Start Here — All 28 Letters in Order

dearimmigrant.com

Twenty-Eight Letters to the Immigrant

From someone who crossed to someone who is about to. The paperwork, the first winter, the money that surprises you, what homesickness actually is, what the country owes you, what you owe the people back home. Start at Letter 01.

READ IN ORDER — 28 LETTERS

01	Before You Pack
02	The Paperwork Is the First Test
03	What the Visa Does Not Give You
04	The First Winter
05	Money Will Surprise You (not yet published)
06	Call Home, But Know What Calling Costs (not yet published)
07	The Job Is Not the Life (not yet published)
08	Nobody Is Coming to Help You (not yet published)
09	Build Your Own People (not yet published)
10	What Homesickness Actually Is (not yet published)
11	The Language Inside the Language (not yet published)
12	Do Not Perform Success (not yet published)
13	The Body Keeps Score (not yet published)
14	What You Owe the People Back Home (not yet published)
15	The System Is Not Your Enemy (not yet published)
16	Your Degree Is a Starting Point (not yet published)
17	Silence Can Be Intelligent (not yet published)
18	Find One Thing That Is Only Yours (not yet published)
19	The Five-Year Mark (not yet published)
20	When You Think About Going Back (not yet published)
21	What Integration Actually Means (not yet published)
22	The Second Generation (not yet published)
23	You Will Change Whether You Want To or Not (not yet published)
24	The Friends You Make Abroad (not yet published)
25	What the Country Owes You (not yet published)
26	Build Something That Lasts (not yet published)
27	The Letter You Will Write Someday (not yet published)
28	Dear Immigrant (not yet published)

dearimmigrant.com

Dear Immigrant: The First Winter

Letter 04

Re: The First Winter

Dear Immigrant,

If you are going somewhere with winter, the first winter will be unlike anything you have experienced. I do not mean this only in the obvious sense of the cold, though the cold is real and it is more total than you have imagined. I mean it in the sense that winter will reorganize your interior life in ways you have not prepared for.

In winter in the northern hemisphere, the sun sets in the early afternoon. You will leave work in the dark. You will wake in the dark. The days will be short and grey and the cold will make going outside a transaction rather than a habit. The world will contract to the distance between the places you must go. You will spend more time alone than you have ever spent in your life.

The combination of isolation and darkness and cold produces something in immigrants that I have heard described many ways — as depression, as homesickness, as culture shock — but that I think of simply as the body registering an absence. You have left a place that had warmth and density and the constant presence of people who knew you. The winter makes that absence physical. You feel it in your chest when you walk outside. You feel it at four pm when the sky goes dark and you are not yet home.

Some things help: finding a community — a church, a cultural association, a sports team, anything that puts you regularly in the presence of people who will eventually know your name. Maintaining a physical routine. Getting outside even when it is cold, because the light, however thin, is better than the absence of light. Cooking food that connects you to somewhere warm.

The winter ends. They all end. But the first one is long, and I want you to know it is coming and to prepare your interior for it, not just your wardrobe.

From someone who made it through several winters,
A former immigrant

dearimmigrant.com