Honor the Grief, Honor the Goodbye

airport

“Make sure you say goodbye” I text these words to my youngest son, followed by “It’s important to say your goodbyes.”

He is only leaving for the summer, he will be back on the same campus next year. But it is critical to me to say this to him. I want my children to be able to say goodbyes, to honor them. I want my children to be able to honor their grief, not suppress it as though it is unimportant, as though it will go away and not leave an imprint on their hearts.

I do the same for my youngest daughter. She is graduating from college, ending one stage and moving on to the next. “Say your goodbyes.” I tell her.

These kids of mine? They’ve moved so much. They’ve lived on different continents, in different countries, cities, and communities. And I am desperate for them to know how to honor the goodbye.

Most TCKs go through more grief experiences by the time they are 20 than monocultural individuals do in a lifetime.”*

It’s March and for the transnational family or child parties and packing will soon fill all the days and worry and tears interrupt the nights. In a couple of months there will be graduations and school endings, job changes and home leaves; home life will be dictated by lists and deadlines. And the unspoken questions will be will we leave in peace, or will we just leave?

And in the midst of all of this it’s easy to forget that grief must be honored and goodbyes must be said. 

So I can’t shout these words loud enough. I can’t speak them clearly enough. I can’t emphasize them strongly enough. Honor the goodbye. Honor the grief that comes with the goodbye.

My bookshelves are filled with books on cross-cultural living, on identity, on belonging, on growing roots in a global world. Every day I think about these things as I read about military brats and third culture kids, kids and their parents who live like bridges between worlds, gathering up their portable lives into suitcases full of mementoes as they move on to the next place. I interact with moms who are worried they are ruining their children, moms who fantasize that life in their birth countries is stable and perfect even as they try to plant roots in countries that are unfamiliar. I connect with third culture kids who never want to move again, who establish their bodies and souls in one place even as they decorate their homes with remnants of their past lives. I also connect with third culture kids who are itching for that next move, that next step – restless and longing in the small towns where they find themselves, unable to see the threads that begin to tie them to these towns.And every day I am more sure of the need to honor the grief, to honor the goodbye. 

And I think about what honoring the grief and honoring the goodbye means. We grieve because we are losing places and people that we love. Each goodbye is a little like death, it’s saying goodbye to permanence and the relationships as we know them. They will change, they have to change. Comfort and hope will have their place, and they are part of the process, but sometimes we need to just sit with the grief before being forced to move on. The global transnational family has developed an amazing capacity to adapt, to move forward, but sometimes we need to just stop where we are and honor that moment, honor the goodbye.

Years ago we moved from one part of the city of Cairo to another, a seemingly small move. But the move still came with loss of connection and community. The kids were leaving their school, we were leaving our neighborhood. We planned to move all our belongings before leaving for the U.S for a home leave. After we returned we would settle into our new space. Part of this move meant giving up our small, red Zastava car. The car was tiny and we barely fit in it but we loved that car. We would arrive places and pile out while others looked on in amazement that we could fit so many children in a car that is smaller than a Volkswagen Bug. The night that we watched another family drive away in our red car my son Joel was inconsolable. I remember walking with him that night, his small hand reaching up to my larger one, and hearing his tears, his sobs. The car was symbolic of this move. “Why do we have to sell our car?” he wailed. Walking beside him I remember part of my heart breaking as well. “I’m so sorry Joel. I’m so sorry.”There was nothing else I could say. I look back at that time and I’m glad that’s all I said. Because in truth, there were no other words.

I think that is what it is like to honor grief. It is sitting with it, not trying to push it away, not providing false reassurance, just sitting. Can we sit with it and let it flow? Can we sit quietly with ourselves or with others and not push an agenda of false happiness? Can we learn that grief is good, grief is individual, grief is rarely nicely organized, grief is physical and emotional?

So if you are one of those people, one of those families that is saying goodbye this June, I offer this: Sit with your grief, let it flow, don’t try too hard to analyze, don’t push yourself or others to some ‘right’ response. Just sit with it. Because as the grief comes, so will the comfort.

And as for your goodbyes? Say your goodbyes. The goodbyes will hurt, they will smart. Like a wound feels when the salty ocean water washes over it, you will brace yourself. But just as the salt in the ocean provides healing so will goodbyes offer healing to your mobile soul.

Are you one who is saying goodbye this year? I would love to hear from you on what you think makes a ‘good’ goodbye. Others, what do you think about honoring grief and honoring goodbyes?

A great resource is the RAFT plan: Reconciliation, Affirmation, Farewell, Think Destination. Take a look here for details on this.


Now Available – Worlds Apart: A Third Culture Kid’s Journey “…a must read for those wanting to build bridges.” Ambassador Akbar Ahmed, American University, Washington, D.C. 

Portions of this book were previously released under Passages Through Pakistan.

This post first appeared in Communicating Across Boundaries.

The Closer We Get To Moving “Home” The More I Want To Stay Here

A couple of months ago I had an exchange on facebook with a friend of mine from university days.

Sal and her husband have been living in the Middle East for the past three years. They moved there with their three young children so that they could immerse themselves deeply in the context and culture, learn to speak Arabic, and then return to Australia and work more effectively with refugees and other immigrants from the Middle East.

Last month, Sal put the following status up on her facebook profile:

It’s 2 months today until we fly from our home here in the Middle East to our home in Australia. As they say, I am feeling all the feels. I can hardly believe it’s been 3 years (almost).

Like the Grinch, my heart has grown three sizes (or more) since being here. The warmth and depth of hospitality and friendship – often in the midst of incredible hardships – I will cherish always.

I replied:

This is SUCH an up and down time. What an amazing journey you guys have been on. Thinking of you during this time of packing up and saying goodbye and tearing loose and replanting.

Then Sal asked me a question.

Do you find that the closer it gets to leaving, the more you want to stay? I have been looking at new apartments going up near the kids school and thought “It would be nice to live there.”

It was so interesting to see this from Sal. I know this last three years of mothering 3 little ones, building relationships, and learning a new language in a culture and context vastly different from her own have not been easy. And although I don’t know all the ins and outs of their story, I would guess that she has, at times, found herself counting down the days until their return to Australia.

But her question also makes total sense to me.

“Oh, yes. Yes. Totally,” I wrote. “There are so many reasons why this can be.”

I dashed off a jumbled paragraph to Sal about this that day (as we tend to do on facebook), but I found myself thinking about her question long after I’d pressed ENTER.

Since it’s been on my mind (and since I’m pretty sure Sal and I are not the only ones who have inhabited this tension) I want to expand on my answer here today.

woman-staring-out-to-sea

Dear Sal,

Oh, yes. Yes. Totally.

There are so many reasons why this can be.

First, you are finally settled to a large extent. You know how to navigate the environment–how to get places, and where and what to buy at the markets. You can speak the language and actually have a conversation that extends beyond greetings, the weather, and if your baby slept well the night before. You know what to expect from your transplanted life.

And your life there is vibrant and alive and full of details that now feel both normal and yet still, somehow, novel. That daily duality of normal/novel that you are living continues to stretch your perspective and your heart and your emotions. You feel like a different person than you were when you left Australia, and you are. You have stretched in so many ways to grow into an entirely new reality.

But so many things about the future remain unknown. You might be going back to the same city you left, but you are returning a different person. You will likely be living in a different place, doing different things. And those new people and jobs and opportunities are likely impossible to visualize in detail. They are aspirations and possibilities that can pale in comparison to the vivid realities of daily life in your adopted home.

So.

Right now you are simultaneously mourning all the wonderful things you are leaving, without being able to fully grasp all the wonderful things you are going to.

You know that the wonderful things you are leaving when you get on that plane “home,” you’re likely leaving forever. You might come back, but it will never be the same.

And then there are the people. You have cooked and laughed and cried and journeyed with so many people during the last three years. You have heard stories and witnessed realities that have taught you, humbled you, buoyed you, and broken your heart. You have felt privileged, helpless, guilty, grateful, and everything in between.

And you are leaving these people behind to face an uncertain future. You are leaving, when so many of those who will stay behind in your adopted home right now long for their chance to leave.

So it makes perfect sense to me that—on the precipice of leaving—you find yourself longing to stay, celebrating all that is and has been good about your adopted home.

This is a time for both grief and hope, mourning and excitement. And if right now there seems to be more grief than hope—more grief than you would ever have expected to feel during those long, hot early days there—remember that you are letting go of things and people you have come to love and respect.

And remember that all the things you have come to love about the Middle East and all that it has taught you will help align you with others who have loved and lost their homes there, too.

That is why you went in the first place. That is why you are now stepping out in faith again into a new reality and going “home.” To your “other” home.

Oh, Sal. Wishing you and your precious ones safe travels and many fresh joys in the weeks ahead. I’m looking forward to seeing you in this next chapter.

Love,
Lisa

Have you ever experienced this tension?
Please leave a comment and share your experiences.

And, if you’d like to learn more about Sal’s journey in the Middle East, take a look at one of her passion projects during her time there: tea and thread: portraits of Arab women far from home.

8 Ways for Expats Who Stay to Stay Well

Staying Well

Before you move abroad there are orientation meetings and cross cultural trainings and seminars and books to read and lists to check off and personality tests to pass and character examinations.

When you decide it is time to repatriate back to the ‘home country’ there are debriefs and readjustment seminars and repatriating coaches and Third Culture Kid conferences and if there aren’t, there probably should be, more personality tests to pass because the person coming back is not the same person who left.

But when you stay…and stay…and stay…there’s, um, well…there’s life. Daily cross-cultural, personality transforming, character challenging, mundane life.

The honeymoon stage of being an expatriate and the down in the dumps stage of culture shock have passed. The dreaming of a new thing and planning for the next adventure and anxiety, grief, and hope of moving on haven’t yet arrived. There’s just…today. And the next day. And the next. And all around those of us who stay are those of us who come and go and come and go and the list of people we’ve known and loved (or hated) over the years grows oh.so.long.

And the heart of a stayer can grow oh.so.cold. Immune to the excitement of the newbie, hardened to the sorrow of saying goodbye. And, even more insidious, indifferent to the peaceful pleasure of staying.

At one point, I was a comer. One day in the future, I will be a leaver. But for the past twelve years, I have been a stayer. And I’ve passed through all the feelings: joy at new friends, sorrow at goodbyes, anger at goodbyes, self righteous judgment of newbies, carelessness about my current circumstances, delight in my situation. It isn’t easy to stay well and to stay healthy emotionally, while staying.

Staying Well

How can stayers stay well?

Love the ones you’re with. Most likely, you are not the only long-term stayer where you live. You might not have a lot of options and the people around you might not be people you’d naturally gravitate toward in another situation. Fine. Love them well anyway. Think of them like family, people you are committed to through thick and thin. People who remember your kids when they were in diapers, families with children you have loved from preschool until university. These long-term relationships are invaluable. We need people to reminisce with, to hold shared memories with, people who know us well enough that they can call out our weaknesses and recognize our strengths.

Keep exploring. Keep learning. You’ve been here a long time, you actually know things now, not like you ‘knew’ things when you first arrived. But don’t let that stymy your learning. There is always a new restaurant, a new vocabulary word, a new campsite, a new experience. Stay curious, stay engaged. Go deep.

Be you. Maybe you thought that when you moved abroad you would have to give up what you love. Give up running, baking, dancing, photography, playing piano. You couldn’t fit the saxophone in your luggage. The city is too conservative for female runners. There are no dance studios. But if you intend to stay well, for more than a year or two, you must find a way to continue doing what you find life-giving. Of course, you’ll have to be flexible. Run in longer clothes, run on a treadmill, run in a group. Start a dance studio, dance in your kitchen. Learn new recipes with local ingredients. You can still be you, you just have to adjust and be creative. But it is imperative that you find ways to engage the inner, authentic parts of who you are.

Be honest about the hard things. It is hard to say goodbye and hello and goodbye and hello. It is hard to know a culture well enough that you see darkness, to have friendships that are strong enough that you are let into brokenness. Its hard to admit to your own brokenness and loneliness and struggles. But have a trusted few, or even one, with whom you can be utterly honest. But, part b) be wise about who you share those hard things with. Newbies might not be ready for your emotional dump. A peripheral, though staying, friend might not be able to handle it either. Be thoughtful, don’t throw your pearls to swine.

Say hello well. Be open to the newbies. You just might find a stayer. Or, you might find someone who goes out again in two years but those two years of friendship might be the saving grace you need. Invite people to dinner or to the beach, be willing to answer questions if someone seeks your hard-earned expertise, be open to the fresh ideas of a newbie. There are treasures here, too.

Say goodbye well. The pain of being left is often masked by the sorrow and excitement of those who are leaving. Let yourself be sad for a while. Don’t make empty promises of keeping in touch. I cannot keep in touch with all those who have left, not in a regular, meaningful way. And I shouldn’t. I need to engage and be where I am. So throw the going away party, enjoy the inherited leftovers, buy something at the leaving sale, take photos, honor your friendship, and then let them go. But remember people by telling stories, keep in touch through your memories and shared legacy.

Help your kids say goodbye well. Don’t let them ignore the goodbye but don’t force something either, or expect all your children to respond the same way. Give them words to express what they feel. Help them honor the friendship. My kids make photo pages of the friends who have left. They give the photo pages to the friend but they make copies and keep one for themselves.

Say hey there well. Become friends with locals. They are less likely to leave and more likely to usher you into the local culture. They are people who knew you when you couldn’t even say, ‘hey there.’ And if they have stuck by you all these years, that is a friendship to cherish.

What other tips would you offer stayers? What has helped you stay well?

Saying Goodbye: Does Practice Really Make Perfect?

Change is in the air. After three years here in Luang Prabang, we’re leaving. My husband, Mike, is taking up a new job in Vientiane (the capital of Laos), so we’re packing up our life here and moving. We’re also having another baby in just over four months.

Because of the lack of quality medical care in Laos, it would be less than wise for me to give birth in this country. Because I have a chronic health condition called lymphedema that makes enduring hot weather heat difficult and damaging, it would also be less than wise to stay here, heavily pregnant, through the worst of the hot season and then make a late-date dash to Thailand to deliver. So the plan for months had been for me to leave Laos with our toddler in mid-May when I hit the third trimester, and go home to live with my parents for five months around the delivery of baby number two.

Given that I am now 37, I am sure that my poor parents thought they were at least a dozen years past any chance that I would turn up pregnant and alone on their doorstep needing sanctuary, much less do this twice within three years. Just goes to show you never know in life. It also goes to show that when you raise third culture kids who choose to continue on as global nomads, you run a serious risk of being permanently pegged as their home base. Parents, take heed.

So Mike and I had it all planned, you see. But in the past two weeks all our carefully stitched-together plans have come unraveled. Mike has re-herniated a disc in his back that was operated on only six months ago. An MRI indicates that the injury requires another surgery, after which he won’t be able to lift anything heavier than ten pounds (including our toddler) for at least ten weeks.

I won’t bore you by relaying all the reasons we settled on our new plan of action, I’ll just jump straight to the details. We’ve scheduled Mike’s surgery for April 12th, and Dominic and I will leave for Australia on about the 18th, right after Mike comes out of hospital.

This new plan moves my planned departure from Luang Prabang up by a month, to just one week from today. It also means that Mike and I will be apart for a full 14 weeks before he arrives in Australia just before (hopefully) the birth of our second child. Mike will have to oversee the pack up of our house, move to a new city, and start a new job by himself while he’s still recovering from surgery. In short, it all sort of sucks.

In the wake of this latest medical drama, I haven’t thought a great deal about leaving here as a move. The fact that I won’t be coming back to this beautiful little town that’s been home for three years hasn’t really sunk in.

They say that practice makes perfect, but when it comes to leaving places and people I think it might be the opposite – on one level, anyway.

You do get better at coping with the logistical demands with practice. I can now tackle a multi-stage pack up of our lives, logically parse a dozen complicated flight itineraries, and shift from place to place without breaking too much of a sweat. Over time, however, the emotional demands of serial itinerancy are becoming more difficult for me to acknowledge and address, not less.

Given the sudden rush and how the pressure has accelerated all the deadlines on an already daunting to-do list, it’s perhaps understandable that this departure still feels unreal to me. I’m not exactly flush with time to sit around and think about things I’ve loved here, things I’ll miss, and all the joys and grief that this town has born witness to. There won’t be a farewell party, or many leisurely dinners with friends that would provide opportunities to tell them how we love and appreciate them, and thank them for how they’ve enriched our lives. I’m thinking more about how to survive this change than how it feels or what it means.

To be honest, though, I don’t know how much deep processing of this departure I’d be doing even if our plans hadn’t been up-ended. So far I’ve moved countries about a dozen times and houses at least twenty. I’m continually getting better at the logistics of relocation, but I’m starting to worry that I’m getting worse at saying and feeling meaningful goodbyes. The last time I deeply grieved a move I was sixteen. Now I tend to disconnect easily, perhaps too easily. And I wonder if this is linked in important ways to another trend I’ve noticed – my growing tendency to settle somewhere new lightly, perhaps too lightly.

Right now, I don’t know. All I know right now is that a week from now we’ll be on a plane, heading for a hospital in Bangkok that I’m way too familiar with. A week after that I’ll be preparing to board another plane. Then the kaleidoscope of life will be given another sudden twist and I’ll be “home” in Australia with winter coming on, minus one husband and plus two parents. I’ll be looking for a new normal for our toddler and for me for the following six months.

And then, we’ll be leaving.

And arriving.

Again.

What have your experiences been with moving?
How do you mark departures and say goodbye?

Lisa McKayauthor, psychologist, sojourner in Laos

Website: www.lisamckaywriting.com      Books: Love At The Speed Of Email and My Hands Came Away Red