What Home Means When You Live Between Two Countries

When I go back to Zimbabwe, someone always tells me I have changed. My accent has softened, apparently, and I ask for things too directly. When I am in the UK, someone always asks where I am really from. For a long time, I felt that I did not fully belong in either place.

If you live between two countries, you may know this feeling well. It is a kind of quiet grief: for the people and places you left, for the version of yourself who stayed, and for a sense of home that feels just out of reach.

The gift and the cost of in-between

There are gifts in this life. We carry two ways of seeing. We can laugh at jokes in more than one language. We understand that the way things are done here is not the only way things can be done. Our children inherit a wider world.

There are costs too. Missed funerals. Video calls instead of hugs. The pressure to provide for family at home while building a life here. The fear that we are losing something we cannot name.

Home is not only a place. It is being fully known and still welcome.

Strangers and pilgrims

Scripture has a great deal to say to people in between. Abraham left his home without knowing where he was going. The Israelites lived as exiles in Babylon and were told to build houses, plant gardens and seek the peace of the city where they had been sent. Hebrews describes God’s people as strangers and pilgrims on the earth, looking for a better country.

That does not erase our longing for home. It reframes it. Our deepest belonging was never meant to rest on a passport, a postcode or a perfect accent. It rests on being known by God and welcomed into His family, a family that includes every nation and tongue.

Building home wherever you are

Practically, I have found three things help. Keeping traditions alive, especially food, language and music, so that home travels with us. Building community here, rather than waiting to feel settled before we invest in people. And being honest about grief when it comes, instead of pretending that distance does not hurt.

If you feel like a visitor in both places, you are not alone, and you are not lost. You are a woman with roots in more than one soil. That can be a source of strength.

About the author

Pat Ricia is a Zimbabwean writer and entrepreneur based in the UK, writing about faith, purpose, womanhood and intentional living. Read her story.