Notes from Barcelona

I took my son to Barcelona this summer, a city that, for a little while, I also called home. It was the first time in more than twelve years that I'd seen the building I used to live in. It felt strange. Familiar, but distant.

I became a mum at thirty, and this year my son turns ten.

Although I wasn't a particularly young mum, the years that followed brought challenges I could never have anticipated. Alongside some deeply difficult and traumatic experiences, my son watched me learn, adapt and begin again, more than once.

I remember giving myself permission to cry for exactly five minutes in the shower because life doesn't pause. A little boy still needed breakfast. He still needed his clothes washed, bedtime stories, cuddles, and someone to make him feel safe. So I cried, dried my face, and carried on.

He watched me move countries. He watched me go back to studying. He watched me build a business. He watched me make mistakes, change direction and keep going when things didn't go to plan.

For a long time, I carried an enormous amount of guilt.

Like so many of us, I spent years thinking about the mother I could have been instead of the one I was. I mourned the childhood I felt I hadn't been able to give him. I was ashamed of the opportunities we'd missed and of the version of myself I'd become.

During one of my therapy sessions, my therapist asked me a question that should have been simple.

"What do you enjoy?"

I had no idea. She asked what made me happy, what I wanted for myself.

Again, I had no answer.

Somewhere along the way, I'd stopped knowing.

Years of moving between countries and cultures. Years of adapting to new environments. Years of putting other people's needs before my own. Years of surviving rather than living. Without realising it, I'd lost sight of myself.

She suggested something that sounded almost absurd in its simplicity.

"Ask yourself every day," she said. "Who am I today? What do I enjoy today?"

It took me months to name one thing: I genuinely enjoyed drinking coffee. It sounds ridiculous now, but that's where I started. I also knew that music made me happy, something I had felt since I was a little girl.

But beyond that?

I had no idea who I was.

The second piece of advice she gave me was to ask the people who knew me best.

"What do you see when you think of me?" Almost everyone said the same thing.

Bravery.

It completely caught me off guard.

They spoke about moving abroad on my own when I was young. About dealing with incredibly difficult situations without having anyone to rely on. About travelling across the world alone with a toddler.

Getting lost in China with a one-year-old. Travelling through Taiwan with a pushchair, suitcases, and a little boy who found travelling particularly challenging because of his sensory difficulties.

I remember sitting there thinking, Really? That's bravery?

Because to me, it was just life.

What struck me most was the contrast. I struggled to tell you what my favourite food was.

But navigating unfamiliar airports with a buggy, luggage and a tired toddler felt completely natural. Travelling with my son was never easy. And yet, somehow, it was. Whatever happened, we'd figure it out.

Living abroad from a young age had taught me something I didn’t even realise I had learned: to trust myself.

Not because I always knew what I was doing, but because experience had shown me, again and again, that I would find a way, my way.

Perhaps I'd spent so many years focusing on everything I'd lost that I'd forgotten to notice everything I'd quietly built along the way.

Living in different countries didn't just teach me how to navigate airports, paperwork or unfamiliar cities. It changed the way I see the world.

The way we live isn't the way to live. It's simply a way to live.

There wasn't one definition of success. There wasn't one way to raise children, build relationships, celebrate, grieve, work or spend time together. There were countless ways of doing all of those things. I discovered foods I'd never tasted, traditions I'd never heard of and ways of thinking that challenged everything I'd taken for granted growing up.

It was incredibly freeing.

It taught me to question assumptions rather than hold onto them too tightly. To stay curious. To accept that two completely different ways of living can both be right. Looking back, I think that's one of the greatest gifts living abroad has given me.

And it's probably the greatest gift I've been able to share with my son.

For years, I measured myself against everything I felt I hadn’t been able to give him. I mourned the childhood I had hoped to create for him, the one I had pictured in my mind before life took a different path. There were years when I was simply doing my best to get through each day, years shaped more by survival than by choice.

But standing in Barcelona, watching my son wander through streets that once felt so familiar to me, I realised I'd been overlooking something important. From the very beginning, I'd been showing him a world much bigger than the one I grew up in.

I'd shown him that people speak different languages, eat different food, celebrate different traditions and see the world through completely different lenses. I'd shown him that there is rarely only one right answer. That difference isn't something to fear. It's something to be curious about.

The confidence to question rather than simply accept. The freedom to build a life that feels true to you, rather than one shaped by someone else's expectations.

I'm incredibly proud of that.

And while I can't rewrite the years that were difficult, I can keep sharing this part of myself.

My curiosity. My openness. My willingness to step into places that are unfamiliar. The belief that there is always more than one way to live, to think and to be.

Maybe motherhood is not about fitting into one perfect image. Maybe it is about showing up as a real person, someone who struggles, learns, changes, begins again and allows their child to see that growth is possible.

Perhaps I am not the mother I once imagined I would become.

But I am the mother my son has known. The one who kept going.

The one who showed him that life can change, that we can start again, and that there is always more than one way forward.