Looking up 'homesickness' online will give you a number of definitions. Most of them include emotional distress caused by the separation of familiar space/people, anxiety or sadness caused by the feeling of missing home, and many others similar to these. It is evident that everyone experiences homesickness differently. It depends on experiences and the ways people decide to cope with it.

As an immigrant myself, I can relate to the difficult feeling of homesickness. Moving away from home is not just about moving houses and schools or having to make new friends. It's learning a new language, leaving behind people you love, experiencing a different culture, leaving behind places you made memories in, and the feeling that life at home moves on without you.

After conducting some research, I came across an article that provided perspectives on how stress and homesickness are correlated during immigration. The article, A longitudinal study of acculturative stress and homesickness: high-school adolescents immigrating from Russia and Ukraine to Israel without parents talks about how stress and homesickness are related but don’t move the same way over time. Homesickness peaks in the beginning then slowly decreases over time but stress rises more after homesickness drops. It is also highlighted that pre-immigration psychological resources really matter, for example, counseling. The most prominent trend in the study is that loneliness is very consistent and related to stress which then later connects to homesickness. Post-immigration social conditions also matter, especially discrimination. Perceived discrimination was the strongest as mentioned in the article. Percieved discrimination is the subjective experience of unfair treatment, in this case because of immigration status. Some of the factors that seem to improve homesickness is support from peers and teachers, which is show to have had more of an effect than support from parents, for these students. 

When coming up with my resource, I brainstormed ideas that would have helped me with my move. I decided on a list of activities one could do to help them with this huge transition. Almost like a guide they could always go back to in case any negative feelings came back. A few ideas I had for this list are journaling about an aspect of their new living space they are grateful for, decorating their living space to make it feel more like home, or looking online to find a community they can be a part of in order to connect with people from their culture who might also be going through similar hardships.

My list will hopefully be used as a post-immigration resource and reviewed as a pre-immigration resource. As mentioned in the research article, A longitudinal study of acculturative stress and homesickness: high-school adolescents immigrating from Russia and Ukraine to Israel without parents, pre- and post-immigration care is crucial to people's mental health and how they handle their stress during this huge change. I believe this resource can be introduced to people who have decided to immigrate before they move, and used after their move. It will be beneficial to them by keeping them busy and distracted from their negative thoughts during this process. Having access to supportive resources, such as these, can help immigrants better understand what emotional challenges might follow with adapting to new areas and cultures. By providing this guidance before and after immigration, it will help those individuals feel more prepared for their transition while also introducing healthy coping strategies during the adjustment period.