Looking for a little advice about your relationship? Perhaps you have questions about parenting in Europe? Ask Andrea! Our social worker, Andrea Liss will pick one question a month and answer it in our mid-month bulletin. You can submit your questions anonymously to her at https://bit.ly/MFSEAndreaSFME.
Hello OUTCAN,
By the time you read this it will be June 2023 and the sun will be shining more regularly and the days will have grown much longer. If you are preparing to return home to Canada this summer, you’ll be lucky to find the time to sip a cup of tea and read this! Good on you for taking a moment to pause at this intense time. You are very likely swamped with tasks and last-minute moving arrangements. School will be coming to another year’s end and so will this posting. There is an ebb and flow to life, and this is never more apparent than where an end meets a beginning in a transition and oh what a big life transition an OUTCAN posting is. This month’s Ask Andrea article is on Reintegration post OUTCAN. Reading this now will require a bit of leap forward into the future. You may be so rushed that you may not want to take the time to read this. Fair enough. Mark it in your calendar to read two months after your Landing. Here’s a quick recap of the first two stages of post OUTCAN and then an overview of the final stage, Reintegration.
The last two Ask Andrea columns focused on the first two stages of moving back to Canada post OUTCAN. The first stage is Goodbye, which generally starts about 6-8 months prior to leaving. It’s an opportunity to thank friends and the place you've called home for the good times and soak it all in. The second stage is called the Landing phase and lasts for about a month after making your way to your new temporary housing back in O Canada. Landing is the short punch to the gut stage that is what many consider ‘surreal’ as they adjust to the Canada that has emerged over their OUTCAN. Landing is generally pretty chaotic because of the ‘nest’ change coupled with reverse culture shock and not having a phone number and internet account. As the first month back rolls into some semblance of routine, the final OUTCAN stage begins. Reintegration is the final stage post OUTCAN and it is this stage that is the focus of this article. Special shout out note: Much of this article I owe thanks to a colleague I interviewed who had an idyllic OUTCAN experience and necessarily a painful Reintegration. Also, props to the I Can OUTCAN group members who share their life wisdom in the group and build OUTCAN community every week even in the online forum that is I Can OUTCAN. We are all indebted to these OUTCAN pros, their input shaping the content of what follows.
The Reintegration phase begins in the second month of being back home and typically lasts for about one year but can be less or more depending on your OUTCAN experience. If you readily adopted your new OUTCAN experience and dove in and were splendidly happy about being abroad, you can anticipate that your Reintegration period will be more protracted as you grieve the loss of the perks of living outside Canada, develop personal strategies to integrate into a new Canada, and reflect on how the OUTCAN experience has impacted your sense of self (each of these will be explored below). If you were less thrilled about your OUTCAN, your reintegration period may not necessarily be shorter. Regardless of your experience, an OUTCAN offers the opportunity to re-evaluate life priorities. This is a natural response to being displaced and can be rather painful at times. Borrowing from the work of British Psychologist David Brazier, a good outcome post OUTCAN involves transitioning well and move along until the next transition occurs. An optimal outcome post OUTCAN is to be transformed such that one now knows how to make various types of transitions in life, view changing circumstances positively, and have learnt from the experience such that one will be in good stead regardless of the new circumstances one finds oneself in. Spoiler alert: Reintegration can involve a great deal of unpleasantness. Let’s take a look at a few of the realities that you may face in the Reintegration phase.
Grieving and Mourning
Grief and mourning are overlapping terms but in fact they have distinct meanings. Grief is the cognitive and emotional response to loss. It is the thoughts and feelings that are internal to you and specific to you. An example of an OUTCAN sadness thought might be “It’s such a loss to me that I will no longer be surrounded by the slower pace of life abroad” and a sadness emotion might be the physical sensation of your heart aching while that loss thought pops into your head. This is grief.
Meanwhile, mourning is the movement of private individual grief from an internalized experience to an externalized one. Mourning is the movement of your private suffering into a social setting by sharing it, planned or otherwise. Letting a friend know you are not doing well because you are having a hard time accepting the changes to Canada while you were gone is you mourning. Your 8-year old child sharing with you that her friend’s eyes glazed over when she talked about Paris in the spring is her mourning. Sharing a hilarious story about the time you missed the train to the airport and the adventure that ensued is also a form of mourning. So is banging your fists on the steering wheel on the Queen Elizabeth way and wishing you were back in Spain. Successful Reintegration requires verbalizing the internal. There is no integration without mourning.
OUTCAN Mourning Strategy
The key thing about OUTCAN mourning is twofold: know your audience, and, always keep it short! Here is a strategy that one OUTCAN mom developed for her children to help them best manage when they have the urge to mourn the loss of OUTCAN with others: They have about three seconds to share a memory with a friend or classmate before that friend gets bored or starts to think they are bragging; they have about 30 seconds with a teacher or friend’s parent before that person gets too bored; they have about three minutes with Grandma and Grandpa. When it comes to mom and dad and brothers and sisters, they can take all the time in the world because those who have experienced an OUTCAN share a special bond. I think this approach is fantastic advice for adults too! Be brief!
OUTCAN Reintegration and Sense of Self
I have always thought that the OUTCAN experience is a wonderful opportunity for significant personal growth. In particular, this is very true for spouses who are unable to work while outside of Canada. These spouses have to grapple with the fallout of when work is no longer fused with identity. This naturally churns up a lot of angst in people. Being displaced into a new nest forces people to problem solve and adapt. This then changes the way that they view themselves because it adds a new twist to the story of who they have become. For example, several people have told me what a positive impact European parenting has had on their own parenting style. Parents are able to see how host nation children are raised and that the results are very encouraging. OUTCAN Reintegration involves assessing and sometimes adopting new customs which then become integrated into our repertoire. You can well see how the Reintegration phase may last up to a year post OUTCAN as new behaviours and values are adopted.
Finally, living outside of our regular culture can lead us to rethink long held beliefs. One OUTCAN mom who is now back in Canada told me how much more confident she is when it comes to travel, so much so that she has committed to treating herself to a trip by herself once a year. Previously trepidatious about travelling solo, her OUTCAN travel skills have been incorporated and she is now forever changed. Reintegration necessitates transformation.
For more tips on managing transition, check out this fantastic TED talk by author Bruce Feiler on transitions and what he terms “Lifequakes.” Bruce Feiler: The secret to mastering life's biggest transitions
Are you a military spouse and interested in supporting your community and being supported? Consider joining I Can OUTCAN, an online group that runs on Mondays. We are currently taking a break for the summer but group resumes Monday September 25th at 1100 (Berlin) for English speakers and, new this fall, at 1300 (Berlin) for French speakers. For more information please contact Military Family Services Europe Social Worker Andrea Liss at liss.andrea@cfmws.com.
Have a great summer OUTCAN! Please send your anonymous questions and I will do my best to share my thoughts with you!
If you would like to pose a question for the Ask Andrea column, please send your anonymous question to https://bit.ly/MFSEAndreaSFME and Andrea will do her best to share some of her ideas.
Andrea has a master’s degree in Social Work and is a Registered Social Worker (Ontario) with over 20 years of experience. She maintains a faculty appointment at McMaster University where she teaches in the Masters of Science in Psychotherapy program.