Return to Stillness: Finding My Voice in a Shifting World

J-0.. american consulates in Strasbourg are closing. The quiet but unmistakable shift in how the world views Americans is happening in real time. Countries that once welcomed us with open arms now hesitate, their gazes heavy with doubt, measured caution replacing what was once unspoken camaraderie. I feel the weight of this changing tide, and I wonder—what will my experience be like as an American abroad in this new world?

I have never carried the burden of American exceptionalism. Maybe that’s why the very idea of “home” in the U.S. has always felt suffocating, why the constant hum of nationalism never resonated with me. I have never been the kind of traveler who clings to my birthplace as a badge of honor. No journey has ever stirred in me the belief that America is the greatest country on Earth. In fact, I have spent years softening my accent, distilling it into something less recognizable, a quiet rebellion against the place that raised me.

But now, there is no escaping it. In this moment, I am an American abroad, and I know what that means. I will be asked to explain the inexplicable, to answer for choices I did not make and ideologies I do not share. I will be expected to give reason to the unreasonable, to stand in the shadow of a nation I do not claim. And yet, the hardest part is not the questions themselves—it is the knowing that I, too, have no answers.

I hope these next three months stretch themselves out like a lifeline, long and slow. I hope I can breathe again, that I can shed the weight of panic that clenches my chest, that I will rediscover the safety that life in the U.S. has long denied me. I hope I continue to make connections, to root myself in the people and places that remind me of who I am beneath the fear.

Most of all, I hope I find myself again—not in the shadows of the past, but in the quiet light of what’s still possible.

And I am reminded that while I have been weathering the storm, the magnolias in Strasbourg have been waiting for me. Silently, patiently, they have held their buds tight against the cold, their bloom postponed but inevitable. They do not rush the process. They do not fear the waiting.

For a year, I have dreamed of their arrival, marking them as a milestone, a quiet promise to myself that I would be here to witness them. But now, they mean something more. They are no longer just a sign of spring—they are a lesson in endurance, a whisper from nature that all beauty must die, but that rebirth is possible for those willing to sit in the in-between.

The petals will unfurl, fragile and fleeting, a momentary brilliance before they fall. And yet, I will not mourn their passing. I will stand beneath them, knowing that just as they have returned, so too can I. That the waiting, the stillness, the unseen growth—it was never emptiness. It was transformation.

*These photos were not taken by me. Photo credit to Olivier Hannauer*