For eight years I have been in a state of working preliminarily toward leaving the US. But something was stopping me. Some of it (at the time) was marriage difficulties, but after I became a single mom, it became clear that wasn't the only issue. Sometimes it was the sheer number of things for me to do as a single parent, sometimes it was just crushing fear for myself and my trans teens, sometimes it was my ADHD and depression, and sometimes it was that things get really confusing sometimes, dealing in systems I don't understand. Another layer to this was always that seeking help with these things brought the kind of help that felt like they didn't understand me or why I was trying to do what I was doing. These things all together amounted to a sense that I was alone in all of this.

Once I found the Conscientious Emigration blog, I had the highest of hopes that Elizabeth was the right partner in my emigration. Her knowledge and wisdom around *why* we are doing what we are doing was so helpful. A lot of emigrating from the US is "feeling crazy" but Elizabeth truly understands the difference between "looking for a place to retire" and "fleeing my country because one or more of us are in categories that put us in danger of harm." It's an important difference. I never had to obscure my reasonings for some of the decisions I made because she already knows these things. We do not want to colonize. We do not hold ourselves above others. We want to move somewhere to be part of a community, not to sit on top of the economic food chain somewhere or displace people.

On top of all of this, I found Elizabeth to be professional and relatable, honest and diligent. She genuinely cares about my kids and spoke to us as a family when schedules and kids' moods worked out. She helped distribute the workload, keep track of what the high priority items were, and when I needed to be doing what. If I ever have a question, she gets back to me as soon as she is able.

Before I was out of the US, I would sometimes start to spiral from the news and she helped me through this mostly by supplying me with (or reminding me of) true factual information about laws, policies, and current practices. She even served some of my spiraling logic back to me for some rethinking in a kind and straightforward way which truly got me through at least one particularly hard week before we left.

I also started to lean on her weekly emails and/or real-time heads-up emails about things in the news that would affect my family instead of constantly scanning all the terrible news coming out of this administration myself. I could trust that if there was something she was concerned about for my emigration, that she would tell me. Having Elizabeth's support and guidance was exactly what I needed to get my family to safety. My kids even give her props, unprompted, whenever our journey to here comes up. They really recognize how important she was and is to our emigration.

Anyway if you are trying to leave the US for similar reasons to the above and you are finding that you need someone to help keep you on track, help you make tough decisions, and keep your energy directed at a solution, I highly recommend Elizabeth at Conscientious Emigration!

— Iridescent Echo, Custom Comprehensive Support Client