Moving to another country or city can be a long-pursued decision, or not entirely intentional. Sometimes we are in a comfort zone we want to leave behind and we look for something new and exciting somewhere else. Other times, factors like a job opportunity, a partner who lives far away, or even an emotional impulse or dilemma lead us to change course and try to build a life in a new place. Whatever the reason, something called migratory grief can show up, just as it did for Elsa Pataky.
The actress spoke about that mix of excitement and emptiness in the fourth episode of the second season of the podcast Todos somos, as she recalled her move to Los Angeles in 2004 to boost her career. It was a choice she made on purpose, but that did not make it any less lonely. “I felt very alone,” she admitted, putting into words an experience many people recognize but do not always dare to name.
In her case, the challenge became fuel. “I love challenges in life, and for me it was a challenge, so I said, ‘Here I am. I’m planting myself here until I decide, until I just can’t anymore.’” The decision meant growing up fast. “I learned so much. It was an incredible life experience, and I learned to live alone. I had always been with people, surrounded and supported by my family.” Suddenly, her familiar world was gone.
In that forced silence, the actress found herself. “You see yourself, you have moments with yourself, you think and meditate a lot, and you start to enjoy that.” A kind of loneliness that can feel scary at first, but that transforms you. “I became a bit more of a hermit, and now I really value moments of solitude and being calm,” she acknowledged.
© Backgrid/The Grosby GroupBut that process, like it is for anyone who leaves the nest, was not without fear. “It comes from that panic of ‘Now what?’ ‘What do I do now?’” Even so, she said she did not experience that grief in an especially intense way, despite feeling very alone. Her story shows how even moves we choose can stir up deep emotions.
For many people, especially from the outside looking in, migrating is often celebrated as a brave act. What is talked about less is what can break inside. Psychiatrist Marian Rojas addresses this in her podcast. In one of her episodes, the mental health expert reflects on the uncertainty, nostalgia, and even sadness that can surface when someone takes the leap and starts over in a new place.
© Elsa PatakyWhat is migratory grief?
The psychiatrist puts words to that quiet emptiness that often accompanies a change of location. At its core, she explains, migratory grief appears when “you miss something, and you have to deal with missing it.” It is not a fleeting or romantic feeling. It is living with absence, because “a part of your heart is still attached” to the place, and everything that comes with it, that you left behind.
As happened with Elsa Pataky, at first you may feel excited, focused on why you made the move. In her case, it was to advance her career. But over time, nostalgia can creep in for everyday things that are no longer close or easy to access.
© GrosbyGroupIt might be the midmorning coffee break with coworkers, the challenge of talking to family because you are in a different time zone, the hug from a close friend who now lives hundreds of miles away, or wanting to spend an afternoon watching a movie together instead of scheduling time to stream it online from a distance.
From that invisible wound, Marian Rojas reminds us that “migrating is not just changing places” and that “belonging is not just living somewhere.” Context matters and deeply shapes the emotional experience. “When you migrate by choice there is grief, but when you migrate for survival there is also trauma.” Uncertainty settles in and affects identity, because “it is hard to build identity when you do not know if you are going to stay.” Living without knowing whether there will be continuity makes it hard to feel whole in the present.
© @elsapatakyThe body and mind pay the price of constant adaptation. And although there are positives like the ones Elsa Pataky mentioned, especially finding yourself, the days can feel heavy. “The brain changes with experience. Nothing is fixed. Everything reorganizes,” she says in the episode. But that change is not neutral. In her words, it “requires constant cognitive energy, all the time.” That is why day to day, “everything feels much harder. Memorizing, paying attention.” It is not a lack of ability. It is a system overloaded by the effort of fitting in.
Why does migratory grief happen?
If you have ever traveled alone for just a few days and felt the urge at the end of the day to grab a drink with your friends or tell someone you trust about what you just saw, then you have had a very small glimpse of what migratory grief can feel like. In those moments, you feel the absence of company. Someone trying to rebuild their life somewhere new often experiences those feelings.
As Marian Rojas explains, “when you migrate, you lose your external home, and the only real stability is in your body.” What shows up next should not surprise us. “It is a nervous system trying to adapt to something new,” and “it is normal to notice fatigue, fear, inner voices, that it is hard to cope.” Naming it helps you stop seeing it as a personal failure.
© @elsapatakyFar from starting from scratch, Marian Rojas insists that “when someone migrates, they do not arrive empty.” They arrive “with memories, recipes, traditions, their way of seeing the world.” The challenge is “to create a new home with what you carried in your heart, in your mind, and in your memories without letting it go.” It is not about forgetting, but about integrating.
How to start creating a home in a new place
Although Elsa Pataky said she knew she could always return home, and that gave her a sense of security, that is not everyone’s reality. That is why building that sense of home Marian Rojas talks about is essential. It does not happen overnight, and it does not depend only on the place itself. There are some strategies that can help:
- Start with your body: If your only real stability is there, learning to regulate it is key. Sleep routines, daily movement, familiar meals. It is about adopting practices that help you function better and sending your nervous system the message that not everything is a threat.
© Elsa Pataky- Connect with others: You do not need a huge circle, just meaningful connections. You can download apps to meet people for shared activities, sign up for a workshop that interests you, or take group fitness classes. Belonging is built on repetition, seeing each other, texting, sharing quiet moments. That is when the feeling of being a foreigner all the time starts to fade.
- Anchor your life in small rituals: Go to the same coffee shop, cook a favorite recipe from home on Sundays, walk a familiar route. Routines create predictability, and predictability creates safety. They do not replace the country you left behind, but they give you emotional ground to stand on while everything else shifts.
- Accept the duality: Do not choose between where you came from and where you are now. Let both exist. Integrating what you left with what you are building is, in itself, a form of home.
© Dave Benett/Getty Images for NatAs the psychiatrist concludes, “home is not a place or a house, but something simpler.” It can be “your body learning to calm down. A couple of people who call you by your name. A place where little by little you stop feeling like a foreigner and feel affection, community, routines.” In the end, migrating is “learning to live with two maps inside you.”
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