Why Do I Feel Like a Stranger With My Own Family?
The hidden tensions of returning home and rebuilding belonging.
The Complexity of Coming Home
Returning to one’s homeland is often imagined as a homecoming — full of reunion, comfort, and belonging. And sometimes, it is. But many returning diaspora also discover a harder truth: family life has not stood still.
Relatives have carried on in your absence. Their routines, perspectives, and ways of living may feel unchanged, while you have grown, adapted, and transformed abroad. The result can be tension mingled with love, and understanding mingled with misunderstanding.
Why Family Feels Different
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Unchanged Roles: Family members may treat you as the person you were before leaving, not recognising the person you have become.
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Different Timelines: You bring stories of change, while others may seem rooted in the same place.
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Unspoken Tensions: Old dynamics resurface — mixed with the new distance created by years away.
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Feelings of Isolation: Even surrounded by familiar faces, you may feel like a stranger in your own land.
The Push and Pull of Belonging
Repatriation often brings a paradox: you are at once “at home” and yet not fully at home.
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Belonging: Shared history, roots, family ties.
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Displacement: New perspectives, altered identity, restlessness.
This tension does not mean failure. It means that both the family and the returnee are adjusting to a new reality.
Pathways Through Family Tension
1. Acknowledge the Shift
Recognise that change has happened on both sides. You have grown abroad; they have continued life at home. Both realities are valid.
2. Allow for Misunderstanding
Not everyone will fully “get” your experience. And that’s okay. Seek understanding where it comes, and don’t force it where it doesn’t.
3. Create Space for Dialogue
When possible, share your story gently. Focus not only on what was gained abroad, but also on what you value about being home.
4. Find Belonging Beyond the Family
Sometimes family cannot hold the whole of your story. Building connections with peers, communities, or other returnees helps ease isolation.
5. Hold Both Love and Difference
It is possible to love family deeply while also recognising the limits of shared understanding.
Conclusion: Home as an Evolving Relationship
Family is rarely simple, and returning home magnifies both its comforts and its challenges. Feeling misunderstood or unsettled does not mean you don’t belong — it means you are navigating the natural tension of reunion after growth.
Fulfilment comes when “home” is seen not as a fixed point but as an evolving relationship: with family, with self, and with the place that shaped you.
Do you feel like a stranger among your own family after returning home? My Fulfilment Coaching Pathway for Returning Diaspora supports you in