Author: Lea Marcondes
Transitioning to a new culture usually begins long before the suitcases are packed. It starts when the family realizes that life will soon have new landscapes, new codes, and new ways of defining what is “normal”. Even when the decision is desired, a culture change touches the heart: anxiety appears, insecurity grows, there is a sense of loss, and a kind of silent grief for everything that will stay behind.
Pollock, Van Reken, and Pollock (2017) explain that intercultural transitions often create grief because they involve saying goodbye to people, routines, places, references, and even to the identity that was built in that context. For this reason, caring for emotional health is not a “luxury”. It is an essential part of preparation, just as important as documents, school arrangements, and housing.
When a family invests in emotional preparation, the culture change tends to feel less threatening and more understandable. This includes validating feelings (“it makes sense that you feel sad”), creating safe spaces for listening, strengthening relationships, and building realistic expectations about the destination country. Preparation also means talking about cultural differences, possible hardship, and strategies for facing the new environment with resilience. A healthy transition is not the absence of difficult emotions; it is the presence of support to go through them safely.
Emotional Phases Before a Culture Transition
Before moving to a new culture, it is common to experience mixed emotions. Excitement about what is coming can exist alongside fear of the unknown – sometimes even in the same sentence. There is joy and expectation, but also sadness about goodbyes, concern about the future, and anxiety about what cannot be controlled. Adler (1975) describes this phase as an anticipatory grief process: a person begins to emotionally detach from the current context, preparing the heart to “let go” of relationships and familiar references.
Recognizing these emotional stages as natural helps avoid two common dangers: denial (“I’m not feeling anything”) and repression (“I can’t cry because I need to be strong”). The transition becomes harder when the family tries to “skip” legitimate feelings. The rush to “focus only on the positive” can silence real pain, and later those feelings return, usually after arriving in the new country, when emotional energy is already low.
Some common emotions during this stage include:
- Excitement and curiosity about the new environment and possibilities.
- Anticipatory grief for friends, school, church, extended family, routines, and beloved places.
- Anxiety and insecurity about adaptation and the unknown future.
- Questions about identity and belonging, especially for teenagers and adults.
Technology can be both helpful and challenging. Connectivity makes farewells easier and helps maintain bonds with the home country. However, it can also intensify identity conflicts: a person may “live” references from two cultures at the same time, increasing feelings of ambivalence and constant comparison (“it was better there” or “it feels strange here”). During this stage, emotional care includes learning to use technology as a bridge – not as an emotional prison.
There Is No Healthy Culture Transition Without Healthy Farewell
Pollock, Van Reken, and Pollock (2017) emphasize that every culture change involves visible and invisible losses. Many of these losses are not socially recognized by others – after all, people say, “you’re going for something good,” or “it will be an amazing experience”. But this does not remove the emotional impact. In more recent discussions, the focus is not only on “culture shock”, but also on managing accumulated grief, especially in families who experience repeated moves from place to place. When grief is not processed, it can turn into constant irritation, prolonged sadness, emotional isolation, or difficulty building new connections in the destination country.
Some common losses in a culture change include:
- Friendships and support networks
- School, teachers, and study routines
- Language and ease of communication
- Status, sense of competence, and autonomy (“there I knew everything; here I feel lost”)
- Belonging and familiarity (“I understood the rules there; here I don’t”)
Healthy goodbyes are not just about having a farewell party. They are rituals that help the mind and heart recognize that something important is ending – and that matters. A meaningful goodbye gives a name to what was lived, honors what was built, and creates space for the new without denying what existed.
Preparing Children for a Culture Change
Children experience culture change differently from adults because they are still building emotional foundations, identity, and a sense of security. Van Reken and Bethel (2018) remind us that children may feel confusion, fear, sadness, and even guilt, especially if they do not understand the reasons in the moving process or if they sense stress in their parents. They may “seem fine” for a while and later show signs such as irritability, regression, isolation, resistance to school or difficulty making friends. For this reason, preparation needs to be intentional, gradual, and age appropriate.
Healthy preparation includes simple and repeated conversations, with space for questions and emotions. It is not enough to explain once. In a culture transition, a child needs to hear many times what will change and what will remain the same. This combination is essential for emotional security. It also helps to involve the children as participants in the process, not just as they are “tagging along”. When a child understands the purpose of moving to a different country, they tend to develop more cultural flexibility and confidence.
Some helpful practices include:
- Using maps, photos, videos, and stories to make the destination more “real”
- Encouraging symbolic play (play helps organize emotions)
- Creating farewell rituals (letters, photos, a “memory book”)
- Naming what is stable: “our family,” “our faith,” “our time together”
- Making a “support plan”: how to ask for help and how to talk when homesickness comes
Pollock, Van Reken, and Pollock (2017) also describe the concept of “third culture”, developed by children who move between countries – an identity that is not only the home culture nor only the host culture, but a mixture of lived experiences. Many Third Culture Kids (TCKs) develop valuable intercultural skills, but they may struggle with emotional rootedness if there is no intentional support. In other words, they may learn to adapt quickly, yet still need help to feel that they belong somewhere and that they are loved everywhere.
A Thought for Families Preparing for a Cultural Transition
At its core, a culture change is not only about leaving one country and entering another. It is an invitation to reorganize affections, expectations, and identity. There is something deeply human about feeling homesick before even leaving, and something deeply healthy about giving space for that feeling. When a family learns to walk with emotional honesty – without rush and without guilt – the process stops being a threat and becomes growth.
Perhaps one of the best questions for this moment is not, “How can we avoid feeling?” but, “How will we take care of one another while we feel?” Because a well-lived transition is not one without pain; it is one in which no one has to suffer alone.
Nowadays, there are trained and specialized professionals who can walk alongside families during this cultural change and offer emotional support so the transition can be healthy.
Sources Consulted
POLLOCK, David C.; VAN REKEN, Ruth E.; POLLOCK, Michael V. Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds. Boston: Nicholas Brealey, 2017. https://nicholasbrealey.com/products/third-culture-kids-tck • ADLER, Nancy J. “The Transitional Experience: An Alternative View of Culture Shock”. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 1975. https://journals.sagepub.com/home/jhp • VAN REKEN, Ruth E.; BETHEL, Paulette. Content on TCKs and cultural transitions (materials and resources). https://www.tcktraining.com
