29.03.2023 Views

Inspiring Women Magazine May 2023

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

feature<br />

In My Own Words -<br />

"When one door of happiness<br />

closes, another opens"<br />

Liz Janson is the president<br />

of FAUSA, the social and<br />

philanthropic network for former<br />

FAWCO club members and others<br />

repatriating to the United States<br />

and Canada. Liz grew up mostly<br />

in Indiana before starting her<br />

moving ways. She and her<br />

husband have moved an<br />

average of every four years in<br />

their 45 years together, raised<br />

three sons and have four young<br />

grandchildren. With all these<br />

opportunities for reinvention,<br />

Liz has been a museum educator,<br />

knit wire jewelry maker and is<br />

currently passionate about<br />

all things beekeeping. Her<br />

slogan is "Bloom where you’re<br />

planted!" (The bees approve!)<br />

As current and recovering expats, we<br />

all know the bittersweet feelings of<br />

saying goodbye while looking forward<br />

to new beginnings. It’s not easy to say<br />

goodbye, and it’s not easy to start over, be it<br />

in a new country or returning home. As the<br />

president of FAUSA, I’ve heard so many times<br />

how surprising it is to come<br />

home, having had so many<br />

new experiences as an expat,<br />

Hiking in<br />

the UK<br />

only to find returning more<br />

challenging. Old friends are<br />

Liz Janson<br />

often not super interested in hearing about<br />

adventures in Tuscany, weekends in Spain,<br />

desert Jeep tours, safaris in Kenya, and (fill in<br />

the blank!). And our worlds have expanded as<br />

we live in and learn about other ways of living,<br />

health systems, languages, cultures, etc.<br />

I’ve had the fortune of living in five different<br />

countries and coming home to the US three<br />

times. As a 21-year-old returning from a year<br />

as a nanny for an American diplomat’s family in<br />

Moscow, USSR, that readjustment was the most<br />

difficult of all of my homecomings. I wasn’t an<br />

exotic American anymore; no one clamored to<br />

speak English or buy black market blue jeans. I’d<br />

traveled extensively: the trans-Siberian railroad<br />

48 INSPIRING WOMEN INSPIRING WOMEN 49

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!