Between Worlds: Finding Identity and Belonging in a Multicultural Setting
- fleurlrichards
- Nov 14
- 3 min read
Many of us who live across borders carry a quiet question inside us: who am I, when I no longer belong to just one place?
In the Chamonix–Geneva region, it’s common to meet people whose lives stretch across languages, passports, and landscapes. We build homes far from where we began; we raise children in hybrid traditions; we form relationships with partners who grew up with different emotional vocabularies from our own. This multicultural life can be rich and generative, but it can also unsettle our sense of identity and belonging in ways that are rarely spoken about.
As a therapist working with expatriates, international families, and people navigating complex cultural narratives, I see this often: the subtle, emotional labour of living between worlds.
The Silent Effort of Being Many Selves
When you move through different cultural environments, you unconsciously adapt your tone, posture, humour, expectations, even your sense of what is “normal”. This shift isn’t fake, it’s survival, sensitivity, and intelligence.
But with time, it can create an inner fracture:
Which version of me is real?
Where do I feel most like myself?
Why do I feel slightly out of sync, even in places I love?
For many international residents, expats, cross-border workers, and third-culture individuals, these questions are part of everyday emotional life. Yet they often remain unspoken.
The Pressure to “Integrate” Perfectly
In multicultural environments, there’s an unhelpful myth that if we just try hard enough, we should fit seamlessly:
understand the unspoken rules
master the language
parent “correctly” in a new system
work without making cultural mistakes
feel grateful, not conflicted
But identity doesn’t shift at the speed of bureaucracy or language apps. Belonging isn’t a checklist, it’s a relationship.
When we push ourselves to adapt without acknowledging the inner cost, we may feel:
never fully “enough” in any culture
emotionally flat or disconnected
caught between people-pleasing and self-protection
grief for a self that feels far away
These are not signs of failure. They are signs of a deep transition.
Grieving the Culture You Left (Even If You Chose to Leave)
There is often a quiet, unrecognised grief beneath multicultural living:the loss of the effortless belonging we once had.
This grief can appear in small, intimate moments:
forgetting words in your mother tongue
feeling “foreign” in your home country
raising children who belong differently than you do
missing humour, food, or rituals that shaped your childhood
navigating workplaces where your instincts don’t match the culture
Migration, whether voluntary or not, creates an emotional rupture. It's normal to feel dislocated at times, even when you’re building a life you deeply value.
Identity as a Fluid, Evolving Story
One of the most healing realisations for clients is this: you don’t have to choose one version of yourself.
You can be shaped by more than one language, one landscape, one history. You can carry multiple cultural identities without betraying any of them. This complexity is not confusion, it’s richness.
Belonging becomes less about “Where do I fit?” and more about: How can I create space inside myself for all that I am becoming?
Through therapy, many people begin to integrate the parts of themselves that have been stretched across borders. They learn to honour their past without letting it limit their future, and to settle more gently into who they are now.
A Different Kind of Belonging
Belonging, in a multicultural life, often grows in small relational moments:
a friend who understands your accent and your humour
a partner who learns your cultural emotional language
a child who helps you rediscover your roots
a ritual from home that anchors your present
a therapist who sees the whole mosaic of your identity
These little connections create something steady, an internal belonging that does not depend on geography.
If You’re Living Between Cultures, You’re Not Alone
Struggling with identity or belonging in a multicultural setting doesn’t mean you’re lost. It means you’re human, sensitive, and in the process of becoming.
If this resonates with your experience, as an expatriate, cross-border worker, international parent, or someone living far from home, you are welcome to explore it more deeply.
If you’d like support integrating your cultural story or navigating a sense of identity between worlds, I offer therapy (online or in person) for adults in the Chamonix–Geneva region.
