Latest / Your People: Finding Community, Friendship & Belonging / When You Don't Know the References: Making Friends as an Expat | Your People
Transcript
- You’re sitting at a dinner party, and someone laughs at a joke you didn’t understand because it relied on a memory you no longer have. In that split second, you feel the ground shift beneath your feet, not because you’re lonely, but because you are suddenly, violently aware of who you used to be. I want you to think about the last time you felt truly disconnected from the people around you. Maybe it was in a coffee shop, or perhaps it was right here, in your own home, when a neighbor asked about your hometown and you realized you couldn’t explain why that place still mattered to you. For so many of us who have moved across borders—whether that’s an ocean away or just a few states over—we carry this strange, quiet grief. It’s not the grief of leaving; we knew that was coming. It’s the grief of arriving and realizing that the shorthand we used to speak in is gone. The cultural references that bound us together, the inside jokes that signaled belonging, the unspoken rules of how to navigate a room—they’ve all evaporated. And what’s left is this hollow space where our identity used to live. Let’s linger there for a second. That feeling of being untethered isn’t a failure of your social skills. It’s a natural response to losing the soil that grew you. There is a specific kind of exhaustion that comes with being the translator of your own life. When you move to a new culture, you aren’t just learning a new language; you are learning a new way to be human. You have to decode every gesture, every pause, every silence. Is that smile friendly? Or is it polite? Is that directness honesty? Or is it rudeness? Your brain is running a background process twenty-four hours a day, filtering reality through a lens that feels cracked. I remember my first month in London, trying to make friends with colleagues. We’d go for drinks after work, and they’d talk about cricket matches I hadn’t watched since kindergarten back home. I would nod. I would laugh at the right times. But inside, I was screaming. Not because I was angry, but because I was mourning the loss of ease. I missed the version of myself that didn’t have to think before speaking. That version of me felt like a ghost, haunting the edges of these new conversations. And you start to wonder if you’ll ever find people who see the real you, or if you’re destined to only ever be the exotic guest at the table. We live in a world that promises instant connection. We swipe, we match, we meet, and we are expected to bond over happy hours and group chats. But deep friendships—the ones that actually hold us up when the walls close in—don’t work on that timeline. Especially for expats, the pressure to ‘make it’ socially can be crushing. You look at locals who have grown up together, who share decades of history, and you feel inadequate. You feel like you’re starting from zero while everyone else started from a thousand. But here is the truth that nobody tells you: those local friendships were built on convenience and childhood trauma, not necessarily on intention. You have the opportunity to build something different. You can choose your people based on who they are now, not who they were when they were twelve. It’s slower, yes. It requires more vulnerability. But it is also deeper. Because you aren’t bonding out of habit; you are bonding out of choice. And that choice carries a weight that old habits simply cannot match. So, where do you find these people? If you stop looking for your old community and start looking for your current one, you might miss the mark entirely. The most beautiful connections for expats often happen in the margins. They happen in classes where you are all beginners together. In volunteer groups where the focus is on a task, not on small talk. In spaces where difference is the point, not the problem. I found my closest friend in my new city not through a networking event, but through a terrible pottery class. We were both clumsy. We were both frustrated. We shared the same struggle of trying to center clay with hands that didn’t know the rhythm. That shared incompetence became our bridge. We didn’t need shared memories to connect; we needed shared presence. We were building something new, brick by awkward brick. And in that messiness, we found each other. You don’t need to be fluent in the culture to be vulnerable. You just need to be willing to show up as a beginner again. To admit that you don’t know the rules. To let people see you fumble. This journey is also about reclaiming your narrative. For a long time, I thought my expat status was a deficit. I thought I had less to offer because I lacked context. But slowly, I realized that my lack of context gave me a unique perspective. I could ask the questions that confused everyone else. I could see the absurdities in local customs that others accepted blindly. I could bring stories from elsewhere into the mix. My difference wasn’t a wall; it was a window. When you stop apologizing for not knowing the reference points, you invite others to teach you—and in doing so, you give them permission to be curious about you. You create a dynamic of mutual exchange rather than one-sided performance. You become a curator of your own experience. You decide what parts of your past you want to share, and what parts you want to leave behind. You get to define what belonging looks like for you, rather than letting society dictate it. That is a radical act of self-definition. It’s messy, and it’s imperfect, but it’s yours. That’s the quiet part out loud. We often hide this fear—that we are fundamentally unlovable without our familiar markers. That if we strip away our nationality, our accent, our shared history, there’s nothing left. But the opposite is true. What remains is the core of who you are. Your kindness. Your humor. Your resilience. Your capacity to listen. These things travel with you. They don’t need translation. When you sit with someone and truly listen, when you offer comfort without needing to fix their pain, when you share a moment of genuine joy—you are speaking a universal language. The expat experience teaches us that belonging isn’t about fitting into a pre-made box. It’s about creating space for yourself and inviting others to fill it with you. It’s about finding the people who are willing to sit in the discomfort of not knowing, alongside you. Who are willing to say, ‘I don’t get it, but I’m here anyway.’ That is the foundation of real community. Not shared history, but shared presence. Let’s talk about community as a verb. It’s not a place you arrive at. It’s a practice you engage in. Every time you introduce yourself fully, even when it feels risky. Every time you ask a question instead of making an assumption. Every time you show up to a gathering alone and stay until you connect with one person. That is the work. It’s tedious. It’s hard. Some days it feels like shouting into a void. But the void answers back. It always does. You will find your people. They might be other expats, navigating the same liminal space. They might be locals who have lived abroad themselves and remember that disorientation. Or they might be people who have never left home but possess a rare openness to the unfamiliar. The common thread isn’t geography; it’s curiosity. It’s the willingness to be changed by another person. So, keep showing up. Keep being curious. Keep trusting that the right people are looking for you, too. You are not lost. You are just finding your way home, to yourself, and to each other. Take a deep breath. You’re doing better than you think. I’m so glad you’re here. Until next time, keep listening, keep connecting, and remember: you belong exactly where you are, even if you haven’t figured out the map yet. Bye for now.