A gentle re-entry
Recovering from culture shocks
I just re-read the last post I wrote for the blog, 6 weeks ago, about the significance of small gestures in my life right now. Two days after writing it I (successfully) defended my PhD dissertation. Less than a week later I was flying to Europe to be with family during a difficult time. Once everything had settled, I took two weeks of sabbath to travel through Germany and the Netherlands. Harbor was one of my biggest supports through all of it, and I am so grateful, more and more every day, to be part of this very special community.
As I was flying home last week after a month away, I looked at the little plane landing emoji I sent to loved ones to let them know I arrived, and I remembered a word from another time in my life. The word was re-entry. Re-entry refers to the process of returning to your home culture after spending a significant amount of time in another culture.
Twenty years ago I travelled to India as an intern with the Church of North India HIV/AIDS program. I spent 4 months travelling around that vast country educating people about preventing the spread of HIV and reducing stigma. Before I left, I spent a week of orientation which included a talk by a woman who had spent 20 years of her life in Japan. She told us about the challenges she faced returning home, re-engaging with family and friends, and re-adjusting to a culture that was familiar but drastically different from the one she had left.
As I looked at that little emoji, I remembered her. I took a breath and recalled the many changes and shocks I had endured in the past month. I hadn’t yet fully grasped the success of my defence, despite friends sending me texts calling me Doctor. I had travelled to another continent and descended into new cultures and languages on very short notice and with no preparation. I had faced major life questions and also encountered new experiences. I was not sure I was ready to land the plane.
Don’t get me wrong. I was so unbelievably happy to be home. Mentally, though, I still felt like I was in all of those places at once. I had not had time to give any of it a conclusion. All of the work, the difficulties, the discoveries, even the good memories, were all so present, and it was a lot to hold.
The day I got home, a friend sent me a message that I consider to be a blessing:
Make sure you’re taking some time to connect the important stages of the last 6 weeks. You’ve been to so many cities, travelled a lot, accomplished a lot, suffered a lot. You need a time out of the best kind.
In the past couple of days I have been returning to my meditation practice. It’s been awful. My monkey brain is running overtime. However, as I sit in the silence around me, that silence is finding its way into tiny spaces in the chatter, doing its work, placing the experiences and the emotions in their proper places in my body.
Perhaps you haven’t travelled across an ocean, but I bet you can relate to the feeling of multiple shocks without time for a breath. Life is pretty overwhelming for so many of us right now. Preparing for re-entry entails naming the resources you have and the resources you need in order to absorb the shocks that come with a whirlwind of changes. I wonder what it means for you to come home, if this idea of re-entry resonates with you.
What do you need to ask for to help you recover from everything you have experienced?
