
Welcome to Holding the Fort Abroad, the podcast for expats with travelling partners:
Holding the Fort Abroad is about sharing creative ways families have found to maintain relationships when a partner and/or parent works away from home a lot and how the non-travelling partner juggles the roles of home and their own pursuits. I interview expats who have experience, therapists and researchers and share my own tools for this life journey. Even if you don’t have a travelling partner, you will find gems in this podcast for your life.
SynopsisShellee Burroughs is a UK Registered Art Therapist. She has 10+ years’ experience counselling within the education sector, specialising in trauma and sexual abuse therapy.She is an experienced child and adolescent counsellor using a range of approaches from Creative Arts and Play/Sand Tray Therapy, Child Accelerated Trauma Therapy, Narrative Therapy, and Strengths Based Psychology. She…
Synopsis For many years, Matthijs de Rave worked as Sales Director for well known, worldwide insurance companies and was also an author of children’s books. One day, he had an airplane epiphany and founded Expat Valley. I talk to him about being the first Ombudsman for International Children, and what it was like being an…
Synopsis Kerry is a researcher, collaborator and entrepreneur in aging, care and connection. She is the Founder of The Long Distance Grandparent, a mission driven business, helping grandparents build strong bonds with their grandchildren – no matter the distance between. In this Episode The Long Distance Grandparent Society (1:10) Nurturing the relationship: similarities in maintaining…
Synopsis Sharoya Ham is a behaviour change specialist and founder of Embrace Behavior Change. She is also a licensed teacher with over 25 years of experience working with at-risk students and their families. Her favourite career, however, was as a stay-at-home mom. She attributes her three amazing sons who are now 18, 20, and 23…
Synopsis: Robert has many different skills, he’s been in the military, he’s been a teacher, he is trained as an engineer and he is the dad of two wonderful girls. He gives us his perspective as a Holding the Fort Dad and gives some fantastic tips on parenting too ! In This Episode: Robert’s life before…
Synopsis: Claire Hauxwell is a professional badass (accompanying supportive spouse), writer, and coach. A trained Supply Chain professional and ex-spreadsheet lover, she now puts her Type A personality to work by deconstructing the nuances of expat life. With more than a decade of global living experience, Claire shares her wisdom on the blog – My Theory On Blooming,…
Synopsis Vivian is the founder of Expat Nest, an online counselling service for internationals. She is a registered psychologist with Master’s degrees in both Child & Adolescent Psychology and Health Psychology. She was recognised in 2020 as one of the 100 most influential women in the world by Women appreciating Women. She is bicultural with…
Synopsis: Helen is NOT an expat, she is the mother of expats, a long distance grandparent and the author of a series of books on distance relationships between grandparents, distance sons and daughters and distance grandchildren. One of Helen’s children was an expat with a travelling partner. This episode is a conversation being a distance…
Synopsis In this episode I talk about what you can expect from this podcast and why I am doing it. Extract from the book Holding the Fort Abroad: “Holding the fort, or, in American English, holding down the fort, is an expression that means taking care of things during someone’s absence. In March 2019, as…
Synopsis: Margaret Ghielmetti knows what it is like to be home alone when she thought she was moving abroad with her husband and not moving abroad waiting for her husband to come home. She talks about her journey from thinking she would be fine to the reality she encountered to finally being open about needing…
“Stories help us imagine the future differently. Stories create community, enable us to see through the eyes of other people, and open us to the claims of others”
- Peter Forbes

Download 'Living, Loving and Parenting Across the Miles'
Research-Backed Strategies When One Partner Works Away From Home. It covers:
- Caring for you, as an individual
- Staying connected as a couple
- Parenting together, while physically apart
- Reconnecting when the travelling partner returns home
- Being prepared for emergencies