Losing everything you have ever known would turn your life inside out especially when you don't have any family to lean against. When refugees lose family members, they start to feel that their lives have no meaning any more. In the "Children at War" text, Amela said, "Before the war I enjoyed life. But after I found out about my father's death, everything seemed so useless I couldn't see any future for myself" (Brice 26). Learning that you have lost someone who you loved would change your life dramatically because you no longer have the connections and safety you had when that person was still alive. In the novel "Inside Out and Back Again," Ha was living without her father for most of her life. She had always thought that he would come back; this changed when she found out he had been killed. In the book, Mother said, "Your father is/ truly gone" (Lai 250). This changed Ha's life: before she had always had a father that had been captured, now she knows she doesn't have someone to protect their family the way a father is supposed to. Once Ha learned that her father had died, she had to take some time to adjust to the news; during this time, Ha felt her life was being flipped around, turned inside out. There are other things though that will turn a refugee's life inside out, including needing to adapt to a new culture.
Refugees come from a place where everyone's culture is the same as theirs. This changes when refugees have to resettle into a new country that has a different culture. It would be hard adjusting to having two cultures, but that is not what is always thought, "Perhaps the greatest threat these children is not the stress of belonging to two cultures but the stress of belonging to none" (Fantino and Colak 9). Once refugees are in a new country, they have to adapt to the change. This would be challenging especially if you could no longer adhere to your culture or adopt the culture of the new country.