Hello and welcome to Holding the Fort Abroad, the podcast about life with a partner who is away from home a lot for work. My name is Rhoda Bangerter and thank you for joining me on this introduction episode. I’m going to talk a little bit about what you can expect from this podcast and why I am doing it. «Until I met you, I thought I was overthinking it». That’s what someone told me just the other day. I have head it in many different formats: «I couldn’t cope, I thought there was something wrong with me», «I am Mexican, married to a German, we have a two-year-old, my husband travels a lot for work, I am drowning.» This breaks my heart. No one should be drowning alone and more importantly, no one should be struggling alone, maybe in a country that is not their home country, with a partner who is away from home a lot. It is not only military personnel who are away from home, businesspeople, humanitarian workers, medical personnel, high level athletes, people who work in the nuclear sector, it is surprising the number of professions that involve a lot of travel. Even during these covid times, many people have been away from their partners and children. Others, for the first time in years perhaps, have been home for the longest time ever, which creates a whole other series of challenges! Some families choose to live in split locations, where one partner stays in one country and the other lives in another country. They come ‘home’ every few months. We’ll cover those scenarios as well. I have been married to a traveller for over 16 years including two years where he lived in Kabul and our boys and I lived in Switzerland. The research I have done on this topic and my life experience culminated in a book called ‘Holding the Fort Abroad’ published by Summertime Publishing. In this podcast, i will be interviewing men and women who live abroad and have travelling partners so that we can all benefit from their wisdom and experience, I also invite family and marriage therapists to apply their expertise to this topic. We’ll also be talking about how best to support mums and dads who are holding the fort. Someone even told me that my book is useful even for people who don’t have a travelling partner, so if that is you, then you will still find gems in the podcast for your life. In this first season of the Holding the Fort Abroad Podcast, I interview Vivian Chiona, psychologist and founder of expat nest. I am honoured that she agreed to write the foreword to my book. With her, we set the scene of challenges and benefits of this kind of life and give some tips on how to make it work.

I will also interview a mum and two dads who are holding the fort abroad. Margaret Guielmetti, author of ‘Brave(ish)’ will join us in an episode. There will be two episodes/month. That’s all for now ! I hope you will join me for episode 1!