Family and friends top the list of things that expats miss most about home. Leaving loved ones behind when moving abroad is tough and can feel like sacrifice in exchange for a different life. Saying goodbye is, however, more than throwing a farewell party for your close relationships. It is a process involving everyone and everything that is part of your life in your native country.

Saying goodbye is a process, not a moment.

Although your farewell party is the actual moment of saying goodbye, the real process of letting go your home country starts before and continues after departure. During my personal expatriation experience, I learned that it is necessary to go through both the prior and the after phase to make a successful transition. Especially the after phase was intense; it taught me an important life lesson on the way.

Saying Goodbye prior Departure –
Preparing to Leave Family & Friends

The process of saying goodbye begins when you have made the decision to move abroad. From that moment on, you know everything will change and mentally you start letting go of your life on native soil bit by bit.

Prior to departure there are many things to arrange and endless decisions to make. Every decision you make gets you closer to your goal and gradually you distance yourself from your life how it was in the past. Physically still being in your home country, you long for the life you are dreaming of. A life that looked so unreal but that is now becoming more real every day.

The big change of expatriation involves a mental switch in order to get used to the idea of living out of your comfort zone. Letting go prior departure therefore comes with ups and down; days full of enthusiasm alternate with days filled with doubt and insecure feelings. Imagining life without family raises doubts and mixed reactions from your surroundings may complicate things even more. But as the departure date approaches rapidly, negative feelings are overpowered by excitement and hope for the future.

Saying Goodbye after Departure –
Missing Familiar Things Around You

The process of letting go continues in the new, unknown surroundings and can take up a lot of time. During the honeymoon stage of cultural adaptation, euphoria dominates your state of mind and you are occupied with setting up your new life. You don´t feel the need nor have the time to think much about home. After finishing the first arrangements, however, daily life commences and you become aware of the fact that you are still far away from the happy life abroad you have been dreaming of.

Settling in confronts you with cultural differences. It takes time and patience to deal with this. One of many things that happen is that you use your home country as cultural frame of reference. Especially when you deal with irritations towards the new culture, you tend to romanticize your native country. But even when the people you meet are kind and you undertake the cultural contrasts as a fun adventure, it is not easy to let go of your roots.

Soon you realize that you haven´t only said goodbye to your family and friends. Since you are connected to your home country in many ways, you also said goodbye to:

• your home and neighborhood
• job and colleagues
• customs and traditions
• language and expressions
• places and areas
• brands and products
• food and beverages
• television and other media
• humor and satire
• etc.

You basically left everything behind that belongs to your native culture and your life within that culture. Therefore it is normal to miss home without missing someone or something in particular; you feel the loss of all the familiar things around you.

Encountering an Unexpected Paradox

To fill up the emptiness, it is normal that you start thinking about home a lot. Thoughts arise about everything that belonged to you for a very long time and that isn´t there anymore – or at least not in the same way. This gets even stronger due to the new culture you are surrounded by; upon encountering different cultural aspects you start comparing your new life to your old one. You miss the details that characterize your own culture and your life in the past, and you analyze them more than you have ever done before.

In contrast to the goodbye phase prior to departure, you are now physically at your dream location but mentally to a great extent in your home country. It is very common that – in the abrupt absence of all those familiar details – you realize how much people mean to you and how much you are attached to your native soil. Although you have just left, you are paradoxically building a stronger connection to your fatherland. When I arrived at this point, I understood that saying goodbye not only involves grief and sorrow, it also involves love and affection.

Besides letting go and leaving behind, saying goodbye,
also leads to a more profound connection.

Sometimes you feel like mourning your old life and sometimes it feels like developing a deep form of appreciation and attachment. For some expats this is a vague feeling, others wonder if they are doing the right thing by living far away from their roots. The strong connection to home may awake doubt and regret about the expatriation plan in general. This phase is not easy and certainly distracts from adapting to the new culture. But far away from home, home sometimes seems the only thing to hold on to.

Crucial Next Step: Letting Go of the Past

This paradox is a confusing aspect of the farewell process. Don´t let it fool you and try to move forward with your expatriation plan. The next crucial step is letting go of the past. I am not saying that you should forget about everyone and everything at home. But continuing with your mind in the past or in your home land most of the time would only hamper your adaptation process. For your own health and happiness it is better to direct your overall mind set to where you are. Otherwise you would constantly be living in the past, rather than the present.

As you build up more familiarities and connections to your new living environment, you will be able to concentrate more on your new life. The connection to your home country gets weaker now – which is sad – but I really think letting go is necessary to live a happy life abroad.

Important Life Lesson Learned

The expatriate life has taught me many lessons so far and one of them is: How to let go of the past and to move toward something new. Often people struggle with this natural process of constant change, but expatriation requires embracing it. Being able to let go of your old living circumstance can take a while but it is an essential part of the process of saying goodbye. Take your time and practice mindfulness techniques such as meditation and thought observation. You will see that in course of time your focus will change and you will be able to live in the moment rather than the past.

Learn to embrace the change and your expatriate life will fall into place.

The challenge of saying goodbye and letting go has frequently a bigger impact on expats than they had expected. Have you experienced a similar farewell process? Do you recognize the paradox of goodbye and the life lesson I described?