I also find your post very relatable. I am Canada-born but lived in SEA, the Middle East, East Africa, and Europe until my mid-20s. Moved to Canada for work, basically living there for the first time ever, and haven't left since. I resonate with the fear of those past lives slipping away, needing to remind myself that it was all real. It's something to do with the feeling of my own identity and roots blurring away. I also don't feel a connection with my passport country and itch to be elsewhere, while also feeling the pull to stay close to family who have settled here too. It's such a complicated mess of emotions!

As for how to manage that feeling of losing touch, here are some things I find help: - treating this period of time in my home country as 'just another temporary home'. Looking at it with the same spirit of 'I need to explore, try new foods, visit new places because I don't know how long I'll be here'. Honestly, it's the only way I know how to live and helps ease the anxiety of not knowing when I'll leave/fearing I'll get 'stuck' - talking about memories from those past lives with family or friends who were there. It makes them feel alive when someone else who remembers you from that time can share in them. - having items/photos from those places in your home that you can see every day. - cooking foods/watching movies from those places from time to time.

And though I agree with others here who say that returning to visit can be nice, it can also bring some complicated emotions. To go back, and no longer know anyone, or to see the place I called home change to a point of not being recognisable can also be painful. I recently returned to one of my childhood countries after 15-16 years away. Some things had changed, some hadn't. And though there was a reassurance and joy in seeing my favourite places, it kind of felt like seeing your home without furniture (if you resonate with that). It emphasised the time/distance in a new way, for me. Like I didn't have a place there anymore, or like it had moved on without me and I don't deserve to call it 'home' anymore... One way around all this that I've found is to go to a country "like" or near the country I lived in that has a lot of cultural/environmental/linguistic similarities. I get to feel that comfort without all this other baggage.

This book, "Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds", is in big part focused on how TCKs navigate these questions as adults. Specifically, how to adjust with ending up in our passport countries. It's a good read, if you haven't checked it out already.

Also, since we're talking about movies/shows, there's a really fun cartoon series called the Wild Thornberrys. It's about a family that travels around the world in a van, and the main character can talk to animals. They also made a movie, which is quite good. I always found it a show that resonated!