The Rewrite

Canada is my home. But that was not always the case.

Almost two decades ago I arrived alone and certain of who I was. Excited. Ready. I had chosen this. Then I stepped outside the airport.

I could not tell if seventy dollars for groceries was reasonable or absurd. Did not know what a loonie was. Could not decode if silence meant agreement or discomfort. Had no concept of what minus forty-two felt like or why daylight disappeared at five in the afternoon.

This was supposed to be home. But the small things, things children know, eluded me. A thousand small moments of competence I had relied on simply did not transfer. I was operating without the invisible knowledge that can make a place actually feel like home.

Identity, it turns out, depends on context. And mine had radically shifted. Without it, I was suspended. Not who I was. Not yet who I would become.

Have you ever felt like a stranger to yourself?

Meaning reconstruction is the work of rebuilding your life story after the assumptions beneath it collapse. The term emerged from grief research, but it applies whenever the story you relied on to orient yourself no longer maps to reality.

You believe that you are healthy. That your marriage will last. That your skills will remain relevant. That people you love will stay. Then something shatters the belief. A diagnosis arrives. A relationship ends. A job disappears. A loved one dies. A home country changes. The mental map no longer matches the terrain.

What breaks is not just expectation. It is coherence.

Psychologist Robert Neimeyer describes meaning reconstruction as the central task following disruption. When loss, trauma, or major change fractures the story you were using, the old framework no longer explains who you are, what matters, or what comes next.

Trauma theorist Ronnie Janoff-Bulman identified three core assumptions most vulnerable to disruption: the world is benevolent, the world is meaningful, and the self is worthy. When these stop feeling true, the lens through which we interpreted everyday life no longer works. This is why going back to normal rarely happens. The person who functioned inside the old story no longer exists.

Research on bereavement, migration, and major life transitions shows the same pattern. People who successfully reconstruct meaning do not do so by finding silver linings or reframing loss as growth. It requires building entirely new belief systems. Asking different questions. Valuing different things. Becoming different people.

Some never reconstruct. They remain suspended in the moment the story broke. Others reconstruct poorly, building narratives rooted in bitterness, fatalism, or blame. But some construct meaning that is deeper, more honest, and more resilient than what existed before.

The difference is willingness to sit in the wreckage long enough to notice what remains true. Meaning reconstruction is not about making sense of what happened. It is about building a self large enough to hold what happened and still move forward.

When people say something fundamentally changed them, meaning reconstruction is what occurred.

During my first years living in Canada, I thought I was adjusting. But what I was actually doing was rebuilding coherence piece by piece.

Meaning reconstruction happens through articulation. Not once, but repeatedly. The story shifts as you shift. A weekly reconstruction journal with three sections offers the structure I wish I had then:

Return to your journal weekly. Notice when old assumptions resurface. Observe new beliefs forming. Reconstruction is not linear. You will contradict yourself from week to week. That is the point.

Some people reconstruct by finding new purpose. Others, like me, reconstruct by radically simplifying. There is no correct blueprint. Only the question: what story can contain both who you were and who you are becoming?

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^{This publication is a space for exploration and reflection. Nothing in this email is medical, psychological, or therapeutic advice. These ideas are general insights on human behaviour, not treatment or diagnosis. Each reader’s situation is unique and deserves the right kind of support. If you are struggling or in crisis, please contact a licensed mental health professional.}