Transition: An Expat’s Grief

I find myself deeply agitated at the end of summer every year. The transition from long, warm evenings to crisp, cool mornings gives way to a deep sense of unease and anxiety, my heart aching with mournful grief. I love summer. And deep down I know I enjoy autumn as well, but letting go of summer is an increasingly painful process. Some years I throw a brief tantrum, thinking of all the hours of sunlight I didn’t capitalise on, even if it was raining or my schedule fully packed.

But as soon as autumn is in full swing, I find myself looking forward to the cool mornings. I can run that much faster and I get to wear the cool jacket I bought last year. I feel confident and stylish in my layers, and I drink way too much tea than is probably healthy. This isn’t so bad.

But the transition is hard, despite knowing the beauty of a familiar autumnal lifestyle. I hesitate at the thought of letting go of the joys of one season, even if I intellectually know the next season will also hold joy.

The first time I experienced “real” autumn was in Aotearoa many years ago. It was fun that year. I tested how long I could handle wearing shorts and I came to understand just how much faster and longer I could run in the crisp seasonal air. But New Zealand cooler seasons are short, and summers long. When I moved to Scotland, it was there I really experienced radical weather changes. Warm weather is a treat in Bonnie Scotland, not guaranteed. Throughout my time there, each summer seemed shorter and shorter, each winter longer and longer. That’s where my tantrums started: I knew how long the cold would last. We would go almost nine months to finally get to a day above 16°C; I wasn’t about to let that go without a fight. I wonder if the weather patterns knew I would wage a war on them each year.

So has my season in Edinburgh been, clinging onto my seasons of joy.

You see, I’d spent much of my childhood and teen years in America struggling to connect with people my age, and especially struggling to maintain friendships. When I moved to Dunedin, New Zealand, it was a similar thing. I had people around me, but finding my people took a long time. Each year of uni looked entirely different, with different friends, and before starting the academic year, I found myself deeply mourning the last year. I had friends then, I thought. Who will be my friends this year? People would move away and I wouldn’t have my tribe anymore, forcing me to be a bit of a chameleon who jumps into one community after another. Yet despite the mourning this entailed, I wasn’t as wary back then as I’ve grown to be now.

Moving to Scotland was much harder and mixing with the British took a painfully long time. I experienced an agonisingly deep loneliness I had never felt before. I thought I could be a solo adventurer going off and doing my own thing, but I found myself deeply longing to connect with people around me. My classmates in the initial years were tough nuts to crack: everyone knew they were coming and going in the blink of an eye. And we were all on a mission to help the world in our own ways, so we didn’t have time to connect in with the each other, let alone the locals .

Church was hard, too. I struggled with the British style of friendship and community, feeling an incredible sense of not being seen or known, and especially not understood. For more than a year I lived the most “on my own” lifestyle I’ve lived to date, and I hated it. I blamed the British, saying they didn’t know how to welcome people in well, or that their way of doing community was wildly inward focussed. So I sat in my bad attitude, waiting to be invited in on my terms of engagement.

But after about a year, the Lord did something radical in my heart.

I had been praying for the Lord to help me with an attitude adjustment, knowing that I couldn’t continue on in that sense of resentment.

That prayer was thoroughly answered.

All of a sudden, one day, I woke up with a completely different mindset. If I wanted community, a place to love and grow and serve alongside fellow believers, I was going to have to be the instigator. Now was the time to stop waiting.

And when my mindset changed, so did my life around me.

Within a year–slow, but assured growth–I would have a dense community of friends spanning all across Edinburgh and each generation. I quickly found myself with far too much in my calendar, especially amidst work, university, internships and training at full speed. My body would quickly crumble as I vastly overdid everything in my life, afraid of missing out on anything. I spoiled a good thing, and paid the price for it with my health.

As my body fell apart, my social circles looked on with confusion towards my “I’m fine” attitude. I was not fine, but I was happy. I had a growing community of people I was learning to love around me. Some of them still annoyed me with their British reservedness, but the fondness grew.

As I took a step back and learned to rest and withdraw, I felt a deep sense of peace. My community was there, like the warm summer sun. It was a sure thing: I could always go out and warm myself. I could withdraw knowing I could always come back out.

Until immigration laws tightened and I couldn’t get another visa. With panic, I realised the sun was slipping away.

The summer sun would not be there forever.

I would have to leave my community, probably forever.

So the tantrums commenced.

And I’m still struggling to let go.

I know what the loneliness of moving to a new place feels like, almost as well as I know what the bitter cold of deep winter felt like. I’ve grown used to the warmth of community all around me, settled in my rhythms and activities. I don’t want that to steal away. I like this season. It has probably been one of the best I’ve ever known, bumps and all.

This transition is hard. I know the next season will have its joys, but I don’t want to let go of the current joys.

I try telling myself that growth doesn’t happen so well unless some things change. Without the change of climate, the yield won’t be nearly as fruitful. And as we all know very well, spring does always comes.

To this hope I hold, even as I mourn the summer swiftly drawing to an end.