Expertise does not protect us from underestimating what the future holds.

Uncertainty is often more psychologically difficult than change itself.

Identity becomes especially salient in times of uncertainty and change.

We moved to England on January 1, 2016. I had accepted a position at the University of Warwick and was due to start in a few days’ time. I had already built a fairly successful international academic career, but I felt I had reached a plateau and that a radical change was needed to move forward. A professorship at a top university in the United Kingdom seemed the perfect next step.

Looking Across the North Sea

Earlier that morning, on a beautiful, bright New Year’s Day, my 12-year-old daughter and I had watched crowds of Dutch people in orange woolly hats dipping into the icy waters of the North Sea at Scheveningen beach near The Hague. It was the annual Nieuwjaarsduik, the local New Year tradition. We looked out across the sea toward England, feeling sad about leaving Holland, where we had stayed for the past year and a half, but also excited about our new life across the Channel. Just an hour-long flight from Amsterdam to Birmingham—things could not be too different there, right?

A little over a month after we had arrived in the United Kingdom, Prime Minister David Cameron announced that the EU referendum would take place on 23 June—Midsummer Eve, a much-loved celebration of the summer solstice across Northern Europe. The Leave and Remain campaigns took off instantly, but our own life dramas and the process of settling in left me with little time and energy to pay........

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