Emigrating is not for the faint of heart: Why it's so much more than just a move
"Oh, you're moving? How exciting!" When you hear this sentence while packing up your entire life into boxes to cross a border, you want to loudly protest. A move means your postal code changes. Emigrating means your entire life's coordinate system shifts.
It's a widespread misconception among those who stayed in their familiar homeland: you load furniture into a truck, drive off, unpack... and you're done. But emigrating is not a logistical act. It's open-heart surgery.
When you emigrate, you trade security for uncertainty. It's not just about learning a new language. It's about understanding new cultures, seeing through customs that often contradict your own values. You have to learn to read nonverbal signals, understand the jokes, and decipher cultural references.
And language is far more than just a tool; it's our identity. If you were eloquent, witty, or professionally skilled at home, the language barrier hits particularly hard. You suddenly feel like a diminished version of yourself. You want to express profound thoughts or be quick-witted, and you stumble over basic grammar rules.
You have to find the humility to sound like a child again, while remaining an experienced adult inside. And you also have to grapple with culinary peculiarities...
The younger you are, the easier it might be. You're more malleable, you absorb your surroundings like a sponge. But the more years of life you've already accumulated, the heavier this step weighs. You've spent decades building a sense of competence and identity that no longer automatically applies in the new world.
For couples who've already lived more than half their lives, this is an enormous test. You might not have small children anymore who naturally anchor you into the everyday rhythm of schools or clubs. You're on your own and have to completely rediscover yourself in the new context. This requires an immense amount of courage and a willingness to be a "beginner" again.
One crucial point that's rarely discussed is mental capacity. Arriving is an active, often exhausting process. It needs rest and space to process new impressions and slowly dig your roots into new soil.
Yet often the opposite happens: your old homeland won't let you go. Whether it's expectations from friends or problems they'd like you to solve "from a distance." These invisible threads can become shackles.
It's the classic misunderstanding: those who stayed behind often see your new home as a kind of permanent vacation destination. They want to visit you, they want to "be part of your adventure." But they don't see the reality behind the postcard-perfect image.
They don't see that you've just started your first job as a tour guide that demands everything from you. They don't see the months on school benches, performances in the choir, or the emotionally demanding existence in your new life.
In this phase of arriving, you're like a battery constantly running in the red. You're trying to build an existence in the new country, cultivate new contacts, and simultaneously juggle old obligations. When a longtime friend then dictates a set visit date without the slightest respect for your new capacity limits, collision happens. A "no" to a visit in this moment is not a "no" to friendship.
It's a distress call from your own psyche. It's the bitter admission: "I can't be a hostess right now. I'm just trying to get my roots into the ground here." When the other person only understands this "no" as a personal offense and insists on their own timeline, something breaks. It's tragic when years of connection fail because the old world has no understanding for the exhaustion of the new one.
Emigrating also means learning that some people only love the person you used to be; they have no room for the woman you're becoming now. You cannot arrive in your new life if you're constantly being demanded from by the old world. It's important to set boundaries here with sensitivity, but firmly. This has nothing to do with lack of love.
If you want to dive into a new sea, you cannot simultaneously try to hold on to the lifeline of the past. You need the permission to be "unreachable" for a while, in order to be truly present here and now.
Emigrating is a process of growth and self-discovery. It's the willingness to weather setbacks and pick yourself up again and again.
So the next time someone tells me that emigrating is like moving, I'll just smile. I know better. And now you do too. It's the bravest step you can take – a leap into the unknown that only succeeds if you give yourself the time and space to truly arrive.
(And I got that sentence from my little cousin, by the way, who took a big step two years before me and is my role model in this regard and other things – though she doesn't know it.)
