You cannot appreciate the warmth of the hearth until you have slept in the cold. You cannot value the sound of your mother’s voice until you have heard a thousand strangers. Feeling homesick doesn't mean you are failing at your new life. It means your old life is holding a door open for you, waiting for you to grow large enough to walk back through it a different person.

This experimental work by the Man Booker International Prize-winning translator blends photography with autobiographical fiction. Homesick | Reviews - Screen Daily

In the ancient Greek epics, nostos (return home) was the highest virtue. Odysseus spent a decade fighting monsters and gods just to see his wife and dog again. Homesickness— nostalgia —was originally classified as a neurological disease. It crushed soldiers and broke explorers.

Interestingly, your brain doesn't distinguish perfectly between missing a person and physical pain. MRI studies have shown that the same regions of the brain that activate when you feel physical pain (the anterior cingulate cortex and the insula) also light up during social rejection or intense longing. When you say your heart is breaking, your brain is telling the truth.

You build new routines. You find your coffee shop. The new sounds become background noise. You have integrated the old self with the new environment.