A Portable Identity: A Woman's Guide to Maintaining a Sense of Self While Moving Overseas, Revised Edition

Truly a Must Read for every woman who is going to make, who has already made, or who is thinking about making a major move. The authors offer serious insight, support and help, not just for those involved in expat experiences, but even for those who simply move, let's say, from one major region of the country to another. New York, after all, is not Maine, not California, not Missouri, and not Louisiana! Any time we leave one culture and take on another, the issues dealt with in this book will arise. In fact, any time we make a major change in our careers or lifestyles, our identities get challenged, so the exercises and strategies set out in this nifty book would be useful. I highly recommend this book to anyone dealing with transition.

I wish I'd found this book 20 years ago when I first moved to Australia. Even now, I am finding it helpful as it confirms much of what I learned the hard way.

Really realistic and super helpful, evidence-based, complete with tools and exercises for more self reflection and self-help. Loved it and its a rarity to find a good one, there's not much out there!

I'm excited to read this book. I bought it a year out before my move and it really seems like something to work through while you are at your new post and not really before.

I love it

"A Portable Identity," by co-authors Debra R. Bryson and Charise M. Hoge, is a valuable tool (and actually a "collection of tools") for anyone who is going through a major identity-shift. While written for the community of women accompanying their husbands overseas ("expatriate wives" - or "ex-pats"), the deeper message and theme is pertinent to people in a variety of life situations, including transitions from:-- Career military to civilian job,-- College student (especially when there is a close-knit group of friends and easy availability of interesting things for groups to do) to an entry-level professional career in a different community,-- Career transition - especially from working in a well-structured company to working from home, entrepreneurship, or consulting,-- Career-related move to a new community (especially if due to a spouse's career move), with accompanying search for a new job and new "community role,"-- Post-divorce, and even post-spousal death, when the old "community" of friends and social activities (especially couples-based activities, or social engagements based on spouse's status) are no longer available.In short, the range of applicability here is enormous - particularly given the huge shifts going on in people's lives today.I found that Debra's and Charise's stories, interspersed throughout the book, were emotionally gripping and compelling. Each, in her own way, made it through a "dark night of the soul." Each traveled into her personal "underworld" and came out again. The fact that two authors shared stories, and build their "tools" and "exercises" around their shared experiences and personal growth, gives this book a special richness that would be hard for a singly-authored book to achieve. Their combined experiences allows them to extract the essential meaning and lessons from what they experienced. This makes the resulting book more valuable to the reader.The most important aspect about "A Portable Identity" is, of course, that the authors discern that it is our "personal identity" that is most challenged during a major life transition. The early exercises in this book help the reader to objectively and clearly discern how his or her "prior" identity was constructed - in terms of (1) internal view, (2) external factors (e.g., points-of-view from others), (3) roles (e.g., job, parental/spousal/friendship roles, activity-defined roles such as "dancer" or "tennis player," etc.), and (4) significant relationships (not only spousal, parental, and other familial, but also friendships, mutual support roles within communities, etc.). This objective framework for helping readers to clarify "identity" - before, during, and after transition (or during the "rebuild" time of a transition) - is perhaps the most valuable insight and useful "take-away" from not just reading, but actively working with this book.Two books that seem to go hand-in-hand with this one are: Military Kids Speak: Celebrating the Way you Think about Being a Military Kid  - this makes a useful "companion" book - "Military Kids Speak" helps school-age children in families going through major transitions (e.g., a parent is deployed overseas, or the whole family moves), and Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer - Inanna, the Sumerian goddess "Queen of Heaven and Earth" is the original woman to travel to her own "underworld." This is the prototypical goddess-journey myth, beautifully brought to life by storyteller Diane Wolkstein, who worked extensively with co-author and renowned Sumerian scholar, the late Samuel Noah Kramer, to create this vivid and readable retelling of the Great Goddess's "Journey to the Underworld" (and her successful return!).I heartily recommend "A Portable Identity" to all who are undergoing a major life transition. It is a book that I will endorse to others, give as a gift, and suggest that people order, read, and work through as a valuable means for assessing and rebuilding their lives as they forge new pathways.

Debra Bryson and Charise Hoge provide a wonderful framework for adjusting to life overseas. In the midst of moving details and a mountain of to-do items, their book offers a wonderful reminder of the importance of tuning into your own process: who you are, how you have landed here, and who you want to be as you face the benefits and challenges of living overseas. The holistic approach presented in A Portable Identity allows for an in-depth understanding of how to move forward in creating a life for oneself in a new country. Their first-person accounts and sharing of experience from their own perspectives presents a pathway forward, that can be revisited from one move to the next. This book is a wonderful addition to an expat's library, whether acquired in their first or 15th move!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful: A Portable Identity: A Woman's Guide to Maintaining a Sense, June 28, 2004Reviewer: J (Washington, D.C) - See all my reviewsAnyone ever to encounter and navigate the endless and exhaustive details involved with moving and living overseas will appreciate the meticulous care and thought that went into this primer. The exercises and for planning for and understanding the different stages, emotions and thought processes that accompany such a move are terrific, not just for the move itself, but for a very effective and smooth assimilation of this kind of life-changing experience.I will be giving this one to many of my friends who are also contemplating living and working overseas.