Living abroad has a way of revealing what was always there—needs we didn’t know we had, grief we didn’t give ourselves permission to feel, and identities that no longer fit the life we left behind. In this episode, Mickelle sits down with Melissa Parks, Ph.D.—writer, therapist-turned-coach, and co-founder of the Location Independent Therapists (LIT) Community—for a conversation that’s equal parts grounding and expansive.

Melissa shares the story at the heart of her memoir: a breakup in Spain that didn’t just break her heart—it dismantled her entire structure of stability. When your partner is also your visa pathway, your cultural interpreter, your primary community, and your “home base,” a breakup isn’t just relational. It’s existential. Together, Mickelle and Melissa name this clearly: it’s compound grief—a stacked loss that’s hard to explain to people who only see the headline (“a breakup”) and not the reality underneath (“a life collapsing across multiple layers”).

From there, the conversation opens into the deeper work: what it means to meet change with mindful self-compassion, how transitions show up in the body, why grief can live beside excitement, and how living abroad invites a level of self-knowing most of us didn’t train for.

In this episode

• Why a breakup abroad can become compound grief (home, visa, belonging, identity—not just love)
• The 3 parts of mindful self-compassion: mindfulness, common humanity, and self-kindness—and how to actually practice them
• How transition shows up in the body: panic, insomnia, stomach distress, physiological overwhelm
• Why closing chapters matters: goodbyes, rituals, and giving yourself permission to grieve even when the change is “your choice”
• Fitting in vs belonging: the cost of being a chameleon and the freedom of returning to yourself
• Multi-selves + neurodivergence: code-switching across cultures, masking, and Melissa’s late-in-life autism diagnosis as a layer of self-understanding

The deeper thread: an invitation to go inward

A standout moment in this conversation is Melissa’s framing of global life as an invitation. Not always an easy one—but a powerful one.

Living abroad doesn’t only change your address. It changes your nervous system. It changes the way you relate to uncertainty, identity, grief, and choice. And as Melissa points out, so much of the suffering comes when we try to stay on the surface—when we keep moving, achieving, and adapting externally, without building the internal tools to hold what’s shifting.

This is where self-compassion becomes less of a “nice idea” and more of a lifeline.

Melissa breaks it down in a way that’s practical and surprisingly clear:

1. Mindfulness: name what’s true—without spiraling into it.
2. Common humanity: remember this is hard and you’re not alone in it.
3. Self-kindness: speak to yourself like someone you love (or like your therapist would, or even like your dog would).

The goal isn’t perfection. It’s building a relationship with yourself that can hold real change.

Home isn’t just a place

Mickelle and Melissa also explore “home” as something more layered than geography. When you’ve lived in multiple countries, loved multiple places, and built multiple versions of yourself across languages and cultures, “home” can become fragmented—unless you anchor it internally.

Melissa offers a beautiful reframe: home as the feeling of safety in your own body. A place where you can take off your shoes, exhale, and be fully yourself—no performance, no translation, no proving.

That’s not something you arrive at once. It’s something you practice into.

About the guest: Melissa Parks, Ph.D.

Melissa Parks, Ph.D. is a writer, coach, and therapist-turned-coach who spent over a decade living and working in Spain and the Netherlands, supporting globally mobile clients through identity shifts, transitions, and the emotional complexity of living between cultures. She is trained to teach the evidence-based Mindful Self-Compassion program developed by Christopher Germer and Kristin Neff, and she is the co-founder of the Location Independent Therapists (LIT) Community.

Melissa’s debut memoir, A Compassionate Mess: A Therapist, Her Monsters, and a Journey to Self-Acceptance, will be published on June 23, 2026.

Explore Melissa’s work + resources:

• Website: https://www.melissaparks.com
• Free 5-day Inner Critic → Self-Compassion series: https://melissaparks.com/self-compassion-series/

For more about Melissa and all episode links and resources, see:https://www.houseofperegrine.com/podcast/ep-093

Listen, share, and join the conversation

If this episode landed with you—if you’ve ever felt the “in-between,” the grief under the adventure, or the quiet identity shift that no one else can see—send this to a fellow Peregrine who will feel understood.