04/09/2026
You're Not Failing. You're Missing the Systems
This story is about being patient with yourself.
Like when the delivery driver spoke Dutch to me, and I had that glazed look in my eyes, trying to understand what he had just said. I couldn't even find the words for "spreken je Engels?" So he kept talking to me in Dutch. I nodded and slowly turned away, hoping he wouldn't notice, saying the only phrase that seemed easy: "Dank je wel!" (Thank you!).
I knew the language would be different going in. I expected that part. What I didn't expect was how disorienting "different" would actually feel once I was standing in the grocery store aisles.
Here, eggs sit out on shelves instead of in the fridge. Heavy cream is shelf-stable. Near the coffee, there is coffee milk, which I later learned is evaporated milk made specifically for coffee. It’s pretty good! The labels are all in Dutch, so my two-hour trip for ten items became an exercise in staring at packages, trying to find any word I recognized. Google Translate helped when the internet cooperated.
There's a self-scan option at the grocery store to "save time." I felt so ready. I finally had the store card. I could scan items. Turns out employees randomly check what you've scanned, so don't bag your groceries until you've paid. You’ve been warned.
That was just the food. It took a week to figure out how to lock our back door without a strange little dance with the key and the handle. Don't walk outside without your key, by the way. Every front door here locks you out automatically. Is this a Dutch joke I don't know about?
The stove had symbols I'd never seen. The microwave is also the oven, which raised the terrifying question of whether I could microwave metal now. I could not. The washing machine panel is entirely in Dutch, and the dryer doesn't actually heat the clothes and takes three hours. I assumed it was broken. It isn't. It's just energy efficient, and gentler on the clothes.
Getting a loyalty card or subscription usually requires a Dutch phone number, which in turn requires completed immigration paperwork, which sometimes requires a Dutch bank account. Plan on paying full price until all of that lines up.
And then there's the food itself: noticeably less sugar, fewer chemicals I don't recognize, and digestion issues we had in the US that simply disappeared here. That could be the lack of stress. It could also be that we're no longer eating what we were eating. The EU won't even sell US chicken. It's banned here, and the chicken I've had tastes like the chicken I grew up with, before it changed.
The metric system. Brilliant, but now I'm converting pounds to kilos, inches to centimeters, and dollars to euros, sometimes all in the same sentence.
Recycling here is taken seriously. Glass goes to a separate bin at the shopping area. It took about three weeks to understand which bin gets what. I'm glad it works this way. The grocery store is a block away anyway.
Almost everything we've bought is cheaper here. A 9-volt battery is €0.84. In the US, it was $9. I won't tell you what our phone and internet bill looks like compared to before, because I don't want to make you angry.
We sold our car. Now we bike everywhere, or take a bus that comes every 12 minutes, or a train. All reasonably priced. No car payment, no insurance. I once read that a US politician called the bicycle the worst thing for capitalism. I have words about that, but I'll keep this article professional.
Here's the part nobody says out loud: I think of myself as a smart, capable adult. I've raised children. I ran professional kitchens. I managed large teams. And some days here, I have felt completely, genuinely stupid and helpless.
That feeling isn't a reflection of intelligence or even capability. It's what happens when every small system you used to run on autopilot - the store, the stove, the schedule - it gets swapped out overnight, all at once.
Only 6% of people worry about their mental health before an international move. Afterward, about half of them are struggling. Not because they got less capable. Because nobody warned them the ground would shift like this.
You're not failing. You're missing the systems, not the skill.
And this isn't just a moving-abroad story.
I've seen the same thing happen to people who didn't cross a border at all. A divorce that rewrites every routine you built a life around. A new job that quietly dismantles the schedule, the identity, the sense of competence you had at the old one. An empty nest. A diagnosis. A move across town instead of across an ocean. The systems collapse either way. The panic in the cereal aisle isn't so different from the panic of any of these. The ground you used to stand on is gone, and nobody handed you a new one.
This is the work I do now. For over twenty years I've worked at the intersection of behavior, nutrition, and psychology, first as a chef, then a wellness practitioner building private client programs, and now as a Transition & Behavior Coach here in the Netherlands. I use a framework called COM-B, which looks at three things when someone is stuck: do you have the Capability, the Opportunity, and the Motivation to do the thing you're trying to do? Most people going through a major transition have the capability. What's missing is the opportunity, the systems, the structure, the support that used to be invisible because it was already built. Nobody warns you that rebuilding it is its own project.
I help adults and families through exactly that rebuild: routine, rhythm, and capability after a major life transition. Sometimes that's a move to a new country. Sometimes it's a divorce, a career change, or a season of life that just looks nothing like the one before it. We build a roadmap, not a generic plan, based on where you actually are and what you actually need to function again.
If any part of this sounds familiar, whether you moved here, moved anywhere, or just went through a season where everything you knew how to do stopped working, I'd love to hear your version of the story in the comments. And if you're in that place right now and want to talk about what rebuilding could look like, my inbox is open.
