Moving to a New Country: Emotional Journey of Starting Over

Moving to a new country is all fun and exciting until it actually happens. If the environment is different from the one you’re used to, you feel it even more. The first few days are filled with excitement about living your dream. A few days or weeks in, reality dawns that you’re living a life miles away from home.

Unfamiliarity

You’ve left the familiar and started life in an unfamiliar land. You get to learn the basics of moving around. Trips to the grocery store make you mark the shops that you’d be going to, just as you would do if you were home. You get used to making calls back home, which becomes even trickier when a time difference is involved. 

If the language is different from your own, you get to learn and polish your ability to speak the language. You quickly realize that the formal language taught in class varies from the one used for day-to-day activities. You learn code words to be used in various places. In the first few days, you use cab-hailing apps to request rides. Soon enough, you learn how to use other means of transport, including public ones. 

Your trips from the house to the stores are ones where you identify landmarks. Soon, you know, if I see this building, then I’m close to my house, and if I see this other one, then I may have passed where I was going.

Getting used to it

As days go by, you learn the names of different streets and towns from the signposts and even Google Maps. You’ve interacted with several people, either from your workplace, school or even when you’re running errands. Your face has become familiar in the neighborhood. Conversations strike and give you more perspective on life in this new land. Sometimes, you’re lucky to be invited to an event or two. Your circle in this new place is created and expanded.

The reality

However, there are times you miss the familiar. You miss home; some term it as 'homesickness'. Other times, it may feel like a betrayal when you start a new life elsewhere, since you don’t have as much time to engage with people back home. The daily calls are reducing. Sometimes, it becomes difficult to be understood to the extent that you want to. Because the environment is different, and some things would only make sense to the people in the same environment.

You are a star

Dear reader, if this is you, be proud of your bold step to start life in a new environment. It may not be automatic that you get to belong; it takes time. In that journey, give yourself some grace. Allow yourself to curate a life in the environment that you’re in, one that you would be proud of looking back on. 

It is not easy, but it is possible. 

Feeling that you belong is nice and important. However, do not place unnecessary pressure on yourself in an attempt to hasten the process. Slow steps but sure. Remember, you’re curating the life that you once desired. 

You are the artist of it.

SHE Centre is here to help you.

Find your community at SHE Space. You were never meant to do this alone.

Under the SHE Journey Shelf, find downloadable resources and tune into The SHE Podcast to find yourself in someone else’s story.

Connect with our partner organizations who are ready to walk alongside you in this season.

Author: Christine Kabiru