By Doreen Cumberford

Most conversations about global mobility end at the border. At Nomadic Diaries we believe this is where the real work of adaptation starts.

We completed last season with SIETAR’s own beloved Daniel Yalowitz and a rangy conversation that ultimately hit on the heart of our intercultural field: ”Is there more?” 

This September/October Nomadic Diaries returns with Season 12. After taking time off to focus on health and family we will start releasing them by-weekly. 

I am calling it What Happens Next.

There are 12 conversations with authors, intercultural consultants, and long-time global nomads about the part of the mobility story that rarely gets airtime: what happens after the move, or after the return, or after the years spent abroad have quietly rearranged who you are.

I think that for SIETAR members, this territory is familiar. It's the space between all the frameworks: after Bridges' transition curve resolves, after the culture shock chart flattens out, what's happening to the person with boots on the ground.

A few of the threads this season covers are:

• The reverse shock of coming home. Guests speak to what it's like to return to a passport country that no longer fits, and what that means for how we prepare clients for repatriation, not just departure.

• The body's memory of movement. One conversation looks at repatriation through a medical lens, the physical toll of chronic relocation that our field talks about far less than the psychological one.

• Distance parenting and grandparenting. As global careers stretch across generations, we're seeing an entire cohort of families managing intimacy across time zones. This season asks what that actually requires.

• Teaching a culture from outside it. A conversation on presenting Korean culture while living in Germany raises a question many of us sit with professionally: how do you represent an identity you no longer inhabit daily?

• Self-compassion as a mobility skill. Increasingly, the research and coaching conversation is turning inward, not just to the adaptation strategies, but focusing on how well we value and treat ourselves in the process of adapting.  

This season is seeking to connect the dots between lived experience and theory. I hope you will find it a useful companion for when you are washing the dishes, walking the dog, waiting for an airplane or recovering from jetlag! You will definitely hear voices you recognize in this season.

What Happens Next with new episodes every two weeks. You can find Nomadic Diaries wherever you listen to podcasts, or at nomadicdiariespodcast.com. If you know someone whose story belongs in this conversation, someone still figuring out what comes after the move, I'd love an introduction.

Doreen Cumberford is the host of Nomadic Diaries, author of Life in the Camel Lane, and an intercultural trainer and coach based in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico – that is 4 hours away from Mexico City!!