Why have we moved back to our home country?

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Our daughter Lena spoke to her English friend last night and I overheard a small part of the conversation:

Friend:

- I wish you were here at school with us, why did you have to go to Poland?

Lena (without any hesitation):

- Because I used to live here and I wanted to come back. Because my family is here.

 

Simple, eh?

I wish it was so simple for us adults! 

 ***

Why did we move back to Poland after five years of living in England?

We enjoyed our life in Liverpool, treated it as home and put down roots there. We never considered or discussed going back to Poland, it didn’t seem like an interesting option for us. We’re also not in love with our home country and were never one of these emigrants who think the grass is greener, the sun is warmer, and people are nicer in their home country. Or one of these emigrants, who are in Britain only for ‘a moment’ and dream every day of going back ‘home’. Never.

And yet – we suddenly moved back to Poland.

If I was to write a list of reasons for staying in England and a list for moving back to Poland, the first one would be very long. All the objective things such as career options, English education for our kids (which we’re fans of, as you can read here), bilingualism, growing up in diversity – all these things matter so much to us. They would be all on the list that says: STAY IN BRITAIN.

The list GO BACK TO POLAND would have one position only: FAMILY AND FRIENDS. Something you can’t measure. Something that eventually and surprisingly made us decide despite all the important things on the list that said STAY IN BRITAIN.

***

Priorities change in different moments in life. In this moment, we decided the most important thing for us as a family of four is to be close to our family and friends. Our older daughter was the one to trigger the first thoughts about it. Even though she spent most of her life in England, she always felt more at home in Poland, surrounded by many loving people. I was pregnant with our second baby, so it was a good moment for us as parents to reconsider what we want for our daughters and for ourselves. They say it takes a village to raise a child, and we were doing it for five years on our own. As parents we missed this big network of support we have in our home country.

It was a very difficult decision, but we decided to trust our instincts – they didn’t let us down last time.  

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