Homesickness 4 of 4 (Dr. Brent Lindquist)

Hello again.  I’ve been reviewing the last notes of my previous 3 presentations on homesickness and we’ve been dealing with being far from hearth and home – the pain of separation.  My first thought, as I reviewed and tried to put together some ideas of what I want to say to you now, was - have I really put you through all of this?  I’m really sorry that this has been so difficult.  It just feels like such a cumbersome problem that I’m focusing on. Then I come back and I think - well, my task during these programs is not to make light of things but to really be real with you.  Where I stand I maybe see a little bit farther than you do just because of my experience and I want you to understand, know and claim the idea that it does get better.  If you’re struggling with homesickness you’ll struggle again.  Maybe you have been having a rough time and I really helped you. That would be really nice, I’d love to hear that someday, but maybe some things made sense.  The next time something happens back home you may feel homesick.  The next time the holidays roll around you may feel homesick.  The next time the anniversary of the passing of a loved one comes around you may feel homesick.  This grieving, missing, and all of these feelings are all part of normal life.  When we avoid this stuff, it gets more intense.  It will not go away, but when we accept it, let it come and manage it (or accept it) it gets more manageable after time.  Don’t lose heart.  This will become more manageable.

I say that as I’m coming up to a particularly poignant homesick episode in my own life.  I took my widowed father out to dinner this afternoon. I should say all four of us did, because we’re all around and we hadn’t seen him in a while.  In the middle of everything he said,  ‘Well, it’s just 2 more days’.  That went completely over my head.  I didn’t know what he was talking about.  Then I remembered that in 2 days it would be the first anniversary of my mother’s passing.  Certainly I knew about that.  We’d been talking about it that this would be the first holiday season about my mom. We’d talked about it as a family, but this was the first time that he acknowledged it by himself.  We talked about what to do.  I asked him, ‘Do you want to go to the cemetery Tuesday?’  He said, ‘Maybe so’.  That was kind of shocking because he usually hasn’t been one that likes to go to cemetaries and memorialize things.  My two children, who are both young adults and are still home from college break, said that they wanted to take him out for lunch on that day. So, in a couple of days we’ll be traveling and we’ll go into a cemetery that we haven’t been in in a number of months. We’ll see a headstone and we’ll remember.  I will be homesick in a different sort of way for a different home than the home that I live in now, as I’m sure you can understand.  I will grieve and we will all grieve over the loss, the separation. Once again, though, I think that’s what makes us human.  I think that’s what makes us special.  I think that that’s what we can use to grow on.  That will come to pass and maybe every early January for the next few years there will be poignant times of remembering.  If we allow that to happen it will become less and less painful and we can go on from there.

Let me tell you a couple of things in summary about homesickness.  First of all, I want you to not sweat this stuff too much.  The next big event may bring homesickness but don’t worry about it.  You’ve been working on some ideas.  Face the fact that you’re not going to be able to prevent anything from happening. It’s okay to experience all of life and to everything that there is a season.  If you can keep that mindset then homesickness is just something that comes and goes.  The next time you get homesick someone is going to say,  ‘Hey, how are you doing?’ ‘It’s been a rough day,’ you’ll answer, ‘I was kind of homesickness yesterday.  I didn’t know why at first but then as I thought about it I realized it was the anniversary of x, y, or z…and now I’m okay’.  That’s what life is going to be like.

Number 2 – keep connecting, please.  The most important thing that you can do where you are is to keep trying to connect to those people around you, both the people that are like you and from the places that you’re from, but also the people that are the hosts of your new cultural experience.  You know – you are creative.  I fully believe that you can think of many ways other than what I’ve told you, to connect in unique ways that are unique to you and unique to your context.  I really wish I could hear about them by the way. You hear Denny talk about how to contact us at the beginning or ending of the program.  It would be so neat to hear from you about ways that you were able to connect that are different, that took some of the ideas that I talked about and built them into other things.  I’d really like to hear from you.

Regardless of that, I still want you to keep working and keep connecting.

Thirdly, what you send out comes back.  There’s a concept of paying it forward.  When you give something to somebody you usually get something back.  Not that we do everything because we expect payment.  I’m not talking about financial payment.  I’m talking about emotional payment.  You will reap what you sow.  The question arises, What kind of sowing, if you will, are you doing?  Are you sowing seeds of doubt, mistrust, fear, anxiety, tension, frustration, anger, reluctance, to name a few ideas or are you sowing attitudes of positivity, friendliness, inquisitiveness, interest, connection, relationship…?  That’s what’s going to come back.  That is the most important treatment for homesickness, being the kind of person that you want others to be with you.  Most often in most cultural contexts, I’m going to say that if you are identifying ways in which people make friends there and you’re trying to be that kind of a person or trying to adjust yourself in some way, you’re going to get people being friendly back.  It just happens.  It’s how we’re wired as humans.  Sure, there are specific cultural issues that arise and you need to be sensitive to those and find out what they are but you also need to understand that you’re going to make mistakes.  It’s in that connecting, though, that we realize that we’re together and that we are comfortable in this new place.  My goal is that I want you to feel comfortable and secure so that what was less home-like becomes more home-like.  Therefore your connections will grow, develop and become fruitful.  Tomorrow this place will meet more needs than it did yesterday.. Then you’ll feel more comfortable, happy and feel like you’re in a place that you’re supposed to be in.  That’s really what it’s all about.  We’re trying to help you to feel comfortable and confident so that you can become comfortable and confident.

Thanks so much for going through this difficult topic with me.  I didn’t mean to depress anyone, if I depressed you, but I think we need to understand that there are going to be dark days throughout our experience in a new cultural context.  Some of those are going to be more vulnerable for us because we’re going to be in a place and time where we have no sense of connection at times.  We’re going to be very vulnerable to being homesick.  The hearth of home is far away.  The task now is to find hearth-like places so that you can become more content where you are.

Talk to you next time!