Going on a trip is good, but you’ll have to come back home! How to prepare your return ?

History a return that goes wrong: Anais tears

When I came back from my little tour in Asia (15 months), my son who was still living at home at the time, suggested to meet Anaïs, one of his friends who had just returned from a year-long trip to Australia.
I am delighted, she comes home for an aperitif. Anaïs is 20 years old, she is funny, talkative and smiles a lot. She exudes self-confidence. She comes into the kitchen like a fresh and fragrant breeze. Her doll’s face is crowned by a fire of blond hair. She is very pretty and in her eyes I see blue skies, orange deserts and turquoise seas.
I bombard her with questions, what, where, who, how? I get attached to her personal story. What did she live there, what did she learn? Is she different? She flares up, gesticulates, fidgets in her chair. She radiates joy, her face glows, her smile is luminous. Australia was wahooo, Wow, Yahoooo!
After flying over plains and deserts, friends, adventures I ask her how is the return, the landing, the readjustment to France.
Ouch, ouch, ouch, there she is, melting into tears. Her sadness is so sudden that my son leaves the table, embarrassed, giving me an angry look as if I had said something terrible.

“It’s the first time in a month that someone is interested in my trip! Nobody ever asks me questions! It’s total omerta!”  

She’s overwhelmed by real despair mixed with anger. I understand all too well. My Himalayas, my crocodiles and my jungles interest no one, especially not my children.
But at least I’m 45 years old! I have already conquered the nightmares of babies, the demons of the teenagers, the backlash when “I thought I was doing well” and the bitter failures. 

Anaïs takes a real slap in the face. She doesn’t understand. She feels this situation as a cruel injustice, a putting in the closet, a violent ostracism.

What the hell is going on in this family? Aren’t they happy to have their daughter back after this long journey?

They are crazy with joy to see their little one again, they are certainly the best parents in the world. But they don’t want to recognize the “new” Anais, they feel they have found her only to lose her even more. They don’t recognize their protégée (who no longer needs to be protected), their little one (who has grown up) and they take the slap in the face of their life: their beloved child is no longer their child. She has become an adult: she no longer needs them.
She has gone far away, has become attached to other people, has discovered a world of sharks, kangaroos, rattlesnakes… a world without them, a foreign world from which they are excluded. They feel useless, overwhelmed.
What else can they do but impose silence on her to protect themselves from the affront, they who have been the centre of her life up to now?

Anais returns home with her heart and head full of things to share, but nobody wants to take part in the feast

What’s more, the light, the joy that Anaïs feels when she is inflamed by these adventure stories makes them jealous! She has to hear, “Since it was so good, why didn’t you stay there?“.
Of course, it was a crisis situation and since then, I hope things have reorganized, become more dispassionate. Anaïs loves her relatives and her relatives love her too. Parents don’t become useless when their little ones grow up. Children don’t become guilty of betrayal when they grow up either.

This story has upset me so much and I met so many Anaïs on my way that since then, I write for those who leave and come back hoping that it will help them to overcome this difficult moment.