COMMENTARY: “I am from two places at once. And I belong to both.”

By: Christiana Best-Giacomini, Ph.D.

January 20, 2026

I was born in Grenada, West Indies, and it is home. I have lived in the United States for fifty years, and it is also home. When I first migrated, my dreams were firmly rooted in Grenada, until they were not. When I first arrived in the United States, I was deeply unhappy and depressed, until I was not.

After my first year, I began to acculturate by making friends and grounding myself in school, searching for meaning in a place that was once a stranger. I adjusted to the tastes, sounds, and rhythms of New York City. As I moved forward, I came to understand that while my childhood in Grenada was largely carefree, my early teenage years were also marked by longing, loss, and uncertainty. I was a child in a transnational family, separated from my mother and father, living with guardians, and relying on letters and phone calls to keep us connected.

The first time I returned to Grenada, I did not want to leave for New York City. Yet, with quiet grief, I realized that I no longer fully belonged there either. Home had shifted. Over the years, with each visit, I fell back in love with my country, its rhythms, its people, its memory, but that love was no longer uncomplicated. It was layered, tender, and marked by distance. Grenada held my origins, the United States held my becoming.

Through an attachment lens, I have come to understand migration as an early separation from a primary secure base. Grenada held my first sense of safety and belonging, the United States became, over time, a place where security was slowly earned through relationships, routines, and the steady work of becoming. Loving two countries is not a divided attachment, but a layered one, proof that the heart can form more than one home without losing its center.

Though I initially felt lost and like a stranger, I embraced education, and it propelled me forward. School fueled my determination to continue beyond secondary education while working part time throughout high school and college. My commitment to education, a strong work ethic, and the support of my mother helped me become independent and, to some extent, self sufficient. Ten years after arriving in the United States, I completed university, married, and we purchased our first home. Fifteen years after my arrival, I was the mother of my son and had earned my master’s degree.

As I continued to live and work in the United States, like many of my peers, I experienced divorce, raised my son to adulthood, returned to school, and earned a Ph.D. I worked in the child welfare system, worked as a clinical social worker, and later transitioned into academia. Along the way, I cultivated deep and enduring friendships with remarkable Americans, some native and others immigrants, who remain an important part of my life, connections that ultimately led me to a second marriage and another sense of home.

Today, I find myself in a unique moment. I am considering retirement while wanting to pursue my passion for conducting oral histories in Grenada. I want to preserve the voices of ordinary Grenadians, their experiences, culture, resilience, and joy. In many ways, this work feels like a return, not to reclaim what was lost, but to honor what shaped me and to leave something lasting behind. Doing so during my year on sabbatical allows me to visit Grenada frequently while continuing to live in the United States.

I now understand that loving two countries is not a betrayal of either, it is an expansion of the heart. I carry Grenada in my spirit and the United States in my daily living, and somewhere between the two, I have learned to belong to myself.

(Dr Christiana Best is an Associate Professor at the University of Saint Joseph, Connecticut)

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