Leaving is never easy, but we can learn how to do it in a healthy way

Especially when we leave a place where we have invested in friendships, learned to belong, and built a “home”. Saying goodbye is one of the hardest things expats need to learn. And it’s one of the things their children (need to) learn at a very young age. We all know: transitions are part of the expat life.

The cross-cultural trainer Tina Quick, popular international speaker, transition expert and author of The Global Nomad’s Guide to University Transition states that:

“Leaving a place you have been rooted in for any amount of time is never easy, but making the time for proper farewells is something no one has ever regretted. Proper closure and forward thinking help pave a smooth road to transition and reduce the stumbling blocks of adjustment…”.

How does a “proper closure” exactly look like?

In their book “Third Culture Kids: The Experience of Growing up Among Worlds”, David C. Pollock and Ruth E. Van Reken suggest to build a R.A.F.T. in order to have a proper closure:

R for Reconciliation

Reconciliation mural painted by indigenous and non-indigenous students of Hillston Central School (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

During the leaving stage we tend to deny or avoid confrontation with those we had disagreements with. We think we won’t see this person again and since we are going to leave anyway, why bother? Fact is that unresolved problems will stick with us like a mental baggage.

It happened to me with someone I had a problem with in highschool. 20 years later I happened to run into her on a train station. We only had like 5 minutes, but I felt like 20 years before: all the bad feelings were there again, like if all these years hadn’t passed! Instead of a quick smalltalk, I chose to put our problem on the table, right there. It was an awkward situation and at the meantime very revealing because we both realized that we had experienced this time in two completely different ways and we both had outgrown this moment but needed a closure. I never felt the bitterness that I used to feel when thinking about her ever again.

Avoiding reconciliation is an unhealthy habit because it can cause bitterness and our discontent can affect our future relationships. Therefore it is important to resolve any problem and to forgive and be forgiven before moving. – And so do our children! They may need a mediator for this.

A for Affirmation

“Customer care must be nurtured from beginning to end.” (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The key is to leave in peace. We’ve encountered and befriended many people over the years, and in order to be really emotionally and mentally moving on, we need to let them all (!) know that we appreciate them.

Many fear the tears and the sad feelings that leaving entails. But we have the choice to focus on the positive moments we have shared together and to solidify our relationship with them. – Closure doesn’t mean that we have to say goodbye forever. We say goodbye to this phase of our life they were part of. But they can remain our friends.

If we look at the terms used in different languages to say “goodbye”, they are not forever but usually mean “see you again”: auf Wiedersehen, arrivederci, au revoir, hasta la vista, now vemos etc.

By planning a gathering together after our move or regularly scheduled skype-chats can make it easier to say goodbye. We might not meet as frequently as before, but there’s still a chance to keep in touch. Social media are a great invention for internationally living families: you can still share happy moments with friends living on the other side of the globe.

I have said goodbye many times and I am always amazed to see that really good friends stay with me no matter where I live: they’ll always call me, meet with me in whatever places and will be part of my life.

We can help our children to do the same with their friends by letting their favourite friends, teachers, neighbours know that they like them and that they want to stay in touch. Throwing a farewell party in the middle of all the preparations for the move seems overwhelming, but it’s really worth the effort! If you want to keep it simple, a kind of gathering in one of your (or your kids’) favourite places with these special friends will do it.

Affirmation is important also among siblings. When one of our children leaves for college or boarding school, it’s important that the siblings are reassured that they’ll still keep in touch. A commitment to call, skype or regular visits will reassure everyone that this is just a phase, a change and not an ending.

F like Farewells

Comment te dire adieu? (song) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Most of us try to avoid the word “goodbye”: it hurts since it marks an end. It’s the end of a chapter in our life. It’s important to take the time to pay attention to things we’ve enjoyed. Taking pictures of places, doing things we’ve enjoyed, meeting friends: every member of the family will benefit from gradually saying goodbye to the 4 “p’s”: people, pets, places and possessions. A good way to remember them in the “old” place and “life” is to take pictures. We and our children can make a goodbye book. They can collect pictures of their friends, the favourite areas, pets, possessions and assemble them in a scrap book. They could also insert a small thing which reminds them for example of their home, like a piece of bedroom curtain, a scrap of wallpaper, a pressed flower from the garden or a ticket to the cinema. Or they can make alternatively a short movie of their friends. A friend of mine once gave me her favourite soap. Every time I smelled it, I thought of her and still do. – Let your children guide you as they have an eye for the small details we adults often miss.

T like Think destination

What do we need where we’re going? What are the drawbacks and benefits to expect? How will our life look like in the new place? – While saying goodbye, it’s also important to focus on the future and to prepare ourselves and our family for the approaching transition.

Thinking about practical aspects of leaving will help us to be more balanced emotionally. – We can help our children in this by involving them in the planning by taking pictures of the new house or area we’ll live in, studying maps of the city and collecting information and details of the new school. Maybe we can even meet new classmates before the school starts. All this will help them (and us!) to plan ahead, to picture us in the new place and get the impression of how we’ll feel in this next place.

Children have a peculiar outlook on life. Parents should try to answer their questions unambiguously and clarify that nothing will change within the family. During the whole transition, our children need to be repeatedly reassured that all is well. You should expect to have (many) ups and downs.– This is all perfectly normal since (young) children thrive on routine and stability. If you can keep up normal routines in your new home, such as the way of having breakfast or dinner, the bedtime routine, or certain other habits, you’re halfway through the battle. Especially new routines need to be introduced gradually such that the children (and we too!) can adapt easier to our new life.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I would add another “T” to the RAFT: T like Time. During this part of the transition stages we easily run out of time. Therefore, planning extra time to slow down and build the RAFT helps everyone to have a smoother ride.

We can avoid goodbyes by just ignoring them or we can consider them instead as a chance to re-center ourselves and to focus on what is really important in our life. – Allowing ourselves and our family to create closure in whatever way will help us all to say happy and healthy hellos in the next phase of our life.

I don’t know how many times I had to say good bye to friends in my life. It started when I was very young and it never stopped, it never will.

We can find many advices for people leaving, how to organize a moving and how to make the move smooth for children, family and friends. But what about those who stay? I’ve been the leaver so many times and I found that when you’re preparing for a move you go through several phases that can even help you to cope with this change. But what about those who stay? They feel left behind.

I find that the stages a staying person is going through are very similar to those of the person who’s leaving. In his classic model of the normal transition cycle, David Pollock notes five predictable stages for leavers. I base this post on David Pollocks chapter “The Transition Experience” (in  Third Culture Kids. Growing up among worlds, David C. Pollock and Ruth E. van Reken, Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2009, pp.66-73), trying to consider the stages from both point of views, the one of the leavers and the one of those I call the “stayers”:

1) Involvement

This first stage of transition is quite comfortable as everyone still feels settled and comfortable: “we feel a responsibility to be involved in the issues that concern and interest our community, and we’re focused on the present and our immediate relationships rather than thinking primarily about the past or worrying about the future” (p.66). Leavers don’t yet know that they will be leaving.

2) Leaving

In this second stage, life begins to change. The leavers learn that they’ll be leaving and start to prepare. If the departure date is not too close, they begin loosening the emotional ties, they back away from relationships and responsibilities. They call less frequently and don’t start new projects at work. Leavers will start to deny feelings of sadness or grief in order to avoid painful moments, but the grief won’t go away, it will hold on until the next stage of transition.

This detaching process is really hard for the stayers. They are confused and can feel anger or frustration.

Leavers will realize that they won’t be part of future plans of their community  and they will feel left out; they will feel invisible, rejected. The feelings of resentment and rejection can produce anger and cause conflicts. Therefore it’s important to let others know about these feelings: “Failing to acknowledge that we are beginning to feel like outsiders (and that it hurts) only increases the chances that we will act inappropriately during this stage” (p.68).

Leavers in this stage will also be more reluctant to reconcile conflicts with others, risking to arrive to their “next destination with this unfinished business clinging to (them) and influencing new relationships” (p.68). Bitterness can be the consequence. Some even deny any secret hope in order to prevent disappointment.

As stayers, we loose our ties and tend to exclude the leavers from decisions about future events.

If the community gives a special attention to the leaver at this point, through ceremonies of recognition etc., thanking for being part of a team or a group, this recognition helps the leavers to forget that even if “they promise to never forget each other, already there is a distance developing between (them) and those (they) will soon leave behind” (p.69).

3) Transition

The transition stage begins the moment leavers leave the place and ends when they arrive at their destination and make the decision (more or less consciously) to settle in and become part of it.

During the move, usually we “lose our normal moorings and support systems” and in this sense of “chaos makes us more self-centered than normal” (p.69). The only things who matter to us in this first part of the transition stage is our health, finances, relationships, personal safety etc. Parents in this stage often forget to take time for their children to read stories, to pick them up or sit with them for a few minutes. This causes insecurity and contributes to the chaos and family conflicts are very frequent in this stage.

It’s the stage of highest stress: how is the new community going to take care of our everyday aspects of life like banking, buying food, cooking? How will the school be, the new working environment, the neighbours etc.?

Especially in cross-cultural moves adults have to learn life practically from scratch: “As teenagers and adults, probably nothing strikes at our sense of self-esteem with greater force than learning language and culture, for these are the tasks of children” (p.70). Sometimes, our cultural and linguistic mistakes embarrass us or make us feel ashamed or even stupid. We easily feel upset, angry and some may even experience depression.

This stage is the first stage the stayers are not directly involved. They may try to cheer up their friends who left by calling, skyping etc. but they can’t really help them directly. Stayers feel the grief. Their friends are gone. The house is empty, they are not there anymore. They realize that life has to go on. Especially for children this is the hardest time. At school, the seat of their friend is empty and they often physically feel the loss. They are sad, some will talk about it, some won’t. It’s important for the parents or caregivers to be aware of the grief these children are feeling and to give them the support they need.

4) Entering

The entering stage, leavers start to accept that it’s time to become part of the new community and they begin to figure out how to do it. They still are vulnerable. People feel a lot of ambivalence in this stage. They start to learn the new job, the rules at school, they start learning the new language. “Emotions can fluctuate widely between the excitement of the new discoveries (…) and the homesickness that weighs us down” (p.72). We feel how different we are in this new place and wish to go back where we were “normal”. But we are in the learning process about how life works in the new place.

“Entering is the stage where leavers need good mentors, someone who can show us how to function effectively in this new world”

At the end of this stage, hope begins to grow and we feel the first sense of belonging to the new community.

For the stayers, this is a sort of entering phase too. The entering and readjusting phase. The phase where they have to go back to their lives without their friends. In this phase they can also will have moments of homesickness: they will miss their friends and would like them to come back. It will be an up and down of emotions, but they’ll finally adjust.

5) Reinvolvement

This stage is like the light at the end of the tunnel: reinvolvement is possible. Every “leaver” will need some time and willingness to adapt before becoming part of the permanent community in the new place. Some may even feel a sense of belonging, of intimacy and that their presence matters in the new group.

Those who were left behind (the stayers) will have achieved a new balance, without their friends. They will have found other, new friends and carry on.

Time feels present and permanent

as we focus on the here and now

rather than hoping for the future

or constantly reminiscing about the past. (p.73)

Knowing about this normal process of transition, about the various stages helps to be prepared, to recognize where we are, what will come next. It also helps to make the decisions and choices that help us to benefit from the new experiences “while dealing productively with the inevitable losses of any transition experience” (p.73).

English: Cover of book Third Culture Kids: growing up among worlds, by David C. Pollock and Ruth E. Van Reken. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Please find an interesting infographic in the article “Expat Life: Not Always a smooth ride“.

Related articles

• Grief, Uninvited (candidobservation.wordpress.com)