The Re-Entry Series — Guest Conversations
Real stories from people navigating the road back home — with Doreen Cumberford and Linda Mueller
The Re-Entry Series brought together voices from around the world — people who had lived abroad, loved it, and then faced the complicated truth of coming home. Over thirty episodes, Doreen Cumberford and Linda Mueller explored what repatriation really looks like when the welcome-home party is over and the real work begins.
This page gathers fourteen of those conversations — interviews with cross-cultural therapists, TCK specialists, intercultural trainers, authors, a photographer, a digital nomad, a long-distance grandparenting expert, and repats who've done it more than once. Each one brings a different lens, a different story, and a different kind of wisdom about belonging, identity, and finding your footing again on familiar ground.
Pull up a chair. These conversations were made for you.
Renata Urban Language Training & Intercultural Communications
Renata Urban knows what it costs to cross cultures — and what it costs to cross back. In this compact but rich conversation, she unpacks why coming home can blindside even the most seasoned expat, and what it actually takes to land well. She talks sanctuaries, community, and the emotional truth that repatriation is rarely the relief people expect it to be. If you've ever felt more foreign at home than abroad, this one's for you.
Listen to this episode: https://www.nomadicdiariespodcast.com/re-series-2-a-suitcase-story-with-renata-urban/
Jerry Jones Cross-Cultural Coach
Jerry Jones made the journey from China back to the United States and discovered what so many repats find — that it's the small things that undo you. In this honest and searching conversation, he traces how everyday disruptions quietly stack up into something much harder to name, and why the gap between the homecoming you imagined and the one you actually get can be the loneliest place of all. If you've ever wondered why you weren't coping better, Jerry's insights on expectations, community, and intentional self-care will feel like someone finally switched the light on
Listen to this episode: https://www.nomadicdiariespodcast.com/re-entry-series-5-the-emotional-toll-of-repatriation/
Tanja Pleis Award-Winning International Photographer
Tanja Pleis knows how to capture a moment — but moving her whole life from the US back to Germany asked something different of her entirely. In this conversation with Linda Mueller, she speaks candidly about grieving the loss of her Chicago studio, landing in a town that felt impossibly small after the city she'd loved, and somehow finding a way to take everything she'd built locally and reimagine it for a global audience. Equal parts practical and deeply human, this one is for anyone who has ever had to mourn one version of their life in order to build the next.
Listen to this episode: https://www.nomadicdiariespodcast.com/re-entry-series-7-family-versus-profession/
Dr. Sally McGregor Cross-Cultural Therapist
Grief doesn't always look like grief — and nobody knows this better than Dr. Sally McGregor. In this quietly powerful conversation, she shines a light on the hidden losses that repatriation carries: the ambiguous, unnamed mourning that can catch even the most resilient expat off guard. She talks about what it means to find a therapist who actually gets your world, why your grief is valid even when nobody around you can see what you've lost, and offers a reframe that stays with you long after the episode ends — that grief is simply love with nowhere to go. If you've ever felt like you were falling apart for no good reason, Sally will help you understand exactly why.
Listen to this episode: https://www.buzzsprout.com/admin/2235555/episodes/15875361-the-hidden-grief-of-returning-home-with-dr-sally-mcgregor
Chris O'Shaughnessy TCK & Intercultural Trainer
Chris O'Shaughnessy has lived the complexity he teaches — as a TCK and intercultural trainer, he brings both personal authority and professional insight to one of repatriation's most counterintuitive truths: sometimes the best way to come home is to treat it like a foreign country. In this lively conversation with Doreen, he unpacks the art of arriving with curiosity instead of assumption, and why humor and humility might just be the most underrated tools in any repat's kit. Whether you grew up between cultures or simply built a life far from where you started, Chris will leave you better equipped for the journey back.
https://www.nomadicdiariespodcast.com/re-series-9-from-familiarity-to-foreign/
Craig Storti Author & Repatriation Expert
If there is one person who has mapped the emotional terrain of coming home, it's Craig Storti. With two landmark books on repatriation to his name, Craig brings a depth of understanding that is both scholarly and deeply human. In this rich conversation with Doreen and Linda, he explores why returning to a place you once knew can feel like arriving somewhere entirely new — and why that disorientation, unsettling as it is, might just be the beginning of something remarkable. From the grief of farewells to the quiet work of reinvention, Craig offers the kind of wisdom that doesn't just explain repatriation — it reframes it entirely. Consider this essential listening.
Joel David Bond Explorer, Expat & Reluctant Repat
Twenty years. Multiple continents. And then, suddenly - home! Joel David Bond's repatriation wasn't planned or gradual; it was abrupt, and he'll tell you exactly what that feels like. In this practical and deeply personal conversation with Doreen and Linda, Joel shares how he pieced himself back together after a life-altering return, reaching for everything from inventory apps to personal rituals of closure to claw back a sense of control. But underneath the practical toolkit is something more profound — a philosophy of calculated optimism that turns even the most chaotic transition into an opportunity to rebuild with intention. If your move home wasn't on your terms, Joel's story will feel like a lifeline.
https://www.nomadicdiariespodcast.com/re-series-12-sudden-repatriation/
Sarah Deschamps Author & Expat Life Advocate
Some repatriation stories begin with a choice. Sarah Deschamps' began with a crisis. In this quietly courageous conversation with Linda Mueller, she recounts what it meant to navigate her daughter's critical medical needs from inside the Japanese healthcare system — a world apart from anything she'd known — and what ultimately brought her family home. Sarah's story sits at the intersection of motherhood, medicine, and the particular kind of love that keeps you tethered to a life abroad even when everything is pulling you back. Raw, honest, and ultimately inspiring, this is repatriation at its most human — not a lifestyle choice, but a reckoning.
Dr. Rachel Cason TCK Therapist & Author
For Third Culture Kids, "going home" can be the most disorienting journey of all — because home was never just one place. Dr. Rachel Cason, therapist, TCK specialist, and author of Incredible Lives and the Courage to Live Them, brings both professional expertise and profound empathy to a conversation that many families desperately need to have. In this episode with Doreen, she untangles the hidden grief and identity struggles that can surface when TCKs return to passport countries that feel anything but familiar, and offers a path forward rooted in curiosity, connection, and the quiet courage it takes to belong to more than one world. Essential listening for any parent raising children between cultures.
https://www.nomadicdiariespodcast.com/re-entry-series-16-repatriation-identity/
Amy Suto Writer, Digital Nomad & Author of Nomad Detective
Eight months. Four countries. And then the inevitable question — now what? Amy Suto brings a writer's eye and a nomad's hard-won wisdom to the particular challenge of stepping off the road when the road has become your home. In this conversation with Doreen, she explores the creative life that sustained her journey across South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore, the burnout that can quietly ambush even the most seasoned traveller, and what it actually looks like to reassess your relationship with freedom before it reassesses you. A slightly different angle on repatriation — and all the more valuable for it.
https://www.buzzsprout.com/admin/2235555/episodes/16107318-can-a-true-nomad-ever-really-go-home
Camilla Quintana Repatriation Navigator & Twice-Repat
Not everyone gets to repatriate just once — Camilla Quintana has done it twice, which means she's earned her insights the hard way. In this warm and grounded conversation with Doreen, she speaks honestly about the isolation that can creep in when the life you left no longer quite fits, and offers a simple but powerful reframe: look for what connects you rather than what divides you. Practical, personal, and quietly reassuring, this episode is for anyone who has ever felt like a stranger in the place that was supposed to feel like home.
Polly Collingridge Cultural Intelligence Centre
From the sunshine and sprawl of California back to the particular rhythms of London — Polly Collingridge's repatriation story is one that will resonate with anyone who has ever returned to a home country only to find it has changed, or perhaps realised that they have. In this rich conversation with Doreen and Linda, she brings both personal experience and the rigour of academic research to bear on reverse culture shock, cultural identity, and what it actually means to belong somewhere after you've belonged somewhere else entirely. Intelligent, warm, and practically useful — whether you're navigating your own return or helping others navigate theirs.
Helen Ellis Expert in Long-Distance Grandparenting & Family Reconnection
Repatriation isn't just about you — it ripples out to every relationship you've ever had, including the ones you moved away from. Helen Ellis brings a tender and often overlooked lens to the return journey, focusing on the family bonds that stretch across distance and the delicate work of weaving yourself back into lives that continued without you. In this conversation with Doreen, she offers both warmth and pragmatism — treating home like a new location, arriving with humility, and finding your people all over again. If the grandparent-grandchild relationship across continents has ever kept you up at night, Helen's insights will feel like a gift.
Margaret Ghielmetti Author of Bravish: A Memoir of a Recovering Perfectionist
What happens when the person who left is not quite the person who comes back — and the life waiting at home was built for someone you no longer are? Margaret Ghielmetti's memoir Bravish tackles that question with honesty and hard-won humour, and in this conversation with Linda Mueller she brings the same candour to the repatriation experience. From dismantling old family patterns to building the international connections that keep a globally-minded soul sane, Margaret's journey is a reminder that coming home can be the most courageous — and most clarifying — adventure of all. For anyone who has ever tried to be perfectly fine and found it exhausting.
https://www.nomadicdiariespodcast.com/re-series-29-understanding-repatriation-margaret-ghielmetti/
Enjoy!