You Moved For This. So Why Does It Feel Like Falling Apart?

A few years ago I moved my family to Rwanda for a role that felt like the culmination of everything I had worked towards the prior decade. I finally felt proud of what I did, and worthy because of it.

When the job became untenable and I had to leave, I didn't just lose work. I lost the thing my sense of self had been built on. I didn't know who I was without it, or what I had to offer the world.

I've since seen this same collapse in others, particularly in people who change jobs or careers when making the move from the US to Europe. And the more time I spend away from a job that defined me, and the US, the more I see how easy it is to see this collapse as a personal failure.

Well, it's not. It's the predictable result of the culture that raised us.

Here is what it often looks like: You moveto Europe because you've reached a breaking point. Maybe you're seek a slower pace with more balance, more reasonable work hours and expectations, lower cost childcare, or a healthcare system that won't leave you in debt and schools free from active shooter drills. 

Some of these things are impossible to obtain right now in the US. The best option seems to be taking the hard step to move your family to a new continent.

But once the newness of the move wears off and you've settled in, something you didn't anticipate happens. The reality of building a new business or looking for work in an unfamiliar market, navigating a shorter school day, childcare that isn't set up yet, and a culture that moves at a different pace sets in.

You moved knowing your professional life would change, and you were ready for it, even a little excited. But without work you've lost structure, and a built-in community and purpose. 

You find yourself feeling like you're "just" managing the move, "just" handling the logistics of a new life in a new place, "just" keeping things running for everyone else, "just" having networking chats or working to build community.

Even though you wanted this change and intellectually know it's the right move, it's hard to shake the belief that you don't have anything "real" to  offer the world yet. That's when the collapse happens.

In the cerulean blue monologue in The Devil Wears Prada, Miranda makes the point that Andy didn't "just happen" to choose that sweater. A thousand decisions made by other people, years before, made it for her. The same is true here.

You didn't just happen to attach your self-worth to your work.

This loss of identity when your career shifts isn't an individual failing. It's the product of an American culture that has spent centuries worshipping work as proof of worth. The early Puritans' belief that hard work would lead to spiritual salvation has since secularized into the belief that you earn to prove you have worth.

Over 50 years, modern capitalism reinforced it. In 1970, Milton Friedman wrote that a corporation's only responsibility is profit, turning the humans doing that work into a (increasingly disposable) line item. 

GDP, the measure we use globally to track national success, doesn't count caregiving or the natural resources being extracted to make this level of production possible in the first place. 

Reaganomics in the 1980s led to unions losing power and tax cuts for the wealthy. Then Jack Welch made Friedman's approach the playbook for business success. Citizens United in 2010 gave corporations the same rights as people to influence elections, giving them even more power to shape American laws. And today, the AI race continues full speed ahead at high human financial cost, even as leaders agree we should slow down (but only if everyone slows down together).

With each decade, the message got louder: produce or you have no value.

"[work is] much more than how we earn a living. It's how we earn dignity: the right to count in society and enjoy its benefits. It's how we prove our moral character. And it's where we seek meaning and purpose, which many of us interpret in spiritual terms." - Jonathan Malesic

It's no wonder then that this identity collapse happens. If you grew up in America, or under American influence in another country, it can feel impossible to see yourself as having value when you aren't on a conventional path to success or earning what you think you "should" be. 

The work of untangling this within us isn't quick. Moving to Europe only makes the contrast in cultures stronger. Especially as globalization (and instagram) might have led you to believe that there aren't really big differences across many of these countries.

You can know rationally that your worth is so much more than your output, but still feel like you offer nothing as you're moving your kid from activity to activity or trying to fill a day that ends at two. 

This is where the hard, sometimes painful, work happens: figuring out what you actually value and what kind of life you want, and slowly learning to see yourself as more than what you produce. 

If you see yourself in this, know that you aren't alone. I wrote about my own version of this here. For myself, my goal isn't to stop caring about work or being less ambitious. It's to continue to build and grow my identity with enough layers that work is only one of them.