Let’s Begin

I am starting this now rather than after it is all done because I want to record my feelings and struggles IN THE MOMENT, rather than trying to recall it all later. 

I have wanted to move abroad for at least 10 years. It started when I was new to teaching and I was working at a rural school in a very red state. I am a science teacher who specializes in biology and ecology- climate change and conservation are kind of MAJOR concerns for me. When we would get to these subjects in my biology classes it was always a fight. Climate change and evolution are the big ones of course, but even just things like recycling and respecting the world around us were neglected topics in the communities I taught. The overall feeling was that ‘the Earth belongs to us and we can do what we want with it -and not care about the consequences…’ Which, for me, is a horrific and incredibly ignorant mindset. I did my best to influence my students towards healthier behaviors, for themselves as well as the world, but I was teaching high school… by the time they got to me, they already had nine or more years of poor schooling and anti-science rhetoric in one of the worst states for education. (Trust me, I have SO MANY thoughts on how the system fails people here in so many ways, but that might need to be a whole other blog on its own… with lots of cussing.)

It occurred to me one day, while showing the documentary A Plastic Ocean, that most of these initiatives that I would love to see and be a part of are happening in places that aren’t the US. That was the first time I thought, “ya know… maybe I wouldn’t be so stressed if I was just in a community that cared more about the environment and was at least TRYING to do something, even if it’s already too late for us.”

That was before Trump happened…the first time… I remember that fateful election night in 2016. I cried -I mean hardcore cried- when it became clear how things were going to go. Not because of Trump or republican rule by itself, but because I knew what this meant for the environment and the larger picture of climate change as well what it meant for human rights and many of my friends. We needed to be doing something more serious about our climate crisis 15 years ago… and now we were going at least another 4 years with no real action and a high chance of contraindicated actions. Cue that being exactly what happened. 

In addition to actual damaging policies and pulling us out of the Paris Climate Accord, the sentiments that his reign spread through the nation just sent us back YEARS in progress. Not just for climate change… 

That was really when my high anxiety started, and where my life started to turn. It wasn’t obvious at first, though. That was also the year I dove head first into accomplishing my life dream of running a wildlife sanctuary and I founded a federal non-profit wildlife rescue and education service. I struggled with whether I should or not, as I had thought about leaving the country again as a result of the political unrest, but I was already knee deep in my rescue work and it looked cautiously promising at the time. I was seeing a lot of growth, increasing donations, sponsorships and grants. I was taking in and caring for 300 injured and orphaned wild animals in a year, then 500, then over 600 before things fell apart. I was doing educational outreach at schools, libraries, summer camps, over 30 programs a year at my peak. 

Trump was committing atrocities, but another election was coming close and I thought, surely, that would be the end of it, we would swing back the other way and it would be back to business as usual (which, admittedly, still isn’t great.) I did however make the plan -if he got elected again, I was going to drop everything and leave. I got my passport and vaguely started planning then, but not in very much detail. I wish I had started this back then. 

Trump didn’t win, Biden took office, no one was really excited about it but we were all relieved that Trump was done and thought he wouldn’t be a threat again. 

Then came the fall out from COVID. Oklahoma, being pretty rural, didn’t see the massive death rates that big cities did and it allowed the anti-science sentiment here to root even deeper as people claimed the virus wasn’t that bad and they didn’t know anyone who died, or they got it and it was just like a flu etc. etc. 

I was living with a chronically ill partner at the time and we were very concerned with what we were seeing in the developing science around it. I left my job at a brick and mortar school and started teaching at an online school- for a lot better pay. Working from home, for more pay, with individual students rather than a class of 30 was SO MUCH BETTER! I actually really enjoyed the job a lot more than teaching in person and it allowed me to really put more into my rescue. So, again, at first everything was actually better. With the new job, income and time, I was able to buy my first house. I was only able to get one acre, but that was enough space to set up more enclosures and get organized for volunteers, and start growing the capacity and impact of my rescue organization. It looked like my dream was really going to be a reality. The end goal was to build an open to the public nature center, and I was so close! 

Alas, the effects of covid did eventually get to us, just in a different way than most. There was a lag phase where donations were still rising at the start of the pandemic but after about a year they really started to drop, I also wasn’t able to receive grants I had gotten in the past. Financial support for the rescue was waning and it was getting a little dicey. But, the nail in the coffin came with the “end” of covid. This red state wasn’t great about reporting their numbers to begin with but at some point they stopped altogether and then just decided the virus was no longer a thing. People started going back to in person schools, and the online school I worked for saw a sharp decline in enrollment -which meant a massive layoff of teachers. I was one of them. 

This was the more tangible start of my personal downfall. Job loss from such a great job was devastating, especially after having just bought a house! I really didn’t want to go back to teaching in public schools so I started trying to break into various other career fields that I am suited for, primarily, project management. During this time I picked up semester jobs teaching biology labs at the college, and that was pretty good for a while. I liked teaching college a lot more than high school. But the fact remained that teaching in any school setting was not my passion and not something I really wanted to do. I LOVE teaching wildlife education with the rescue but I kind of hate teaching biology in a public school setting. After two years and hundreds of applications with no luck moving into a different career… I ended up back teaching high school. Which is where I am now, basically wanting to die everyday. 

The financial and emotional stress of losing my job, in combination with the drop in donations, and then the new complicating factor of HPAI (avian flu) affecting my ability to take in birds, all proved too much in the end. I wasn’t able to keep up with the need for fundraising, or the critical importance of a media presence and community engagement, and after a while, even taking care of the actual animals was a stressor rather than a motivator -and that has NEVER been the case for me. It was an incredibly hard truth to swallow, but it was the shining beacon that told me I was burnt out and I needed to step back. When the one constant source of joy in my life, across my entire life, was suddenly just another source of stress… it broke me.

I stopped taking in rescues, I stopped posting on social networks. My mental health tanked as I came to terms with the fact that… I had failed. My rescue, my magnum opus, was done. Over. This wasn’t an overnight process, it was small steps over those two years of unemployment and mounting stress. But it did end, and it was incredibly painful to accept. All of this was also happening during a time where the strain of caring for my chronically ill partner was at an all time high, and my relationship with another partner was falling apart due to his alcoholism. I separated from both of them in the end, although on amicable terms with my sick partner. Due to the non-conventional nature of my relationship style I didn’t talk about it very publicly, even on my personal social media. But I can’t pretend like the events of those relationships didn’t also have a major effect on everything I was trying to do. 

Fast forward to today. I “officially” closed my rescue in December, made the announcement on social media, and I will be dissolving the non-profit after tying up some loose ends. Although It had been coming for years, making it official is a whole new knife in the heart. And let’s not forget the political turmoil. Possibly the largest factor driving my decision to leave the country is that direction things are going. Trump is in office AGAIN… I understand how we got here but I just can’t believe that we got here. And I am SO tired of it. Maybe I would feel more resilient or rebellious if I was living in a very progressive state… But over a decade in this very conservative deep red state dealing with the mentality of people here, the science denialism, and the hate of christian love has left me far too tired to even think about fighting for it anymore. America has nothing left for me, and I am so bitter and sick over what I see around me everyday that I can barely stand to even still be here  while I am plotting my escape. I fear for what is to come for everyone still here… but I have no intention of sticking around for it.

So let’s jump into the point of this blog. I am planning to move abroad. I am still working out the where and the how and the what I am going to do for work part of things, but I am dedicated to this path. I want to document my process both for my own mental health and organization but also as a resource for others who are thinking about it. Because it is SCARY. It is HARD. I haven’t even started the real leg work yet but just the emotional struggle of leaving everything behind and going to a foreign nation with no real plan yet… it is terrifying. Now, I don’t have the problem of a spouse or kids or even a job that I am really connected to and don’t want to leave. But I do have the problem of a lifelong lack of confidence, imposter syndrome, and a LOT of animals. Remember, I was running a wildlife rescue and doing wildlife education. I had a lot of permanent resident animals for education as well as plenty of my own ‘pets’. (side note, I will generally never refer to my animals as my pets as that term is reserved for my submissive partners XD) It has been the hardest thing I have ever done to work towards reducing and rehoming my animals. I have no intention of rehoming all of them but I definitely can’t move overseas with 60 plus various species! 

As I work through this process and the emotional rollercoaster that it is, I will try to keep track of it all here. Anyone who chooses to follow can see my struggles and successes and what methods I am using and whether it’s all working out or not. Fingers crossed that I am out of here within a year, but we shall see!