1 Courageous Journey of Grief After Leaving Home

This post is a heartfelt piece that I wrote after coming from my trip to El Salvador in 2021. Leaving home is never easy. Relationships, friendships, and family are a big parts of our life, and we need to deal with our feelings to move pass them. I had to travel and face the fact that I have left. I went to “say goodbye” to my grandma and my dog because they were both sick. I candidly discuss my experience of being an Immigrant and the complex emotions that come with leaving your home country and starting new somewhere else. I talk about the struggle of being physically separated from loved ones and missing milestones and significant life events from people I know. Furthermore, there is a pain in not being able to share everyday experiences with family. There is something to be said about people’s thoughts on grief who haven’t left home.

Intro: Immigrant’s Grief

“Disclaimer: The following will be a long post. If you have never been or never met an immigrant, I don’t expect you to understand me… This is not a ‘pity party’ post, this is also not a funny one… I feel that nobody talks about love and grief hardly enough. Lately, I am in a place where I am just taking a single day at a time and trying to survive!… I am done brushing all of the feelings off my shoulder… Mostly this is a letter to myself that I decided to share in case you can take anything helpful out of it.”

The Validity of Grief

“I feel that nobody talks about love and grief hardly enough. Lately, I am in a place where I am just taking a single day at a time and trying to survive this semester! (2021 is a learning year for me). However, I got tired of the ‘happy appearances’ and ‘I’m fine’ answers. I am done brushing all of the feelings off my shoulder. (Mostly talking to myself, because I am used to ‘shoulding’ myself:… Steffy, you should feel this way, you should do this, you should react that way, and you should NOT feel this other way). I am over it.

Mostly this is a letter to myself that I decided to share in case you can take anything helpful out of it.

It is valid. It is valid to grieve and be sad when something you love, loved, have loved; has changed. It is perfectly fine to try to come to terms with the changes that life has brought us and not succeed at first. It is okay to miss what once was, and give yourself permission to honor those feelings and things. They deserve it. It is valid to bring flowers and tears to those things and then walk back to your own reality to continue to be thankful and whole. Read that again.

Truths:

I am not going to conceal this.

Not living in your home country for any given reason is hard. Nobody talks about this enough. Others might say immigrants should feel a certain way, or not feel another. I’ve heard some of these statements as to why immigrants should be happy, because ‘they have it better’, ‘they chose this’, ‘they don’t live here (home country)’, ‘this (home country) sucks anyway’, ‘lucky for them because they don’t have to deal with x, y, z situation’ …

Not so fast though…

Speaking for myself only: I don’t want my grief to be invalidated. I don’t want my mourning to be disregarded.

These are my reasons:

→I lived in my home country for 25 years and I am thankful for all the experiences, teaching, shaping, and things that El Salvador allowed me to live. I am the person you know because of my life there.

→I have 25 years worth of ‘story’ in the story of my life there.

→ My mom, my grandma, my family, my friends, stayed there. This means that I can’t bring my children for an afternoon at ‘Yaya’s house and eat pupusas for dinner WHENEVER I want to. This means that my mom has to travel long ways to see her grandchildren, my mamita too.

→This means I can’t call my mom to come over my house and help me with the kids TODAY if I want to.

→It hurts. I mourn that. I accept it but I grieve it.

→Lukas & Markus’ aunties are far away. Most of them, they haven’t met. It hurts. I accept it but I grieve it. (Uncles too ;))

→ This one is a good one: time. People I deeply love stayed there. So did their lives, memories, experiences, and happenings. Time went on. New things happened. I wasn’t there. (I understand this couldn’t have been any other way). It hurts. I mourn that deeply. I accept it but I grieve it.

→Some of my friends got married, got babies, new jobs, promotions, deep struggles. I wasn’t there to give a physical hug and bring a meal. (Phone calls and FaceTime hit a bit differently). Never in my life did I understand better the power of a hug before now. It hurts. I mourn that deeply. I accept it but I grieve it.

→ New difficulties have come up. I am no longer there to endure them. Helping with some of those difficulties is hard in itself or near impossible. This breaks my heart.

These, just to mention a few… There are more.

Practicing Gratitude

I am not saying that I wish my reality was different because I don’t. God’s plan is magnificent and perfect. I know this and I am truly happy about his gift to me, now. I treasure my reality and blessings with all of my heart. I am so thankful for how things have turned out here in the US and I love my family and friends here. I love my hubby, babies, family, friends here too. The weather changes, the seasons, the lovely gringos I’ve met… all of that. I do. I thank Jesus because He knew better.

Nevertheless, there are hard things that come with leaving your home and it is okay to grieve them. I am going to cry unapologetically and bring all these things and people to Jesus in my prayers. I am going to talk to Him about them and cover them with all my love. I will walk with his hand back to my day-to-day life and continue to be thankful. He knows…

“I have no words to describe how happy, thankful, and glad I am that I got to see my mom, my mamita, my dog, and a few of my friends in this ‘blink of an eye’ trip. I am delighted to have woken up in my room in 70˚ weather, with the song of the birds that I heard for 25 years. The smell of home, and the wind were a gift from God. (For context: the sun is up in El Salvador most days to greet you and smile at you). The background noise of the buses, the bicycle that sells bread and its honking (There is a boy that rides a bicycle selling bread and honking), and the random radio playing in the back gave me peace and reminded me of sweet memories. I slept in my bed and showered with the water that has the perfect temperature. Do I tell you about the coffee? I am convinced that the coffee at home tastes the best.

I am giving myself permission to meditate on this. Despite any rationalizations, generalizations you may have or have heard about people who leave their home countries, lives, friends… It is not easy, the journey deserves to be honored and respected. It’s fine to have a thankful heart that hurts and eyes that are wet for a moment. It’s fine not to want that moment rushed.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.”

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