Maira’s Blog - Finally finding a sense of belonging in the “home” country

Posted by mairabay on October 26th, 2008 | Categorized as Blog, Stories | 179 views and 5 Comments

Yes! After 2 years of repatriating and “killing” many “demons” I’m finally finding a way I can belong in my “home” country without compromising the “world citizen” in me!

For those who don’t know me, I lived in the UK as a child and repatriated to Brazil when I was 7, but always felt depressed, confused, unloved and insecure (because of many things that happened at that time and through the rest of my teen/pre-teen years). I never even realised I felt like that. To me, I was just a problematic person who would never be happy and have a normal life.

When I came back from Canada in 2006 after a 2-month cultural exchange, I felt the pain of repatriation, reverse culture shock, grief (and so many other feelings TCKs know well) in a VERY strong way. It was then that I realised that I had felt like this before, when I was 7. I then had the urge/instinct that I was not going to heal unless I healed the unresolved feelings/pain from when I was 7 - I was finally ready to deal with my hidden and delayed grief.

That’s when I started reading about culture and allowing myself to feel like a stranger in the country where I grew up believing I was ”one of them”. During this research I found out about TCK, and later joined TCKid.

The book and the people in this site have given me the validation of my feelings - something I’ve been needing since way back when I was 7 - because it has healed the feeling I grew up with that ”nobody gets me”. It has also healed many other feelings and wrong beleifs that I developed as a consequence of repatriation. I cannot put in words how helpful it’s been, because it’s something I never even thought was possible.

But for this post, the most important feeling is the security in my identity. After around 1 year of sharing stories and feelings with people here, I can now say “I am a world citizen”. I don’t feel afraid to tell other people and myself that I have lived overseas, I’m not afraid of their judgement anymore. Because even if they say “no you’re not, you’re Brazilian”, I have a bunch of people who agree with me. And I now know who is right. I know my truth and I have people to back me up.

But so far, this is a sense of belonging to a group of people spread all over the world. What this post is about is the sense I have now found with a group of people in my “home” town.

Since I came back from Canada, I’ve been going to this French conversation group (we meet at a bookstore once a week just to chat in French) . Most of the people there have lived in France or some other francophone country. So together with my healing on TCKid, I started realising that I feel more comfortable to talk about my life overseas around those people.

And then, just a few months ago, something very nice happened. A new girl joined the group, and we started talking about the feelings of repatriation and she had many of the feelings I did, and her feelings were as strong as mine! It felt great to finally have someone who understood me in ”real life” (I was definitely NOT a drama queen!). Then in these last weeks, two other girls who’ve recently moved back have also joined the group.

Then one of the girls told me about an English conversation group, similar to the French one. So I started going to this one too. And I was even suprised with myself at how “at ease” I felt when expressing myself and talking to that group. I feel SO comfortable talking in English, it definitely is my 2nd mother tongue. Just having a random everyday conversation in English makes me feel really at home.

So, lately, I’ve been making friends and meeting people that are like me. I can mix languages when I talk to them, I can say how much I miss certain things from certain countries. I can have these conversations just as people talk about the weather, without worrying or refraining from giving my opinion and expressing my true feelings.

This is my sense of belonging. I was thinking about all this one of these days and realised that, there IS a place for me here, there IS a group of people in this country where I belong to. I have my place in this country. Of course I will never belong to the majority (not that I even want to). But the best thing is, I DON’T HAVE to belong to the majority to feel like I belong here. That’s the catch.

That’s the catch I didn’t know about when I was 20 and thought the only way for me to belong was to be like an average Brazilian (and ended up making me go against many of my values, but that’s a story for another day). That’s the catch I didn’t know about when I was 7 and felt ”left out” at school. This feeling kept echoing inside me throughout my life, until now. But now I know that I can be myself and still belong here.

So I’m really really happy that I have finally found my place in the city/country where I grew up thinking that there was no place for me.

I hope this post helps other TCKs out there find their sense of belonging. There IS a place for us in this world! No matter where you are, be strong!

Maira Bay de Souza

Born in Brazil, then moved to England, then back to Brazil, then to Wales, then Back to Brazil. Now planning on moving to Canada in 2009 (or maybe even 2008!). MSN: mairabay AT hotmail DOT com Skype: mairabay