Whether you’re returning home after living abroad for many years or just for a few months, coming back is always a little bittersweet – and a lot harder than you might have expected. You’ll be excited to see family and friends again, to enjoy your favorite foods and engage in your favorite activities back home – yet, you’ll miss the new friends and the new life you’ve made in your host country and may find it difficult to fit back into your old world.
Everything and everyone in your homeland will have changed while you were abroad – and you will have changed too – so it will take quite a bit of time and work to reintegrate into your home culture and reestablish yourself in your home community. Once you overcome the repatriation blues though, you’ll realize how much stronger and wiser your expat experience has made you and will be able to move forward with your life in your home country in a confident and successful way. You will always keep your adopted country in your heart, but will be able to readjust to life back home without a hitch.
Here are some valuable tips for moving back home after living abroad to help you achieve a smooth transition and make the most of your expat experience.
Plan your move back home with care
Just like moving abroad, moving back after living abroad brings a whole set of unique challenges – from the emotional toil of leaving your new friends and your new lifestyle behind to the practical hardships of organizing an international move. To successfully deal with both the emotional and pragmatic aspects of moving home after living abroad, you need to devise a smart relocation strategy that will allow you to say a proper goodbye to your host country and perform a safe and efficient move back home:
- Give yourself as much time as possible to enjoy your adopted country before repatriation – visit your favorite spots in town, eat your favorite local food, and have fun with your foreign friends, etc. Find a way to thank the people who have made your time abroad special and bid them a meaningful goodbye. This will not only help you create lasting memories of your expat life that you’ll cherish forever, but will also give you closure and allow you to move forward without regret or fear;
- Take care of the paperwork – collect personal documents, update papers, transfer records, etc.;
- Make a moving budget and a moving timeline;
- Book your flight and make any necessary travel arrangements;
- Sort out your possessions and decide what to bring back to your home country (be sure to check customs regulations and moving costs before you make your final decision). See also: How to pack for an international move;
- Research international moving companies, get international moving quotes, and choose the best overseas movers for your needs. Book their services and schedule your move.
Prepare for culture shock
When moving back home from abroad, it will all seem a bit off at first – what was previously familiar will have become strangely alien, things that you once thought of as completely normal will seem shocking, weird, and even offensive to you now, and you may even feel like a foreigner in your own country. That phenomenon is known as reverse culture shock and is common for expatriates returning home.
So, when preparing to move back, keep in mind that you may have some difficulty acclimating to the norms, expectations, and values of your home country’s culture. You will most likely have moments of reverse culture shock and it will be quite disorienting – and disheartening – in the beginning. Be patient though – after a while your perceptions will readjust and things will begin to appear normal again.
Have realistic expectations
Before moving back to your home country, you need to curb your expectations a little to avoid disappointment – the home you return to won’t be the idealized version you remember. And things won’t be the same as they once were.
When the excitement of seeing family and friends fades away, reality will set in – and even though you’ll be home, real life won’t be perfect. There will be problems, hardships, frustrations, etc. – you need to be ready to face the challenges and overcome them.
Besides, you need to remember that people and places change, so you can’t expect life to be waiting for you when you get home. Thinking that everything will be the same as before will only make your transition back home more difficult – you will have to accept that, just as much as you’ve changed during your time abroad, so have your friends and family and your hometown.
Especially if you’ve been away for more than a couple of years, things will be quite different when you return – your family and friends won’t be in the same place in their lives as they were when you left, your hometown will have changed, there will be new people around, etc. You need to prepare yourself mentally for the changes and embrace them, so you’re not bitterly disappointed when reality doesn’t live up to your preconceived notions.
Also, have in mind that despite all the time that has passed and all the changes that have transpired, people will probably still be expecting the old you – and that can be rather frustrating when you have learned so much and grown so much. It is really difficult to come back home full of experience and stories only to realize that people think of you as the same person who left so many years ago and no one is really interested in your adventures, exploits, and discoveries away from home. In fact, people may even perceive it as “pretentious” or “bragging” if you keep bringing up your adopted country and your experiences there in your conversations.
Reach out to your old friends – and make new ones
Your first few weeks back will be a whirlwind of visiting, partying, exchanging stories, and catching up with family and friends. Once the initial excitement wears off though, everyone will get back to their regular lives and you might feel a little lonely. Your friends will have married, had children, started new jobs, made new friends, etc. – some of them may have even moved to different cities. They will still care about you, but everyone will have their own lives and will be used to the idea that you’re away and therefore – unavailable.
So, you need to be the one who reaches out first – call your friends, text them, invite them to do something together, etc. Remind them that you’re back and you still love them and still enjoy their company and want to spend time with them. Soon enough, you’ll become a part of your old friends’ lives again.
What’s more, when you return home after living abroad, you’ll have the chance to make new friends as well. You will have picked up a lot of social skills and friend-making tactics during your expat life that you can put to good use in your hometown – join a sports team or a hobby club, volunteer at local charities and organizations that support causes you believe in, attend events you’re interested in, etc. You’ll meet like-minded people and make new friends in your old home.
Rediscover your homeland
When moving back to the States after living abroad, it might be best to think of it as going to a new place and let yourself rediscover your home country and your hometown.
You’ll have the unique opportunity to see your homeland with new eyes – and appreciate it in a new way. There will be dozens of places and activities in your area that you’ve never seen or tried before (or haven’t done so since you were a kid).
So, go explore – visit all the places in your hometown that you’ve always wanted to see but never got round to, try all the things you’ve always wanted to experience but never dared to, meet new people along the way, etc. It will be quite an adventure – and it will reintroduce you to your home culture and will help you fall in love with your home country again.
Reconnect with your old world
The final step in your journey back home will be to reintegrate into your home culture. It won’t be easy and it will take time, but you will eventually succeed. To make the process easier, you’re advised to:
- Have an idea of what you want to do when you get back – start a job, open your own business, engage in artistic endeavors, go to college, etc. Having a plan – or a goal – will help you feel more grounded and stable. It will also give you a purpose and a direction in your new life back home;
- Make your place feel like home – Whether you’re returning to your old house or apartment or buying/renting a new place, do your best to turn it into your sweet home within days after your return;
- Set a daily routine as soon as possible – go running around the neighborhood in the morning, have a coffee at a local café, spend some time searching for and applying for jobs (or go to work if you already have a job), take a walk in a nearby park, practice your hobby, have dinner at your favorite local restaurant, etc. This will help create a sense of normalcy and will get you involved in the local community quickly and easily;
- Allow yourself time to readjust – do not rush things, do not put pressure on yourself to feel a certain way, engage in favorite activities, get out in the community, etc. Step by step, familiarity will settle in and you’ll get a sense of connection to your home country again;
- Rediscover your homeland and reconnect with old friends (as detailed above).
Related: How to adjust after moving
Stay connected to your host culture and embrace your expat experience
Last but not least, understand that you don’t need to abandon your connection to your former host country in order to adjust to life back home. On the contrary – embracing your overseas experience will enrich your life and help you build a brighter future for yourself.
So, when you move back home from abroad, be sure to maintain ties with your adopted country and adapt the things you gained from your expat experiences to your everyday life:
- Stay connected to your host culture – prepare dishes from your host country, watch movies and listen to music from that country, write a journal or start a blog about your experiences there, etc.;
- Stay in touch with the friends you made in your adopted country and maintain the connections you built during your time abroad;
- Keep studying your adopted country’s language and use it in every way possible;
- Hold onto the lessons you learned while living abroad and use them in your new life in your home country;
- Work your good habits from your expat life into your day-to-day life back home.
As time goes by, the feeling of loss that you will inevitably experience when you leave your adopted country will gradually transform into a feeling of gratitude for your amazing adventure and everything you gained from your life abroad.
In many aspects, moving back home after living abroad may be even harder than moving to an unfamiliar place. At the end of the process though, you will be left with great memories, broader worldview, heightened self-awareness, and the advantage of feeling at home in two countries.
