HAVANA TIMES – Ever since we arrived in the United States, it’s like there aren’t enough hours in the day. We have video calls pending with friends and family. We almost don’t have the time to answer WhatsApp messages. I was recently talking to a friend about the madness we experienced with the children starting all over again and she said something that got me thinking.
She also emigrated a year ago, but alone. She told me that it was very hard to adapt in the beginning because you had to get settled into an unknown environment, with a different language, get documents, find a way to move forward… If you’re emigrating with two small children, then the responsibility and obstacles you face double.
Crossing borders, embarking on a journey which you only know the beginning to but not the end, leaving everything behind while you accept an uncertain future is a challenge that seems too much. It’s such a heavy burden that it overwhelms you at times.
My friend made me realize that I’m (we’re) going through two difficult processes at the same time: migration and maternity. You use the other as a support to keep going and they both demand that you reinvent yourself in new ways.
Where is my identity?
People build a safe space, stability, and routines as they grow up. Maybe this is why it’s so hard to leave your comfort zone and give up the environment you feel safe in.
Emigrating is therefore a process of great change. Emigrating is to be reborn as you navigate inner mourning that appears when you leave that feeling of safety, that feeling of “being home”, behind.
People who emigrate do so to look for better quality of life, beyond any other individual reasons they may have, and the reality check you get when you arrive in a different country with a different social and cultural environment isn’t easy. Motherhood is a process that also changes. You’re reborn with your children, you start from scratch and let go of the life you’d known up until that point.
Motherhood was never in my immediate plans. When I decided (we decided) to have Daniel, the changes this meant to my life were hard because I had to give up my d
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