Living abroad is sweet, but never soft

There’s a Brazilian saying that’s been playing on a loop in my head lately: “Rapadura is sweet, but it isn’t soft.”

If you haven’t had the pleasure (or the dental risk) of trying it, Rapadura is a delicious Brazilian candy made from pure sugarcane juice. It’s rich and delicious. But here’s the catch, it’s rock hard. If you bite into it the wrong way, you’re not just getting a sugar rush, you’re potentially breaking a tooth.

To me, living abroad is exactly like Rapadura.

The Sweetness of the Journey

I truly love the sweetness of this life. I love the freedom of walking everywhere and feeling like the world is perfectly connected. I love the mosaic of international friends I’ve made and the way their cultures have stretched my own perspective. There are those “pinch-me” moments, like sitting on a Mediterranean beach at 10:00 PM with the sun still clinging to the horizon. That make everything feel worth it.

The Hardness We Don’t Talk About

But let’s be real: living abroad is one of the hardest candies out there.

Most expats and immigrants I know carry this heavy, disorganized train of feelings. Sometimes it’s sharp and concrete, like the sting of missing a best friend’s wedding or a family milestone. But more often, it’s deeper. It’s a continued emotional pain.

It’s this persistent ache deep in your chest. We try to give it meaning to make it lighter, or we try to “outrun” it by working harder and staying busy. But the feeling remains. Eventually, the battle against this pain becomes exhausting. Life can start to feel a bit empty or pointless, and we find ourselves withdrawing from the very things that used to bring us joy.

Like Rapadura, if you “bite” this experience the wrong way, it can break something important inside you.

The ACT Perspective: How to Eat the Rapadura

In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), we learn that the pain of living abroad isn’t something to be “fixed” or “cured”, it’s something to be carried. To eat Rapadura without breaking a tooth, you have to work with its hardness, not pretend it’s a marshmallow.

Here is how we handle the “hardness” of expat life:

• Acceptance (The “Soft” Bite): Stop fighting the ache. When you feel that heaviness in your chest, instead of trying to work it away or drown it in distractions, try saying: “I feel lonely right now because I am far from home, and that’s okay.” Pushing the pain away only makes it heavier.
• Values (The “Why”): When people ask, “Why would you eat a candy that can break your tooth?” your answer lies in your values. You aren’t doing this because it’s easy; you’re doing it because you value growth, adventure, or building a better future.
• Committed Action: Even when the “pain” is present, we can still take small steps toward what matters. You can feel homesick and still go to that dinner with your international friends. You can feel exhausted and still take that walk by the sea.

The goal isn’t to wait for the pain to melt away. It’s to realize that the sweetness and the hardness come in the same bite. We eat the Rapadura not because it’s soft, but because what we gain from it is worth the jaw-aching effort of carrying it all.