So, it's been over a year and a half since my last post. I no longer live in Lyon. Last July, our family moved back to America. The verdict? It's been the most depressing 9 months of my life. (I know, this comes as a Big Shock to all expats who have returned to their home country! Ha!)
Let me just say, living overseas changes you. It takes everything you thought was gospel, turns it upside down, shakes you until you feel like you've just come off the teacups ride at Disney World -twice- until you're nothing but a puddle of mush. During our three years in France, I went through all the typical stages that the experts tell you to expect: the glorious "honeymoon" stage when everything feels like a grand vacation, the "flight" stage when you are so homesick that you think you'll literally die of overwhelming sadness, the angry clash-of-cultures "fight" stage where you internally wrestle with your core values and beliefs, and finally the "fit" stage where you come to terms (somewhat) with the fact that your new home might be insanely different, but that doesn't necessarily make it "bad."
I was prepared for these stages while we lived overseas. Our mission organization drilled them into us until we could repeat the symptoms in our sleep. Whenever we hit a road bump in our cultural adaptation - which was often - I was usually able to diagnose the stage and we'd laugh about it and move on. But nothing prepared me for the reverse culture shock I've experienced upon returning "home." Even though I'd heard and read about reverse culture shock, I figured that since we'd only been living in France for 3 short years, not much would have changed. Maybe nothing had changed about America. But WE had changed.
Honestly, I don't know where I'll go with this blog in the next couple of weeks. When you backtrack to posts in 2013, you can see that I'd loved writing about our adventure in the months before we moved to France, as well as during our first year and a half. But at some point, something inside me switched. I don't know how to express it, except that my life in France was no longer a public adventure to be shared with outsiders. It had become my real life; it was now my private journey. Writing about it on a public blog would have felt like opening a secret diary for all to see. Even now I'm wrestling with the idea of opening up again and admitting that the last two years (one in France and almost one in America) have been HARD. So maybe I'll be brave and write about the emotional challenges of the past two years and how I've dealt with them. Perhaps it will be therapeutic. Or maybe this will be the only thing I post again on LyonLiving. Reader, let me know: would you like to hear more?
Keep writing this blog. You write beautifully and your insightful words open a little bitty crack in my opinionated, inflexible, uncompromising, narrow-minded mind. Who knows? Your blogs might transform me into a critical thinker.
ReplyDeleteThank you!!!
DeletePlease do consider writing again for this post. I have appreciated your posts very much!
ReplyDeleteI am reading in chapter 4 of Brené Brown's book Daring Greatly where she discusses the beauty and power of Vulnerability as well as the "Vulnerability armor" we spend years learning to live behind but that steal from us ultimately. I would love to hear more for two reasons:
1. I'm an American who lived in Lyon twice as an adult (first time was in 2004/05 right out of graduation from Wheaton College and 2nd time just under a year doing ministry with Youth With A Mission). I deeply enjoyed and appreciated hearing another American's experience of French living, specifically in Lyon.
2. You articulate your experience so well and I found myself not only relating often but growing in my own understanding of cultural differences, culture shock and the heart's journey through it. I think I'd be blessed by more of your writing, if you so choose.
Thank you Christy! Your encouragement is a blessing. I'll keep writing! I bet we know some of the same people -- Lyon is a small world for Anglophones!
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