Hey Everyone,
For this month’s Conversation from Elsewhere, I welcome Brianna Gilliam to share an essay with all of you. I met Brianna back in September after she reached out to me on LinkedIn, and I was immediately intrigued by her story—how she had cultivated a life in Spain’s largely agricultural Extremadura region for nearly a decade. What struck me most was not just how her life has unfolded in Spain: working as a teacher, falling in love, and raising children abroad, but how she’s raising herself through the quiet, complex stages of adulthood—parenting herself through shifts in identity, vocation, and desire.
It’s rare to meet someone so tenderly attuned to their own becoming, and I’m deeply proud and excited to witness Brianna give her writing the care and consistency it (and she) deserves. In this reflection, she explores the emotional and cultural terrain of “Mothering Myself While Mothering Abroad,” and the many ways life lived elsewhere can be both disorienting and deeply clarifying. I hope you enjoy this piece and check out more of her beautiful writing as well.
Be Well,
Christine
Mothering Myself While Mothering Abroad
Being a mother is hard. Being a mother in a country that’s not your own is even harder. That’s something I found out after nearly 10 years of living in Spain. Let’s go back to the beginning.
Life In A Foreign Country
A few months after my 23rd birthday, I moved to Spain for what I thought would be a year-long stint. Planning to go back to university and get a master’s in school psychology, I decided to first take a gap year after working for two years as a behavioral assistant and program auditor.
When I found out about an organization that would not only let me move to Spain but also give me a stipend and health insurance to stay there, I jumped at the opportunity.
A few months later, I packed up my suitcase and booked my flight to Spain. Within the first month, I had a group of about 10 expat friends. We were the only English speakers in a town of 50,000, making us a close-knit group. During that first year, I took up dance classes, travelled around Spain and to different countries, and of course, practiced my Spanish.
Midway through the first year, we were given the chance to renew. Thinking about my goal of wanting to learn Spanish and still planning to return and continue with my “adult” life, I decided one more year could only benefit me. I still didn’t have a level of Spanish where I could go back and apply for jobs, saying, “Look at me, I’m bilingual!”. I also wanted to start working on some personal ambitions, like writing a book — things I could see myself pushing off when I got back home.
I continued into my second year, doing slightly less travel but connecting more with Spanish locals whom I now considered friends. I started going to dance socials, accomplishing a childhood dream of being like Vanessa Williams in Dance With Me. And I finally got back to journaling, something I’d stopped doing after finishing college because of a lack of time and inspiration. For the first time in my 24 years, I felt wholly complete and like I was living for myself by going after my passions, and not because they made sense in the long run or were a part of a greater plan.
I was doing what made me happy because I wanted to.
Unsurprisingly, when the offer came to extend my life in Spain for a third year, I started questioning whether or not I really wanted to go back home to the US. For weeks, I was plagued with doubt after doubt: if I stay, am I running away from real life? Was I looking for an escape? Could I build a life for myself in a foreign country?
These questions led me to think about what would happen if I lived for myself, instead of out of fear of the unknown or obligations of the expected. I began to wonder whether my version of success and happiness looked different from the norm and whether or not it was acceptable.
Those weeks and months of questions eventually led me to the conclusion that I wanted to try to stay in Spain indefinitely. I didn’t have an exact plan for how, but I was hopeful I’d be able to get a permanent job teaching since that seemed the “thing” to do when living in Spain. Without realizing it, I was still trying to fit my life into the label of what I thought I was supposed to do.
Sometime after deciding I would try to make a life for myself in Spain, I met a cute Spaniard from a small farming town. We started dating, talked about our future and where it would be (spoiler: Spain), and eventually had our first child together. With the birth of my daughter, I had a culture shock of two sorts: the first, raising a child in a culture very different from my own, and the second, becoming a first-time mother.
Whisperings of Motherhood
Assuming you’ve never lived in Spain or raised a child here, there are quite a few differences. Some are silly, like the unspoken rule that all baby girls must wear earrings, or Spanish babies must dress in high fashion 24/7. Other differences, such as the constant inclusion of family, especially suegras, or Spanish mother-in-laws, was a bit harder to manage. Yet, none of them came close to the compounding notion of figuring out who you are and what you want as a first-time mother.
I’d love to say that after welcoming my first child, I had some epiphany about my life and the direction of where I wanted to take it. But it was more so a period of drowning above water. After I had my daughter, it felt like my identity as Brianna got pushed to the background, and my new identity as a mother was first and foremost. It was something I subconsciously struggled with throughout the first year of my daughter’s life.
While this internal struggle was happening, I began working as a teacher in an academy. I was no longer just a teacher’s assistant, but had my own classroom and didn’t have to co-teach.
Although I was still trying to figure out who I was outside of my identity as a mother, I found new meaning in my new position. It was a reprieve I hadn’t realized I’d needed.
Still, it wasn’t until I started doing therapy during my second pregnancy that I realized I was missing something important in my life — my own identity. I’m a millennial. It’s not that I didn’t know I could be a mom while still going after my own goals and pursuits — it was that I didn’t know how without dealing with mom guilt or constantly being exhausted. Halfway through my second pregnancy, I realized I kept trying to do what was expected to work, instead of what would make me happiest.
About a year passed by, bringing with it the birth of my son and the increasing awareness that teaching wasn’t a career I wanted to do for the rest of my life. That being said, I wasn’t Spanish.
I didn’t attend college in Spain or grow up here. While I did do a Master’s program, to work in any school with an official title, I needed to get my US degree certified — a process I’m still waiting on to be approved after handing in the documents three years prior. Because of these issues with paperwork, it seemed like my career was in limbo, or at the very least, a document purgatory.
That first year of my son’s life, I felt more aligned with who I was and what I wanted than I did during my daughter’s first year. But I still had this part of me, the career side, that wasn’t living up to the fullest extent. Thankfully, the older my babies got, the calmer I felt because each month, I was finding myself again. The year my son turned two was when my eureka moment came along.
The Pursuit Of Happiness
Years of working as first an assistant, then a head teacher, and I finally decided it was enough.
Writing was something I had always been passionate about, promising myself when I was a preteen that one day I’d write my very own novel. It took two kids, a year of therapy, and some honest moments with myself to realize I didn’t have to keep going after a goal that I wasn’t thrilled about. It was time to reconcile my life as a mother and a woman, and go after my dreams just as I’d done before having children.
Originally, I came to Spain looking for something greater and more exciting than my life in the US could give me. Growing up, my mom always told me I could do whatever I put my mind to, but after having two kids in a foreign country and struggling through bureaucratic red tape, each day felt like I was further and further from my dream life.
That being said, my dream has changed depending on the stage and season of life I’m in. In my early 20s, it was to live a life of adventure. Now in my early 30s, it’s time to live a sustainable and happy life where I continuously build a better future for myself and my family. For me, that means creating and using my words to tell stories that connect us as humans.
There are days when I’m still intimidated by the prospect of not living up to my own expectations. Yet, the greatest gift I’ve learned being a creative and a mother in a foreign country is that my path is forged by my willingness to continue. There have been bumps along the way, and I’m sure more will appear in the future, but I’m no longer worried about them stopping me or holding me back.
Would I have been as resilient and determined had I stayed in the US? The honest answer to that is, it doesn’t matter. Meet and accept yourself for where you are in life — then build on that shamelessly, recklessly, and without abandon. We are the life we choose to live.
Brianna Titus-Gilliam is an American freelance content and ghostwriter based in Spain. When she’s not racing after her children or working on her debut novel, she can be found dancing, baking, and singing in her kitchen. Who doesn’t love a good multi-tasker? Want to read more of her work? You can connect with her on Substack or LinkedIn—her Instagram is sadly feeling quite abandoned.
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/brianna-titus-gilliam
Substack: https://substack.com/@briannaelan
Instagram: @briannaelanauthor
