Going Home in Both Directions
Written by Lindy Lelij, Founder of Mpowerme Coaching
Lindy Lelij is the founder of Mpowerme Coaching. With more than 30 years of leadership and international experience, she helps people navigate migration, cultural transitions, and identity to thrive personally and professionally.
A few weeks ago, I returned to New Zealand after spending two wonderful months travelling through Europe. Three and a bit of those weeks were spent in the Netherlands, catching up with family and old friends and once again immersing myself in the country where I grew up and lived until I was 42.
I still call the Netherlands home. But I also call New Zealand home. It has taken me a surprisingly long time to be able to say both without feeling that somehow I should choose between them.
For many years, every trip to the Netherlands brought the same mixture of emotions. I would be excited about going home and then dread the inevitable goodbyes when it was time to leave again. I kept telling myself that surely, with time, it would become easier. It didn't. At least, not for a long time.
Looking back now, I think I understand why.
The belonging I never realised I had
When I immigrated to New Zealand 23 years ago, I didn't just leave a country. I left behind 42 years of accumulated belonging.
My closest relationships had entered my life at various stages, but there was something sitting underneath them that I had never really thought about. We had grown from the same cultural soil. We shared language, humour, cultural references, and ways of communicating that rarely needed explaining.
My friends and family knew where I came from. They knew earlier versions of me and, perhaps most importantly, I knew that I was "one of us." There was enormous emotional safety in that. I just didn't realise it because I had never lived without it.
This wasn't my first experience of living abroad. In my early twenties, I lived and worked for around eight months in Italy. But that experience felt different. I always knew I would return to the Netherlands. Home remained clearly defined and close enough that, if circumstances required it, I could get on a train or plane and return.
New Zealand was different. At 42, I wasn't temporarily living somewhere else. I had immigrated with my kids in tow, and I didn't know where that decision would ultimately take us.
When your cultural foundation travels with you
As I left the Netherlands, my friends and family there continued to develop personally and professionally, just as I did. Careers changed. Families grew. Life happened.
But my own development was now taking place within another cultural context. I was still Lindy, carrying the same history, values, and cultural upbringing with me. But as I continued developing as a mother, later a grandmother, in my career, and simply as a person, I was doing so in a society whose cultural codes I was still learning.
I made friends, built relationships, and developed a professional life. Yet something felt different.
My Dutch cultural foundation hadn't disappeared. It had travelled with me.
What was missing was the everyday familiarity of living among people who instinctively understood that foundation because they had grown from much of the same cultural soil.
I know of something similar my mother told me when I was growing up. My Dutch mother, who was married to my Kiwi father, spoke fluent English. Yet when things became challenging, English sometimes wasn't enough. She needed her Dutch language to truly express what she was feeling.
We would joke about it, but I understand it differently now.
I also notice it myself when Dutch friends here in New Zealand remind me of an old Dutch saying. Its meaning can easily be explained in English, and most people would understand it. But hearing those familiar words does something more. They carry humour, memories, and a way of looking at life that was around us when we were growing up.
Perhaps that is one of the quieter ways culture lives within us. Some things can be understood across cultures but are felt differently by those raised within the same culture.
I think that was part of what I had been missing.
When home became a choice
During my early return visits to the Netherlands, stepping back into my old world was relatively easy. Only a few years had passed, and I still felt very much like the Lindy who had boarded that plane to New Zealand.
But as more years passed, my yearning for the Netherlands became stronger. Around seven or eight years after immigrating, I increasingly felt that I needed to decide where I should live. Which country made me happiest? Where did I feel most understood? Which lifestyle suited me better? Where did I really belong? New Zealand on one side. The Netherlands on the other. Pros and cons...
I thought eventually one country would win, but instead, I felt increasingly stuck in that battle. By then, New Zealand wasn't simply the country I had moved to anymore. My family, friendships, professional experiences, and memories were accumulating here too. I was developing roots even while questioning whether they were deep enough.
Looking back, I can see that I had been comparing two very different timelines. In the Netherlands, my sense of belonging had been developing for well over four decades. In New Zealand, I was expecting relationships, community, and cultural familiarity to provide that same sense of safety in just a fraction of the time. It couldn't, of course, and perhaps more importantly, it didn't need to.
Another kind of belonging was already growing
New Zealand couldn't give me the cultural familiarity I had known in the Netherlands, and, without realising it, I was using that familiarity as my measure of what belonging should feel like. Neither did New Zealand recreate my Dutch sense of belonging. Instead, I was developing another one. That notion took me years to recognise.
I hadn't arrived in New Zealand empty-handed, waiting to become someone new. I had arrived with a lifetime of memories, experience, and expertise, as well as fears, dreams, and hopes for what this new life might become.
For a long time, part of the journey was about fitting in, learning how things worked here, finding my place, establishing myself professionally, and building new relationships. But somewhere along the way, belonging stopped being about fitting in.
New Zealand had shaped me, but I had also brought myself to New Zealand. I had made my mark here, and life here had made its mark on me. My belonging here didn't need to recreate what I already had. It developed as I did.
Going home in both directions
I felt that again during this recent trip. After three and a half wonderful weeks in the Netherlands, saying goodbye still hurt. I suspect it always will. But I wasn't abandoning one part of myself in order to return to another. Somehow, it felt easier. I was going home in both directions.
I wonder how many immigrants unknowingly compare a lifetime of belonging in one country with the much younger roots they are growing somewhere else. So, if you have immigrated and still find yourself wondering where "home" really is, I would like to leave you with two questions, "When you say you are going home, which direction are you travelling?" Perhaps the harder one, "Are you asking your new home to give you a sense of belonging that took a lifetime to build somewhere else?"
Your answers may be completely different from mine, but perhaps home isn't always asking us to choose.
If you are navigating your own questions around identity, belonging, and finding your place after immigration, I would love to explore them with you. Visit MPowerMe Coaching to book a complimentary discovery call.
Read more from Lindy Lelij
Lindy Lelij, Founder of Mpowerme Coaching
With Māori and European heritage, Lindy knows firsthand what it means to live between cultures. She spent over four decades abroad before returning “home” to Aotearoa New Zealand. Today, as founder of Mpowerme Coaching, Lindy helps people navigate migration, cultural transition, and identity. Through positive psychology, deep journaling, energetic tuning, and narrative reframing, Lindy offers clients practical tools for growth and resilience. Backed by more than 30 years of leadership, governance, and business experience across Health, governance, and international trade, she brings both professional expertise and lived wisdom to her work.
