Imagine waking up every morning excited about what’s ahead. Confident that your best days are still to come in your life and career. Feeling meaningfully connected to the people, places, and activities most important to you.
Unfortunately, if you’re in re-entry after living abroad you probably don’t feel that way right now.
Instead, you probably feel sad. Tired. Frustrated. Disconnected.
Missing the home you created abroad. Wondering if you really belong in your home country anymore. Lacking purpose or direction. Feeling like you’re going backwards. Wondering why “home” doesn’t feel like home anymore. And why everything that used to be familiar and comforting is now so very strange.
Everything you’re feeling, thinking, and questioning? Rest assured, it’s all normal!
Re-entry (or repatriation, as some people call it) is a deeply emotional, often disorienting, and sometimes alienating experience. Re-entry pokes at your insecurities, stirs up complex questions about identity and belonging, and often prompts you to re-think relationships, career, and sometimes your whole life.
The good news? While it may not feel like it now, re-entry is a unique opportunity for developing the self-knowledge that will propel you forward into an even better life than the one you lived abroad (even if your plan is to live abroad again).
That’s why I created The Re-entry Roadmap, a five-step process for navigating re-entry. Here are the five steps ( you can read more about each one here):
- Identify your emotions
- Reframe re-entry
- Unpack your re-entry backpack
- Find your Global Life Ingredients
- Create your Forward Launch!
Whether you’ve been abroad for a few months or several years, were living, studying, volunteering or working abroad, whether you plan to stay in your home country long-term or want to move abroad again, The Re-entry Roadmap will help you gain the insight needed to answer the questions your global heart is asking you, and then use those answers to keep you moving forwards in your life, career, relationships, and travel.
Cate, how can I work the Re-entry Roadmap in my own re-entry (or help others with their re-entry)?
Great question! While I’ve got some new opportunities brewing, for now I recommend you start with the self-guided Re-entry Roadmap workbook if you’re in re-entry, and the Study Abroad Re-entry Toolkit if you support returnees.
Returnees will put this book down and think ‘I can do this!’
Craig Storti, author of The Art of Coming Home & Why Travel Matters
About The Re-entry Roadmap Workbook
Filled with fresh insights, thought-provoking activities, and actionable advice, the Re-entry Roadmap helps you adjust forwards by figuring out who you are and what you want your life to be like now.
This lively, humorous, and engaging guide shows you how to put what you’ve learned about yourself into a plan of action – your “Forward Launch” – for living a beautiful, meaningful, and satisfying global life that you love no matter where in the world you are.
The Re-entry Roadmap is available in hardcopy and Kindle editions on Amazon.
If you’re interested in bulk ordering the Re-entry Roadmap to use with clients or students, click here for bulk rates!
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