About Ava
The life behind the work
I care about what happens to a life while we're busy making it work.
The ideas we keep for later. The parts of ourselves that become harder to make room for. The future we assume we'll eventually get around to living.
For me, this isn't an abstract idea. It began long before it became my work.
I'm Ava Houkes. I work with individuals, couples and organisations navigating international life and the changes it brings to identity, relationships and direction.
What stayed on the shelf
My mother had ideas. So many ideas.
She didn't just dream about them. She developed them into business plans, printed them, bound them and placed them on a shelf.
She was waiting for the right moment. The moment when there would be enough time, enough space, enough certainty to finally do something with them.
That moment never came.
My mother died suddenly at 57.
And alongside the overwhelming grief of losing her, I felt something else. The loss of all those things she had imagined, planned and hoped to bring into the world. All those possibilities that would now never have the chance to become real.
I know there are perfectly good reasons to wait. Responsibilities, money, health, other people's needs. Life isn't a matter of simply deciding to do whatever we want, whenever we want.
But I also know how easily "just for now" can quietly turn into years. How a temporary compromise becomes a permanent arrangement without anyone ever consciously choosing it.
I want us to notice what we're postponing while we still have choices about it.
Making a life in another country
When I moved from the Netherlands to Australia as an accompanying partner, I left behind much of what gave my life its familiar shape.
Work. Community. Everyday structure. The places where I was known.
I had chosen the move. I wanted that adventure, that experience, that life.
But choosing something doesn't mean you automatically know how to find your place within it.
I rebuilt friendships, started building a business and made a home. Gradually, a country that had once been unfamiliar became somewhere I belonged.
I learned how much reinvention asks of you, even within a life you have chosen.
And I was proud of the life I was building.
What I didn't yet realise was how many of its foundations were connected. How a change in one part of my life could set so many others in motion.
Starting over, again
When my relationship ended, the consequences reached into almost every part of my life.
My visa was tied to my partner and our relationship. I had to leave Australia—and with it, the home, friendships and everyday life I had built. The business I was developing needed to be reconfigured too.
And suddenly, I wasn't deciding what I wanted to build next. I was deciding what I could take with me.
Two cubic metres.
That was the space I had for the things I could bring back to the Netherlands.
Try fitting a life into two cubic metres.
The things that had made a house my home. The things I'd collected, chosen, loved and used every day. The little things that wouldn't mean anything to someone else but meant something to me.
And then there were all the things that couldn't fit into a box at all.
My friendships. My routines. My sense of belonging. The life I'd spent so much time and energy creating.
One detail still captures that experience for me: I no longer had any keys.
No house key. No car key. No bike key.
Nothing to unlock. No front door of my own to come back to.
I returned to the Netherlands heartbroken, without a home of my own, a job or the relationship around which I had built my future.
I knew the country. I knew the language. I knew how things worked.
But I no longer knew my place in it.
Being sent "home" did not make it feel like home.
What that taught me
I'd already learned what it takes to build a life in a new environment.
Now I was discovering what happens when so much of what holds that life together disappears.
And I began to understand something much more deeply.
Our sense of who we are doesn't exist separately from the world around us.
It's shaped by our relationships, our roles, the places where we belong, the opportunities available to us and the practical conditions of our lives.
A visa. A relationship. A home. A daily routine.
Things that can seem so ordinary while they're there.
Until they're not.
I also saw how interconnected those foundations can be. How a change in one can affect several others, sometimes in ways we never anticipated.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't build our lives together, rely on one another or commit ourselves to something bigger than our individual plans.
Of course we should.
But it does mean that understanding those connections matters. That having room for our own identity, direction and choices matters.
And that the practical foundations of a life deserve just as much attention as the dreams we're building on them.
For a while, the space ahead of me felt painfully empty.
And then, gradually, I began to notice something else.
There was room in that space, too.
Room for choices I hadn't considered. For possibilities I hadn't imagined. For a life whose shape I didn't know yet.
That didn't make the loss smaller. It didn't mean everything happened for a reason, or that I needed to turn what happened into some wonderful lesson.
It meant I had somewhere to begin.
I was still alive. There was still a life to make.
Today, I feel more like a global citizen. My sense of belonging reaches across countries, people and experiences.
And I know, perhaps more deeply than ever, how much it matters to have somewhere to land.
Why I care so deeply
These experiences didn't create my conviction. They gave it sharper edges.
When we move countries, we don't simply change our surroundings.
We change the conditions in which our lives unfold.
Some of those changes open doors we never imagined. Others create dependencies, limitations and vulnerabilities we may not recognise until much later.
And often, the very same circumstances that make a wonderful life possible can also make it more complicated than we realised.
That's why I care so much about what happens beneath the surface of international life.
Not just whether the move is successful. Not just whether everyone has settled in, the paperwork is done and daily life is running smoothly.
But what is happening to the people living it.
To their sense of themselves. Their relationships. Their independence. Their ambitions. Their ability to make choices about their own future.
Because those things matter when life is going beautifully, too.
I want people to have more understanding, more preparation and more choices—while they are making a life, while things are going well, and when life takes an unexpected turn.
There is too much life at stake to keep leaving these conversations for later.
The experience I bring
I hold an MSc in Clinical Psychology, with professional experience in coaching, organisational development, culture and leadership programmes, and international teams. My background also includes teaching and mentoring at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
As co-founder of Expat Institute, I bring that experience into work addressing the personal, relational and organisational dimensions of international transitions.
My services are coaching, advisory and facilitation; they do not include clinical assessment, treatment or registered psychological services.
How I work with you
I bring care, curiosity and honesty.
There's room to think aloud, to be unsure, and to say things you may not yet know how to explain. We can take your experience seriously without assuming that every difficult feeling means something is wrong.
I'll also ask questions, offer another perspective and help you examine patterns that may have become so familiar you no longer notice them.
Together, we look at what is within your influence and where you need support, a conversation or a change in circumstances. From there, we find practical ways forward that make sense for you.
I want you to leave our work with a clearer understanding of yourself and your situation, and more confidence in the choices you make.
A place to begin
If something in my story connects with yours, I'd be glad to hear what brings you here.
Contact Ava