When I moved to Morocco in 2015, every day held a story that I was eager to share with anyone who cared to read. By contrast, returning to Canada in 2019 has left me largely wordless. I had not written a thing since my return, when I came across a “receiving letter” that my thoughtful employers had written for all departing staff before we left. The idea was to prepare us, and the people who care about us, for the “reverse culture shock” that was about to hit us when we returned to a home that no longer felt like home. Here is that letter, and the thoughts it provoked.

So here it is: all that I have left unsaid since the day four months ago when I made my last voyage between the two places that have been home to me for the last four years: one, the place of my upbringing and my roots, the other, the place of my uprooting, and re-rooting, my redefinition of myself as “one who goes forth.”