An Account of Moving Through Depression and Grief After Transitioning Home from Africa
In the beginning, I spent a lot of time visiting the void. When I would enter that empty space, all I could do was weep. I would open the door and see nothing but darkness, and I would curl up on the empty floor, and cry out to God.
I lay there, angry, sad, exhausted, for as long as I needed to. Sometimes a loved one would knock on the door, but I rarely answered. And when I did finally emerge, the outside still looked gray. I would close the door and hazily walk toward some unknown place.
Then, for a long period of time, I refused to enter the void. There was enough challenge on the outside, I felt it was silly to purposely put myself in the way of pain. I stopped trying to make contact with anyone associated with that dark, empty space in my heart, and focused instead on trying to be fully present where I was.
After all, I was surrounded by natural, earthly beauty I had craved for so long, and people I had missed dearly. What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I just be happy to be home? My confusion and anger only seemed to grow, even though I was no longer visiting the void.
Then something strange started to happen. I got together with an old friend and we shared stories about our experiences in other countries. We talked about how the fruit in countries like Colombia and Kenya can sometimes look different. An orange, for example, can look beat up and bad on the outside but when you peel and eat it, it tastes so good.
Afterward, when I decided to revisit the void, I saw something peculiar. There was a pop of color in the center of the room. I walked towards it and saw a single sunflower had bloomed in the darkness, and the walls were starting to sparkle.
Some time later, I met someone on the outside who knew about the void. We talked about living in another land, and in twenty minutes time, it felt like I had just met an old friend. We shared stories from there, and from here. We laughed. I cried. And we hugged. When I visited the void again, there were more sunflowers and sparkles. I giggled as I felt the new warmth and brightness.
Then a little while later, two of my best friends from South Sudan came to the United States. I was able to visit them on the outside, and we picked up right where we left off. They told me everything that was happening in their lives, and in their country. And I told them how I had slowly become my awkward American self again, reacting strangely when a person sat too closely to me. We laughed good and hard. We looked each other in the eyes as we ate and spoke. We expressed gratitude for each other, and the friendships we had.
Afterward, when I visited the void again, I couldn’t believe my eyes. My face opened up with delight when I saw there were more sunflowers. This time, there were daisies. too. There were white, common daisies everywhere. There were also different colored gerbera daisies — yellow, orange and pink — and there were even African daisies, in their white and purple glory.
And the sparkles in the walls, brighter than before, were starting to produce bright rays of golden, shimmery light. The rays filled the room from side to side, top to bottom, and every which way.
As time went on, tiny miracles kept happening on the outside. Once, I met a woman who had lived in Sudan years ago, and we spoke to each other in Arabic. We laughed and hugged and said how happy we were to have met. After that conversation, I felt hummingbirds flying around in the growing, glowing space.
Soon, I was meeting more people who wanted to hear my story. As I started opening up to the people around me, I started to feel trees growing in the once empty space. As friends, family and God kept showing me grace and love along the way, the golden, shimmery light became brighter, and warmer. The flowers, trees and birds — the life, multiplied.
This vision came to me about two and a half years after I returned to the United States. I had spent three years acclimating to life in South Sudan, where I lived and worked with an international organization. I had spent three years learning how to cope with loneliness and war — how to survive amongst the most lionhearted survivors I’ve ever known.
When the vision came, I was reflecting on a question someone had asked me just before I left South Sudan. “Do you worry that when you come home, you’ll have a void that will be difficult to fill?” I didn’t worry. I already knew there would be a void, and that it would be impossible to fill. I just didn’t know how I would cope.
I had spent days, months, years, creating a new space in my heart for a country and its people. I had spent curiosity, tears, and laughter, growing it into something beautiful and meaningful. Nobody could ever move in and take up residence in that space. Once I left, I knew it would grow quiet. I knew it would feel empty and make me ache with loss and loneliness.
Sometimes transition is a kind of grief. Particularly in moving from one place to another, there is often significant loss involved. Depending on the amount of time spent in the place being left, and the degree to which it is different from the place being arrived at, the loss can be quite severe. As it was when I made the transition from life in South Sudan to life in the United States.
There’s a common understanding of grief, that it only happens when a loved one passes away. My experience tells me otherwise. Although nobody close to me died, as I moved through the last few years, I experienced symptoms generally associated with grief, such as anger and depression. I experienced profound loss, and multiple losses all at once. It was like a big part of me died.
When I left South Sudan, I lost deep relationships and community, a certain culture, passion, a type of lifestyle I enjoyed, perspective, mango trees, vocation, identity, goats as neighbors, the ability to sit by the Nile River, a sense of epic adventure, closer proximity to East Africa and all of Africa and the Indian Ocean and the sun, an environment which fostered my creativity, curiosity and learning like none other, the ability to be stretched — mentally and spiritually — and the ability to witness what life is like at the center. I lost an entire country. I lost what has been my life’s most visceral chapter, to date.
Living in South Sudan was like living at the core of everything. The country was pulsing with life and death and everything in between. Because it was a high-stress, post-conflict environment, I was pretty well worn out by the time I left. I made the conscious decision to come back home and rest, but that doesn’t make the loss any less painful.
I don’t know how to classify this type of grief. Perhaps it falls under the “disenfranchised” category. The kind we’re made guilty for feeling, because it’s not enough, or it is self-inflicted. The kind society doesn’t want to recognize because it’s difficult enough to keep our eyes open to *real grief*. Much of my grief is disenfranchised.
Shortly after I returned home to the United States, I spoke with a friend I made while living in East Africa. Like me, she had spent three years of her life living in a country that wasn’t her own. She had started her transition home months before me, and she wanted to know how I was doing. At that time, I was still visiting the void regularly, and weeping on the dark, cold floor.
She acknowledged the pain I was feeling but assured me it wouldn’t last forever. Then she said something that gave me hope. She said it might take time for things to reveal themselves to me. The experience may seem lost, but over time, things would make more sense. All the gifts I had received in South Sudan would somehow find a way to open up. Like seeds planted in fertile soil, they would blossom at the right time.
I haven’t come out of this with some step-by-step guide on how to survive during major life transitions, much less thrive. The truth is, it wrecked me. It was only time, and generous amounts of gentleness, grace and love given by friends and family, and learning how to practice these things toward myself, that brought me to where I am today: walking a little less hazily, in a clearer direction. Therapy, rest, patience, creativity, and my faith also helped.
It’s been about three and a half years now since I returned home. I’m grateful to be doing as well as I am. Though I’m quite certain I acquired some complicated post-traumatic stress as a trade off for living my dream in South Sudan, I have come a long, long way from where I was when I landed in California.
After all this time, with a vibrant garden growing in that once dark chamber of my heart; I have reached a place of being ok. I’ve made peace in the garden. It’s a place, now, where I can visit anytime and find joy.
I wonder, what new life will be there the next time I go? Will there be Starlings or Red-cheeked Cordon Bleus? Perhaps there will be mango trees, goats, or monkeys. And who knows, maybe one day I’ll sit by that ancient river, listen to the steady rush of murky water, and wonder again, how many stories the Nile contains.
