The Truth About Travel and Homesickness
Reframing “homesick” as a part of travel and discovery
After I graduated last August, I uprooted from California and moved to Southeast Asia. Two entirely different locales with different languages, food, and cultural norms.
I left home initially to expand my comfort zone, to embark upon unfamiliar grounds. I sought an adventure, unlike anything I’d previously experienced in college or family vacations.
Reflecting on these 10 months I can say, proudly, I have expanded my comfort zone. Not exactly in the way I had planned, but maybe that’s the whole point.
I left home and moved abroad to stand eye-to-eye with the unknown. Without fail, it has met me at every bend and slope, sometimes with good news and sometimes with hardship.
Not surprisingly for a solo traveler, my most loyal travel companion has been homesickness. It follows like a shadow, furtive and ever-present.
Whether amidst the skyscrapers of Hong Kong, the night markets of Taiwan, or the clear water surrounding Thailand’s Phi Phi Islands, homesickness remains, stubborn and clingy. Sometimes it nudges me only subtly, other times it makes its presence felt like a heavy-handed slap.
Before I left the US, I had believed myself to be confident, independent, and strong-willed. I had believed myself to be a tough and competent traveler, untethered by traditional ailments.
Was my own self-perception crumbling, a brittle guise under the weight of feeling homesick? Was I destined to carry this around, to pack, unpack, and re-pack it into every luggage, every flight?
I wanted to be present, to travel without having my memories anchored down with nostalgia. How was I going to rid myself of this?
Acclimating to life abroad doesn’t eliminate this feeling
As with any move, I had anticipated homesickness to strike early and hard.
And it did.
Missing what used to be is expected at first. There’s no getting away from this. New environment, new people, a new language, different food — novelty puts our mind in disarray and can make us feel out of place.
Feeling out of place is usually followed by missing home. But soon enough, I began to feel in place, comfortable in my new milieu. I joined a gym, became a regular at a coffee shop, fell into a routine.
And yet, nearly a year later, homesickness still finds me regularly and often. This wasn’t entirely anticipated.
Once I’d established normalcy abroad, I thought missing home would slowly regress in both frequency and severity.
But it hasn’t yet.
Home as an identity
My family and friends, university life, and hometown in California remain a significant part of my identity. I miss home so much because I identify with it at a fundamental level. Because of this, I’ve found moving on, letting go, and being present to be difficult.
Identifying with a place and era can be a beautiful thing, though now I recognize that it can also distract from being elsewhere.
My goal isn’t to remove everything about California and home from my identity, though I am consciously trying to accept and understand my circumstance.
Home is going to remain home, regardless if I’m there or not. It’s where I grew up and the place I reminisce to. Telling myself that my perception of home isn’t my present moment is a necessary, daily reminder I’ve begin to undertake.
Likewise, relationships extended overseas can be taxing, stressful, and sad. This remains the biggest obstacle to living abroad. Several occasions, this almost compelled me to end my adventure and move back to California.
Sometimes I told myself that proximity determined the strength of a bond between two people, and distance diminished this bond. It certainly can, but not always or even usually.
I wrongly believed that I was losing the people I cared about most because I had physically, geographically, removed myself from their lives.
I’ve learned this isn’t true by default.
My people will remain my people because they are my people, not because of place or geography. The distance between myself and loved ones doesn’t exactly feel good all the time, but I remind myself that those who matter aren’t going anywhere, even if they take a backseat momentarily.
When I return home (whenever that may be) my people, my home — what matters most — will be there.
Accepting and admitting these things has helped me be more present and conscious while abroad, mitigating the pain and angst of missing what I cannot have and where I cannot be.
How to Reframe “Homesick”
The shadow remains, but it is no longer a burden or sickness.
How am I going to rid myself of this? is the wrong question.
I think of home often because it is part of me, a puzzle piece to my identity. I’ve stopped trying to rid myself of this feeling. Instead, I’ve continued to learn how to understand it and accept it.
Homesickness shouldn’t be considered pathological. It isn’t a sign of weakness. Feeling homesick helps keep us sane and grounded. It provides a perspective of where we came from and explains the cultural biases we may hold.
This clingy, nostalgia-inducing attachment shouldn’t be something to avoid or ignore. Accepting it as a building block of your perspective, a cornerstone to your identity can help enrich the time you spend away from home.
Homesickness is inevitable; we all come from somewhere. It’s as certain as the color of your eyes and the size of your feet. It stays with us because we know where we hail from and who awaits us back home.
The feeling isn’t something to dread, but something to be thankful for. A feeling inspired by a place and era so important that it makes you want to return.
Accepting, understanding, and reframing “homesick” like this has made me more present while away from home. It’s no longer something to ignore or suppress, but something to embrace, fully and proudly.
For me, homesickness evolved from a nostalgic, weighty burden into a source of gratitude and comfort. I’ve maintained my confidence and independence — there’s no longer any overlap between these things and feeling homesick.
I miss home every single day. I miss the people and places I used to wake up to every day, the era I once took for granted. I’ve learned to accept this as a new direction of growth for myself, rather than a malady to expunge.
Being abroad and missing home provides perspective and comfort while still granting all the latitude of adventure.
In other words: now, I love being homesick.
Living well requires reading well — if you want to see some of the books that have most impacted my ideas, you can check out my Essential Reading List.
Phil is a travel writer and editor. He currently lives and works in Hong Kong. If you liked this article, you can see more of his ideas on his travel blog and Instagram.
