Blog
Emerging after Coronavirus: anxiety, frustration and boundary work
But if you are struggling in this lockdown transition, you aren’t alone. You are in the company of many others, tip-toeing tentatively towards a world that feels quite demanding and overwhelming. You are not alone. Together we can sniff the air, pause and pay attention to our own pounding hearts, and then carefully negotiate our own small steps outside. Together.
New Year’s Resolution(s) – with a free download!
Got your resolutions for 2017 sorted? Or are you avoiding them, as I did for years? I hated the idea of being pinned down, committed to achieve something that seemed a good idea on January 1st… Anyway, I reasoned, if something was a good idea, it was a good idea all year round… so why make a fuss about it once a year!? But deep down, I did like the idea of getting to the end of a year with a sense of specific achievements, and having some sort of motivator to do those things that stayed on my ‘good intentions’ list most of the year… So here is a free download to help!
Hit the Festive Doldrums?
Christmas has taken a whole 24 days in coming (earlier if shop decorations are anything to go by!) and took only one day to leave us. Depending on your circumstances, the day may have passed in a delirium of food, sparkles and laughter, or it may have dragged slower than Garfield on a particularly lasagne-free Monday.
Driving home for Christmas… except when I can’t…
The gathering of family is an important ritual that reminds us of our history, invites our significant others into our present, and launches us into the new year secure and hopeful. Except when it isn’t. Or it would be, but we can’t do it.
Pico Iyer’s Stained Glass Self
Pico describes Third Culture Kids as pulling different aspects of different cultures into a “stained glass whole”. This is a beautiful and accurate way of describing how we can and do approach identity construction. Over time, our identities become a glorious explosion of contrasting colours.
Survey Report: Third Culture Kids and Social Media
Third Culture Kids are wonderfully responsive to research projects – and I’m so grateful! I put out a survey exploring the ways in which TCKs use social media only a few days ago and I was quickly inundated with responses. So many of the respondents asked me to share my findings that I decided to do a short report here, as the easiest and most effective way of saying ‘Thank you!’ for getting involved!
Does Travel Make Me a Better Person?
Again and again, in the TCK world, I encounter the belief that “I travel, therefore I am (okay)”. The thinking goes something like this:
My experiences of travel are what make me interesting. Ergo, should I stop travelling I would become mundane, boring.
Families in Global Transition 2017!
Last year I had the thrill of working alongside the wonderful author of the TCK blog, Drie Culturen, who not spurred me on to make an application but also took incredible care of me on my first visit to Amsterdam. This year I have the thrill of working with the very talented Cate Brubaker, founder of Small Planet Studio and creator of the Re-entry Relaunch Roadmap. We are combining our experiences as expat coach and TCK researcher/therapist to bring a Kitchen Table discussion to FIGT 2017.
Beyond Fragmentation… and into Beauty.
According to Kaushik, of www.amusingplanet.com, Kintsugi is a method of mending pottery that, rather than trying to disguise the breakage, restores the pot by “incorporating the damage into the aesthetic of the restored item, making it part of the object’s history”. A client session recently put me in mind of this phenomenon, as we discussed the ways in which Third Culture Kid lives can been seen as a series of interuptions… Highly mobile life trajectories are regularly and routinely halted or redirected through repeated transition, loss, and challenging relationships.
Senses that Resonate…
I’m sitting in my front room (or sitting room, or lounge, or whatever you call it in your part of the world!) listening to the sound of rain thundering against my windows. And I love it. You see, I grew up knowing the sound of rain on a tin roof to be the sound of Hope, Life and Joy. Rain meant food for the country in which I was raised and, in the desert lands, not a thing to be taken lightly. The echoes of its significance resonate into my life now. Indeed, 15 years later, in cold, wet England, and the Sound is like an echo of Home.