaning of it? Who knows the answer? What’s sure is that there are only two ways […]

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Art Therapist Emma Ehrenthal explains Art Therapy

What exactly is art therapy and who is it for? We asked Stockholm-based art therapist Emma Ehrenthal to explain to our readers what it is that she really does. As an artist, I am not great with words, I am a visual learner and I love teaching through experiences. But I quickly learned that it was […]

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International Parents Integration Project Stockholm launched

Surprising figures show that over 60%⑴ of expat working immigration assignments fail due to lack of support for the accompanying family. Despite the best intentions of integration projects, business and the families themselves, there is a clear lack of dedicated integration initiatives aimed at this particular demographic. The International Parents Integration Project Stockholm (The IPI […]

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Community Essentials Family Health Parenting

A jaggy issue – vaccines in Sweden

I seem to be talking a lot about chicken pox and vaccines at the moment. I guess it’s the age at which S is. It always comes up in conversation with other parents and S’s class seems to have had at least 3 bouts of chicken pox this winter. Fortunately (or, unfortunately depending on how […]

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