By Mirna Plotkowski, MA Psychology Graduate and Guest Contributor
When I first moved to Los Angeles at twenty-two, I expected the big things to be difficult.
The language.
The freeways.
Building a career.
Making friends.
I was prepared for all of that.
What surprised me were the little things.
Like yogurt.
If you grew up in Croatia—or anywhere in the former Yugoslavia—you know yogurt isn’t simply another dairy product. It’s breakfast. It’s what you drink with burek. It’s what your grandmother insists will soothe a sunburn. It’s something that unassumingly occupies a permanent place in your refrigerator without anyone ever discussing it.
Until one day it’s gone.
I stood in front of endless refrigerated shelves filled with tiny plastic cups promising strawberry, blueberry, and vanilla. America seemed convinced yogurt should taste like dessert.
It wasn’t my yogurt.
Eventually, I wandered into a small international grocery store tucked between ordinary strip malls. There it was. Kefir. Not exactly the yogurt I had grown up with, but close enough that my homesick taste buds immediately relaxed.
Then I spotted Croatian Napolitanke.
Real cornichons. Not sweet American pickles pretending to be cornichons.
Looking back, I wasn’t simply grocery shopping.
I was collecting familiar pieces of myself.
Years passed.
America eventually figured yogurt out. Greek yogurt appeared. Then Skyr maneuvered itself into my life, and my breakfast loyalty shifted from Croatia to Iceland.
Years later, visiting Croatia, I found myself standing in a supermarket aisle thinking, Where’s the Skyr? And while we’re at it, where’s the oat milk? The almond milk?
Apparently, cultural adaptation is a one-way street. At first, you miss home. Years later, you find yourself expecting home to catch up with the places you’ve lived.
At the time, I had no idea these small routines were doing anything more than making me feel a little more comfortable.
Years later, while studying counseling psychology, I learned that rituals are more than habits or routines. Psychological research suggests they can restore a sense of predictability and perceived control during periods of uncertainty and transition (Norton & Gino, 2014). When so much around us feels unfamiliar, familiar rituals and routines can anchor us, creating moments of stability from which adaptation becomes possible.
Without realizing it, I was adapting, one repeated Saturday at a time.
Bread followed almost the same story.
I grew up on my aunt’s homemade bread, dense rye loaves, and proper baguettes. Los Angeles initially seemed strangely committed to sweet bread.
Once again, I waited.
Once again, Los Angeles surprised me.
Within a few years, artisan bakeries began popping up everywhere, and somehow I found myself spending Saturday mornings selling bread and pastries for a little French bakery at a local farmers’ market.
I still don’t know how I survived those Saturdays.
I’d dance until three in the morning, sleep for two hours, pull on my boot-cut jeans, black Chuck Taylors, and an old army jacket, then somehow arrive smiling before seven.
The neighboring vendor never asked whether I needed help.
She simply handed me a shot of fresh wheatgrass.
Apparently, I looked like someone who needed chlorophyll.
Customers began asking me to save their favorite loaf. Other vendors wandered over with peaches, berries, hummus, and little treats from their own stands.
At twenty-five, I thought they came because I was a good salesperson.
Looking back, I think something else was happening. First, the produce was awesome. And secondly, people were beginning to expect me.
My sister once told me, “Once you find your Cheers, you belong.”
At the time, I thought she was talking about a bar.
Years later, I realized she meant finding the place where people notice when you haven’t been around for a while, greet you by name, and, in my case, hand you a shot of wheatgrass before you’ve even had a chance to ask.
My farmers’ market had quietly become one of my own versions of Cheers.
Monday evenings belonged to a tiny Thai massage studio hidden in a strip mall.
Calling it a spa would probably be too generous.
It was a little hole-in-the-wall.
The women who worked there spoke very little English.
They didn’t need to.
Their smiles translated perfectly.
Every Monday, I walked in carrying another week’s worth of deadlines, traffic, homesickness, and everything that comes with trying to make a foreign place feel familiar.
Ninety minutes later, I walked out feeling like someone had politely taken my body apart and put it back together correctly.
One Monday, my favorite therapist wasn’t there.
Someone else gave me an excellent massage.
It wasn’t the same.
I never found out where she went.
Perhaps she returned to Thailand to see her family.
Perhaps life simply carried her somewhere else.
What stayed with me wasn’t disappointment so much as the realization that I had become attached—not only to a person, but to the comforting certainty that every Monday unfolded in a familiar way.
Wednesday evenings belonged to Bikram yoga.
I still remember the wonderfully flexible Japanese instructor encouraging us to imagine ourselves standing between two large sheets of glass.
“No broken umbrellas,” she would say.
To this day, I still hear her voice.
And every now and then, I smile, remembering the weeks I confidently replied, “Have a nice day,” before eventually realizing she had actually been saying, “Namaste.”
Those Wednesdays became another thread in the fabric of my life.
Nothing extraordinary.
Just dependable.
Only years later did I understand what all these ordinary routines had been building.
Environmental psychologists describe place attachment as the emotional bond that develops between people and places through repeated experiences, social relationships, memories, and everyday routines (Scannell & Gifford, 2010). Rather than emerging all at once, place attachment is built gradually through ordinary, repeated interactions with our environment.
I hadn’t fallen in love with Los Angeles all at once. But I surely did.
I had simply returned often enough that pieces of my life attached themselves to it.
Home hadn’t arrived one dramatic day.
It accumulated.
One Saturday.
One Monday.
One Wednesday.
If you’ve recently moved abroad—or even simply moved across town—you don’t have to wait until a place feels like home before investing in it. In many ways, the investment comes first.
Find your “Cheers.”
As my sister said, “Once you find your Cheers, you belong.” Find the café, market, walking trail, yoga studio, or neighborhood bakery you’ll return to often enough that people begin recognizing you. Belonging rarely appears overnight. It grows through familiarity.
Become a regular.
There is something surprisingly comforting about hearing, “The usual?” or realizing someone notices when you’ve missed a week. Those seemingly ordinary interactions weave us into the social fabric of a place.
Carry one ritual with you.
Not every ritual has to stay behind when you move. Some can travel with you.
For me, it has been a massage.
In Los Angeles, Monday became massage day. Years later, after moving to Bolivia, life changed, and so did my schedule. Thursday became my new massage day. The country changed. The day changed. The ritual didn’t.
Looking back, I think that mattered for reasons I didn’t yet understand.
Every international move asks us to learn new streets, new customs, new grocery stores, and sometimes even a new language. It can begin to feel as though we’re expected to reinvent ourselves each time.
But perhaps we don’t need to.
While many rituals help us become attached to a place, some do something else as well—they help us remain connected to ourselves.
A growing body of psychological research suggests that adapting well to major life transitions is not only about embracing change. It is also about maintaining self-continuity—the subjective sense of connection between who we have been, who we are, and who we are becoming (Sedikides et al., 2023). Rather than reinventing ourselves with every move, we carry forward aspects of our identity that continue to make us feel ourselves.
For those of us who spend parts of our lives between worlds—between countries, languages, cultures, or even different chapters of life—these portable rituals become significant companions. They don’t keep us from changing. They remind us that we don’t have to reinvent ourselves every time we cross a border.
Home rarely arrives all at once.
More often, it settles slowly into our calendars.
Into familiar smiles.
Into routines we barely notice until they’re interrupted.
Into ordinary places where someone expects us to walk through the door.
For years, I believed home was something I had to find.
Now I think it is also something we build—through the places that welcome us and the rituals that travel with us.
Every move changes us. I certainly hope it does. I know it changed me.
New countries expand us. New friendships reshape us. New cultures invite us to see the world differently.
But perhaps adapting well isn’t about becoming a completely new person every time we arrive somewhere unfamiliar.
Perhaps it is about knowing which parts of ourselves deserve another passport.
Some rituals help us attach to a new place.
Others help us remain attached to ourselves.
For those of us living between worlds, we need both.
About the author:
Mirna Plotkowski holds a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Croatia and an M.A. in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from The Chicago School. She is currently completing her M.A. in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Walden University.
Having lived in Croatia, the United States, Belize, Armenia, and Bolivia, Mirna is passionate about exploring identity, belonging, and the psychological experience of living between cultures. Through her writing and future clinical work, she hopes to support immigrants, expatriates, diplomatic families, digital nomads, and other globally mobile adults as they navigate life’s transitions and create a sense of home across borders.
References:
Norton, M. I., & Gino, F. (2014). Rituals alleviate grieving for loved ones, lovers, and lotteries. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(1), 266–272. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0031772
Scannell, L., & Gifford, R. (2010). Defining place attachment: A tripartite organizing framework. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 30(1), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2009.09.006
Sedikides, C., Hong, E. K., & Wildschut, T. (2023). Self-continuity. Annual Review of Psychology, 74, 333–361. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-032420-032236
