Inspiring Women Magazine May 2023
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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