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I've written about obvious hurdles to immigration: legal, jurisdictional, logistical. The more I chat with folks who dream about moving to a different country, I realize that no one is acknowledging the psychological barriers to leaving.

Most people have created lives for themselves which are comfortable, or at least familiar. We invest time, money, and energy to create spaces that we (hopefully) enjoy occupying. It's hard to walk away from a good life, even if you wake up one day and realize you're surrounded by bad actors; a nest of evil. In this case, wouldn't you cling harder to the good things in your life, and be more reluctant to move on?

The Spectrum of Not-Leaving

Starting in 2025, in almost every conversation, I asked people how they felt about leaving the country. Were they open to the idea? Did they have a plan, maybe relatives overseas? Did they have an exit strategy?

This isn't a scientific ranking, but in my head it's convenient to sort people's answers into 4 buckets:

1. Doesn't plan to leave.
   "I'm not leaving."
   Includes folks inventing social proof: "No one I know is thinking about leaving."


2. Wishes to leave; believes there's not enough resources.
   "It's too expensive." "I'm barely making ends meet now." "I don't know how to do it."


3. Wishes to leave; defers responsibility with commitments.
   "I own a successful business here." "I have a 15-year-old." "I have such a strong friend group here."


4. Actively trying to leave.
   "I just learned that {{Country}} will pay you to relocate there, if you have certain skills. So I visited their immigration website, and it looks like I could really do this ..."

Frequently people daydream about leaving, while simultaneously feeling stuck: "I can't leave, because ____" or "it won't happen, because ____". People's brains frame the big move in disqualifying terms.

I think the harsh truth is, there will always be a reason to not do it. If you feel blocked by one obstacle, and that obstacle magically disappeared overnight: your brain would fill that void with another obstacle, and you would still feel blocked.

This is a perfectly human response to difficult decisions, and overwhelming amounts of stress. This does not suggest that you're "weak" or "ineffective", or whatever maladaptive buzzwords that capitalism and hustle culture have programmed into us. This shit is hard to contemplate. There is no painless way to teleport your whole life to a different locale. You already know that some things will be lost along the way.

Losing my possessions, and comfy routines, felt like a personal attack to me. It's irrational, but that was the overwhelming feeling I dealt with. The demand to forfeit my favorite things, places, foods, and easy access to people; it made me defensive and angry, on top of the maelstrom of emotions surrounding the moving process itself.

Things will be lost, in a literal sense. Some things, and connections, will probably be left behind forever.

The Purge

When I moved to Portland (circa 2002), all my worldly possessions fit inside a 4-door Ford Granada. 8 rentals and 2 home purchases later, I felt embarrassed when my husband and I rented an industrial dumpster to dispose of stuff (furniture, clothes, "art", etc), and we filled the dumpster to capacity. We ran out of room, in a big-ass dumpster. That's how much crap we were dragging around.

Then we moved to house #3 (Portland, again). It took one-and-a-half moving trucks to move our empire of junk. It was bizarre, realizing that our collection of things had somehow expanded further. (This is after filling that dumpster, mind you.) I felt like something was deeply wrong with this scenario, like a disease of "stuff" had infected our life.

Fast-forward to 2025, we're talking about a big move, and there's an urgent need to dispose of everything. What happens to all this crap?? We brought an estate sale executor to the house, and showed her our piles of possessions, room by room. Afterwards, she sat us down and delivered the verdict:

"Boys, you don't have enough valuable stuff to make an estate sale worthwhile."

BOYS

I HAVE SEEN YOUR STUFF, AND IT'S NOT EVEN THAT GOOD

It turns out that the best estate sales occur after a house is occupied for decades. (How many moving trucks is that?? I get dizzy comtemplating this.)

She proposed another plan: her crew could do a total cleanout, and keep everything (meaning: our stuff would be sold in an actual estate sale elsewhere, to recover the cleanout expense). Instead of charging us, she would pay us $400. Obviously the money is a pittance; if we had infinite time, we could eBay everything for a few thousand bucks, but we don't have time, do we? So this seemed like the best option.

One twist is that she photographed anything sale-worthy. Anything that wasn't photographed was still considered "ours", which is how some of my electronic "art" was gifted to Portland nerds. I'm happy it found good homes, but it's personally sad too: I spent/wasted so much time on these pieces; they broke; their LEDs burnt out; the whole hardware-hacking adventure didn't change the world like I imagined it would. It was a curious sidestep in my career, and now we've all moved on.

Say Goodbye

We weren't in the USA, when the cleanout happened. We were enjoying dinner in our Netherlands flat, when the crew arrived at the old house. I felt something like stability, like I had finally "let go", until my neighbor sent a picture of the carnage:



Yeah, it's gone. Thousands of dollars "invested" in clothes, technology, bicycles, luxury mattresses, mortgage payments for quirky estates. They were all temporary joys and conveniences. I didn't realize how quickly this truth would descend on me.

How many of these investments were "worth it"? If something had a lasting impact on my life, and made me a better person, or happier in the long term, then it's a win, yes? ... So, the honest answer is: not much. Definitely less than half.

This post is hard to write, because the whole affair still bothers me. I believed I could "let go" of my stuff and "reset" my life, and this was a necessary lie I told myself, to cope with the process of moving. It can't possibly be that easy, for anyone.

I took photographs and videos of a few things, to keep digital memories forever: a special quartz crystal, photo frames gifted from friends, a silly assemble-it-yourself plywood pinball machine, etc. I rediscovered forgotten objects that I once cared about (thanks, ADHD). Maybe it's easier to walk away from stuff if you have ADHD; your new obsessions will distract from the old psychic wounds? I hope so.

My original plan for the year 2025 was to exit my job around summer, then bum around Portland undoing the stacked stresses of the job: reconnecting with friends, and revisiting favorite hangouts. Then we'd move somewhere cheaper, in the USA; maybe Portland, maybe not, but I expected to take my time finding the right house, maybe a "forever home". This plan was concocted in 2024, when Vice President Harris absolutely destroyed the other guy in a live TV debate. So it seemed like the future was bright.

Things don't always go as planned, and everything surrounding you is temporary. I wish I had better advice to offer. Walking away from your life hurts. It was a messy exit; maybe it always is. I didn't reconnect with friends in the way I wanted. I miss my favorite restaurants, and fabric stores. You have to give yourself grace, and let your emotions run their course.

The good news is, you can look forward to new experiences on the other side. We just purchased e-bikes, and I pushed through my nervousness and pedalled around the city's proprietary bike lanes, for 30 whole minutes. It was awesome! We've been struggling this week, rebooting our lives in this barren townhouse, and we barely speak a word of Dutch. With the e-bikes, everything seems closer and more accessible. Also it's beautiful here, and the trees are full of wild parrots, so what can I say? Things will get better. Things will feel better, soon.

Letting go of your material life sucks. You're not alone in feeling this way. It's impossible to avoid this completely. That's really it.

When you're thinking about the pain, be sure to also consider the opportunities on the other side: New experiences. New favorite places. Maybe some old routines aren't benefiting you anymore; maybe you want to do better, or try something different.

My therapist once said that our brains tend to weigh negative emotions 2.5x stronger than positive ones. So for every reason to not move, see if you can counteract this by thinking of 2-and-a-half reasons to take the leap, and do it.

This post took days to write, because we're stressed and confused, and I rediscovered chardonnay. There's more to say on this topic (especially: what to bring! And, I mailed boxes from the USA to the Netherlands, which are currently stuck in customs, so I hope to have a happy follow-up post when they're cleared.) Stay tuned! ...