Whenever they hear my accent, people ask me where I’m from and what brought me to Seattle. When I respond, “Microsoft,” I must add that I followed my husband — only to be identified primarily as a “trailing spouse” and often resenting the rest of the conversation. All of us who have moved with our partners, prompted by their careers, still have our own lives and dreams, the right to pursue them wherever we are in the world, and the need for a loving community to help us find new roots.
Therefore, in the decade since moving to the United States as a newlywed, I’ve had mixed feelings about the term “trailing spouse” and its evocation of being always a step behind, or even worse, dragged along. Growing up, I was always the one who liked to walk first: in my family, among friends in school, among colleagues, when I first started working. I was never afraid to raise my hand and blaze a trail that others will follow.
True to form, when my fiancé received a job offer contingent on relocating to Seattle, I was the first to embrace the idea of leaving our hometown of Belgrade, Serbia. For me, the unknown journey before us was a path of reinvention. To Marko, however, it seemed like an exile. He was reluctant, he was devastated — but he accepted, trusting in my excitement about the imminent adventure and that we would take this journey together. Over the years, in fact, he would complain that I had dragged him away from home. In a dark corner of his heart, he felt as if he were the trailing spouse on my dream of bending, stretching, and erasing the world’s borders.
As a writer, I know well that every story can be written in many ways, through different eyes. While my husband’s American experience might have felt like an exile, the same years for me were a heroine’s quest, a journey of finding my true self.
A path to becoming
We came to Seattle in Fall 2009, straight from our honeymoon. While Marko settled into his new work routine, I found myself walking around town with an overwhelming urge to rediscover myself. The continent-swap was a clean slate for me. I was free to do whatever I wanted; I was free to be whomever I dreamed of becoming.
For me, the move scored a near-ideal 13/15 on the Gupte Scale. It also helped that deep in my soul, I was already confident of my vocation. As a born writer, what did it matter where I lived? America was a land of infinite opportunities for a curious soul like me. I gathered information on writing courses and writers’ conferences, I subscribed to magazines and bought books on writing. I felt like a kid taken to a fair for the first time, eager to take in a vast assortment of choices. Soon, I enrolled in the University of Washington’s Creative Writing program and tripped over the first threshold — writing fiction in a foreign language!
There’s a button on the keyboard you can press to switch languages. Unfortunately, there isn’t a similar switch in a writer’s brain. Suddenly, I became mute, wordless. The world seemed erased entirely, as if someone had accidentally chosen the option delete all. Yet I continued with the writing course despite persistently doubting if my effort made any sense — what was the purpose of knowing the elements of the craft when I couldn’t use them?
As I began to feel lost in a faraway city, we had a daughter. An American and organically bilingual. Her mother used to be a writer before she switched continents following her husband’s career. Now she was a stay-at-home mom, an ex-writer, a trailing spouse. Someone who had fallen infinitely behind.
An epic adventure
The trail I stumbled along in those years was in a thick Northwest forest. Always damp, always dark. But there are fairies in the forest, my daughter believed — and deep in my heart, I believed it, too.
In the spring of 2013, I attended the Writer’s Digest Conference in New York City, where I had no other option but to call myself a writer again. This trip was another turning point in my story; a new world opened in front of me, a world of new possibilities. I found myself in the middle of a circle from which different paths shone outward like sun rays. I could trail one or a few, or all. I could embark again on a journey of reinvention. I returned to Seattle rested, stronger, and willing to learn and fight and cross the barrier called the other language. I remembered why we had come here four years ago: to bend, stretch, and erase the world’s borders.
In July 2014, I enrolled in graduate school to pursue my MFA in Creative Writing. The day I came to my first class, I carried two embryos inside of me. One would become our second daughter, the other my first novel.
I had never worked harder in my life than during those two and a half years, raising a toddler and an infant while writing a thesis novel in my adopted language. I saw a forest, and I decided to take down big trees to build a trail that others may follow. As a result of my struggles, I created MAMA WRITES: creative writing workshops to inspire and encourage women writers and help them navigate their artistic journeys.
By the time I earned my MFA in 2017, my firstborn was in kindergarten, but my two-year-old was still home with me full-time. I wrote in early mornings from a neighborhood coffee shop, and later in the day, during her afternoon naps. I seized every opportunity I could to go to workshops and conferences, to connect with my community.
Mind, body, soul
The following summer, I lost my father. Depressed and grief-stricken as my youngest daughter started preschool, I spent these precious hours of freedom binging “House of Cards,” then practicing yoga.
I had taken my first yoga class in 2009, a month after moving to Seattle. Back then, I wasn’t able to hold a warrior pose for more than a few seconds without experiencing discomfort or embarrassment, and I didn’t believe I could ever advance in my practice, let alone become a teacher one day. Yet somehow, I kept coming back to my mat, similar to how I kept showing up in front of the blank Word document.
I have kept these two practices separate over the years. I would write or I would yoga. I could see my progress in both, which gave me the encouragement and content — but it wasn’t enough to get me to the place I dreamed of arriving.
In the months following my father’s passing, however, all I did somehow jumbled together in an enormous, incohesive mess. At the same time, I would receive a new rejection from the publishing industry almost every day. To get away from my thoughts, I went back to my body. I was in my neighborhood yoga studio nearly every day, and organically found myself embarking on a 200-hour yoga teacher training, despite having only 16 hours of childcare a week.
When we say that yoga means “to yoke” or to join separate parts, we usually refer to the joining of the mind and the body. My reward was merging once independent practices of yoga and writing into one — whole and powerful practice of the heart.
Finding new roots
Today, 10 years after I moved to Seattle because of my husband’s job, I can say that I am firmly rooted — not to a place to which we came for a career opportunity, but in myself. Responding to a call for adventure, I came here without firm plans, then I challenged myself over and over and over again and surpassed all my expectations.
But finally, my husband truly couldn’t live in Seattle any longer. His Vitamin D levels were very, very low, and he couldn’t look at the sunless skies without longing for home. He moved back to Belgrade last month, accepting an exciting new role at the Microsoft Development Center Serbia. The kids and I will join him in December, experiencing our first major relocation as a family. This time, our relocation is a 12/15 on the Gupte Scale. (One point lower than in 2009, but still fairly high.)
Above all, I no longer feel negatively about being a “trailing spouse.” Not because I am returning to the place of my roots, but because now, I understand that spouses are accomplices in each other’s adventures. We go through life side by side, in willingness and collaboration. We grow stronger and more resilient as we are uprooted, transplanted, and rooted again — together.
