A refugee can be any person who has left their home because they are afraid for their safety if they stay. Once refugees leave home, they have to find asylum in another country until they can resettle into a new home. When refugees flee, their lives twist and turn inside out because of all the changes they go through and everything they leave behind or lose. This is very challenging for many people to go through; as soon as refugees resettle, their lives start to turn back again when they move past the changes and their host community works with them as peers and equals. In the novel Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai, Ha and her family are living in the middle of the Vietnam war. Ha is 10 years old and likes to push boundaries while being three steps behind her mother at all times. Ha doesn't know what to think about her situation; she is hopeful that the war will end or at least move away from her home, but she is not naive and understands the dangers that come with living in a country divided by war. When it becomes too much to handle Mother decides that their family must flee to America and find asylum there. Ha and her brothers have to deal with the sadness and emptiness that many refugees face. Ha goes through the process that most other people who flee their homes go through: she had to deal with her life changing until it was inside out when leaving, then she got to experience it shifting back again while finding a new home. .
Refugees' lives turn inside out when having to deal with the loss of family and trying to adapt to a new culture; these challenges lead to the longing of being back in their home country. Refugees come from a country at war, this means that many families have had to deal with the loss of loved ones. In the text "Refugee children in Canada," it was said that "Some have lost many family members and many have lost everything that was familiar to them" (Fantino and Colak 10).