There's a particular kind of grief that people who've migrated often carry, and it's rarely named. It sits underneath the practical adjustment (visa, job, housing, finding a good place for coffee), and it doesn't resolve when those things resolve. It's a grief for something less concrete than a place. It's grief for the version of yourself that existed there.
Australia is a country of migrants, but our clinical conversation about migration and mental health is thin. Many first- and second-generation Australians carry this and assume it's just how they are.
What migration grief actually is
It's the loss of:
- Fluency in your own life — knowing how things work, what to expect, who to trust
- An identity that was legible to the people around you
- A language in which you were fully yourself, if the migration involved a new one
- Extended family and community, or the daily texture of them
- Rituals, food, sounds, seasons that anchored you
- The version of yourself who was the default, rather than the exception
Some of these can be rebuilt. Others cannot. Both need to be grieved.
Why it often goes unspoken
Because saying "I miss home" often feels like ingratitude to the country that took you in or the parents who made the sacrifice. Second-generation adults sometimes feel it isn't theirs to grieve — they weren't the ones who left. But the loss is transmitted across generations, and the grief travels with it.
It also often goes unspoken because the practical adjustment tends to look fine. School, career, home. All the boxes ticked. The grief doesn't fit into those boxes.
How it shows up
- A quiet, chronic low mood that isn't clearly depression
- Difficulty feeling fully present in the new place, even years in
- An intense reaction to specific songs, smells, or foods
- Feeling like you belong in neither place fully
- Guilt about "not being grateful enough"
- Difficulty passing your culture on to your kids in a way that feels intact
- Complicated feelings when visiting the country you left
What helps
Naming it, first. Migration grief is real, and it has clinical weight. Treating it as legitimate isn't self-indulgence.
Cultural community, wherever you can find it. This doesn't replace what was lost, but it provides continuity for parts of you that would otherwise atrophy.
Language. If you spoke another language and haven't kept it up, resuming can return access to versions of yourself that don't exist in English.
Therapy with a psychologist who takes cultural identity seriously. This is one of the reasons cultural competence in therapy matters — grief around migration doesn't get properly held when the therapist doesn't recognise it as grief.
A note on second-generation experience
If your parents migrated and you were born here, or arrived very young, you often carry a specific version of this: the grief of a version of yourself you never fully had access to. That is real, and it's worth working with, especially if you're now raising kids of your own and trying to figure out what to pass on.
I offer sessions in English or Malay, and hold particular attention for cultural identity in the work. If any of this resonates, a 15-minute intro call is a warm place to start.