Anna’s story

My credentials

I have lived in 6 states in the US, lived in 4 very different towns in France, traveled in 4 continents, spoken a few languages, taught French to children and adults in different types of classrooms, done sociolinguistic fieldwork with generations multilingual women for my PhD in French linguistics, and recently stayed home with my children.

That is essentially what I’ve relied on in the past to tell my story and how I’ve let others see me. It’s the story which highlights the diverse experiences I’ve had and has a clear trajectory until I became a mother.

A shift in perspective

But as so many of us find, the pieces of the puzzle shift as we enter motherhood and the old narrative doesn’t quite fit. The seed for Multilingual Mums was planted as I’ve re-evaluated my story and found the thread that brings it all together for me. I find that I am uniquely positioned to bring together a variety of people from many different backgrounds but with common experiences of multilingualism and motherhood that unite us.

And the Multilingual Mums community will grow as we find the common ground where our stories overlap.

As I share my story, I will thus offer questions to get the conversation going so we can better connect.

CHILDHOOD

I’m American, as are my parents, and I grew up speaking English at home. I first learned French when I was 7 and my family lived in France (my father was doing research there). I did my 2nd and 3rd grade years in French public schools and my 7th grade year in a bilingual private school. Otherwise I grew up in west Texas!

When did you learn your languages

and in what environments?

YOUNG ADULTHOOD

I spent 3 additional years in France – one year studying abroad in college and living with a host family, one year after college when I was an English teacher in elementary schools, and one year doing research for my dissertation. After college, I taught middle school and high school French as a foreign language for 3 years and took students abroad.

Do you recognize yourself in any of these experiences

of living, studying or working abroad?

RESEARCH
I then decided to do my PhD in French linguistics where I specialized in language acquisition, sociolinguistics, and language contact. For my dissertation, I conducted fieldwork in France with multiple generations of women of North African origin (Moroccan, Tunisian, Algerian). Some mothers were recent immigrants with young babies; other families already had been in France for 3 generations. They shared their stories of immigration, drew diagrams of their language history and their networks, and some even completed real-time text message questionnaires tracking their language use. Looking back at this as a mother, I’m amazed that so many women let me into their lives and took the time to do this but it goes to show how important language, culture and connection is! As well as the desire to be seen and known by others! And it might have helped that I was an outsider who was not French, where there were fewer assumptions and expectations and there was more space and freedom for them to define themselves in whatever terms they felt most comfortable.

Does your family have a story of immigration,

whether that was recent or a few generations ago?

TRAVEL

After my dissertation, my husband and I were very lucky to take 6 months to travel around the world (as an extended honeymoon). We backpacked with only a carry-on since we were hopping from place to place, all over Europe, Africa and Asia. We figured we needed to travel to many of these places while we were young and before children. We even had a website by that name for friends and family to follow us. Mike wrote the text since I felt he was more eloquent at telling stories and I expressed myself through photography. Note all of the travel photos on the website are my own from our travels. Though look at me now, finding my voice and the words to finally express myself! We met people along the way in hostels, by couch surfing, on excursions, and in trains. Some people were 5-minute friends. Others we have crossed paths with again. And we met a handful of families who were traveling with children and we pondered how we might do that in the future with our own children.

Are you looking for tips on travel with your family?

Are you looking to connect with others as you travel?

DUAL IMMERSION

Upon returning from this trip, we drove cross-country with a moving van to Utah. We moved for my husband’s work but it was also a new adventure with opportunities for exploring out west. I stumbled upon the Dual Language Immersion program in public schools (kids spend half the day in English and half the day in the target language). I taught the French side of the 3rd grade program, teaching math and science and French literacy.

Is language immersion part of your family’s story?

TEACHING ONLINE

When my daughter was born and I stopped working full-time, I became the director of the French school for the small Utah chapter of the Alliance Française. This was my way of staying connected to my professional side with the flexibility I craved as a mother. I coordinated the class registrations and taught when I could. When the pandemic hit, all our classes went online. After busy months of supporting DLI children who were home from school and whose parents wanted them to keep up their French through zoom summer camps and tutoring, things settled. Though with baby #2 on the way and no childcare, I taught less and less and no longer had natural opportunities to use my French. As you know, it takes practice to really keep up a language.

What kind of big changes have you had,

whether that’s due to career, children or a move?

Have your language habits changed because of it?

FINDING CONNECTION THAT FITS

Whenever I have moved over the years, my first step to meet other French speakers has been to seek out the local French groups. In Utah, I had gone to the Alliance Française within a couple weeks of moving there because I was already familiar with it in other places and it was a wonderful starting point. It tended to be older people who were interested in France and French. Utah Accueil was the other local French group that did have young families who were mostly native French speakers. While the two groups did collaborate from time to time, I wished for a more mixed group where my whole family could feel they fit. I was looking for the native French speakers, but my husband who didn’t speak French, didn’t really feel he’d belong. So it was my thing, but in the back of my mind I wondered…

Could there be a space where we all wanted to be? Where we could each get what we needed? With 2 young children, time was limited for getting out, the Pandemic didn’t help with meetups in person, and the energy it took to really go out of my way to connect with others felt overwhelming. I started to dream of what Multilingual Mums might be but I didn’t yet have the time, energy or headspace to create that grand vision.

Do you have a place where your family belongs?

Where do you look to make those connections?

What have you found? What are you still searching for?

BUILDING MY NETWORK

Instead, I poured my energy into building my mom network, my local community, my village. Luckily, in the first 9 months of being a new mum before the pandemic hit, I had made the effort to get out and meet other new mums at the playground, our amazing public library story time, and at the local mom groups. Although I consider myself an introvert, I got over my fear of talking to people and asking for their numbers, figuring we were all in this together and could use friends.

A group text message chain I created grew to a large WhatsApp group of local mothers who have supported and encouraged each other on this journey of motherhood. The group grew naturally by word of mouth, mothers inviting other mothers, and thus felt like a safe space to ask questions, share funny stories, commiserate about challenges, reach out when in need of connection.

Do you have a local community for support?

What would you look for most in a network of mothers?

ANOTHER MOVE

But a year and a half ago, Mike and I started talking about moving back to New England to be closer to family for several reasons. We reflected on why we were moving, what we wanted life to look like, and how we would get there. We were on our own, making these big decisions, and we weren’t ready to share these questions with our neighbors, our local communities until we had a better sense of the direction we were headed. We wished for a roadmap for how to navigate decisions around a big move – Mike wanted the spreadsheet for calculating all the pieces of the puzzle; I wanted to talk to people about how they weighed the importance of different factors. This was yet another instance when I thought Multilingual Mums might be the space for that kind of discussion.

What is your experience of moving?

How do you navigate big changes?

What can you talk with local friends about?

What is challenging to discuss?

THINKING CREATIVELY: AN AU PAIR

We thought creatively about this year of transition: how to make things easier and make space for what was important to us. To help with all of the shifting pieces and to have some stability for our 2- and 4-year-old, we decided to bring an au pair into our family. Finding the au pair who was right for our family situation has made so much possible for us. It was what we wanted for childcare, giving us the time we needed for work and other responsibilities. It has given me the headspace and energy that I’ve been seeking as well as the ability for Mike and me to connect as a couple, since that can be so hard with young children. And it has been the cultural and linguistic exchange that is reconnecting us to the outside world since we haven’t traveled internationally since before kids.

How have you managed to balance your priorities?

What still needs to shift?

How have you thought creatively about your life?

Is an au pair something you have contemplated?

Or is there something else you’ve thought about?

COMMUNITY

Community was the biggest thing that I thought about in our move. I worried that the tight-knit community we had was particular to the rural neighborhood where we lived and that we’d never find that again. I have mourned the loss of my local mom network that I knew I could rely on. But the key people are still with me in spirit if not active connection (usually text or phone call). And this has been a fresh start to reconnect with long-time friends I’ve lost touch with as well as extended family. Moving somewhere we don’t know anyone is daunting at times but having built my communities before, I know I can do it again. And in the months we’ve been in Connecticut, the connections I have made have confirmed we made the right decisions for our family.

What role does community play for you?

What connections, old or new, can you put energy into? and can in turn breathe life into you?

Is that connection with yourself or with others?

BELONGING
We have found where our family belongs now and it is starting to feel like our long-term home. While it’s partly about the place itself, it’s mostly about the support and connection we have from our communities. This is the start of Multilingual Mums, in its in-person and online form, both local and global! In this day and age, these can be intertwined and feed each other. We can reconnect with the old and start to connect with the new. And in the process, we can find ourselves and grow stronger roots wherever we are planted.

Join the Multilingual Mums community!