Every woman who has moved abroad packed more than suitcases. Every woman who has moved to another country in her life also packed bags full of hopes. Hopes of finding calm, peace, a new home, a new environment, safer, more nurturing. And sometimes also the hope of finding a new "me." To "find myself" or "discover myself" anew. A wish to hit the reset button. To start anew.
Sometimes, in the "honeymoon phase" of the move, that's exactly how it feels. Everything about the new home feels exciting, and the fears we had are tucked away neatly in some corner, somewhere in the pile of things we thought we'd need and discovered we manage perfectly well without.
But over time it turns out we brought with us everything about who we are, and slowly parts we'd hoped to leave behind reveal themselves too. Those moments when we lose patience with the kids, and encounter the maternal guilt we carried with us. When we try to speak the new language, but confront a familiar fear of making mistakes, of being misunderstood or not understanding. When we deal with questions of belonging and identity, facing the local society or the Israeli community, facing a new professional world or the role of a stay-at-home mother after relocation. We encounter questions of belonging, identity, self-worth, and other questions we've already encountered before.
It turns out that yes, we made a change, but we didn't make a restart.
And that's unbearable, but also tremendously lucky. Because we also brought with us our strengths, the ones that helped us cope with past challenges. Our interests, which bring excitement and pleasure into our lives. All the growth and development we've already done in work, in studies, in therapy, in parenting, in partnership, and in relationships.
Psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion borrowed the poetic term "caesura" — a moment of interruption that does not end the piece, but becomes part of its unfolding — to describe major life transitions. In such states there can be a cut, that leaves the parts disconnected and inaccessible to each other, or there can be a caesura: a break that allows continuity. Like a mountain trail that's interrupted when it reaches a stream, but continues, the very same trail, on the other bank of the stream, toward the next peak.
In this way, moving to a new country can be a cut: "my old life" and "my new life." "Who I was before" and "who I am now." Such a cut reflects the hope for a "restart," but it also leaves behind parts of ourselves and of our world, so that we may feel diminished, sometimes to the point where we are "losing ourselves." But moving to a new country can also be a caesura, just like that stream channel in the mountains. A moment of separation out of which continuity and sequence are built, where "who I am now" connects in an ongoing sequence to "who I was before."
Bion argued that this continuity becomes possible when we're willing to stay in the moment of transition. In the "in-between," in uncertainty, in pain. Like in the film "Inside Out": when we allow ourselves to feel the painful emotions that come with a move — the longing, sadness, fear, and even the parts of ourselves we want to get rid of — then continuity becomes possible: what we were remains alive within us, with all the strengths from which we can keep growing.
But this is far from simple. We have very good reasons not to want to feel pain, not to grieve, not to want to be in uncertainty. All of these are always hard, and harder still when we're in another country, without our support circles "from home." So how can it be done anyway?
In her poem "Trees," Leah Goldberg, one of Israel's most beloved poets, wrote about the pain of her own migration from Lithuania to Israel: "Perhaps only migratory birds know, suspended between earth and sky, the pain of belonging to two homelands."
Her words bring about a thought: there is a reason why birds migrate in flocks. Migrating together, in a flock, enables a journey that a single bird couldn't make alone. Birds need other birds in order to be "suspended between earth and sky," to stay in that in-between space that is neither here nor there.
Birds need birds, and people need people.
To remember different parts of ourselves and connect them together, to allow ourselves to feel and to hold uncertainty, grief, and longing, to gather the patience needed to find the path again, we need people — companions and partners for the journey. People who know us, who accompany us, who help us remember parts of ourselves even when we struggle to see them.
Sometimes our "flock of birds" is found in relationships that already exist in our lives. A partner, family, close friends, colleagues at work, fellow expats from home, a professional community, a sports club, or any other circle.
But sometimes, precisely because of immigration, change, the loss of the familiar, and questions of belonging and identity, it's hard for us to find those connections and lean on them.
In such situations, therapy can offer an additional space for the journey. Individual therapy allows us to look at the transition and what it brings with it, as well as at the difficulties and resources we carry with us, and to reconnect different parts of our story.
Group therapy offers a different kind of space, alongside others going through similar experiences. A therapy group can itself be a place of belonging, a "flock of birds," and can also enable, through the encounter with other participants, processes of identity formation, in which familiar parts come into clearer focus and new parts are revealed.
This way, we can develop and grow not through a restart, but through a process of expansion and continuity, and discover together that the path continues beyond the stream channel.