The Transitional Bridge: moving from settled to unsettled to chaos to resettling to settled. I am currently in the unsettled stage and will move into chaos the closer I get to leaving. If you are connected to me you will also have to cross this bridge.
Quick update: My new expected departure is January. Things are coming together faster than expected.
Healthy Good-byes & Hellos
06 November 2008
Grief & Loss
I have always been ashamed of the way I express my emotions and cry at the drop of a hat. I’ve learned here that I have a healthy sense of grieving. My shame is hindering the good that can come from those tears. For the first time in my life I felt free to truly grieve this week.
There are many things I am grieving. I am losing any sense of stability. Home is an abstract concept. My life does not have routines. With each passing day life becomes more and more unpredictable.
I am already struggling with a sense of lost identity. I have moved from my community. I am no longer a teacher and will soon become a language student. Once I leave I will not be anyone’s friend and it won’t matter to anyone who my parents are or where I grew up. I will become a stereotype of what others think Americans (or even Texans) are. This is always not a good thing. That’s an issue for a later blog.
As I move away I must let go of all my support systems and have to rely on strangers. Things will not come easy and I will have to get use to things taking longer. My goals and ambitions will take longer because I will lose my competency. As a language learner, I will be functioning as a 2-3 year old. I will have to learn every aspect of daily life over again.
Then there are still anticipated losses which I must face. The good-byes. I’ve already had to say some. They are hard especially when the elderly or children are involved. The hardest good-byes will be to my sweet nieces and embracing the loss of missing out on their lives. I also have three precious godchildren. I must grieve the loss of missing out on their lives as well. The reality of losing those you love while you’re gone. My grandparents are in their eighties. At this point I consider each day with them an extended gift. This decision means missing out on family events.
I draw comfort that though nothing can replace these relationships and experiences that I must let go of I will have new relationships and experiences to fill the loss.
There are many things I am grieving. I am losing any sense of stability. Home is an abstract concept. My life does not have routines. With each passing day life becomes more and more unpredictable.
I am already struggling with a sense of lost identity. I have moved from my community. I am no longer a teacher and will soon become a language student. Once I leave I will not be anyone’s friend and it won’t matter to anyone who my parents are or where I grew up. I will become a stereotype of what others think Americans (or even Texans) are. This is always not a good thing. That’s an issue for a later blog.
As I move away I must let go of all my support systems and have to rely on strangers. Things will not come easy and I will have to get use to things taking longer. My goals and ambitions will take longer because I will lose my competency. As a language learner, I will be functioning as a 2-3 year old. I will have to learn every aspect of daily life over again.
Then there are still anticipated losses which I must face. The good-byes. I’ve already had to say some. They are hard especially when the elderly or children are involved. The hardest good-byes will be to my sweet nieces and embracing the loss of missing out on their lives. I also have three precious godchildren. I must grieve the loss of missing out on their lives as well. The reality of losing those you love while you’re gone. My grandparents are in their eighties. At this point I consider each day with them an extended gift. This decision means missing out on family events.
I draw comfort that though nothing can replace these relationships and experiences that I must let go of I will have new relationships and experiences to fill the loss.
Stress Management
This is an area which I have been struggling with. If I catch stress early I usually deal with it well and can defuse it. In the midst of chaos, I tend to ignore my early warning signs of stress and then when I finally do realize I’m stressed out I have to do a lot of damage control/recovery to do. The following questions help me identify if I am stressed:
- Do you have muscle tension (especially in your neck & shoulders)?
- How’s your stomach? (my bowels are a great indicator of how I’m doing=)
- Are you sleeping through the night? Are you having any bad dreams?
- What’s annoying you? (if it’s all the little things I need to withdraw)
- What are you reading? (if I’m not reading, then things are not ok)
- Am I exercising on a regular basis?
- Am I eating healthy?
- Am I honoring myself? This last question is key. This refers to knowing myself and acknowledging my personality, preferences, gifts, limitations, areas of vulnerability, areas of health and victory? If I’m honoring myself then I should be doing pretty well. If I’m not, then something is going to be off and I’m going to be out of balance.
If you want to encourage me on this journey, use these questions to keep me accountable to healthy cross-cultural living principles. Another key component of managing stress is resting. It would also be appropriate to ask me when was the last time I took the day off or went on a weekend get away. If I don’t rest on a regular basis I won’t be able to manage my stress through. If I don’t manage my stress I increase my possibility of health related issues and coming home prematurely.
Conflict Management
I am a shark! Those of you that know me well have probably most definitely felt my bite. I am a shark that has learned skills in order to change my conflict management depending on the situation and the person I am relating to. It doesn’t matter what I do on the outside my heart processes conflict in the following ways:
- I have a strong sense of right and wrong.
- It is important for me to be right.
- If my character is offended in anyway I will shut down.
- I have a need to take charge and be in control.
- It is important to be direct and get right to the point.
- The closer you are to me the worse my bite.
Some of you might be surprised by this and disagree. The issue isn’t in what I do but what is going on inside of me in the midst of conflict. When I act differently in conflict than what I described above, it is because I have learned to change my conflict management based on the situation and the person. When I function from another style I am operating from my brain and not my heart. Thank goodness I’ve learned to do that. Please forgive me where I haven’t.
Paradox & Expectations
The most complicated part of preparing to go to a foreign country is the paradoxes I live everyday. The simplest example of this is the great excitement I feel in anticipating my departure coupled with the great amount of grief there is in saying good-bye to everything familiar and to all the people that mean so much to me. Our instructors gave us this great visual for the paradoxes we are experiencing. Imagine a person standing in the center of the room. Put a large stretchy band around the waist of this person and stretch it out in two different directions. On one end of the stretchy band are the “yeah!” feelings I am having. On the other end are the “yuck!” feelings. Both these feelings live in tension around the center of the person. Don’t stop there. Add another stretchy band and stretch it out in opposite directions. This tension represents the expectations I have versus the reality I will face. The close my expectations are to reality the less tension I will experience. Now add another band with the expectations of nationals on one end and the expectations still coming from the States. The stressful thing about this tension is I don’t have any control over the expectations that others have of me. All I can do is figure out healthy ways to deal with this tension. Alas, I live a paradox in the midst of all these tensions. This leads to my next entry…conflict management.
Worldview
How do you view the world? There are many lenses that we look through when we observe and interact with our world. At the core is our lens of Faith. This answers the question of “What is real?” Moving outward we find our lens of Beliefs which answers “What is true?” From that lens we view our values which tells us “What is good or best?” All these lenses combine to dictate our Behaviors which demonstrate our worldview by “What is done?”
Every culture and sub-culture has different lenses. The challenge for me living cross-culturally is to try to see the world through other lenses. This can be difficult to do and takes a great deal of intentionality. It will be important for me to wrestle with this in order to function, communicate, and thrive in India.
I took an inventory of my values and identified which values are probably going to my greatest hurdles when I arrive in a few months. The first is my need to be independent and in control. Both of these will go out the window the moment I get on the plane. When a person enters a new culture they must be dependent on others and revert back to being more like a child. The everyday routines of life will no longer be familiar. I won’t know how to get around or go to the grocery store or even cook the food. Every aspect of life must be relearned. To top it all off I won’t speak the language or be able to communicate.
Another value that I will have to wrestle with is my knowledge and experience. I have very little knowledge and experience of Indian life and the Indian worldview. In fact I know just enough that I think it’s going to be more of a stumbling block because my knowledge/experience gives me a false sense of confidence.
Have you ever thought about how friendships are different in various cultures? As Americans we have certain expectations of our friends. In different cultures people have different expectations of how friends should interact and relate to each other. How friendships are formed and when one is considered a friend is also very different from one culture to another. Having intimate friendships are very important to me. I do not know what that will look like or how long it will take to form intimate relationships in India.
Also concerning relationships, I do not know what loyalty and respect look like in India. These are two characteristics I highly value in my relationships and interactions with others. Both of these qualities can be demonstrated very differently. It kind of is like the idea of love languages. When you know someone’s love language you can communicate love to them in a way that is meaningful to them. I will need to learn how Indians show loyalty and respect in order to know/understand how these values are communicated.
Every culture and sub-culture has different lenses. The challenge for me living cross-culturally is to try to see the world through other lenses. This can be difficult to do and takes a great deal of intentionality. It will be important for me to wrestle with this in order to function, communicate, and thrive in India.
I took an inventory of my values and identified which values are probably going to my greatest hurdles when I arrive in a few months. The first is my need to be independent and in control. Both of these will go out the window the moment I get on the plane. When a person enters a new culture they must be dependent on others and revert back to being more like a child. The everyday routines of life will no longer be familiar. I won’t know how to get around or go to the grocery store or even cook the food. Every aspect of life must be relearned. To top it all off I won’t speak the language or be able to communicate.
Another value that I will have to wrestle with is my knowledge and experience. I have very little knowledge and experience of Indian life and the Indian worldview. In fact I know just enough that I think it’s going to be more of a stumbling block because my knowledge/experience gives me a false sense of confidence.
Have you ever thought about how friendships are different in various cultures? As Americans we have certain expectations of our friends. In different cultures people have different expectations of how friends should interact and relate to each other. How friendships are formed and when one is considered a friend is also very different from one culture to another. Having intimate friendships are very important to me. I do not know what that will look like or how long it will take to form intimate relationships in India.
Also concerning relationships, I do not know what loyalty and respect look like in India. These are two characteristics I highly value in my relationships and interactions with others. Both of these qualities can be demonstrated very differently. It kind of is like the idea of love languages. When you know someone’s love language you can communicate love to them in a way that is meaningful to them. I will need to learn how Indians show loyalty and respect in order to know/understand how these values are communicated.
Cross-Cultural Training 101
I have been in Colorado for three weeks. During this time I have been looking at various aspects of living cross-culturally and anticipating how I might respond. To do that I have looked at my personality, worldview and cultural values, conflict management style, stress management and how I grieve. I’ve decided to make a series of entries related to my experiences here and what I have learned.
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