“Who Am I Now?” or The Identity Shift of Coming Home
When I first moved back to the U.S. after living overseas, I expected reverse culture shock. I expected to miss food, friends, and daily rituals. What I didn’t expect was the subtle, unsettling question that kept bubbling up: Who am I now?
Coming home after living abroad isn’t just about unpacking boxes—it’s about unpacking identity. You’re returning not as the same person who left, but as someone transformed. Yet the place you return to often hasn’t changed at the same pace, and that mismatch can be deeply disorienting.
The Disorientation of “Home”
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.
This mismatch can lead to:
Frustration: Why don’t people understand what I’ve been through?
Loneliness: I feel isolated, even when I’m surrounded by others.
Guilt: I should be happy to be home, but I’m not.
Identity confusion: I’ve changed—but how? And what do I do with that change?
Why This Happens
Returning from abroad is often framed as an end—but psychologically, it’s just another transition. William Bridges, who wrote extensively on transition theory, differentiates between change (external) and transition (internal). Returning is a change—new house, new job, familiar culture. But what you’re navigating internally is a transition—a process of letting go of one identity, enduring a neutral zone, and eventually embracing a new beginning.
You’re not just coming home. You’re becoming someone new. When you return from living abroad, you will most likely experience:
Loss of role: You might have had a job, community, or role abroad that gave you meaning. Coming home might feel like starting over.
Loss of rhythm: Daily life abroad had its own tempo, foods, customs, and social rules. You learned them, internalized them, and now have to relearn your home culture’s tempo again.
Loss of visibility: You might have been seen as unique or interesting abroad. Back home, you may feel invisible.
Unprocessed experiences: There’s no built-in moment to pause and reflect on what you’ve learned, gained, or lost.
So, when you feel off-balance, it’s not you being “bad at coming home.” It’s you doing the emotional heavy lifting of re-integrating a globally expanded identity into a previous environment.
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.””
You’re Not Alone
If any of this resonates, you are not alone. There’s a quiet global community of people doing this work every day—coming back “home” and realizing they’ve outgrown the box they left in.
Here’s what I want to say to you:
It’s okay to grieve what you’ve lost.
It’s okay to not feel at home, even when you’re technically home.
It’s okay to take your time to figure out who you are now.
In fact, that’s the point of reentry: to do the work of understanding who you’ve become so you can choose who you want to be next. (Find out more about the coaching cohorts to help you through this.)
Coming home isn’t a return to what was. It’s a new chapter in your story—one where you bring back the treasures of your experience abroad and start writing the next part of your narrative with intention. That’s where your power is.
You’re not just returning. You’re rebuilding.
And maybe, just maybe, home is not a place you go back to—it’s a place you create from who you’ve become.
Reflection Question:
What parts of your identity feel different now that you’re home—and how do you want to honor those changes?