Expat employees are not only representatives when they go abroad—showing up daily as bridge-builders in their host culture. They are also ambassadors when they return.

Too often, the return home is treated as an afterthought—yet this stage may determine whether the company retains its global talent or loses it to a competitor.

The “movie” of life abroad doesn’t just fade when you come home. It lingers in your senses and your identity, even as the world around you expects you to slide back into the ordinary.

To help organizations value their staff through debriefing, we’ve created a free guide to best practices for debriefing humanitarian staff. Inside, you’ll find practical steps, tips for avoiding common pitfalls, and insights into how structured debriefing benefits staff, organizations, and the sector as a whole.

Funding cuts can’t always be avoided. But how your people experience this transition is within your control.

Here’s the thing: people don’t connect with perfection. They connect with what’s real.

Sending employees abroad is a big investment—and for good reason. International assignments can shape exceptional leaders. But here’s the part too many companies miss: what happens after they come home? Reentry is often the most overlooked phase of the global mobility cycle—and one of the most costly to ignore.

Major transitions shake more than just our routines—they shake our identity, emotions, and sense of direction. These six lessons didn’t come quickly or easily, but they reshaped how I approach change. If you’re in a season of upheaval, may they offer you insight, permission, and a path forward.

Lately, I’ve been learning to ask a simple three-word question that’s helped me cut through noise, trends, and pressure.

It is particularly intriguing to me to look at Mon Mothma’s arc in Andor through the lens of William Bridges’ Transition Model: the Endings, the Neutral Zone, and New Beginnings. Through that lens, we see just how much her transformation echoes the process many of us go through during major life transitions.

Whether you’ve been home for a week or a decade, these truths are ones I come back to again and again in my work with returning expats. Think of this list as a gentle companion for the road ahead.

This is a gentle structure designed to help you pause, reflect, and reorient yourself—wherever you are in your reentry journey.

It’s not about fixing anything. It’s about creating space for growth.

Even though it’s written with Christian cross-cultural workers in mind, its structure and insights apply broadly to anyone navigating the emotional, spiritual, and practical challenges of repatriation.

Home is supposed to be familiar. Safe. Known. But for many people who have returned from living abroad, it feels more like landing in a version of your past life that doesn’t quite fit anymore. You may feel like a stranger in your own hometown, trying to reconnect with people who remember the “you” before your global experience.

What do you do when the institution you once trusted—a government, church, nonprofit, school, or company—shifts into something unrecognizable? What do you do when the values that once seem to reflect yours now feel foreign or even harmful?

Without debriefing you may:

• Struggle to explain your experience

• Feel like no one truly understands

• Miss opportunities to grow

• Carry unresolved grief or stress

It’s common—but it doesn’t have to be your story.

Instead of searching for a single place to call home, consider this: What if belonging isn’t about where you are, but about who you are becoming?

Sometimes, expats get stuck in a tourist mindset, consuming culture like a product instead of truly experiencing it. Here are three signs you might be doing the same—and how to shift toward deeper cultural adaptation.

Just like a kayaker must adjust to shifting tides and unexpected waves, people must adapt after a major life disruption.

By looking at repatriation and the expat experience through the lens of the hero's journey, we can see them for what they really are: not mere logistic transitions, but an opportunity for—and even an invitation to—profound personal transformation.