Tag: repatriation

Finding Flickers of Light in the Darkness of Re-entry

One day I’ll write our looking back story — how I can see God’s hand was with me through the darkest valley and how He turned it all to good. One day, I’ll see how the prayers were answered for the best, and I’ll thank God for the ones that weren’t answered. One day.

But today is not that day. I have faith that God is faithful and will be faithful. But today I am in the midst of it, the darkest valley.

I quote the psalm to myself as a promise I’m clinging to: “Even in the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for I know that you are with me.” But it is my faith that prompts me to repeat these words each day, not my feelings.

I am in the smack-dab middle of re-entry. I am not looking ahead in planning mode or looking back triumphantly that I have finally gotten through. I am in the midst of it — the smack-dab middle.

Here is what the middle is actually like and what I would tell you if I could say how hard it’s been without being accused of being ungrateful or unfaithful (neither of which is true). In the smack-dab middle this is how it feels and how faith in what I cannot see is the only thing getting me through.

Some days and some weeks I have felt everything has gone wrong. Our whole family has been exhausted and sick. We’ve had mystery illnesses, staph infection boils, and tormenting lice caught at a summer camp. What we were really hoping would be a spiritual high ended up being a long, drawn-out physical and spiritual battle.

We are trying to enjoy the US, but it’s hard, and we miss so many things already. We miss our healthy food from our host country. We are sick of peanut butter and jelly, hotdogs, chicken strips, and French fries. But we’ve been so busy and transient for weeks that lots of days, that’s all we can manage. We miss unrushed meals together. We miss having a bed that’s ours and our favorite blankets. We miss our pets and our favorite yard tree. We miss routine and rest and family time. We miss life being familiar.

We’re over travel. We’ve driven too many hours to count and spent too much money on gas and car repairs to transport our family. Anxiety over a broken-down car is constantly lingering in my mind behind all the higher-priority anxieties — what will we do if it actually breaks down unrepairable?

It feels like we are living in our car, and it’s felt that way for weeks. We’ve packed and unpacked the car so many times, I am completely exhausted by it. I am almost paralyzed. I can barely bring myself to load and unload, to carry in another bag. But our travel isn’t over. We don’t yet have a home to call our own. And there’s nothing to do but lift the bags and do it again. 

We needed a break from the constant travel, so we planned two stationary weeks at a free retreat center. We were hoping for rejuvenation — instead, the remote mountain gravel roads caused car damage and necessitated major repairs. All my previous anxieties confirmed. We had to leave early for repairs, we missed our debrief, and my spiritual renewal gauge went down rather than up. “God, why?” I asked in frustration. 

I want to tell you some peoples’ words and encouragement and faith in our next steps have been exactly the cup of cold water we’ve needed in this barren land. But others’ hurtful comments have pierced so deep, it’s hard to imagine a time in the future when the wound could possibly fully heal.

Church member support has been the same mixed bag. Some have shown little or no interest; some have made hurtful comments; some have continued on so faithfully and generously, it brings me to tears thinking of their love and sacrifice. But I have so little to give in this season, I am not thanking them as I should.

In the darkest valley, I want to tell you that we’ve never had so much conflict or so many things go wrong. Yes, even in our life overseas. It’s been in every way a battle, fighting spiritually to hold on to all the beliefs and behaviors we’ve cultivated so many years. It’s taken just as much faith to return as it did to leave, maybe more.

I want to tell you it’s been so hard on our kids, even as they have been so eager and willing to participate in all the new experiences with such courage. They are worn out from the faster pace of life. They are sad that so many people are so busy with their own schedules they barely have time to spend with them. They miss the home they left, even as they want so badly to make a home in this new place, to fit in to this new, foreign world.

This was a planned re-entry for our family. We did plan, grieve, and say goodbye well. Yet, it’s been so hard just the same, and each of us has reacted differently, which has also added to the conflict and confusion and tension we’ve felt. Some of us pre-grieved and are jumping in to our new life with gusto; some of us are post-grieving, and every day we feel the emotional weight of loss.

Knowing all we did beforehand and how carefully we prepared to leave and yet how hard re-entry has still been is at best confusing. I am grateful for our own preparation, full of compassion for those who have no time to prepare their re-entry journeys, and trying to accept the reality that no matter how much anyone prepares, re-entry is still really hard.

We’ve seen light in this dark place, but it’s felt like the flicker of fireflies in a dark forest rather than a constant lighthouse beacon telling us clearly which direction to go. The firefly lights only appear as the sun fades and the darkness is taking over. Then a tiny light here or there appears. But just as quickly, it is gone. Darkness again.

In the darkest times, I haven’t questioned if God is real. An undeserved gift of faith makes me know He is. But I have questioned if He is good. If He will give good gifts, especially to me. If suffering is the only path. If joy will come in the morning.

If this all sounds like a big, faithless complaint, maybe you’ve never walked through your own dark valley. But this is what it feels like to be in the midst of it. My feelings aren’t getting me through; neither are my outward circumstances. I’m walking by faith, not by sight. 

My faith tells me He is with me, even in this dark valley. And I’m clinging to that promise. I can’t see my path ahead clearly. The sun is gone. But in the darkness, I’m watching for the fireflies.

The Challenges of MK Re-entry

by Elina Placentino

“Look, it’s snowing!” I cried. 

“That’s not snow, it’s sleet.”

The reply from the front seat of our family car was enough to dampen my enthusiasm. I was eight, and we had just moved back to Finland for the first time. And although I didn’t realise it at the time, that was when I discovered that I was a foreigner in my parents’ home country. Although my passport was Finnish, my perspective on the world around me was not.

For my parents it was a return to something familiar, but not for me. For me it meant moving to a new world where winters were white, children were independent, and the general culture was reserved.

Unsurprisingly, the move took a toll on me. It played out in various ways, including causing anxiety and disruption in sleep patterns. In fact, one night my parents caught me almost walking out of the house in my sleep!                              

Re-entry is a process that may look simple on paper, but there are multiple issues that complicate it. If a child has spent a lengthy period of time abroad and has no memories of living in the passport country, the stress of transition can be considerable. It can further be heightened by the degree of difference between the countries in question, due to very practical changes connected to climate, food, language, and cultural norms.

Re-entry is also a demanding process for missionary kids, since they are commonly expected to adjust to their passport country, to appreciate it, and to sense a heart connection to it. After all, they often grow up hearing their parents speak of their passport country with affection and even nostalgia. Thus, when returning to their country of origin, parents may experience a sense of delight and even relief, whereas a child is likely to experience enormous stress and even dread.

And there is plenty to be stressed about. Nothing is familiar. There is the question of schooling, with its new subjects, systems, and requirements. There is the issue of friendships, with a very real risk of becoming a social misfit or a social chameleon (ready to change one’s behaviour in a desperate effort just to fit in). What was once seen as perfectly normal and polite behaviour (e.g., avoiding looking an adult in the eyes) is sometimes seen as bizarre. 

And, as I realised in my early adulthood, unlearning deeply engrained cultural reflexes is a time-consuming process, particularly for children who return to their passport country in their teens. It requires a high degree of self-awareness that can cause teens to live with constant self-evaluation and criticism, further contributing to heightened stress levels.

Missionary kids returning to their passport country frequently feel like foreigners while not looking physically different. This creates its own set of difficulties, as people around them expect culturally appropriate behaviour and fluent language from them. Thus there is simply less margin for mistakes.

And yet, no matter how much missionary kids try to adjust, it is unlikely that they will fit into their passport country after spending extensive time abroad. Accepting this may be challenging, particularly for parents or relatives — and these experiences can even create conflicts within the family.

These conflicts can, in turn, be further aggravated if missionary kids begin to drift away from their faith. After all, missionary kids returning to their passport country are often challenged by the different worldviews that they face around them.

This is where parents need to be aware of their children’s needs and strive to meet them ahead of time, where possible. Although missionary kids need to have space to ask questions and explore different worldviews, they also need biblically solid support, pointers, and encouragement in the process.

In an attempt to help missionary kids navigate the great questions in life, I recently published a lighthearted romcom about a seventeen-year-old missionary kid returning to her mother’s country, Finland. The Diary of…Who Am I Again? explores re-entry, apologetics, and questions of identity with humour. My hope is that it will provide young people with pointers for their own journey — and someone to laugh with. For, as most of us know, there is a good deal to laugh at in the blunders that missionary kids experience! 

Re-entry guarantees a time of turmoil, and our children need to know that they are not alone, that there is space for their emotions, and that there are answers to their questions. 

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Elina Placentino is an adult missionary kid, author, and homeschooling mother. She creates Christian worldview content for children and teens. In her free time, she enjoys being outdoors or snuggling up in an armchair with a book and a cup of tea. Her book, The Diary of…Who Am I Again? is now available on Amazon.

Looking for a Place to Call Home

by Val Robb

As our plane descended into Auckland, I stared at the arrival card: “Answer this section if you live in New Zealand. Otherwise go to 2B.” I glanced further down the card to section 2B: “Answer this section if you DO NOT live in New Zealand.”

The form blurred as my eyes filled with tears. At the moment, I didn’t live anywhere. Our family was returning to New Zealand after over five years in Beijing, leaving a home and life we loved. Moving out of our apartment just days earlier already felt like a lifetime ago. 

Leaving hurt. My husband had thrived in his job at the university. We enjoyed deep friendships with both locals and expats. Ministry opportunities had grown. We loved our international church. However, for education and health reasons, we felt God was closing this chapter of our lives. 

As the plane landed, I felt rootless and displaced. Originally from Canada, I had embraced New Zealand as home in the past, but five years away made it feel foreign to both me and my Kiwi husband. Coming ‘home’ to no physical home also felt strange. My husband’s parents were kindly hosting us for a few days, and then we’d be house-sitting while looking for a place to live. 

Having sold our house before moving to China, we now faced the reality of Auckland’s sky-rocketing house prices. We considered buying but soon deemed the market out of our reach. Friends warned us that rentals were hard to find, especially large homes like we needed for our six children. My stomach tightened when I heard that multiple people vied to rent each house and sometimes even bid each other up.  

Before searching for a rental, we took a brief break at a rural holiday home called Emmanuel House. The name reminded me that God was with us. As we strolled the nearby beach, the salty air and rhythmic, rolling waves soothed my restless spirit.

The Creator brought to mind the verse He had impressed on my heart in Beijing: “Oh, how abundant is your goodness, which you have stored up for those  who fear you and worked for those who take refuge in You” (Psalm 31:19 ESV). 

“Hey, Mom, here’s a gift for you.” My oldest daughter presented me with a bumpy purple and white shell. On it she had written, “Remember–if God so houses molluscs, will He not house you? Do not worry. Matthew 6.” 

Smiling, I gazed at the shell. Its simple beauty encouraged me to trust the Shell Maker, and I thanked Him for His abundant goodness in the gift of a faith-filled daughter. 

I reflected on God’s faithfulness to our family throughout our many international moves. Each one had involved enormous changes and emotional turmoil. Each confirmed that my “citizenship is in heaven” and that my true home is in the never-changing, ever-loving heart of God. Cupping the shell, I imagined the insignificant little mollusc safely housed inside amidst wild ocean breakers. Surely I could trust such a compassionate Creator with our family’s needs. 

Back from our holiday, we scrolled online for five-bedroom houses for rent. Only three options came up. One looked dilapidated. The next exceeded our budget. After repeated failed attempts, we finally connected with the agent to see the last possibility. While waiting to view the house, we discovered several Asian supermarkets in the nearby shopping area. Chinese signs, the familiar sing-song sounds of Mandarin, and the aroma of Asian spices made us feel at home. 

My heart filled with hope as we viewed the house. Despite a quirky lay-out and dated decor, it boasted an ocean view and convenient location. The kids were enthused about the spacious deck. We immediately filled out the forms. The next day, as we completed the paperwork to make this house our home, we heard another client had applied. We had signed just in time. 

The transition still took time, and my emotions often lurched like a roller coaster, but we now had a place to call home. God’s kindness in details like the view from the kitchen window, nature walks nearby, and a heat pump for cold winter days moved me to tears.

After settling in, I put the treasured shell in a prominent spot on my dresser as a reminder of God’s faithfulness. Many years have gone by since then, including multiple moves. Still the shell reminds me of my kind and faithful Father whose heart is my ultimate home.

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Val Robb met her Kiwi husband in Canada while completing an education degree. Their family moved to Auckland in 1994, the first of 13 international moves so far. Homeschooling six children while living in New Zealand, China, Canada, and America has provided plenty of material for her to write about! Val has taught workshops for parents and writing classes for children on three different continents as their family travelled for her husband’s university job. Now that she’s completed her 25-year homeschool journey, Val offers coaching and workshops to encourage homeschooling parents. She blogs at www.inspiringwriting.co where she loves helping parents strengthen relationships with their children while growing their kids’ writing skills. Val is the author of the upcoming book, Walking Together: Grace-filled Guidance for your Homeschool Journey.

One Year In: What Has Helped Our Transition

As we have reflected on our past year of transition back to our passport country, a few particular graces stand out as hugely impactful. I use the word “graces” because often, when transitioning back from an overseas life, certain elements are out of our control. The following list is not comprehensive, and these are not ways in which we planned well or succeeded. These are simply elements that assisted in the smooth transition for our family, by God’s grace.

Some of us may have needed to leave in times of chaos or crisis, when it is exceedingly challenging to have any space or time to think with intentionality. There is so much grace for transitions like these. So take what is helpful here, and leave the rest.

Leaving well. We are grateful for resources written for returning cross-cultural workers. In one such resource, I was given basic principles that helped shape how our family could leave our field in a healthy way.

We prayerfully sought wisdom on how to fairly offer our household furnishings to those in our community. We made a family bucket list of some of the last places we wanted to see, or special places to revisit. We planned many dinners, coffee dates, playdates, and intentional times with friends, church family, and coworkers.

As others have written about before, we prayed through the RAFT concept, considering if there were any relationships to repair. When it came time to leave, though our whole family would have loved more time with many of these dear friends, we were relationally ready, and gratefully did not leave with any looming conflict hanging over our heads.

Having a job lined up. There were a couple of different seasons while we lived and worked overseas when we were tempted to transition back, but in the end, we did not feel God was releasing us. Looking back, we are so grateful we waited for His guidance and particular timing. In our transition, we had time for my husband to candidate for pastoral positions as God was leading and prayerfully walk through this process with others praying for us.

When it came time to physically leave our host country, we knew where we would eventually be moving and what job my husband would next be doing. This shaped so much of our transition and provided essential stability when so much of our lives seemed at sea.

Prioritizing a soft landing for our children. Some friends of ours who transitioned back to their home country a few years before us helped shape this priority for us. My husband, an adult TCK, knew firsthand the many challenges for TCKs transitioning back to passport countries, and had specific hopes for our children. We prayerfully considered what part of the country in which to land, how far from family, what size town, what kind of schooling, etc.

In the middle stage of candidating with churches, we brought our children (ranging from seven years to twelve years) into the conversation and asked them to pray for God’s direction for our family. When it came time to make the final decision, we sought their perspectives and waited until each child was onboard with leaving. God truly orchestrated a soft transition for our children, and we settled into a small church with a great youth pastor and youth group, in an area with abundant opportunities and natural beauty.

Stepping into a supportive church community. We have loved being a part of so many churches through our cross-cultural years of service and have been supported deeply by some of these churches. Stepping into pastoral ministry meant that we were stepping directly into a new church community, and one that has cared for us genuinely.

In the beginning months, they sought to meet many of our practical needs, helping to fix up the home we moved into and providing many basic household items. There have been a core group of people who have understood on some level what it is for our family to transition from a decade of living and working overseas, and have cared well for us through prayer and intentionally checking in. This church has shaped the majority of our new community in this early stage of transitioning, and has been a blessing.

Being willing to wait on God. Even with all of these listed graces, there have still been many moments of angst and wondering. While my husband jumped into a new, defined role at our church, I have struggled with the identity loss of cross-cultural worker and wondered what is next for me personally. We have considered all of the schooling options and struggled to find a community like the one we left. We have prayed constantly for friends for our children.

At one point, about eight months after we left South Africa, I was deeply anxious about some of these issues, and just felt my spirit couldn’t settle. After an interrupted night of sleep, I sat with my cup of coffee, journal and Bible, and cried out, what am I to do, Lord? Almost audibly, He said, “You wait for me. Have I not provided in the past?”

Hot tears ran down my face as I realized all of the many ways He had indeed provided and cared for us in all of the previous years, for the whole of my life. Be patient, and wait. None of these angsty issues needed to be answered right now; I needed to wait on Him, for His leading and provision.

This biblical principle of waiting has since shaped my perspective. When I look back on our time overseas, I am keenly aware of the painstaking years it took for a sense of rootedness in our cross-cultural context. God provided deep friendships and meaningful community, good work and productive ministry, but not all at once, and some of these took years to fall into place.

We know our transition journey is far from over; and yet, we are grateful at this stage, one year in, to be able to see the goodness of God and significant ways in which He aided our repatriation process. It is an incredible grace to think back on all that God has done in these past twelve months, not only for our family, but for those we left and those we’ve come to join.

If you are on the cusp of transition or thinking ahead to what God has next for you, my hope is that you are encouraged. God is with you, He is leading you, and He will provide for you.

Looking Back over the First Year of Re-entry

A year ago, we were in the throes of selling off many of our belongings, packing up the rest, and preparing for an international move. We left our field of nine years last June and have spent these past eleven months getting settled on a new continent, in a new ministry setting. One year ago, I was prayerfully reflecting that although I knew it would be hard, this transition could also be good. In a way, this is my story of how God has carried us on the journey we have been walking, a reflection on the graces and goodness He has shown to us.

Of course, every repatriating story is different, and the process is truly ongoing, years long even. One year in, this is our story, beginning from when our family arrived back in the US.

The first three months were pure chaos. Not every single moment was chaotic, but my overall headspace was functioning at a sprint speed, periodically halted by deep grief for all we had left. We were wrapping up our cross-cultural ministry decade by visiting our partners and presenting at our churches around the Midwest while actively shopping for a house online.

Garage sales were a tremendous enjoyment — because when you move intercontinentally and need nearly everything, it’s a very productive use of time and limited resources. It was at garage sales that we found not one, but two small roll-top desks for a couple of our daughters, and my husband and I spent one week mindlessly (blissfully) refinishing both as some small investment into our ambiguous future life. We did not know where exactly these desks (or our family) would land, but we trusted that God would provide a space for them (and us).

In that chaos stage of the transition bridge, God miraculously provided a home in a way that still humbles us and brings tears to my eyes. We were stepping into pastoral ministry and had a waiting church eager to help in many ways. We attended a family debrief a week before we closed on our new home and gratefully received tools and language for the long process of repatriating.

Renting a U-Haul for our garage-sale collected things and suitcases, we moved our family over to Minnesota. Our new home needed some updating, and dozens of people from our new church helped for a week straight. It was overwhelming, beautiful, and humbling. After a couple of weeks of work, during which my husband started his new job at our church, we moved into our new home in September and began unpacking our bags after three months.

The second three months were defined by relational overwhelm. Though our family was physically settled in a new home, we were brand new in every sphere of our lives. In a way that was both meaningful and draining, our family’s arrival into pastoral ministry meant that everyone knew who we were, but we knew very few people. On top of that, my children and I joined a large homeschool co-op in our area. Though I prayed extensively over this decision and felt God guided us to it, we struggled every single week to rally and go.

One Tuesday early in the fall, several of us were on the verge of tears on the way to co-op. After assessing the sheer number of new faces with which we would again be met, I rerouted our car to Ikea instead. The girls and I had a huddle in the parking lot, and I said, “Everything about our lives right now is new. We have met, and are meeting, so many new people. I just don’t think I can do it today. What about you? Should we just walk through Ikea instead?”

This was met with cheers. “We are all doing our best, and this is really hard. I just want you to know that what we’re doing — what you’re doing — is really hard, and it’s okay that it feels that way sometimes.” We had a truly fun and special morning meandering through the aisles, dreaming about how to make our new house into a home and appreciating each other more than we had in some time.

One of the personal gifts of this season were the visits we had by three families we have known and loved for many years and from both of our parents. We quickly figured out plenty of extra bed options and guest spaces for hosting. These times were an essential reminder to us that we were known beyond this last year; these were friends and family who have been with us through seasons of ministry and before. These visits were profoundly encouraging and life-giving.

As my husband settled into his new role at our church, I began to struggle with the loss of my own role as a cross-cultural worker and the ambiguity of my work now. What was I supposed to be doing? What is my role in our new life? These questions would linger — and still do.

Finally, after seven months, our small shipment of the rest of our belongings arrived in January. This stretch of three months was characterized by deeply settling.

I laid the rugs under our new furniture and finally hung our collection of art around the house. We hung our African baskets over the stairs and unpacked boxes of books on to waiting bookshelves. Eventually, this house began to feel like home. The girls took up ice hockey at our local park’s rink. I cross-country skied for the first time in a decade, elation whipping through my heart and hair. This feels so good, I thought.

We hosted family after family from church and small groups for Sunday lunches. My husband and I walked nearly every day, even in sub-zero temps, proving to ourselves that we could cope with Northern winters after a decade in the sunny Southern hemisphere.

Our church asked our family to be the featured cross-cultural workers for missions week. We regretted agreeing in the weeks leading up, as we poured over photos and videos and tried to articulate a decade of life and ministry in thirty minutes. Emotionally, this process left me raw, and I cried Sunday morning when a sweet woman asked how the preparations had gone.

In the end, though, we were grateful to have had the opportunity to share with our new community a deeper glimpse into our life before, into who we have loved, and what we have been involved with. A deeper sense of feeling known accompanied that painful sharing, and that was worth it.

This current season is marked by deeper belonging. Our family has jumped into the rec soccer season, and we are meeting more community members and neighbors with the warming spring weather. The girls run into church on Sunday morning ahead of me, greeting everyone, knowing nearly everyone (as pastors’ kids do). The are confidently asserting their personalities, volunteering in the tech booth and helping in nursery. They are loving their youth group and Sunday school classes. There is, in short, a sense of belonging that brings tears to my eyes.

Last weekend, our nature co-op had our end of year theater performances for three crazy days in a row. It has been a busy last month of rehearsals and extra hours spent, of figuring out costumes and props. We had our last day together earlier this week — a cast party, it was called. I chatted easily among the groups of other moms, and the girls ran around playing and exploring without abandon.

Just as I was packing up to head out, another mom grabbed my arm and we all jumped into a spontaneous dance party. The kids joined, and as I looked around, my heart swelled with gratitude. Later, in the car on the way home, the girls eagerly affirmed my vocalized reflection: “Well, it took the whole year at nature school, but it feels like we finally belong.”

They say it takes the average cross-cultural worker three to five years to truly, deeply assimilate back into a home culture. As I write this, I am aware that we are still on the early end of this long transition journey. There is more story still to tell. At this stage, we can affirm that God has been gracious and faithful, as He has promised. He has answered voiced prayers and the ones we did not know to pray. My husband and I often look at each other, with gratitude for how God led and orchestrated this transitional season. It has been hard, and it has been good.

Coming Home: The Hidden Struggles of Reintegration

by Ken and Brenda Groat

As the airplane lifted off, the tears began to roll down. We were leaving a place that had become our home. We were leaving behind friends who had become more like family, familiar places, and a culture and a people we finally adapted to and fell in love with. And in our case, we were leaving behind our daughter, our only child, who was finishing up her post-graduate studies.

We lived and served in Israel for almost ten years. We did not have a sending church, but we followed God’s leading and sold everything we owned and moved overseas to serve in full-time ministry. Settling in to the new surroundings, the new culture and new relationships was a challenge. We quickly learned the public transportation system, enough language to order a coffee or a meal, and our new roles at the ministry we were volunteering with. I’m not sure I can count the number of times we purchased cottage cheese instead of the cream cheese we were supposed to get for a recipe, or vice versa.

Living abroad without being completely fluent in the language was a challenge, but we blended in and found our way. After living abroad for years, we grew close to other volunteers, and of course to many people in our adopted homeland. 

Returning to the U.S. was never something we thought about, but as our parents aged, we came to the conclusion that we needed to be close to them in case they needed help. Giving notice to the ministry we served with was difficult. Packing up what we could afford to send back to the U.S. on a pallet was even more difficult. I’m not sure if giving a one year notice and having that amount of time was good for us or not, but we thought it was the right thing to do for the organization.

As our departure date approached, we began to experience the lasts; the last time we would go to our favorite restaurant, the last time we would see these particular friends, the last time we visited this special place, the last time we closed the door to our apartment, then finally the last time we hugged our daughter and said goodbye until she finished her university studies.

We were almost silent for the hour-long ride to the airport, then waiting for our flight at the airport seemed to take forever. As we took our seats on the plane, a sense of dread set in. But we knew this dread. The few times we left our adopted homeland for trips back home, we experienced this same dread. This time, however, was different; this time we knew we weren’t coming back.

Being back in the U.S. was strange. Of course our family and friends were happy to see us, and we were happy to see them, but it felt, I don’t know, different. No one could possibly understand what we had experienced, so conversations were shallow. We gave everything we knew, everything that was comfortable for us to serve abroad, and almost no one wanted to hear about what we were so incredibly excited to share. 

When we returned, we had to start over completely. We didn’t have jobs waiting for us. Apart from family, we had no place lined up to stay. We had no vehicle, no car insurance, no health insurance, no furniture, no cell phone plan that worked in the U.S., no church to support us spiritually. Fatigue quickly set it.  

People were not the same as we remembered, and the culture was different. In our case, the stores were overwhelming. It was difficult to walk into large American stores with so many choices for nearly anything we could want. We returned to an America that was very different then when we left it. Family dynamics were not what we expected. We were outsiders and no longer had a community of people that we could rely on.  

Few people understood what we were going through, except those who had returned before us, and they were also struggling to adjust to their new situations. Depression was easy to fall into. We had given everything to follow God and now we felt like we were being kicked to the curb, punished or forgotten.

We struggled for a long time, but eventually things became easier. It still doesn’t quite feel like home, but we are adjusting to the new normal. We have come to realize that we will always miss our adopted homeland, and we may never feel completely at home in the country we grew up in.

Reintegration takes time and intention. Something that helped us was to speak about our experiences with others. You can read articles on A Life Overseas, make the effort to find others with shared experiences, and talk with people who supported you while you were abroad. As someone who has given of yourself for perhaps years to improve the lives of others, it’s not easy to openly talk about what you’re going through and make the conversation about yourself, but it’s necessary and it’s worth it.

As we worked through our reintegration and talked with others around the country who had similar experiences, we realized there is a need for a landing place where you can work through your thoughts and emotions with people who have lived through it. From our first-hand experience, Return Again was born. It was created to be the landing place that we desperately needed but couldn’t find. 

Based in Central Florida, Return Again aims to provide temporary housing, access to vehicles, and—perhaps most importantly—a compassionate community for ministry workers during their transition back to the United States. Although we’re still seeking the right location to build and are awaiting full funding, we can still provide many services and resources to help returnees. 

Whether you’re on deputation, furlough, or returning permanently, Return Again offers practical resources and emotional support during one of the most challenging seasons of your life. Because coming home shouldn’t mean coming home alone. You gave everything to follow your calling. Now it’s time for someone to be there for you. Learn more at www.returnagain.org.

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Ken Groat serves as the Deputy National Director for Bridges for Peace USA. He co-founded Return Again Ministries with his wife of 33 years, Brenda. Together with their daughter, they served in Israel for nearly a decade.

If at All Possible, Take Them Home

The tears started when we got out of the tuk tuk and stood at the edge of our old neighborhood. My teen girls wanted to meander from the main road, down the hill, around the corner. They wanted to walk slowly home, taking it all in and letting the memories come as they may.

We were five years late, but we had come home.

Our furlough was supposed to last from April to August of 2020. As the world began to shut down, we talked with our medical advisors and bumped our flights up to mid-March; we packed our suitcases, wore our masks, hoped all six of us would remain fever free, and boarded our flights from Phnom Penh to Taipei to San Francisco to Kansas City. The flight board in Taipei was nearly all red, full of cancelled flights. Thankfully, TPE to SFO was on time.

We didn’t know it then, but this was how we were wrapping up eight years of life and living in Asia.

About a month into our time in the States we realized the doors were closing on Cambodia. We cried, we planned, we wept. We ate a lot of ice cream.

And we did our best to end well during a global pandemic and without the chance to say goodbye in person. Our kids kept meeting with their international youth group virtually, we used Google maps to “walk” down our streets, we tried to do what we could while also figuring out how to survive in the vastly altered America we had just landed in.

***

But now, five years later, I saw my girls enthralled with the country of their youth. They were coming back to their childhood, and they were loving it. During the late-night taxi drive from the airport, they rolled down the windows and said it felt like they never left. The sharp smells, the weight of the air, the Khmer throngs, the Chinese neon blinking signs.

We went to the Japanese mall where our family spent many Saturdays, we walked through the Russian Market and bought trinkets and shirts. Some of our favorite restaurants had had to shut down during the pandemic, but some made it through, so we ate and ate and ate. We were tourists who didn’t feel like tourists.

We went to our old church, a place where we all experienced the beauty and complexity of the global, international Kingdom. We were the last ones there that Sunday, walking around the church compound, remembering hot Sundays playing in the grass and eating samosas from our Pakistani friends.

My girls loved hearing Khmer again and feeling the humidity and swimming late into the night. They loved the French pastries, leftovers from a not-too-distant colonial time. They said the visit changed their memories of Cambodia, that when they thought back of Cambodia now, it wouldn’t be all loss and empty space and a shapeless goodbye. Their memories would now include long walks with teenage eyes, good hugs, the beauty of long friendships across oceans, and laughter at how our 7th floor hotel room flooded because the bidet exploded while we were touring the Royal Palace.

***

When we walked down the hill and turned the dusty corner of our street, we were known. Our old neighbors, cooking and chattering away outside their houses, saw us from several blocks away and started waving their hands wildly. They welcomed us back so sweetly and with such smiles; I will cherish their gift for a lifetime. They asked about the family, about America, about work. They showed us how five years had grown their children too. We visited with our old landlord, who surprised us with an invitation to walk through our old row house.

We climbed the stairs, peered into the old spaces where we lived. The girls saw some of their old furniture, repurposed now by a Cambodian family. They went out on the little patio, my youngest’s first “garden,” the place where she first tended to living things. What a beautiful, unexpected, wonderful gift.

The trip was so much better than I had even hoped. I knew I wanted to get them there; for five years I had known that somehow, someway, I needed to get them there. And I am so grateful.

***

We stood at the Phnom Penh airport, departure tickets in hand, and breathed. The girls wanted to recreate the last photo we took in Cambodia in 2020: at the top of the escalators, just before immigration, looking down on the airline check-in counters. Arched ceilings framed reliefs of Cambodian scenes. The girls are much taller in these new photos, and their smiles are older too.

We were all sad again, a little bit. And we were happy too. This time, we were leaving a Cambodia that had been home, that still felt like home in many ways, and we were also going home. Soon, we knew we would land at a little airport in Southwest Missouri that would also feel familiar. We would greet the rest of the family and tell all the stories. We would go to church on Sunday, a place with dear friends and kind hearts where we, once again, feel known and cared for and seen. The global church, it turns out, is in Missouri too, with all her beauty and complexity.

We would recover from jet lag in our own beds, and we would sit around our own table once again and laugh and laugh. There aren’t palm trees outside, and we can’t usually smell our neighbor’s dinner. The air isn’t thick year-round with humidity and incense, and there are no geckos. But we can walk down our not-so-dusty street. We can fall in love with the four seasons of an American Midwest. We can drive to our new favorite Asian restaurant. We can still live.

Because, wonder of wonders, after traveling there and back again, we have come

Home.

It is not always possible to return to a once-loved place. For ideas on what to do when you can’t go back, check out The Day We Didn’t Go Home. Also, if you’re not familiar with TCK Training and all their excellent resources, visit their website at tcktraining.com. Marilyn Gardner has written a beautiful piece for adult third culture kids on returning home: So, You Want to Go Back ‘Home’?

I asked a lot of questions during our trip: Has anything surprised you? What is this like for you? Is there anything left undone? What are the things you really need to do here or the places you really need to go? I didn’t really have much of an agenda at all, and I didn’t really try to anticipate what they would want or how they would feel.

After the trip, I asked one of my daughters for her advice to families making a return trip. “Let the feelings feel,” she said. “Let it be happy if it’s happy, and let it be sad if it’s sad. And if the feeling’s anger or frustration, let that be too.”

Did I Really Live That Life?

I run through the park where my husband and I held our wedding reception in 1999. There is the big rock that looks like a baked potato, the one we sat on for one of my favorite wedding day photos. There is the grassy lawn where we had a four-string quartet, and I waltzed with my grandfather.

Brilliant pink leaves are floating like cotton candy down from the trees. Puppies zoom around the dog park, and a snapping turtle is stuck between the fence and the porta-potty. A man digs it out with his walking stick. I ran past three deer, half a dozen ducks, rabbits. It is 45 degrees Fahrenheit.

No one is chasing me. No one throws stones at me. No one pinches my rear. Probably, no one even looks at it. No one calls me a prostitute or wonders about my body parts, worried they might fall off or out or be rendered ineffective if I continue running.

I am not sweating, not even a little bit. No drips, no streams, no splatters, no sloppy footprints through my shoes, no sweaty foam. There is no salt in my eyes and no dirt in my teeth and no camels to laugh at or wild dogs to be afraid of.

I think about Djibouti. And I wonder. Did I really do that? Did I really live there? Did all that really happen? Is this really one planet, the same shared earth?

Later that same week, I am in my yard raking and raking and raking. We have a lot of trees. Tomorrow, I will do this again. Rake and rake and rake. My neighbor is out, too, raking. I wave. He waves back. We rake our own yard with our own rakes on our own.

Later, he mows his lawn. I mow my lawn. In a few months, he will shovel his driveway. I will shovel my driveway. We will wave.

I don’t run into people I know at the grocery store every day. The cashiers never ask after my children by name. They never tell me they are praying for my family.

I don’t buy drinking water from the same man every Monday for twenty years, so I don’t ask about the children of anyone having anything to do with my drinking water. I don’t go to the phone company in person to pay my bills or resolve a problem and so I don’t know what the people working there even look like, let alone how their grandmother is doing after her surgery.

I drive fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes to see a friend, and that feels close. I certainly would never just drop over, not without planning several months in advance.

I think about Djibouti. And I wonder. Do I really do this? Do I really live here? Is this really happening? Is this really one planet, the same shared earth?

Djibouti feels like a long time ago and like it is still current. Minnesota feels like a radically strange world and like it is utterly normal.

Neither is better or worse, there is just the way it was and the way it is. There were and there are beautiful things and challenging things on both sides of this shared planet.

Sometimes I feel dizzy trying to hold it all, and I wonder if any of it was, or is, real. And then, my mom sends me a box of stuff.

Because now I do live in Minnesota and I did buy a house and it does have a basement and we don’t have the American twenty-five-plus years of accumulating stuff, so we have multiple empty shelves. My mom was thrilled to pass off my old things. A lot of it is junk.

One box was delivered just last week. It is a box of gold. Embarrassing, precious gold. The box contained three massive binders and a stack of loose-leaf papers: every email I sent from the day we landed in Kenya in February, 2003 until 2008.

Kenya, Somaliland, Ethiopia, back to Kenya, on to Djibouti. The email pretending canned green peas count as vegetables (barf). The email about neighbors trying to teach me how to shake my butt when I danced (never managed). The one about when my water broke and then the long wait for labor to begin and then the sudden, two quick pushes, and voila, a baby! 

The thief. Another thief. Language successes. Language disasters. The first time friends invited us into their home. Learning to cook. Learning to differentiate goat meat from lamb from cow from camel as they all hang in slabs from metal hooks. Starting to run. Keeping on running. Culture lessons. My husband’s job at the university,

Every blog post I published on my old blogspot website that my sister built for me in 2007. All my published pieces for Running Times when I was a regular columnist for them, my first paid writing gig. My mom had printed out each one and saved it in a binder.

I wrote a lot.

I remember I had to write emails into a word doc, and my husband Tom would take it to the university to copy, paste, and send. Eventually we got dial-up, and it was so slow I would write everything into a word doc, log on, copy and paste, hit “send,” and go make dinner while waiting to see if the emails sent. It was faster to upload a photo to a blog, and so I started doing that, making those early entries exactly what bloggers joked about — writing for my mom.

I don’t have these emails or blog posts saved anywhere else. The story of my first market visit and the kids falling into cacti in Somaliland. My thrill at completing a conversation in Somali for the first time. The day Annalena was murdered and everything changed.

Emails sent from our safe house during security lockdown. Then Ethiopia, then Nairobi, then where would we go? The email announcing we were moving to a place called Djibouti.

Lists of requests for items to be packed and brought when visitors came. My mom’s pencil markings on what she was sending and how it was getting packaged to save weight.

What was it like to get those emails? To hear about my daughter falling from the roof and we were in Somaliland, so far away. To hear reports about the kids growing up without being able to hold them or see them or hear them? To wonder if we were going to be okay, safe, if we could thrive?

I have not read through everything yet. I’ve hardly read anything. I’m not sure I’m ready to relive that part of me. Who was I? How silly and naive and brave and curious was I? Am I still?

What I do know is that I’m so glad my mom saved these memories. Just looking at them, flipping through the photos, watching words pop off the page, I know.

I did live that. I did live there. Those things really happened. That really was my beautiful, challenging community. And so is this one, this new one in Minnesota. Not entirely new, as it is built on my first twenty-three years of life here.

And still, new, as this new life in Minnesota is one I am weaving on a loom built in Djibouti. Or think of it as a quilt containing all the squares from before while I add fresh squares, and it becomes a melange, an isku dhex karis.

 

*Isku dhex karis is a traditional Somali stew whose name basically means “cook it all together.”

An Open Letter to Returning Workers and Their Support Networks

by Shonna Ingram

Dear Mission Teams and Churches,

When my family of six returned from serving overseas, we thought we knew how to transition. We had read all the books, navigated home assignments and job changes, and made fifteen moves in twenty years.

But this time was different.

What I didn’t realize then—and what our research now confirms—is this: Re-entry isn’t a single event. It’s a layered journey, often marked by loss and disorientation, and it lasts much longer than anyone expects.

Even though we had chosen to return and had prepared for it, parts of re-entry were deeply painful. We lost relationships, purpose, and stability—and we weren’t prepared for how disorienting this season would be.

I often wondered: Why was this so hard? Why did the hardest part hit months—even years—after our return? Why did no one warn us of the deep losses we might encounter, simply because we were “back in America”?

At the time, I kept hearing statements like, “Re-entry is the ugly duckling of the missionary life cycle” and “It is soul sucking, but no one wants to talk about it.”

So I decided (or perhaps God nudged me) to start gathering stories, walking with other returnees, and collecting data myself. What emerged confirmed what many have felt but few have voiced: Re-entry is a long, complicated, and sometimes isolating season that impacts every area of life—identity, finances, mental health, family, and even faith.

Here’s what the data is telling us.

1. Half of Re-entries Are Unplanned

50% of missionaries return unexpectedly—often due to crisis, health issues, team conflict, visa challenges, or burnout.

What this means: Many families return suddenly and without adequate preparation. This demands flexible, compassionate, and sustained care—especially in the early months.

2. Re-entry Is a Long-Term Process, Not a Quick Transition

40% of returnees still don’t feel settled after 5+ years.

What this means: Re-entry care shouldn’t be something we “check off” in a few months. It must extend over years and include spiritual, emotional, and practical support.

3. Loss of Purpose Is One of the Hardest Battles

70% of returnees lost their sense of purpose after leaving the field.

What this means: Leaving the field often means losing not just a role, but a deep sense of identity and calling. Missionaries aren’t just changing jobs; they’re grieving what was.

4. Emotional Health Often Remains Fragile for Years

Over 50% rated their emotional adjustment between 1–4 on a 10-point scale.

What this means: Re-entry is not just reverse culture shock. It includes grief, disorientation, and sometimes trauma.

5. Financial and Career Stability Are Major Stress Points

Over 50% feel unstable in their career or financial future.

What this means: Returning home often feels like starting over—without savings, direction, or networks.

6. Family Adjustment Is Hard

65% rated their family’s adjustment on the low end of the scale.

What this means: Re-entry affects the entire family system. Families need intentional support, community, and care to thrive.

7. Long-Term Expectations Were Shattered

 Almost 70% thought they would live overseas indefinitely.

What this means: Many global workers envisioned serving for life—raising children, retiring, and even being buried overseas. When re-entry comes unexpectedly, it feels like more than just a transition; it’s the loss of a future they had built their lives around. This makes the process deeply disorienting and often layered with grief, identity struggles, and spiritual questions.

8. Churches and Missions Organizations Are Often Unprepared

75% said their sending or supporting churches were not helpful during re-entry. 50% said the same about their sending organizations.

What this means: Too many returnees feel left to navigate one of the most vulnerable seasons of their lives alone.

Together, We Can Change These Statistics

Our findings show that re-entry is long and layered, impacting every part of a global worker’s life. But that also means there is an opportunity for real change.

Churches and organizations have the potential to make a profound difference—not by doing everything, but by doing a few things intentionally.

You might be thinking:

  • “Our church is small.”
  • “Our missions care department is overwhelmed.”
  • “We don’t have the time, money, or training.”

    Here’s the good news: When even one group, such as a sending church, a mission organization, or a care professional, understands and actively engages in re-entry, 85–90% of returnees feel significantly more prepared to navigate the transition.

And when churches, mission organizations, and care providers partner together, the burden doesn’t fall solely on one group.

Imagine what could happen if we:

  • Created emotional and spiritual discernment spaces where returning workers felt safe to share their stories.
  • Offered support that went beyond the initial “landing stage,” so no global worker felt like they were losing everything if they came home.
  • Connected returnees to mentors, peer cohorts, or re-entry-informed coaches and counselors to process loss, rediscover identity, and reimagine calling.
  • Invited them into their next season with hope.

Re-entry Experts was founded by people who have walked this road themselves and know firsthand how difficult re-entry can be without support. We believe it doesn’t have to be that way. What began as a personal journey is becoming a movement.

Our vision is to walk alongside global workers—regardless of their organization, church denomination, or passport country—and to equip the networks that care for them. We know we can’t do it all, which is why partnership is at the heart of what we do.

We love partnering with:

  • Churches and mission organizations that want to build intentional re-entry care
  • Coaches, counselors, spiritual directors, and retreat centers who feel called to serve returnees

We are building the Re-entry Care Network—a connected system of support so no global worker has to walk this journey alone. After completing our training, care providers are added to our network database, making it easy for returnees, churches, and organizations to find the help they need.

Together, we can become a community that doesn’t just send well, but also receives well, heals deeply, and restores purpose.

Let’s walk this road together.

In Hope,

Shonna Ingram, PhD
Founder & Director, Re-entry Experts

Shonna’s new book Navigating the Re-entry Journey: Trauma-Informed Care for Global Workers in Transition shares the “Re-entry Experts” approach to the four phases of re-entry, along with practical tools for churches, organizations, and care providers to create healthy, sustainable care systems for those returning from service.

~~~~~~~~~~

Shonna Ingram is the founder and director of the Renewed Hope Approach, a program that offers a practical path to post-trauma care. She has served in ministry and the global missions community, both on and off the field, for over 20 years. A spiritual director and board-certified master trauma-informed mental health coach, Shonna holds a PhD in faith-based trauma care and has trained hundreds of people in more than 30 countries to integrate mental health within a biblical framework. Her heart for global workers in the re-entry season inspired her to create a non-profit called Re-entry Experts, helping global workers discern their next season—whether inside or outside vocational ministry. Shonna’s first and favorite ministry is to her husband and being mom to four amazing adult children and one wonderful daughter-in-law.

Rediscovering Home: When the Familiar Feels Foreign

by Mari Eygabroad

“Welcome home!” I heard the words, but they didn’t feel right. I stood wide-eyed. Were we home? The whirlwind of events over the last month darted through my mind. My heart sank, unsure of what to say. “Thank you” was all I could muster.

The word “home” is supposed to bring comfort. We weren’t there yet. We landed in the US just a month earlier after months of packing and a forty-two-hour trek around the globe, toting as many belongings as we could fit in action packers and checked luggage. We were still adjusting to the ten-hour time change, didn’t have our own space, our kids were sharing an air mattress, and we were all living out of suitcases until our rental house was ready.

Looking back, it took several years of living in Lesotho before it felt like home. We didn’t fit into that culture, but we also didn’t fit in in the US anymore. Maybe anywhere. But isn’t that right where God wants us? “Home” is where He wants us to be. No matter where we are, home is where we are together with God.

By about our third year in Lesotho, we were settled. Most things had become comfortable but not necessarily familiar. We adopted a year-round school schedule, providing our kids with a regular routine that only deviated when we were sick, on break, or on vacation.

We built our community, meeting regularly with friends for coffee or meals. We participated in team gatherings and our home church, and my husband attended regular men’s breakfasts. We gave and received love. Conversations went deep, discussing heart issues, morals, and values. Small talk had no place.

Almost a decade had passed since we began living life overseas when the Lord put it on our hearts to consider returning to America. We thought of so many reasons why we shouldn’t. Nothing was pushing us out of Lesotho. We loved the people, our community, the pace of life, and the ministry we were doing. But one thing remained: God was calling us in a new direction.

So we prayed. A lot. We also invited others to pray with us, which was one of the best decisions we made. We yearn for the wisdom and counsel gleaned from the experiences of others who have walked this path before. After bathing the matter in prayer and receiving a great deal of encouragement and counsel regarding repatriation, we felt prepared to return to the US.

The number one thing we learned from the experiences of many others is that getting plugged into a church and building a community can be a challenge. Though we were returning to our “home area,” many of our friends had moved away. So, we knew we would be building a new community from scratch. We wanted to be intentional about finding a church, so we began scouring websites and attending online sermons as we researched churches in the area where we planned to live. Although we were unable to make in-person connections, we still gained a sense of the church environment and its pastors.

We decided we would attend a church with a homeschool co-op near our rental home. Being comfortable with the pastor and his messages allowed us to feel more at ease about committing to that church. The church has proven to be a solid, biblical church, and we have been able to connect with some smaller groups without hesitation, which would have been a concern if we were unsure of which church we wanted to call our home church.

Initially, we wanted to keep a low profile — just be normal and not play the missionary card too early. However, when attending a small church, people know you’re new, and a straightforward question like, “Where are you from?” opens up a whole can of worms. That’s when I also learned that not everyone is fascinated with our life as missionaries.

It’s challenging to reduce a decade of life into a few sentences. We discovered that we would only be able to share our life overseas with a select few people. Thankfully, we have friends who have been on this journey before us, and they have been great at listening to our stories. It can be a struggle to find friends who genuinely want to hear about your life, so it may become necessary to find a counselor or a repatriation mentor who understands.

Developing relationships has been a slow process. Friends meeting regularly is almost unheard of, and creating depth in a relationship seems tantamount to torture for some people. I cherish the few people I’ve found who desire more serious relationships, but my husband and I both long for that one person we can call our “bestie.”

One of the things we looked forward to when coming back was the opportunity to be involved in church and for our kids to participate in sports or other activities. We dove into quite a few church activities. Although we loved the Bible studies, having more than one a week, in addition to youth group and small group, we realized how quickly those activities can fill up our calendar.

Understanding that packed schedules and constantly on-the-go friends are part of the culture, I’ve realized the importance of not only adjusting my expectations but also protecting my own schedule so I would not get wrapped up in the pace myself. That’s when I resolved that our first few years would be our “try and see” years.

A wise counselor once told me that it could take several years to find a rhythm and establish a routine upon returning. I am beginning to see the truth of that statement. Within the first year, we transitioned from full-time homeschooling to homeschooling plus a co-op and then to private school.

With all the transitions and newness, we’ve discovered that our kids, what some would call Third Culture Kids (TCKs), though resilient, are different than most American kids. We’ve had many tearful discussions around the dinner table about what we miss about Lesotho and the struggles we’re facing. Our son was upset one day after a schoolboy laughed at him because he didn’t know what the phrase “cut the cheese” meant. A seemingly minor colloquialism, but to him, it was a stark reminder of not fitting in. It’s important to encourage our kids that it’s okay to be different while still allowing them to express their emotions.

We’ve also had many joyous conversations about what has been good. Being in school has provided both educational challenges and social awakenings for both of our kids. Having the opportunity to connect with other children has made us realize how significant a role their social life will play in their development. They are forging their own paths and developing their own relationships. Some of their uniqueness and quirks will remain intact, while others will fade away.

It will take some time for all of us to adapt as we continue to learn what it means to live in the US. We will prayerfully enter into church ministry, carefully select activities and events, and continue with patience as we develop new relationships. In trying to establish a routine, I’ve learned that the rhythm of life in America seems seasonal — just as we were beginning to feel we had a good rhythm, along came summer break and bored kids!

When the time comes for you to return to your home country, remember to give yourself time and grace. As you research churches in the area where you’ll be living, try to get plugged in earlier rather than later. Also, understand that past friendships will be different, even if you’ve kept in touch. As you’ve lived, grown, and changed during the time you’ve been away, so have they. Even if you have a few friends to reconnect with, you will likely still need to build a new community around you.

And if you have children, check in with them. They are adapting to everything new on an even larger scale. Our kids only knew Africa. America is an entirely different experience. Children need to have a safe space to process their struggles and successes. Even if their emotions seem irrational to us, they are still real to them.

Moving overseas, you expect things to be difficult, so it seems strange to think things would be so challenging upon returning to your home country. But more and more people find their return more difficult than their departure. So let the Lord be your guide. Invite people to pray with you, pray as a family, and seek counsel from others who’ve walked this road before you. The journey is long. You’ll need some help along the way.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mari served as a missionary for eleven years in Lesotho, Africa, with her husband, a pilot/mechanic with Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF). During their first few years living in Africa, her family faced many hardships and tragedies. After searching unsuccessfully for resources that could have prepared her for what they experienced, God put it on her heart to write the book she wished she’d had, and Living Uprooted: Encouragement for the Missionary Wife was born. She and her husband returned to the US in 2024, where they now train and mentor new missionaries. You can find her online at marieygabroad.substack.com.

Co-Grieving Loss with Your Repatriated TCK

We didn’t have words for TCK loss back then. Not when I left Cameroon at nineteen and stepped onto U.S. soil as a stranger to my own country. But just because there weren’t words doesn’t mean the ache of loss didn’t burrow deep. Nineteen and newly repatriated felt like drowning in a sea of people who looked like me and talked like me but didn’t know the red-earth-Africa that shaped me. 

I hardly recognized the girl I became in the wake of losing Cameroon, my best friends, and everything that felt familiar. That season was one of the hardest – and one of the unhealthiest – of my life.

Now, after the years have fast forwarded to an empty nest, I find myself looking back, not just at my own story but at theirs. I think of my children, my third culture kids, who built rich and beautiful lives on South African soil, their home. How will they handle letting go? How will they carry the weight of leaving behind the people and places that shaped them?

When I saw Megan Norton’s invitation to write a letter to my recently repatriated TCKs for her upcoming book, Letters Now Sent, I knew exactly what I wanted to say. I know the grief of leaving a place that tattoos an indelible mark on your soul. As their mother and as a TCK myself, I want to co-grieve their losses of saying goodbye to a life they loved in South Africa. And I know where I want them to root themselves now, as they step into adulthood in the U.S.

This letter is a new beginning with new language for parents of TCKs. It is my way of opening the door to a safe and sacred conversation with my young adult children—one established in love, shared understanding, and the kind of hope that reroots through the cracks of even the hardest losses. While their reactions to my letter are deeply personal and honey to my heart, I can tell you that this budding conversation was met with warm reciprocity and open arms. 

A letter to Elaina and Sawyer Danforth, 2025 (republished at A Life Overseas with permission) 

My two dearest toasted marshmallows,

You are eighteen and nineteen now. University carries a steep learning curve for everyone, but especially for the ones like you who left home, country, and friends to be grafted back to the place of your heritage. 

As second-generation TCKs, you belong to a tribe that your father and I know well. Your childhood was formed in the womb of the cradle of humankind, in KwaZulu-Natal, and it ended abruptly on the other side of a plane ride to the United States. But the things that formed you there still sing in every crevice of your mind and shape the way you see the world. 

Repatriation is a season when the losses of the familiar sink in hard for TCKs. And these are the years when you become aware of your roots, the ones that have been transplanted to new soils and now feel wildly distinct and out of place. The places of your childhood are the places where your formative and deepest roots grow. And the soil of South Africa no longer surrounds or supports you. 

You’ll remember from working on our farm that a transplanted plant often wilts for a while. It is learning to survive in a new and unfamiliar environment. Its roots aren’t sure what to make of its new home. They don’t know whether they can unfurl and take new life or whether the newness will be hostile to growth. Repatriating TCKs are the same. 

While my roots in South Africa will never be as deeply formative as yours, I am here to co-grieve your losses with you. I did the same as a nineteen-year-old with my Cameroonian roots. And your father did too, at eighteen with his Congolese and Central African roots. 

Some losses are obvious. Our imperfectly perfect little farmhouse and the stability of its cracked walls. The foamy blueness of whales flirting between the horizon and the Indian Ocean. The oneness of our multicultural, multi-lingual farm family. The wind-whipped cheeks from four-wheeling wild past giraffes. The saggy eyes after Minecraft all-nighters with friends. The laughter with your non-blood sisters farmsteading in the mountains. The crispy-edged pancakes hot off the griddle every Saturday morning. The seasonal ebb and flow of subtropical downpours and droughts. 

But some losses are hidden. Some, you won’t even know you miss until you come across them years later. And you’ll be caught off guard by a sudden feeling of home. Hidden losses are the sounds, smells, and invisible things that God sprinkled into the backdrop of your childhood. They are the things that you didn’t even know weren’t everywhere on planet earth. Until they weren’t. 

Your hidden losses don’t have to make sense to anyone else. They don’t even have to be pleasant. But something about these background sounds and smells had a profound impact on developing the unseen part of who you are today. And we honor those gifts by naming them. 

The background sound of your childhood is the cry of hadedas filling pink southern skies and beckoning your sleepy eyes open. You didn’t even know the sound was missing until that first morning in a Midwest dormroom when the synthetic shock of an alarm clock demanded your attention. 

It is the faithful singsong Xhosa greeting “Molweni” on your proud farm stoep. It is the mourning doves telling each other off gently and sternly. It is the inexplicable peace of violent rains threatening to crash right through tôle roofs. It is the baying of hounds, whether to threaten skelems or to give chase to dassies, outside your burglar-barred window. 

It is the South African flavor in which people have always said your name. It is the twisted, segregated history healing in real time through the harmony of church songs in English, Afrikaans, and Zulu. It is the comfort of our family’s age-old call to meals that reaches back to the recesses of your first independently held spoon, “On va prier.”

The background smell embedded in the roots of your childhood is a eucalyptus flame licking Karoo lamb ribs on the braai. It is soft buttermilk vanilla steam from an Ouma rusk dunked in Five Roses tea. How can something be so moorishly crunchy and goopy at the same time? It is the barely-there salt in the air where the Indian Ocean laps at the sky. And yes, it is even the familiar sewage plant every time we try to hold our breath at that bend in the highway by Uvongo.

Your roots will fumble around in this new place of red, white, and blue for a while, figuring out what is friendly soil and what isn’t. And this is the time. Dit is tyd to close your eyes, take a breath, and rediscover the power of your one unshakable tap root. It is your deepest root. The most formative one. The most familiar one. The most stabilizing one. It is your one root that pushes far past all the others, past every good and rocky soil, reaching like life depends on it, to the source of life. Water. Living Water. 

It is in Living Water that you’ve always found life and truth and all that is good. When everything around is unfamiliar, this source is the familiar. 

You’ll find community in the taproots of familiar people planted there too. And you’ll come to know new people who are automatically family because their taproot seeks life in the same place where yours does. This is the good stuff, my toasted marshmallows. 

While your secondary roots stumble around and try to make sense of star-spangled life, sink all your energy, all your questions, all your everything into your taproot’s source of life. It is the one and only thing that will never change no matter where you go, how far you fall, or how unfamiliar everything else seems. 

Taprooted to the Source with you,

Mom (Anna Danforth)

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Inspired by Ruth Van Reken‘s book Letters Never Sent, Letters Now Sent will be a collection of letters from TCKs, parents of TCKs, and system leaders to share personal stories about their experiences with TCKs, being a TCK themself, and/or raising TCKs. This book is a fusion of both memoir and anthology written in a specific “Dear [name]” format. 

Here is the Google Form link to submit a letter with additional details about length and content prompts: https://forms.gle/jQyzq3TtFqfyznvCA. The deadline to submit a letter is March 31, 2025, and the book will be launched in July 2025 at Ruth’s 80th birthday celebration. Families in Global Transition is hosting the 80th Birthday party in Chicago on July 26, 2027, and registration will be live on their website soon. You do not have to be a member of FIGT to register for this event.

When Expectations Aren’t Reality: Supporting Your TCKs in the First Years of University

by Lauren Wells

I stood on a grassy hill hugging my parents tight as they prepared to drive away and head back to Africa, leaving me at university in Indiana. I had prepared for this transition. I had visited the school, had already made some friends, had earned my driver’s license on a previous home assignment, and felt ready and excited for this new chapter. It was going to be great.

A few days into the semester, I was required to go to an international student workshop. I was excited, thinking this was the part where I’d meet other TCKs. I was surprised to find that all of the other international students came from other passport countries for the purpose of university and that this was their first time living outside their home country.

I was equally surprised when our workshop consisted of teaching American currency (“This is a dollar. This is a penny, it’s worth one cent.”) and explaining how to dial 911. Having lived in the US until I was 13, I quickly realized I was the outsider in the international student group, so after I’d met the requirements, I never went back. 

As the semester went on, I tried to make friends. But it felt like every time I opened my mouth, the words I spoke didn’t get the reaction I was expecting. My attempts to be funny were met with awkward smiles. My attempts to deepen relationships by sharing about something a bit more vulnerable were met with comments that communicated a lack of ability to relate to my experiences and no invitation to continue the conversation.

I quickly felt like I didn’t belong with the monocultural crowd, but I told myself it didn’t matter. “I’ll only be here long enough to get my degree anyway, and it will be easier to leave if I never make close friends.” I knew what it felt like to leave close friends, so when my initial attempts to build relationship hadn’t worked, that seemed like a good excuse to stop trying.

I became the quiet one who walked through campus trying not to be noticed. I succeeded academically but have no memories of good social experiences. That first Christmas break, I remember feeling like a shell of myself, never having felt that level of emptiness and despair before, and I simultaneously decided that I just needed to toughen up and keep moving forward. 

School resumed, and I took on more classes than recommended, thinking that if I just poured myself into the academics, I could ignore the rest. But then, the grief started to creep in. Not just the grief of that year, but the grief that I had so skillfully pushed down for a long time before that. My Grief Tower was collapsing.

At TCK Training we work with TCKs on both sides of this story – educating families who are raising TCKs on how they can be intentional in caring for the unique needs of TCKs so that they can prevent adverse outcomes in adulthood and serving adult TCKs who reach out to us for support. 

In between the two parts of that story, we have found the need for preventive care and support. Sometimes universities have a wonderful TCK program, like MuKappa, that provides community and support for TCKs in their university years. Unfortunately, there is often a lack of resources available to university-age TCKs to guide them through that season. 

But there is good news! We can be intentional about supporting our university-age TCKs well, especially in those first couple of years. 

  • Set them up for emotional success by making sure they’ve had the opportunity to debrief and unstack their Grief Tower before university. The books The Grief Tower and Unstacking Your Grief Tower can guide you in doing that process in your own family. We recommend doing this at least 3 months before the transition to university so that the grief these conversations bring to the surface has time to begin to heal before they experience the major transition of starting university. 
  • Make sure they have avenues for connection and continued processing with safe people – family, friends, counselors. There will inevitably be difficulty in the transition, but they will not always want to share their hardships with you. Often this is because they won’t want to burden you on top of your international work or because they won’t want to disappoint you at their “failure” to thrive. Take away that shame by regularly asking them what has been hard. Ask them questions, and even when they don’t answer, let them know you don’t expect everything to be easy for them. For more on this, check out KC360’s workshop, “Indicators that University Transition is Going Well (or Not) with Dr. Rachel Cason” included in their free website membership. 
  • Help them develop a support network. There is potential for heavy, hard, or just unexpected circumstances to arise that require the help of a supportive adult. Asking for help can feel shameful, but that fear and shame can be reduced when the TCK has a list of people who have agreed to be a support to them. It is even more helpful when those people regularly check in with the TCK to see how they’re doing and what they need. Have your TCK help create a “supportive adult” list, and then ask the people on the list to regularly reach out to the TCK – both asking what they need and offering tangible ways they can help. For example, “Can I take you shopping for a winter coat? Can I come help pack up your dorm room for summer break?”
  • Teach them to celebrate wins. Adult TCKs often struggle to acknowledge their victories due to consistently feeling the need to adapt to fit the communities around them. The internal need to continue performing at ever higher levels leads to burnout. Celebrating victories, however, allows for rest, builds confidence and a sense of value, and strengthens their emotional bank to handle the difficult waves that come. 
  • Provide them transition support in their first year or two of university. An example of this is TCK Training’s Launch Pad program, which provides repatriating TCKs with a 10-month virtual cohort community, education, and support directly related to adult TCK experiences. There is space to process and grieve, along with regular checks-ins to celebrate victories and continue developing as an individual.
  • Familiarize yourself with Adult TCK resources so that you can support your Adult TCK by sending them relevant resources along the way. There is so much available now that simply wasn’t around only a few years ago! You can view all of TCK Training’s ATCK services, workshops, and resources at www.tcktraining.com/for-atcks 

The first couple years of university are notoriously the most difficult transition for TCKs. We believe, however, that with intentionality we can make these years not only healthy, but years that set them up for long-term emotional and relational health. 

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

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Lauren Wells is the founder and CEO of TCK Training and the Unstacking Company and author of Raising Up a Generation of Healthy Third Culture Kids, The Grief Tower, and Unstacking Your Grief Tower. She is an Adult TCK who spent her teenage years in Tanzania, East Africa. She sits on the board of the TCK Care Accreditation as Vice Chair and is part of the TCK Training research team focusing on preventive care research in the TCK population.