Living between cultures can expand our world, but it can also unsettle some of our deepest assumptions about identity, relationships, and what it means to feel at home.

Moving abroad is often described in terms of opportunity, adventure, and adaptation. Yet beneath the visible changes of countries, languages, schools, homes, and social circles, there can be a quieter psychological experience.

Relocation can bring loneliness, shifts in identity, relationship strain, cultural disorientation, and grief for people and places left behind. Even a move that is freely chosen and outwardly successful can involve a sense of loss. Sometimes what we miss is not only a country or community, but a role, a sense of competence, a familiar way of being, or the version of ourselves that existed there.

Repeated relocation can make the question of home increasingly complex. Where do I belong? Which culture feels like mine? Who am I when the structures around me keep changing? For some, there is also the experience of becoming attached while already knowing that another goodbye may eventually come.

A perspective shaped by lived experience

This is an area I understand both personally and professionally. I was born in Romania and have since lived for many years across Germany, the United States, South Africa, and India. I know something of the experience of arriving, adapting, building a life, leaving, beginning again, and carrying pieces of different places with you.

My master’s research explored perceived social support, belonging, and loneliness among expatriate spouses, deepening my interest in the less visible psychological dimensions of life abroad.

How we may work

Our work can include the immediate challenges of adjustment, but it can also go deeper into identity, grief, relationships, family dynamics, cultural transitions, and the experience of living between worlds.

Drawing on Somatic Experiencing® and parts-oriented work, we can pay attention to how transition is experienced in the body and nervous system. You may know intellectually that you are safe in a new environment while another part of you remains vigilant, unsettled, disconnected, or unable to arrive fully.

Together, we may explore what has been left behind as well as what is emerging; the parts of you that adapt quickly and those that resist; old patterns that become more visible when familiar structures disappear; and what creates a sense of home when it can no longer be defined simply by geography.

This work may be relevant whether you have recently moved, have lived abroad for many years, are accompanying a partner’s career, or are returning to a country that no longer feels quite like home.

The intention is to cultivate a more grounded sense of belonging within yourself, while remaining connected to the people, cultures, and places that have become part of who you are.