Jan Hugo: Welcome to the Relocated South African, the show for navigating immigration from South Africa for a better future. I’m your host, Jan Hugo, from Lagos, Portugal. Check out our website https://therelocatedsouthafrican.com/. It contains a lot of useful information and details of all episodes to date. If you want to interact with us or comment on our discussions or even participate in an interview, please contact me on jan@therelocatedsouthafrican.com. You can also subscribe to our newsletter. Also, if you like our content, why not subscribe on your favourite platform?
Joining me on the show today is Dr. Sulette Ferreira. She’s a Migration therapist who specialises in immigration therapy for families living apart. Welcome to the show, Sulette.
Dr. Sulette Ferreira: Thank you so much for inviting me. It’s really an honour to be here with you tonight.
Jan Hugo: I really appreciate it. Maybe to start with, your practice is in Stellenbosch. Do you also work online for listeners who may be interested?
Dr. Sulette Ferreira: Yes, definitely. I think also for the parents in South Africa, I’ve decided to have the practice online. So I don’t see any people in person. So all the interviews are online. I think also to give them a sense of practice to see what it’s like when you talk over the internet and when it’s not in person. So all the interviews are via the internet.
Jan Hugo: Wow, that’s really interesting. And I know you were from Pretoria originally. Are you a Pretoria native? Did you study there?
Dr. Sulette Ferreira: Yes, I studied in Pretoria and then at this later age I decided to be in the mountains. I want to be near nature and decided that it’s time to move down to Stellenbosch, and I cannot tell you how happy we are here. Everybody complains about the weather but the weather is fantastic. I think if it rains then you just dress appropriately and you’re doing red wine, and if the sun shines we’re doing white wine, so it’s everything.
Jan Hugo: I know what you’re talking about. We lived there. We still miss the wine, although the Portuguese wines aren’t so bad, but we enjoyed Stellenbosch. As a first question, do you yourself have family who emigrated?
Dr. Sulette Ferreira: Yes, I have two children and they both emigrated at some stage and then came back again. I think I’ve also been in Australia for a while, so I’ve been on both sides. I think it’s easier to talk from both sides because I’ve been in Australia and then I’ve also experienced children immigrating, so it’s like when I talk about this I’ve been there, I’ve done this, and I think it’s also, you know, once you’ve been in a situation it’s so much better to understand. Yet nobody’s situation is the same but I think they are definitely overlapping aspects that makes it easier to understand.
Jan Hugo: Absolutely. I can only agree with you. Is it your own immigration journey that led you to specialise in this field?
Dr. Sulette Ferreira: No, you know, I had started quite a while ago. I was doing voluntary work at the hospital in Pretoria, at the Kalafong Hospital. And what was fascinating for me is when people are in palliative care, and it’s a difficult decision with regards to the parents, I always wondered, when is a good time for the children to come back to see the parents? Is it once they’re very sick at the end of their lives? Is it at the funeral? And it was also, in a sense, sad to see how many people in hospital have children overseas. And then you find all this dynamics with the children here and the children there and the parents in the hospital. And that made me wonder about long distance bereavement therapy. So how does it work? And what recommendations can you give to the parents?
But then we realised that in South Africa as such, there are very little research done with regards to immigration. So we know about the immigrant, but what I was interested in was the families left behind, and that made me do the whole study with the parents to ask the parents to tell their story. So how do you experience a child that has immigrated? And that’s how my whole journey started about 18 years ago.
Jan Hugo: Well, that is so interesting because, you know, we’ve now had 31 episodes, mostly talking to and about the lives of people who have emigrated. And as I mentioned to you when I contacted you, I was recently contacted by a listener with both children abroad. She actually lives in Pretoria and just said that they feel neglected. Nobody looks after them. Nobody takes up their case. And also, on Monday I launched an episode with a lady in Mossel Bay who has two children abroad, and it just all of a sudden dawned on me that, you know, there’s so many emotions and things involved and a lot of people suffer, but people care for the children that leave and not for people who stay behind. Why do you think people are ignored who stay behind?
Dr. Sulette Ferreira: Immigration is often portrayed as an individual pursuit of better opportunities in a distant country, motivated by various factors. And I think people get stuck on those factors. So we look at statistics, we look at numbers. How many people immigrate? Where do they immigrate to? What is the effect on the country where they come from? What is the effect of the country where they go to? And then people forget that immigration reshapes family dynamics across generations, and in the process I think the parents and the siblings got left behind. So we focus on the immigrant and not the parents left behind, and that’s why with my study I specifically looked at the parents left behind. What kind of emotions do they experience? What are their experiences in this whole immigration situation? So there are various factors why they don’t focus on the parents per se, and then even less on the siblings, for instance.
Jan Hugo: And parents probably suffer much more than we think, but I have the sense that parents often try to hide their suffering from the children who are already also suffering, adapting to a new country and with all the challenges that go with that. So parents tend to just not deal with the emotions.
Dr. Sulette Ferreira: Yes, I think one way is not dealing with it, but I think maybe what you’ve also experienced when you ask a parent, tell me about your child that’s immigrated, and they’ll normally start to say, he’s doing so well. You know, they are so successful in this new country. They started a business and they’re much more financially better off. They are so happy there and we are happy for them. So it’s really always the trend to talk about the happiness of the child.
And then later on, when I asked, but how did you experience it? How did you feel about it? There was one specific interview that I’ll also never forget. And it was a husband and a wife that I interviewed together. And then I said, you know, were you sad when the children left? And the husband said, oh, no, you know, we coped with that very well. And the wife just said, but now you’re lying. You are lying to the woman. You cried all the way at the airport. Tell the truth. And then you realise, you know, people, even in a family, how the husband and wife differ about their experience. But yes, I think they try and see the positive first, and then you probe them, and then only you realise what the effect is on them as the parents.
Jan Hugo: I always say that, you know, in this podcast I started it because I think there’s a big difference between Facebook and real life, and people put good news on Facebook. You never see the real story. So when you start interacting with people and asking them how they really feel, then you hear the real stories, and I guess in a way it’s a similar thing because you also don’t want to acknowledge that the kids aren’t doing well, if they’re battling. You know, it’s not in our nature to say to people, no, they’re really battling, they should come back, but anyway.
So in the practice and the people that you treat, what would you say are the biggest emotional challenges?
Dr. Sulette Ferreira: The longing, the feeling of missing out, the feeling of my child has a life there and I’m not part of that life. You know, Jan, I’ve got to say that what makes it most difficult for us as human beings is the picture in our head of how it’s supposed to be. And when that picture gets distorted, then it’s very difficult.
So what I’m trying to say is, when you have children, I think most of us have this idea that when they grow up, because we want them to leave the house, we want them to be on their own. Most of my parents say they never thought that they’d go that far away from home. You visualise your children on their own, independent, having grandchildren, but then you also visualise them coming back and spending a weekend with you, and you are with the grandchildren and you grow up with the grandchildren because that’s the picture in your head. That’s how it’s supposed to be.
And now all of a sudden this whole picture of how it’s supposed to be is not happening because they are in Australia, we’ve got a time difference, I don’t even know when the next school concert is, I can’t go to an Ouma and Oupa day. So as a parent, and as a grandparent especially, I’ve got a double loss because I’m losing out on my child’s life and I’m losing out on my grandchild’s life. But there are ways to deal with that, but yes, that’s the most thing: we’re missing out. You know, and it’s the small things, going to a party together or just, some of the parents will say, just to sit and talk with my child or just to sit in silence with my child. So I’m missing out on important moments in their lives.
Jan Hugo: That is so true. And you know, we sit here, we moved closer to our children. We’re a three-hour flight away from Dublin, so a bit further to the US. But you know, we can go there for a weekend now. And I always say, even though we see them on television, on a video call, and we speak to the grandchildren, it’s very different to being able to put a little three-year-old boy to bed and read him a story and be there. These days we record stories and we send it to them and they hear our voices. But I mean, it’s just not the same. That touch and feel is a massive, massive loss. So I can imagine it’s like that for everybody.
Dr. Sulette Ferreira: I think what you’re saying, Jan, what you’re saying at the moment is also very important, the whole aspect of touch. When a child, when your grandchild is born, normally the parents go to the hospital and you are there to touch this baby. I know that’s also a change. A lot of children don’t want the parents to be at the hospital. They want them to give them time to adjust to the new role, but then shortly afterwards the grandparents will be with this new child, picking up, touching, and that whole idea of parents doing something, being physically involved, and that all gets taken away from you. There’s no sitting on your lap, no touching, no playing, no…
Yes, the physical touch, and there’s a lot of things that we can reproduce with the internet and with videos and with story reading. But that human touch, that being in the same space, that smelling, you know, even the smell of the little baby, you’re missing out on it.
Jan Hugo: Absolutely. And again, you know, you talk to me because I’m a parent and a grandparent. And I know exactly what you’re talking about. And for me, it’s almost like, you know, you’ve got to do something to ensure that that communication stays because I look at my children in America with time zones. It’s very difficult to maintain that contact. Now the little boy is a 13-year-old teenager. He doesn’t really give a damn about his Oupa anymore because, you know, he’s moving on with his life and doing his stuff. So it really is hard.
And you talked about bereavement therapy and I think that’s an appropriate word because I also spoke in one of my previous episodes about the sense of grief on the one hand of broken families, of children that can’t play with their cousins, that don’t get to know their cousins because sometimes they live in different countries. And then the other side of that, which is an emotion I want to ask you about, is anger. Because for me, if South Africa was a normal society, we wouldn’t have had this. We would have stayed there. The kids would have stayed there. How does one deal, or do people feel this anger?
Dr. Sulette Ferreira: When you say in this country, we’ve also got to remember, I think at the moment in South Africa, we’ve got kind of an idea that it’s only happening in South Africa because of a lot of political situations, because of the crime, because of the electricity, because of a lot of stuff. But immigration happens all over the world. And there’s a lot of people all over the world that feel like we feel. And to go back to why people immigrate, we must also remember that there’s a specific personality. So in other words, not everybody will immigrate, but there are people that would have immigrated anyway, no matter what the situation is. So that’s one thing also to keep in mind. And that’s why I always feel, don’t blame the country or don’t blame the immigrant for a bad relationship.
So there’s a lot of aspects in that regard that one should be aware of. And then we need to talk about grief therapy. A lot of people also don’t understand what it is that they’re experiencing. Because what you are experiencing and what the parents are experiencing is not a normal grief situation. When we talk for instance about death, the person is sick or dies instantly, but there’s an end point to it. We have a funeral and we grieve. And I won’t say there’s an end point because you always miss that person, but there’s a kind of finality towards that.
But if one looks at immigration, we call that an ambiguous loss. So in other words, it’s a continuous loss. And you’re grieving something that you can’t have. There was a professor, Professor Pauline Boss in America, and she coined this whole term of ambiguous loss. And she explained that you get two kinds of ambiguous loss. So the one type is where a person is psychologically present, but he’s physically away, and then you get the other situation where he is physically present but emotionally away.
So in other words, with immigration my child is emotionally still with me but physically he’s gone. I can’t reach him, I can’t be with him, and that makes you feel stuck in that situation because you’ve got this yearning and you don’t really know what it is that you’re experiencing. And so for instance, you do have the ability or the, I would say, the privilege to go and visit. That whole grieving starts from the beginning again because now I visit and the minute I walk in I start thinking about leaving and coming back to South Africa again. So it’s that constant grieving. And even when you’re in South Africa and you see other families with their children, it’s this whole thing of what could have been, what should have been, and now you’re there and we’re missing out. So there’s constant reminders of that.
But then saying that, I also need to say that not everybody experiences ambiguous loss. And what I’m also trying to explain is not everybody sits every day and is, you know, depressed and crying. That’s not at all what I’m trying to say with this grieving process. All I’m saying is, especially when I ask you about it, then obviously you stop thinking about it and we talk about it and you realise this. But people don’t realise the severity, I would like to say, about ambiguous loss and how to deal specifically with ambiguous loss.
Jan Hugo: That’s really interesting. I never thought about it like that, but it makes absolute sense. Because one of the thoughts that I have around this is, we have X number of days on Earth. And I said, people emigrate because they’re looking for more happiness. They want to spend their days living happily. And other people decide to stay because they’re happy where they are. But when your family now decides to immigrate, you have to make a call as a parent to say, well, it’s for their good, but it’s for my bad. Now, some parents, I guess, can be selfish, selfish in inverted commas, to say, you know, you can’t leave us or, you know, put kids on a guilt trip. I guess, is that something that happens as well?
Dr. Sulette Ferreira: Yes, definitely. So there are parents that are really angry, and what you also find is that in a household, say for instance the wife accepts this more but the husband doesn’t accept this at all, so there’s a conflict between them as well. So what happens with immigration, sometimes it’s like opening a can of worms. This one aspect triggers a lot of other aspects where the wife then realises, but look, I’m not happy in the relationship at all. So there’s a lot of aspects that just gets opened up with this whole situation.
So yes, people are angry, but then again it’s also important to go and look, what was the relationship before your child left? Did you have frequent contact? Did you have a good relationship? Is it the immigration that’s changed it? Because my finding is that if you’ve got a good relationship before immigration, that relationship will stay solid. It will still be a good relationship. But if you had a bad relationship before immigration, it’s very difficult after immigration to fix this. It’s not impossible, but it’s very difficult.
Jan Hugo: Yeah, I guess that’s also so true. And then in that way, people will find ways of keeping that relationship going through regular calls and that kind of thing. And I’ll ask you about that now. But the other question, we talk about families and how they behave differently. If you’re in a situation where, say, a father worked overseas for a period of his life, and he thinks it’s a good idea, but the mother didn’t. But in that situation, they will almost encourage kids to leave, whereas if people haven’t travelled, they haven’t experienced life abroad, they would be dead against it. And I mean, that in itself must create a conflict as well.
Dr. Sulette Ferreira: Definitely. These we do find. And then again, the other aspect when you talk about when you travel, so you find a lot of times that parents will tell children, but you know, it’s so bad in this country, you should definitely pack your bags and go find a new life. And the children start thinking about that. But like I said, it’s not everybody that’s an immigrant. So I think as a parent as well, be careful what you preach. Make sure when you talk about this that you know your child. It’s like I said, even in one household, you’ve got two children and the one will definitely be so happy as an immigrant and the other one will be totally unhappy. So we must be very careful how we deal with that whole situation.
Jan Hugo: That’s very true. I’ve spoken to a number of people who have come back to South Africa after leaving. One family decided they were going to stay for a while and come and raise their kids. They were very happy to be back. Others had bad experiences overseas. And somebody said that immigration can take five years out of your life to readjust. You give up a lot, you go, you come back. So it’s a big, big, big decision. And yeah.
Dr. Sulette Ferreira: There’s also the situation where, for instance, your family is extremely important for you and you’ve always had a very close relationship with your parents and your siblings, but your wife never had. So for her maybe it’s going to be much easier to adapt wherever you’ve immigrated to. But for you that’s so close to your family, it makes it extremely hard. That longing back to South Africa and to be with family makes it very, very difficult.
So most of the people that do return also say that it’s because of the family. They just miss that whole family unit. Because even if you just think about having grandchildren, all of a sudden that support system of the grandparents, the only people that you really trust with your children, they’re not there. So the pressure is even more on you to look after your own child. There’s nobody that will come and say, don’t worry, we’ll look after them tonight, you go and sleep. Because I’ve got a friend now whose daughter has moved back into the house with her husband and she’s helping out with this little baby to say, go and sleep tonight, you know, just take some time off. But now I’m overseas and there’s nobody that tells you, okay my child, take a little bit of time off. So that even that is extremely hard.
And you must also remember, all three role players are affected: the parent, the grandparent is missing out, the parent is missing out, and the grandchild is missing out. So it touches everybody and it puts the responsibility so much more on the parent per se and the grandparent to keep that bond.
Jan Hugo: And that was one of my other questions. You talked about working in the hospital where people are sick and kids overseas. The other side, we’ve just experienced with my daughter having complications with a pregnancy. Fortunately, her mother was able to be with her for a while. And I went there and they live not too far away. But it’s a massive, massive thing for them to have that support. They’ve got beautiful friends, a lot of South African friends, but it’s not their parents. It’s just not the same. You can’t have a friend come and stay and say, you know, tonight you sleep, I’ll look after the baby. It just doesn’t work. So yeah, that’s a big thing.
And the other side, if the parents get sick and kids feel guilty, often I spoke to somebody in New Zealand the other day who said the father-in-law passed away and they just didn’t have money to go to the funeral, to go back to South Africa, and that in itself is a very difficult thing to deal with as well if you’re sitting there worrying but you can’t go.
Dr. Sulette Ferreira: That makes it extremely difficult. The one article that I wrote and the research that I’ve done, and it sounds so logical, but finance plays a huge role, Jan. First of all, if I can’t afford it, one lady said to me, you know, if I think about my child and I look at my finance, I might see this child once more in my lifetime.
If you’re fortunate enough, and yes, you can go and visit it, it makes it easier. The other aspect, if you are not in a financial situation, for instance, most people don’t even think about it, but to go to a guest house for instance, just to leave that breathing space. Because a lot of parents go and visit for a month, two months, three months in a tiny house. So coming from South Africa where we’ve got space and every room has got an ensuite bathroom, now all of a sudden you are taking up a bed of one of the grandchildren and you’re waiting in line for a bathroom, which is lovely at most stages and you’re very close to one another, but that can also cause a lot of friction in that whole household because you come to visit but we are working and we’ve got to carry on with all our daily life as such. So that makes it extremely difficult.
Jan Hugo: Absolutely. Again, we see it live because we’re here and we know exactly what you’re talking about. Those houses in a place like Ireland are pretty cramped and small and they never stay more than three, four days, but the parents come from South Africa. You see, that’s the other thing that I find, we have a lot of English friends here because they don’t really emigrate to Portugal. They live two lives because they live here, they may be working in IT or whatever, but they go up and down because it’s a cheap flight on Ryanair and so on. But for South Africans, distance, mentally that must also be a big factor.
Dr. Sulette Ferreira: It’s a huge factor. And now, what I’m also trying to explain to people, we’re really young and we’re like 50 or 60. We’re still active and we can get on a plane and you can do what you’ve got to do. Now I’m reaching the age of 70 or 80. You come to the place where you put your bags through the security, they want you to take off your shoes, they want you to open your bag, and you know, Jan will be laughing about this now, but I can’t bend. So now I’ve got to put on my shoes again, I’ve got to get my bag, I’ve got to get everything that they took off me, and I’ve got to get ready to go on the plane.
So all of those aspects makes it so, so difficult and we become so vulnerable when we’re old. And your child remembers you when you were 60, but now I’m 70 and you haven’t seen me for 10 years. I’ve aged in that 10 years, so it’s not as easy to travel as it used to be. And then all these hours to travel. You know, by the time you get there you are dead tired and it’s the time zones and you’ve got jet lag and you fit into this new household, so it also takes a bit of time to fit into the household again and everything is new and different. And again, we’ve got this picture now here that we’ve got to get in there and everybody’s happy and we can have this wonderful time.
Parents sometimes also, I think in a certain sense, think about this wonderful holiday, and then you come, then you do one thing wrong and daughter-in-law isn’t as friendly as she wanted to be, and that ruins that whole holiday. So it makes it extremely difficult to, you know, just to be in somebody else’s house. And there I’d like to say, just have realistic expectations. Just be realistic of what’s gonna happen there.
Jan Hugo: I think you mentioned the travel and I guess part of dealing with it, if you’re in the fortunate position financially to be able to travel and go there once a year, so your kids live in Australia, that helps a lot I think to look forward to it, to have something to cling to, to know that it’s coming and you’re going, then at least you can look forward to the next one. But that’s not available to everybody. That must be a very difficult thing to deal with when you talk to people. It almost then becomes that final grief. How do people deal with it? How do you deal with it as a counsellor and a psychologist?
Dr. Sulette Ferreira: One thing that I’d like to say is when you look at the parents and all the parents that I deal with, it’s a very emotional journey. And there’s never a moment that you can’t see that a parent has experienced loss. So for me as a therapist also, it’s extremely difficult because I can’t bring the child back. I can’t change the situation. But then again, if we look at Viktor Frankl and what he said, that when you can’t change the situation, you’ve got to change your attitude.
And that’s what I’m trying to get across to the parents. This has happened. It’s not your fault. It’s nothing that you did. It’s the child that has decided to go and that’s the situation that we are in. So how will we deal with this situation the best way we can? And that is to keep your communication going, to keep on being the parent in this whole situation. And that’s the important aspect around this. So the communication needs to keep going.
Jan Hugo: Okay, okay. And I mean, another question is just what role does community, friend support groups play with parents that stay behind? Because obviously, if you go on Facebook, there’s a gazillion groups for people who live in England or Australia or wherever, South Africans living abroad. But for the parents, what role does it play to have other people that share your emotions?
Dr. Sulette Ferreira: Sometimes with ambiguous loss, a lot of people don’t understand what the parents are going through. Now it’s like the same with a divorce. When somebody gets divorced, you say, I’m happy for you. Eventually you get rid of this guy. Or should I say, I’m sorry for you. You know, I’m sorry for your loss. So again, in a situation with a parent, should I say, I’m so happy that your child has got this wonderful life overseas? Or should I say, I’m sorry for your loss?
So it’s a difficult situation for the community also to deal with this, and a lot of people don’t deal with it in a correct way to say, but for instance, you’ve got a child in South Africa, so why is it so difficult for you? Or your child is still alive, I mean what is the problem? So they don’t understand it themselves. That’s why for me it’s so important to write as many articles to educate people to say, but even though your child is alive, he’s not physically with me, he’s not physically reachable.
And so the community also needs to get educated in this whole aspect. And that’s why I’ve also started a Facebook group and the group is called Worlds Apart, Living in One Heart. So only if you are a parent with children abroad, you are welcome to join the group. And on the group we discuss aspects like ambiguous loss or grief or what do we do at the airport, because the airport is a very important aspect in this whole immigration scenario. Everything starts at the airport, everything ends at the airport. The airport starts playing a huge role. So we deal with a lot of those kind of aspects.
And my recommendation to the parents is also find new friends and find communities where you can participate again, get involved in the community so that you don’t focus on your child not being here all the time, that you can live a meaningful, full life, even being apart from your children and your grandchildren.
Jan Hugo: That’s fantastic to hear. I’m so glad that you have that group and that you publish these articles. I don’t know, maybe at the end of the write-up we can just tell people where they can find some of these articles if you publish them on the Facebook group, and I will also give your website address. But I mean that is amazing because I think there’s a lot of people that don’t find the support. I don’t know if you know in churches in South Africa whether there are specific people that care for people who miss their family.
Dr. Sulette Ferreira: Not that I know of. And it’s also difficult because I think the responsibility gets put on the other child, for instance, to take care of your mother or to take care of your father, and they don’t always understand the real need of that person. So yes, it gets a bit complicated.
Jan Hugo: Okay, that’s really interesting. What would you say, what are signs that people need to look out for and to say to them that they need professional help in this process? Because clearly there is help available. People don’t have to do this alone.
Dr. Sulette Ferreira: Not at all. One of the signs I think is if you are really depressed, if you feel that depression is starting to play a role in your life where you just cannot cope, the longing consumes literally everything in your life, then I think, not then, but then obviously it’s time to speak to a professional in this regard to give professional help. Because a lot of people with ambiguous loss get stuck and they don’t know how to get out of the stuckness. So when you feel that there’s no way out, I can’t live without the children, I can’t carry on anymore, then it’s definitely time to speak to somebody.
Now even if you just need a consultation, and it’s not therapy as such, but a consultation to say, but this is how I feel, and sometimes just to find out but this is normal, what you’re feeling at the moment is absolutely normal in an abnormal situation. And that as such is already beneficial to this person.
Jan Hugo: Well, that’s very true. I mean, and people don’t have to think that there’s anything wrong with asking for therapy. I think very much sometimes South Africans, especially men, don’t want to go to therapy because they don’t think it’s a very manly thing to do. But in this situation, there’s absolute huge benefit to be gained from it. So…
Dr. Sulette Ferreira: I also want to say now, Jan, especially the men, because they also don’t want to admit how difficult it is that they are missing the children. So they keep this kind of facade of how happy they are for the children, we’ve got to carry on. And sometimes it’s also, in a certain sense, a little bit easier for men because they are still working, as opposed to the wife that has lost this mothering role, the grandmother role, and is not working. So her day is quite long as opposed to the husband who might still be working. But the minute he also stops working and the days get long, it’s difficult. And if you can’t admit how difficult it is for you, it’s not a good situation to be in.
Jan Hugo: No, it gets very tough. We can talk for a long time but we’re getting towards the end of the interview. Maybe if I can ask you what’s one actionable piece of advice that you would give to parents who are struggling today?
Dr. Sulette Ferreira: It’s to have a good relationship with your child. If you can have a good relationship with your child and keep that bond strong, they will be more positive towards their grandchildren to keep you alive in their homes. So what I’m trying to say is if there’s a good relationship, they’ll boost you as a parent and keep talking positive about you all the time. So if you can as a parent keep your parent role, keep your positivity when you phone your children, be positive.
Yes, I know we all have our bad days, but you can’t every single time that you phone say how difficult it is and how you’re struggling. It makes it difficult for the children to phone you. So you have to find meaning in your own life to be able to carry that over to your children and for your children to know, even though it’s hard for my parent, they are functioning quite well. They are in certain groups. They are doing things that they like. It’s nice to talk to them. It’s nice for them to talk to the grandchildren. So it’s to keep your parent role the way that you used to. That’s for me extremely important.
Jan Hugo: Well, I think that’s fantastic advice because it is easy to be called or to get a call at the wrong time when you’re not feeling great and not to be positive. So I think that’s wonderful advice. And as you said, if you’re not feeling great, just go and look for help and the help is there and they can talk to a therapist, talk to you. They don’t have to go for long-term therapy. I think sometimes people think that if you sign up to have a session with somebody like yourself, it’s a long-term thing. It doesn’t have to be.
Dr. Sulette Ferreira: Sometimes you just need that reassurance. We all need to feel normal, if you know what I’m saying. So somebody can just tell you, but your feelings are normal and whatever you’re experiencing now, it’s fine as long as it doesn’t get out of hand. But what you’re experiencing is normal in this situation. But let’s look at other ways also to deal with this that will be beneficial for all of you. Because also for the child, the adult child, it’s so important to keep that relationship with a parent and to have the responsibility to keep the relationship. So the responsibility on the parent and the child gets even more than when they were in South Africa.
Jan Hugo: Absolutely. Wow. Is there anything else you would like to add, Sulette?
Dr. Sulette Ferreira: I think I’d like to add, but in a sense just to say that it’s definitely not a solitary experience. Immigration seems quite simple but it’s got such a huge, huge ripple effect on everybody in this situation, and that we should look out for one another because I think sometimes you tend to think it’s only me and I’m the one that’s suffering. And you forget about the other people in a situation that’s also suffering. So it’s also, I would say, just look out for one another empathetically in an immigration situation.
Jan Hugo: Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you for sharing your experience. I think it’s just opened my eyes again to what people are going through and the help that’s out there. So if I can say, if you want to contact Sulette, the website is https://www.drsulette.com/. Is that right? And that Facebook group, Sulette, can you just repeat that?
Dr. Sulette Ferreira: Yes, it’s called Worlds Apart, Living in One Heart. So when you go on Facebook, you have to apply for that because not everybody can be on that group. I’ve got a Facebook page for Dr Sulette that everybody can join, but this group is specifically for the parents and also for the siblings left behind. So Worlds Apart, Living in One Heart.
Jan Hugo: Worlds Apart, Living in One Heart. On Facebook, go and apply to join if it applies to you, if you’re a parent in South Africa or siblings. It’s well worth it. Thank you so much for joining us, Sulette. I really appreciate your time and I really appreciate your wisdom.
Dr. Sulette Ferreira: Thank you so much for having me, Jan. Thank you.
Jan Hugo: If you enjoyed my discussion with Sulette and would like to hear more about experiences of South Africans who have left South Africa, why not subscribe on your favourite platform. If you would like to share your own story, contact us on jan@therelocatedsouthafrican.com. Until next time.
