There is something missing in my life — and it’s my family. Those people that know me the most and love me anyways. I was trying to figure out a word to describe families such as mine, so I did a google search of “international family” and “global family” but the search results were not very helpful (although I did discover there is a cult called The Family International and that Global Family is actually a non-profit organization). I am honestly really surprised there is not already a word that exists for a family where members reside in different countries, so I’m just going to call it an “international family.” There, I’ve coined the term. When it becomes popular in the next ten years, just remember, you heard it first here.

A bit of background is necessary to give you an understanding of what it means to be part of an international family. I come from a family of seven and I am the youngest of the five kids. My parents moved to Taiwan over 30 years ago as a young married couple to be missionaries. They moved to Taiwan with their first two kids (2yr old and 6 month old) and had the last three of us in Taiwan. The last year my whole family lived together was when I was six years old and my oldest sister was seventeen. In fact, that was the only year when all five of us kids attended the same school, me as a first grader and my sister as a senior, with three siblings in between. Since the five of us have grown up and left home, we’ve all ended up living in different countries: US, Taiwan, Netherlands, and Australia.

All of us initially moved to California after high school for college, where most of our extended family lives. Since college, both of my brothers have moved back to Taiwan to work. My oldest sister moved to The Netherlands where she works as a human rights lawyer for the United Nations, and has has lived for the past 5 years with her husband and their gorgeous little boy. My other sister now lives on an army base in the California desert, with her husband and 1.5 year old boy, expecting another baby boy next month. Unlike my siblings, I was still in a serious relationship with my high school boyfriend when I finished high school. So I moved to Sydney after one semester at Cal State Long Beach to complete my studies at Sydney University and got married two years later.

Is it really any surprise, when you consider that we’ve all spent most of our developing years in a “foreign” country, 4 out of 5 of us have ended up living outside of our country of citizenship? You know how people talk about the “travel bug?” Well, we have something similar, except it’s a “move to another country to live for an extended amount of time bug.” Growing up, my family would move back to the USA for a year, every four years in order to visit all of their supporting churches and raise additional support for their big fat family. So, every four years we would pack up and head back to the states for a year. It was like taking a 1 year break from our lives and pretending we were a “normal” American family. When summer came around again, we would go on one last American-sized shopping spree, hitting up Target and multiple thrift shops, and Trader Joes so dad could stock up on chocolate covered espresso beans, before packing as much as we could squeeze into our two-suitcases-a-piece.

When we landed back in Taiwan, we would start all over again — new street, new house, new neighborhood, most often in a different city than we lived before. So, as “grown ups”, we still get this itch to move. This feeling that we’ve lived in one place for too long and it’s time to move somewhere new. It’s a reluctance to “settle down”; a revulsion to staying put. It’s just so boring. While other people are focused on saving enough money to buy a house, we are focused on saving enough money so that we can get the hell out of here.

Now that I’ve given you a bit of an understanding of why international families end up as, well, international, here is my Top 10 list of international family problems:

You see each other once a year or less

When you’re part of an international family, you’re lucky if you get to see everyone once a year, let alone all together at once. As you all start to get married and start families of your own, getting the whole family together becomes even rarer. The prospects of getting all seven of us plus spouses and grandchildren together once a year are pretty slim, and we’ll probably be lucky if it happens every two years. Fortunately for me, my husband’s parents live in Taiwan too, so it’s more of a possibility for us to make it back once a year to see parents and my brothers that live there. But it’s just not the same as having my WHOLE family together.

On a side note, because we see less and less of each other these days, family weddings are the best thing ever! 2013 was a pretty epic year for my family as all three of us girls got married within nine months of each other, so I got to see my family THREE WHOLE TIMES that year!

Coordinating plans is near impossible

When you’re part of an international family, coordinating plans is pretty much impossible. With so many people coming from different places for different lengths of time, it’s really hard to go on trips or even day outings that take any amount of prior planning. If we try to go anywhere, we usually end up spending all day trying to get everyone organized and out the door that by the time we actually get to our destination it’s time to go home. So I’ve learned to just enjoy the time we have together and not try to do too many things.

Time difference is the worst

When your family is spread out across 4 continents, the time difference is the worst. When it’s a good time for you to talk, it’s the middle of the night for them. And when they try to call you, you’re almost always asleep or at work. You’re constantly checking what time it is in other countries and having to specify if you mean 4pm “your time” or their time. Organizing a good time for both of you, let alone all of you at once, to talk is sometimes impossible. One of you will usually end up having to compromise by getting up at 6am to actually make it happen. So, even though you all say you wish you talked more, you can easily go for months without talking to some of your family.

Skype sessions are chaotic at the best of times

Internet video chats like Skype or Google Hangouts are chaotic at the best of times and impossible at worst. Living in Australia is the worst, since the internet is incredibly slow and you are guaranteed to be disconnected at least once. You want to see each other but video makes you lag, so you have to choose between being able to see their face and guess what they’re saying half the time or not being able to see them at all. Group chats with the whole family at once are great, but insanely chaotic. We usually end up all just making faces at each other and laughing at the babies, because when we try to talk we end up talking at the same time, cutting out, lagging, and generally not being able to hold a discussion for any length of time.

It’s too expensive to send gifts

When you live across the world from your family, it’s really expensive to send anything to each other. The postage costs are usually more than the cost of whatever it is you’re trying to send. This means you only send things to each other on really special occasions, and if you do get something in the mail, it really means a lot.

You miss all the important occasions

Whether it’s birthdays, Easters, Thanksgivings, Christmases, New Years, Fourth of July, graduations, baby showers, or births, you miss a lot of important occasions when your family is everywhere but where you are. As a third-culture kid growing up in Taiwan, I got used to missing important occasions in the lives of my extended family in America. It was always rare and really special when we got to spend the holidays in the states with all the cousins, aunts and uncles, and grandparents. Not being able to share important occasions with the people you love most in the entire world is really hard.

You miss all the “little things”

Even worse than missing all of the big important things is missing all of the “little things.” Life happens in the everyday little things, and not being part of the day-to-day lives of my family is, to be honest, heartbreaking. You miss the little wins and losses of your siblings and parents that you never hear about. You miss the subtle changes in their values, opinions, beliefs, and interests that make them unique. You miss seeing your nephews learn to crawl and walk and run. You miss seeing their features change from those of babies to little boys. You miss hearing everyone laugh and make fun of each other. You actually have no idea what their lives are like, what their work is like, what their friends are like. So many memories that your family isn’t there for, and so many of their memories that you’re not part of.

Saying goodbye is the absolute worst

You literally experience grief and loss every time you have to say goodbye again. You spend the last few days of your time together dreading the inevitable moment when you’ll say goodbye. There is nothing worse than the feelings of grief in the time leading up to the goodbye and in the days/weeks that follow it. You get used to not being in each other’s lives, it’s how you cope. But you do not get used to saying goodbye again. All of the anticipation of being together again for a short time, and then it’s over, and you don’t know when you’ll see each other again. Probably not for at least another year or more.

A part of yourself is missing

When you are not with your family, a part of yourself is missing. You know how people are always talking about the struggles of long distance relationships? Well, I was in a long distance relationship for nine months, and I can tell you, it’s pretty much the same feeling when you’re away from your family for so long. You really are in a long distance relationship, struggling to maintain an intimate relationship with people half way across the world. It sucks. Most long distance relationships do not last, because you get so lonely and fed up with not being together, it is just easier to break it off. But you can’t break up with your family. You just have to deal with it and keep going. Sure, you get used to it, but a part of yourself is always missing when you’re apart. The only way to not feel sad is to not think about your family too often. Which is sad in itself.

You will most likely never all live in the same place

I would definitely love to live closer to my family, but if I did decide to move, where would I go? There is not any one place I could go to be close to ALL of my family, since they are all in different places. You know that even if you were to move to be closer to family, you would still be far away from other family members. You fantasize about how nice it would be to all live in the same place. To see each other every week, babysit your nephews and nieces, have each other over for dinner, catch up over your lunch break, grab drinks after work, travel together, go on road trips across country, organize play dates for your kids, go out on your birthdays…but you know that you will most likely never all live in the same place.

One of life’s great tragedies is that we spend so much of our lives away from the people we love the most.

I often think to myself, one of life’s great tragedies is that we spend so much of our lives away from the people we love the most. This might not be true for everyone, but it has certainly been my experience as part of an international family. I blame my parents for the way we have all ended up all over the place; for instilling in us the itch to move and the fearlessness to just go somewhere new. At the same time, I am so thankful for the upbringing we had that has given us a sense of confidence that, as citizens of the world, we are free to live wherever we choose and are not confined by the borders of our “home” country, ethnicity, or language. We do not have one home. We have many homes, some that we have yet to discover. I have no doubt that we have not reached our final destination; we will all continue to move, explore, repeat.

Being part of an international family can be extremely hard sometimes, but it makes the times you spend together all the more precious. The times I have with my family make my heart so incredibly full of joy and thankfulness, and I can’t wait to see them again. But I will.