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MAPPING THE HYBRID LIFE: Abandoning the map in order to live more fully… here are highlights from our Dialogue2010 roundtable discussion.
Moderator ROSE DENIZ: What have you had to leave behind in order to live more fully?
CONCERN FOR LEAVING LOVED ONES: “You have to make very hard decisions that are going to hurt the people that you care about perhaps, especially if you’re moving abroad away from your family. You have to be a bit uncaring, and at the same time, have a lot of empathy and compassion to help people deal with your decision. Plus, I’d say we never fully leave anything behind. Some of it gets put aside. We can’t deal with or use it at this particular time but that doesn’t mean that in the future we can’t pick it up again.”– Catherine Yiğit
ANGER AT HAVING TO CHOOSE BETWEEN TWO WORLDS: “I’ve come to really embrace the fact that it’s actually liberating to be part of two worlds and that I could choose the best from each of them and become my own person.” – Elmira Bayraslı
BEING A SOLE OPERATOR, IMAGE OF AN EXTROVERT: “Before I could pick and choose everything. But as I settled into the hybrid life, suddenly I was having tea in a way that’s socially acceptable but not my choice. It was part of a bigger choice. People back home say they’re exploring the world through me but I’m exploring vicariously! I don’t want to be in a crowded bus with a back pack. Bushwhacking my way through the jungle. I’ve done those things and don’t like it. I’m pioneering plenty.” – Anastasia Ashman
IDEA OF HOME, HAVING A PLACE OF ORIGIN: “Growing up as a Third Culture kid, I don’t have a place I consider home. Since I’ve gotten married, I do have a home with my husband. So while I had to let go of this idea of having a stable home like a lot of my friends did, or knowing that ‘I’m from Milwaukee’, I have a person that I’ve built a home with.” – Sezin Koehler
SECURITY OF THE AMERICAN DREAM: “I had to leave behind a feeling of security, of what I should have, the house and the husband and the car and the 2.5 kids. I had to leave that definition of things: ‘I’m a Southern Californian and I have all this stuff.’ I found myself and my happiness by putting myself out there and taking the risk.”
– Catherine Salter Bayar
EXPECTATIONS HOW LIFE WOULD TURN OUT: “I left security about what I was going to have in my life, my expectations about what it was going to be. Because any expectations of the life I wanted to have in California is certainly not what it’s turning out to be here. And it’s more exciting not to know. I have plans about what I’d like it to be, and we move towards that as much as possible, but not to be attached to anything is very freeing.”
– Tara Lutman Ağacayak
RESPONSIBILITIES AND OBLIGATIONS TO PARENTS: “I had to leave behind the idea that it’s my responsibility as a daughter to live close to my parents. I always thought I’d live within distance for an easy weekend home by car. I need to support them in every way I can as they age, but I’m free to live where I want. I wasn’t born into this world with a set of restrictions on what I could do and where I could live. Realizing my first priority is not my parents, it’s the partnership I have with my husband. — Karen Armstrong Quartarone
HOPPING BACK AND FORTH, PERSONALLY AND PROFESSIONALLY: “For years I had one foot in the Netherlands and one in the United States. Keeping myself from really finding a life in America by remaining so attached to the old country, which had to do with my mother. But what I really had to leave behind was recognition in the eyes of other people. Everybody in the arts scene knew who I was. I knew everybody. I had access to a lot of possibilities, and coming to Seattle I felt invisible. In order to become visible, I had to make a decision to really be in America.” – Judith van Praag
FEAR OF BEING IMPERFECT, ATTACHMENT TO ‘STUFF’: “I went to China and couldn’t speak any Chinese at all. I had to make mistakes in public all the time. Getting over that really helped. It’s OK not to be perfect, learning along the way. Also, when I moved to China from the US, I had to leave behind so much stuff. When we moved to Idaho because my husband had gotten into graduate school, gas prices were so high we ended up selling all our furniture. It was the last thing I wanted to do but it was so liberating.” — Jocelyn Eikenburg
IMPATIENCE: A WORK IN PROGRESS! “I can relate to the idea of perfectionism and wanting to speak perfectly in Turkish, wanting to be able to see my plans and my goals manifest. What I had to leave behind was impatience. It’s still a work in progress. I don’t think it comes naturally to me at all. I want things to happen when I want them to happen. That is something I have to deal with daily in living fully.– Rose Deniz
creating a personal compass
Question for expat+HAREM community: What have you left behind in pursuing a hybrid life?
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Other highlights from Dialogue2010: Mapping the hybrid life
Answers to Rose’s request to name 3 CHARACTERISTICS TO LEAD A HYBRID LIFESTYLE
Answers to Rose’s question WHAT HAVE YOU HELD ONTO TO LIVE AN EXPANSIVE LIFE?
Answers to Rose’s question HOW DO YOU DEFINE A HYBRID LIFESTYLE?
Coming soon: Answers to Rose’s question HOW HAS YOUR WORLDVIEW SHIFTED DUE TO LOCATION?
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