S6 Ep8: Kerryn Colen

When Kerryn Colen and her family repatriated back to Australia from Canada after 11 years overseas during COVID, hotel quarantine was a silver lining. A silver lining that turned into a silver bullet to getting all the repatriation admin done in two short weeks. Kids enrolled in school, check. Kids football club logistics, check. Great job, check. What took longer, was feeling ‘normal’ which took nearly 12 months for the family of four. In this podcast, Kerryn talks about how the family adjusted and the difference in feelings between parents, who were ‘coming home’ and the kids who were going to live in a place that to date, had just felt like the land of ‘beach holidays, Christmas with relatives and fun times’ - despite their Australian birth certificates. Kerryn used preparation time and hotel quarantine to sort out the anchors for her family’s new life back in Australia. While for Kerryn this was a job and volunteering, for her kids it was sorting out school and a football club. For Kerryn and her partner, getting the family’s ‘non-work’ lives sorted as soon as possible was a key strategy to making the family, the kids in particular, reconnect with life back in Australia as quickly as possible.