Iman, 38 yrs, Lebanon-USA
I am Lebanese-American, born and raised in the USA. The oldest sibling to two younger brothers, I grew up in a conservative home in the Midwest suburbs. I always had an itch to leave. Against my family’s encouragement, I received my undergraduate and masters studies in studio fine arts. After graduation I took a rather impulsive decision to leave the USA and live abroad. I found a job coincidentally in Lebanon and moved the following month. I was employed for two years before I started my own pottery studio, which turns 9yrs old this year.
What’s the biggest life transition you have had?
The biggest life transition that impacted me was not my move to a foreign country, but the return to the one I was born.
In 2021 Beirut was in the middle of terrible times and things got beyond unbearable, that I had to leave to catch my breath. I went to my parent’s house, my childhood home, no clue what I was planning to do, or for how long I was going to stay. All I knew was I felt my entire life that I had built over the past 10 years had been destroyed and no longer existed.
My parents had never been very supportive of my life decisions, as they were too far out of the box for them. I felt like a failure and surrounded by people who disapproved of me. I clearly didn’t realize it at the time, but later the act of beginning work in the USA would be the best professional move I probably never would have decided to take on my own if I hadn’t felt there was no other option.
Why it’s harder to return after 12 years than it was to leave at 26yrs old?
1. I have nothing to return to. My family home is gone (not that I wanted to live there anyways).
2. I no longer had good close friends, 12 years of barely keeping in touch, and one or two I managed to keep now had their families and kids.
3. My way of living became so different, I learned an entirely opposite way to live so much so that I became a foreigner in both countries.
4. I will always be comparing it to how I have been living and nothing will ever come close.
When I left, I was blissfully unaware, I was excited for a new life, eager for new experiences and felt I had my entire life ahead of me. I am less eager, tired and looking for comfort now.
I feel I am late, behind on any great opportunity people that stayed have taken advantage of, and am single and unattached at a very late stage in life to where there is no longer the possibility of such.
How did you handle this transition?
I immediately jumped into work, I got a few projects and then signed myself up for a trade show in NYC. Things for the most part were OK, I had huge hurdles in front of me each step of the way figuring out an entirely new system, and learning the way things were done in this ‘’foreign country.’’ Each new hurdle would cause me massive amounts of stress and anxiety and I made so many mistakes that cost me a lot of money, but I somehow managed my way thru each of them with my stubbornness.
What were the emotions felt during this transition? What’s the biggest emotion you struggled with?
The emotions ranged from being OK, overwhelming anxiety and then to unbearable depression. The winter was void of work and my parents were gone for two months so I was alone in the house with my depression. Without actually being suicidal, it was the first time I ever felt losing the will to live and wanting it all to end.
“I believed the situation was permanent and there was no way out, but in fact nothing is permanent, even if we want it to be.”
What is something that you have now that if you could go back, you would tell yourself?
The new and overwhelming task at hand that you see no way of solving and is causing you crippling anxiety, will at some point be part of the status quo. Even though I can see this from my experiences, I still am not good at it keeping this in mind and in practice.
When you rehash this transition again, how can you use it for future life changes?
I can see the strength I had, and what I was able to accomplish through the darkest moment of my life. And that should give me confidence in myself.
What was the best advice you had at the time from a friend, a loved one, or a mentor?
There were two: 1. At the very beginning of the transition Nada helped me to realize that it was not me that did something wrong to end up in that situation, when I was feeling like a failure in mine and my parent’s eyes.
2. There was a period in the winter when I was at my lowest that my cousin came and sat with me and talked to me. I remember I couldn’t even lift my head from the couch, and even though I don’t remember the word he said, he put strength and courage in my head with them.
How did it make you grow? What were the learnings?
I think I believed the situation was permanent and there was no way out, but in fact nothing is permanent, even if we want it to be. It was a process of tackling each obstacle as it came, and then moving on to the next, and the next, until eventually I was experienced at something new