How Belize (Almost) Broke Us But Became Our Home

On Struggle, Commitment, and What it Really Takes to Create a Sense of Home Abroad.

A mango tree rooting itself seaside (AI image)

What makes a place feel like home? It's an open question that leads to many others: Is home a place or a state of mind? Is it physical or conceptual? Answering this question wasn't as straightforward as I first thought. I intended to comment on Kaila's initial Living Abroad Discussion post, but as I began to ponder the question, I needed more space to articulate my thoughts. There is no direct way to define what makes a place feel like home. What appears to be a simple concept is, in fact, a profoundly complex one. Like an onion, each layer peeled away reveals a tangle of emotions—some sweet, some sharp enough to bring tears to your eyes.

While considering this concept, I thought of ideas related to comfort and familiarity. I almost wrote this piece about that, but it didn't feel authentic to me. Something was missing. Undoubtedly, home is a place of comfort; a place imbued with your personality; a place that is familiar and predictable. However, this doesn't capture the essence of home for me.

As unsexy as it may sound, home is a commitment. It's an acceptance of location and circumstance. I lived in Ottawa for four years while at Carleton University, but it never felt like home. Perhaps because I knew I wouldn't stay, because I never made any plans to do so, and therefore knew I'd eventually leave. I had friends from my region of Ontario who stayed and established their lives in Ottawa after school, but I just couldn't commit to living there.

Many years later, I now live in Belize. I decided to sell almost everything and move out of Canada. It's taken years, but it's finally beginning to feel like home to me. While Canada is my 'home country,' and my parents still reside in our 'family home,' it no longer feels like home.

And while comfort appears to be a crucial characteristic when defining what makes a place feel like home, it's a result of another action and not the determining factor in deciding whether a place feels like home. Commitment is. When we commit to living somewhere, we can begin to establish a sense of comfort and familiarity. But we need that pledge first.

I've been in Belize for three years now, and while the country is finally beginning to feel like home, it's a new feeling; we almost gave up and left. Our proposed departure stemmed from the numerous hardships we faced during our transition. We took on a lot by moving. We started completely anew, creating new careers, becoming new parents for the second time (our youngest was mere weeks old when we relocated), and building a new house from scratch. Just one of those things is enough to cause stress, but we also faced numerous other hardships.

We faced financial challenges. The strain of purchasing land and building a home left us more depleted than we had anticipated, and starting new careers in entirely new industries put us at the bottom of the income stratum, making rebuilding our finances all the more challenging. Then, about a year and a half after emigrating, I had to deal with identity theft; a fraudster assumed my identity, opened bank accounts and secured credit in my name, leaving me to sort it out while abroad.¹ The ordeal took nearly a year to resolve, and during that time, it sometimes felt like we were untethered from everything, drifting between two worlds with no clear footing.

We also had our health and well-being tested more times than you can imagine. The first instance occurred shortly after arriving in Belize, when a nasty bacterial infection nearly took our youngest son from us. Thankfully, he made it. Since then, we almost lost a dog to a poisonous toad, a cat to a toxic plant, and have fielded a barrage of flues, colds, stomach bugs, eye and ear infections, in addition to two rounds of stitches, one for each of our boys.

Then there were the social challenges of making friends—something I explore in depth in my podcast episode with Gregory Garretson. At the same time, we faced a new challenge: navigating the complex social landscape of Angry Expats. In addition to everything else, we encountered a series of vehicle issues, including multiple flat tires, blown engine lines, and a near rollover off a cliff in Mexico, which caused the vehicle body damage.

It was a lot to deal with in just over two years. It felt like Belize didn't want us here, or that the universe was testing our resolve in our decision to move abroad. Many would have given up, and we know people who have, after a few months of challenges. The transition nearly broke us. We almost left: we set up our home as a vacation rental for a time while we explored other options. Then put it up for sale.

In other words, we struggled to commit to making Belize our home.

But my wife and I aren't the type to sit around and wait for things to happen.² In the face of uncertainty and strife, my wife and I resolved to rebuild our lives. Instead of waiting for the changing force of yet another house sale and move, we committed to living our lives in a new land and got to work crafting a new reality for ourselves.

We put the hardships behind us. We pulled through. Our lives have improved considerably. In the process, almost without realizing it, we committed to Belize—by focusing less on what might be next, and more on building a life here, now. Now, my wife's art career is blowing up, and I'm finding my groove as a freelance writer. The boys are thriving at school, learning and making new friends. We are making changes to our home and property that now reflect our style and preferences, rather than catering to the vacation rental market and tropical real estate industry. Everyone is healthy, except that three- and four-year-olds are essentially germ production and distribution centers.

And you know what? We're beginning to call Belize home. It's finally starting to feel like our home: the result of committing to fully live our lives here. We know we are staying, and that makes it feel like I have a home again.

Now, I realize Kaila's prompt was probably geared toward physical experiences of home, such as "the sound of a spoon hitting the bottom of a cup" or "a certain light in the kitchen." And while home is certainly these things, these types of experiences cannot happen before one commits to calling a particular place home. That commitment opens the door to opportunities to transmute physical experiences into tangible interpretations of home. Now, catching a glimpse of morning light shimmering off the Caribbean through the seaside trees feels like home. The earthy smell that hangs thick in the air after a tropical downpour brings me a sense of peace. The sound of my wife singing in her studio while she creates another abstract work—a blending of paint and thoughtful intention—brings a smile to my face. The freeing feeling of being barefoot wherever I go is irreplaceable, and I now wonder how I ever wore shoes so much. The taste of fresh, locally grown mangoes, which are now sprouting on a tree we planted two years ago, too, makes me excited for this time of year. It's a fantastic feeling and a welcome change from the last two years or so.

Our commitment to our new home now fosters feelings of peace and comfort. Back in October, my oldest son turned four, and we invited a handful of people we have come to call friends to celebrate. It was an eclectic group—one that wouldn't usually gather in everyday life on the peninsula—and we all had a blast. It left me with a sense of community and belonging I hadn't felt in many years. It felt like home.

Just the other day, during the boys' Easter break—a two-week affair in Belize—we ran into some of their classmates on our way to a daytime activity. When the kids spotted each other, they called out names and ran to greet one another without hesitation, exchanging big, clumsy hugs the way only three- and four-year-olds can. Watching them—different skin colors, different backgrounds, but united by pure joy—I felt it again: home.

None of this would have been possible before committing to calling Belize home. And to think, we almost gave it all up, nearly cutting off the potential to make our move abroad work. Now, all the hardship seems worth it. Ultimately, home isn't just where you're comfortable. It's where you decide—despite uncertainty, despite struggle—to plant yourself and grow.³

1. After obtaining an $85,000 truck loan, the fraudster used the vehicle in a theft of gasoline, prompting a police detective to track me down online. I had to prove to them that I was who I said I was, living where I claimed to live.

2. The housing market in Belize bears little resemblance to that of many Canadian municipalities: we sold our home in Hamilton in five days, considerably over asking. That's not Belize real estate. Not even close. It takes a considerable amount of time to sell a property in this country. Expect it to take years, unless you're willing to accept a fire-sale price—and take a massive haircut, which we weren't.

3. And this can change. Will Belize be my forever home? Unlikely. But it is, for now, and that feels great.

If you enjoy my writing, you might also like Belize Foreigner Blog, the Lili Art Blog, or my award-receiving book Home in Good Hands. If you'd like to support this Substack and help me keep creating stories and essays about life abroad, consider subscribing, sharing, or making a small donation. And to those who already have—thank you. Your support means the world.