Blog
Third Culture Kids and Adverse Childhood Experiences
I knew it’d be hard to read Tanya Crossman and Lauren Wells’ recent research. I was right. As much as I eagerly read the methodologies and results of their work, “Caution and Hope: The Prevalence of Adverse Childhood Experiences in Globally Mobile Third Culture Kids”, I could feel a heart clench of pain for the many TCKs I work with who know the pain of adverse childhood experiences all too well.
The Struggle in the Doldrums: when TCKs keep still
There is a passage in C.S. Lewis’s ‘The Voyage of the Dawn Treader’ that goes some way to expressing the fear that the doldrums brings. The wind drops, the sails hang useless, and a slow awareness comes upon everyone on board that there are limited resources on this ship. A ship’s entire purpose is, after all, to take a crew from place A to place B – without movement it cannot achieve what it has been designed for. But what happens when the winds of change drop, and we become still? We can find ourselves looking around at our crew of portable identities, wondering how to assign a captain when no new land is in sight. We can become acutely aware of our own limited resources – and wondering if we are, in fact, enough.
Rachel’s Bookshelf: “Home: the quest to belong” by Jo Swinney
One of the frustrations I have found around the issue of home and Third Culture Kids, is the regular dismissal of home as a significant player in our health and happiness. It’s all to too easy to decide that “belonging everywhere and nowhere” should be interpreted as a kind of clarion call for TCKs to dismiss the particularity of belonging, the importance of home. Jo Swinney counters this interpretation beautifully in her book “Home: the quest to belong”. She is a Third Culture Kid herself and reflects upon her own experiences of multiple homes in a way that invites our own explorations of our home stories.
Rainy Day Memories & Self-care Opportunities
How do you feel about the rain? And what on earth does it have to do with self-care? Let’s walk through our memories together, and reflect on how our experiences can shape (or limit) our ability to self-focus and self-nurture. Rainy days act as a thread, drawing itself through many different chapters of my story – the different climates, homes, experiences I have lived. Rain somehow links me to myself, the selves of my past, the ecosystem of my own story. Rainy days offer the opportunity for introspection, a home-coming to the self, an opportunity to self-nurture.
Third Culture Kids & Hidden Loss
I know I’m lucky. I know I’ve had a very privileged life, full of wonderful experiences. In fact, I sometimes describe myself as a collector of experiences, like others collect precious gems. But I have collected one experience along the way that weighs heavy; hidden loss. Perhaps you recognise this one too. I am a Third Culture Kid. And with every move I made, I gained… and lost.
Becoming your own best friend
Whether you have many friends or few, I believe the need to be your own best friend is crucial. It is crucial for me. No amount of loving friendships will calm my negative self talk if I’m stuck in a loop, and I’ll likely isolate myself from these friendships, in some kind of martyred attempt to avoid “inflicting” myself onto them. In fact, being my own best friend isn’t merely compensation for a lack of friendships, but it actually helps me to deepen already present friendships too, and certainly to enjoy them more.
Your Story Makes Sense
One of the most painful things I’ve felt myself, and heard expressed to me, is the feeling that “I’m crazy”, “I shouldn’t be feeling this way” or “I don’t make sense”. To feel you are incomprehensible, unreasonable, unfathomable is just so lonely. And frightening.
Three Ways to Bloom in Place
I’ve had the opportunity this week to do one of my favourite things; tidy up the garden. I noticed how much my spirits lifted with the presence of dirt under my fingernails, and a sense of mastery over mess. What is it about digging about in dirt, and tidying up ‘bits’ that creates in me such a sense of peace and that things are once again right with the world? Do these activities have the same effect on you?
Third Culture Kids & Knowing a Place “well enough” to belong
I was listening to the radio this weekend when I suddenly registered that the author being interviewed was a Third Culture Kid, and was reflecting on the role of place in her latest book. The interviewer noted that while Tana French hadn’t grown up in Dublin, her latest book was set there, and he queried if she was able to write from a Dubliner’s perspective. “Yes”, she parried, “I have grown up in many places but Dublin is the only place I have lived that I know well enough to set a book in”.
Longing for the Life We Don’t Have
Do you find yourself easily overwhelmed? Are you teetering on the edge of ‘holding it all together’ and ‘fitting it all in’, all the while remaining painfully aware that one more demand, one more ‘good idea’, and the whole thing will come crashing down? I feel you. I tend to operate with the belief that I can live many lives in perfect parallel to one another. I want to achieve all the things, make all the choices. I want to live all the lives I think I should be living. And I’d like to live them perfectly, thank you very much.