It’s very hard to explain to someone the term repatriation. Most people I know haven’t lived in another country for an extended period of time. The closest American equivalent is perhaps trading one coast for another, one state for another. But to give up a country means to choose loyalty, one ocean over another. And ultimately, to identify with one identity over another. The price of assimilation can be high. Even higher if you don’t have a plan for wanting to fit in.
The definition of Reverse Culture Shock according to the U.S. Department of State is an emotional symptom of displacement that results after an extended period of time in another country. The stress of re-entry shock is tremendous and it can take months before one feels settled in one’s mother country.
I think back to those early days when I first arrived in Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh and walked down those very long streets and sidewalks wondering what the heck I was doing here.
But the truth of the matter is that while the reentry shock to the States has subsided, I will always continue to grieve the loss of giving up our kibbutz home and our little country of Israel. During the last three years I’ve been investigating these unsatisfied longings in a little book project, my memoir I’ve titled Sand and Steel: A Memoir of Longing and Finding Home. The “sand” of my journey represents the amenable, adaptable aspects of when you go home. When you go back home, are you determined to live well despite these changes and your unsatisfied longings for what used to be or do your longings consume you?
For a long time, I was in a middle zone – neither here nor there. If a professional opportunity didn’t pan out, then my fallout would be thinking like an American Jew returning to Israel. If I couldn’t connect with the right tribe in Pittsburgh, then I’d miserably find myself speaking Hebrew with my family as a way to simulate the feelings of going back home.
This kind of unsatisfied longing is not unique to people who long for a place; it exists after death or divorce or separation from loved ones, too. This kind of longing is about a desire to be connected to some place or something when you cannot. This kind of longing is about deep loss.
But when I wrote bits of scenes at 5 am at home, in airports, on buses, in coffee shops, across time zones, while dealing with various professional and personal losses, I wasn’t thinking yet of that universal loss. I was thinking how to channel feelings of loss.
Images of our kibbutz, the Western Wall in Jerusalem turned into objects, symbols of loss, of home, of community. Places I had taken for granted now became almost sacred. To write a memoir that will deeply resonate, you have to put aside your feelings and rise above whatever state of mind is controlling you from getting to the heart of your truth. Ultimately, writing a memoir requires heroic strength. Each scene needs to move your character along the timeline of growth and transformation. And if you know how powerful your story is, then you need to figure out how to get out of your way so you can tell it.
To really touch others, I needed to identify with a loss on a human level. And not just people like myself who had given up a country, but to make universal connections. So for the first time, I gave myself a break from “cross-cultural journeys” and attempted to cross “cultural boundaries.” I imagined myself having a conversation with J.K. Rowling as if I was interviewing her. I had already watched multiple videos of her with Oprah and in a 4 part documentary, her commencement speech. I accessed her in my mind – not as this larger than life, celebrity, billionaire author, but someone human just like you and me. Someone who I could bring to my own level of human consciousness.
One particularly coldish night, I ventured to our local coffee shop and watched a 2-minute video of her life accounting for all her tragedies from losing custody, to an abusive marriage to wanting to take her own life, to depression. That writing session, I gave myself permission I needed to channel my own feelings of loss of giving up my country. She had inevitably gone through it, and lived to the other side.
At that moment, the second ingredient I needed – the firm resolve of steel I describe in the book, had revealed itself beyond the story level. Confidence. Courage. Determination. Fortitude. Revealed to Rowling in the depths of her despair when she thought she’d take her own life. When she thought she had nothing to live. She figured out how to turn her circumstances around. Channeling her feeling of loss from the hardest of moments required such inner strength.
You might find this funny or even strange, but following those brief interludes of watching those YouTube videos of her, I felt uplifted. As if all my dreams were purposeful and very real. That I could accomplish really anything. That I didn’t have to be the object of my isolation and alienation. So I started to replaying uplifting trance melodies and beats and when the repetition turned into a single take of “discovery” and “flow” I’d fueled those moments of empowerment into my writing. Artists like Tiesto and Chicane I’d later discover for the emotional freedom and hope for a deeper emotional connection they’d bring me. I know many a writer who can’t write to music, but I need to be seriously emotionally touched since writing is a sacred art of touching the heart.
How do you define and channel loss? Are you writing a book that touches on themes and ideas of loss? Share your thoughts in the comment box below. I’ll respond to them.
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