Friendships abroad: the art of holding the invisible 🔗 with Mariele Klering

The quiet power of adult friendships abroad

Some friendships come with a story. Others arrive quietly, without a big moment or a perfect beginning, just someone showing up again and again until you realize they’ve become essential to you.

When you move across the world, friendship turns into something else entirely. You start looking for people who can hold space for the version of you that doesn’t have it all figured out. Someone who gets it when your voice catches mid-sentence. Someone who knows why certain silences feel heavy. At first, you don’t even know what you need, you just know everything feels unfamiliar, and you’re tired of carrying it all by yourself.

One day, someone makes you laugh in a parking lot or sends you a meme (someone probably came to your mind already) or offers to help carry something you were pretending wasn’t heavy. That’s how it starts.

This post is the result of two women - Mariele and me - connecting over this shared experience, while still getting to know each other. It’s been a pleasure to meet and work with her, and I’m excited knowing this is just the beginning of many more projects together!

These are two stories about that kind of friendship.

Mariele Klering
While watching Ginny and Georgia season 3 this weekend, there was a scene where Georgia, the mom, is talking to her daughter before the first day at a new school. Ginny’s scared to go in, and Georgia comforts her by saying:

“You just need to find one friend. You can go through anything in life if you have one good friend.”

Of everything that happened in that one-hour episode, that’s the only line that stayed with me. One good friend.

I have been lucky. When I moved to the other side of the world seven years ago, I had friends waiting for me. Friends who spoke my language. Friends who stood by my side in quiet ways. They were there when I worked the most intense job of my life. They were there through a divorce. They were there when I found love again and they were there when I lost the most important person in my life, without getting to say goodbye. None of it would have been possible without them.

Maybe that’s why making new friends as an adult feels so hard, because I know how much it can matter.

A friend once told me: “you can’t expect all your friends to be the same kind of friend.”

At the time, I didn’t get it. So I asked her to explain.

“Well,” she said, “there are friends you call in a crisis. There are friends you go out with and only talk about light things, like, is anyone still doing Botox these days? There are friends who love going deep. And there are friends who will go on a Costco run with you on Boxing Day and say they’re having fun.”

If you are really lucky, you’ll find people who check all those boxes but that’s rare. And that’s okay.

We expect one person to meet every need, fill every silence, handle every meltdown, join every plan. Poor person. You’d need to send them a contract with terms and conditions.

But still, how do we even make new friends?

We don’t get to walk up to someone in the park and say, “Wanna be my friend?” the way we did as kids. Now we’re busy. We’ve got work, kids, partners, and if we’re lucky, a few stolen minutes for a walk or a workout.

So friendship ends up at the bottom of the list and that’s the real challenge.

Because when you are trying to make friends as an adult (especially as an immigrant), you’re not just looking for connection.

You’re trying to create space where no space exists yet.

You have to be intentional. You have to send the message. Not the “we should hang out sometime” that dies in the group chat. The actual “Want to get a coffee next week?” kind.

And yes, that takes effort. Real effort. Which is hard when you’re already stretched thin and barely holding your routines together.

But here’s the thing no one says out loud: if we wait until life gets easier (spoiler alert: it doesn’t!!!), we’ll look up one day and realize we built a full life with no one in it.

Far from home, making friends stops being a bonus and starts being survival.

---

Fer Sanchez

Mirela, Linda & me. somewhere in Portugal, 2025.

Before moving, I thought what I needed was structure: a good school, a decent routine, enough language to get by. What’s held me the most hasn’t been logistics, it’s been warmth.

The quiet, steady kind that shows up in WhatsApp groups, shared snacks, knowing glances, genuine meetups. The kind you don’t plan for but end up building your days around.

Sometimes, life in a new country feels like a puzzle without edges.

You kind of know the picture you’re trying to build, but each piece takes its time to fit (a lot of it) and then someone shows up, or a few people, and suddenly everything clicks. It feels like home. Even if it has no walls.

This time, we met without meaning to. In the soft chaos of a kids’ activity, surrounded by karate backpacks and those tiny pockets of maternal solitude while waiting for our children, a small conversation found its way through. First the laughter, then the messages, then the spontaneous plans.

Between the three of us (Linda, Mirela, and me). As if the heart had recognized something long before the mind caught up.

But the life changes all of the sudden and a few months ago, our friend (Mirela) who had become our soft landing told us she was leaving. Even though I was genuinely happy for her new path, the sadness was just as real.

Coffee tastes different now. The bench sits quieter without her laugh, her eyes, that energy that leapt at every little thing and stood tall for what mattered most.

“Avísame cuando llegues,” we would say, even after just a quick coffee.

Fun trips feel further away now but more ours, too.

I cried, of course I did. Not just because of the distance that opened up, but for everything that friendship taught me:

That showing up unfiltered is what opens real doors. That affection doesn’t need years, just presence and truth and that the connections born far from home are often the most fertile.

This isn’t just my story, it echoes. I’ve seen it, felt it, heard it in the voices of other women who’ve also migrated.

Something shifts in us when we’re far away, when routine gets heavy and uncertainty tightens its grip: the body seeks refuge in connection. It becomes almost instinct to reach out, build tribes, make space for one another.

It’s not just emotional, it’s physical. As if the body knew: closeness heals.

These friendships don’t just ease loneliness. They strengthen our mental health, our sense of belonging, even our will to stay.

Many of them begin on a bench, while waiting, not even realizing your life is about to change.

To the friendships that show up when you need them most and leave just when you wish they could stay a little longer: thank you for staying with me, even after goodbye.

We still send each other voice notes. Not every day, not always deep, just enough to say: I’m still here. A little update, a memory, a silly meme. It’s not the same, but it’s something.

Maybe that’s what friendship becomes when it grows across borders: a soft thread you keep choosing to hold.

Stories like Mariele’s and mine remind us: a good friend abroad is often the closest thing to home.

Who’s been that kind of anchor for you lately? 💭

With love,

🤍 Mariele & Fer 💛