Supporting migrants, expatriates, and people living between cultures, experiencing grief, identity shifts, life transitions, and relationship challenges.

Building a Life in Australia?

You have come to Australia to begin a new chapter in your life. Perhaps it was a long-held dream. Perhaps you followed a career opportunity, a love-relationship, or simply the desire for a different life.

You do not regret the decision. And yet, there are moments when you find yourself missing home more than you think you should.

Not enough to return. But enough to feel the ache.

You miss the small things.The cultural references that needed no explanation. The non-verbal communications transmitted by eye contact, you knew exactly the ways to approach all kinds of problems, whom to call, where to ask for support. The familiar faces, the familiar seasons, the smell of the bakery around the corner.

Meanwhile, life back home continues without you. Family members grow older. Friends marry, separate, have children, and build lives you are no longer part of in quite the same way.

And here, even after many years, there can still be a sense of starting over.

Building friendships. Finding community. Learning unfamiliar, unspoken social rules. Navigating a partner’s culture. Living between languages. Explaining parts of yourself that once required no explanation at all. And come to understand that some humour can just not be translated.

Many people are surprised by the grief that accompanies migration.

Researchers sometimes call it cultural bereavement or emigration grief; some even refer to this as “transitional death”. Whatever name we give it, it is real. I have been there!

As a migrant to Australia myself, I understand the complex mix of gratitude, opportunity, loss, and longing that can coexist at the same time. You can love your life here and still grieve what was left behind.

If this resonates with you, perhaps it is time to talk.

A different kind of support

Together, we gently explore:

• emotional blueprints shaped by your history

• meaning making of grief, loss, and life transitions

• the deeper questions that often don’t have just one answer.

  This process often leads to a special kind of change—one that feels more integrated, more self-trusting, and further aligned with who you are.

Get in touch

Inga Rodenberg

Email

Phone

SMS: +61 422 621 465

ingarodenberg@therapist.net

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• grief counselling

• relationship patterns therapy

• therapy for relationship issues

• counselling for life transitions