The Second Arrival

When we moved to the Netherlands in 2003, a wise man said something I have never forgotten: whenever we move somewhere new, there are really two arrivals. At the time, I thought I understood what he meant, but over the years, having lived in a few different countries and known plenty of others who have done the same, I have realised just how true it is.

The first arrival is the obvious one. You turn up at the new house, unload the boxes, work out where everything goes, find the nearest shop, learn the road to work and slowly begin making this strange new place feel a little more familiar. Your address has changed, your furniture is in different rooms and, at least on paper, your life has moved somewhere new. You have physically arrived.

But then, he said, there is another arrival, and this one is much harder to put a date on. It happens quietly.

One day you suddenly realise that things that once seemed strange or took a surprising amount of energy now feel normal and require far less effort. You know where you are going without really thinking about it. You begin to understand some of the little cultural things that used to confuse you. You stop comparing everything with the place you came from. Somehow, without really noticing, you have emotionally arrived.

I have seen how differently that second arrival happens. For some people, it comes within days or weeks. For others, it can take months, even years. We each bring our own story, so there is no simple formula for how quickly somewhere new begins to feel like home.

I have always loved an expression used by the beautiful people of Newfoundland, Canada. They have a lovely phrase for someone who is not originally from there: “come from away.” I love it because it recognises that you can live somewhere, contribute, belong and become part of a place while still carrying somewhere else with you.

The more I have thought about those two arrivals, the more I have realised that they apply to far more than moving countries. All of us keep moving into new places physically and emotionally. We begin new jobs, relationships and seasons of life.

We become parents, grandparents, leaders, carers, retirees or empty nesters. We experience loss, success, disappointment and unexpected opportunity. Sometimes the outside of our life changes very quickly while the inside takes a wee bit longer to catch up.

You can walk into a new office while part of you is still in the old one. You can move house while your heart is still sitting around the kitchen table you left behind. You can take on a new leadership role and still wonder whether you really belong there. The change has happened, but that does not necessarily mean we have fully arrived.

And I wonder if there is another arrival beyond the physical and emotional ones: a spiritual arrival. It is the point where we stop simply recognising that life has changed and begin to notice what the change is doing in us.

Maybe it is making us more patient, less certain, more courageous or simply more open to something we could not see before. For me, that may be the deepest arrival of all.

This is part of what I explore in The Imaginal Coach . Real change is rarely neat.

There is often an in-between space where the old version of us no longer quite fits, but we are not completely sure what is coming next. We have left somewhere, but we have not quite arrived. I don’t think that is necessarily something to fix. It may simply be part of how we become.

The problem is that we are not always very patient with ourselves in these seasons. We assume that because the boxes are unpacked, we should feel at home; because the new role has started, we should feel confident; or because a difficult season has ended, we should have moved on. But people don’t change according to a timetable. Sometimes the deeper parts of us simply need a little longer to catch up.

And the funny thing about the second arrival is that we often only recognise it afterwards. Something that used to feel difficult suddenly doesn’t. A place that felt strange begins to feel normal. A role that once felt too big starts to fit. What used to take lots of thought and energy becomes something we simply do.

Then one day we look around and realise that, somewhere along the way, we arrived.

So perhaps the question this week is not simply, “Where am I going?” but something a little quieter: Where in my life am I still arriving?

Maybe physically you are already there, but emotionally you are still travelling. Maybe emotionally you have settled, but spiritually you are still working out what this new chapter means.

Or perhaps there is an area of your life where you have already had your second arrival and simply haven’t noticed it yet.

There is no correct timetable for arriving. Sometimes it takes a few days. Sometimes it takes a few years. But I find something hopeful in knowing that what feels unfamiliar today will not necessarily always feel that way.

Somewhere along the way, the new road simply becomes the road home.