Blog
Third Culture Kids and the Winter Blues
How are you doing? I mean, really? Something I’m hearing a fair bit of right now is how people are suffering from the ‘winter blues’. This seems to be a fairly common phenomenon in the northern hemisphere, and not a particularly Third Culture Kid issue. Humans need a certain amount of vitamin D, daylight, fresh air and physical activity to feel good – and winter typically messes with these elements.
Third Culture Kids and the Growth Mindset
Growth Mindset is a bit of a buzzword at the moment… but the buzz originates in an idea put forward by Dr. Dweck 30 years ago. For a good summary of that work click here, but for now let’s focus on the links we can make between growth mindset and Third Culture Kids.
Third Culture Kids & Safe Places: a Safe Self
This post is the third in a short series about Third Culture Kids and Territory. In this series we explore the ways in which Third Culture Kids can create safe places for themselves. We have explored safe homes and safe communities, and now I want to turn to the safe Self. And this is hard. How many of us feel as though exploring our own Self is something akin to walking in quicksand? Ever shifting, slipping through our fingers even as we try to grapple with it, our sense of Self can feel unstable, shapeless and as ephemeral as the lives we have lived have been transitory.
Third Culture Kids & Safe Places: Community
So this is the second of four posts in which I explore the ways in which Third Culture Kids can engage in territory (or the building of safe places) as a means to more groundedness and belonging. Last week we looked at how we can make home a safe place in our lives, and today I wanted to talk about community. So many of the TCKs I work with long for community. Many of us were raised in expat communities or communities that were tightly knitted and orientated around our parents’ workplace. Perhaps our community came ready-made through our schools, or compounds, or places of worship. Perhaps we long for community because we never had any one.
Third Culture Kids & Safe Places – Building Home
Last week I wrote about Territory and Third Culture Kids. I wrote about how, while TCKs tend to avoid territorialism, I wonder if there isn’t something to be gained by learning how to do territory – how to build safe spaces. I suggested there are three kinds of safe spaces we can build: a physical safe space, a safe community and a safe self. Today I want to further explore how we can build a safe physical space, aka Home.
Territory and Third Culture Kids – Building our Safe Places
I think TCKs tend to avoid territorialism. We avoid limiting ourselves to fixed-border definitions that feel narrowed in their expression. We identify more easily with hybrid motifs… fluid identities, flexible citizenship, non-binary belonging. And yet, so many of my clients are struggling in some way with place and belonging. Where do they belong, and to whom? While able to express strong identities that embrace diversity, the multicultural and the novel, so many of us feel a gap in our experiences; a gap shaped like a safe place. Safe places are shelters. Shelters are, by nature, boundaried in some way. There is an out there and an in here. We use them to retreat from the elements, and their borders give us rest.
Chronic pain and losing identity…
My Chronic Pain has reared its head and roared its presence this week. I capitalize Chronic Pain because it does really seem more of a character in my story of self, than a mere experience. Chronic Pain has needs, expressions and form, and I’ve been ignoring its voice for too long. Voices that are ignored when they whisper, learn to shout.
Integrating the Self: moving from Da Vinci to Picasso
For those Third Culture Kids who have formed roles or even simply observed (and experienced) roles performed differently by different cultures, there is a good chance that the pieces of their Selves do very little cooperating. Instead of slotting together, they collide with one another – each culture trying to contribute their pieces to the picture of Self that makes most sense to them. The result is more Picasso than Da Vinci. Beautiful, but more than a little discomposing. Yet there is a deliberateness in the placement of all Picasso’s elements; unexpected it is, chaos it is not.
Third Culture Kids – Stone and Water Work
I work a lot with my Third Culture Kid clients about identifying the issues – all the bits of them that fight for and need expression, honouring… all the pieces of themselves that have distinct needs that need meeting. And this is important work, hard work… it is work that leads the way towards better self knowledge and understanding. Marking and allowing these pieces to take up space in your identity, in your life; this is stone work. But the water work is also important. Water work is the piece of work that allows the stones to be heard… it is the precursor of active sorting out and shaping, it is active stillness. We engage in water work when we actively make a decision to pour out our selves, and gaze into their waters.
Drawers and a cat; my little big things
I’m feeling strangely emotional writing this post. You see, a few days ago I arranged to have a new chest of drawers delivered as my daughter’s needed replacing. This is basic stuff, right? Normal life. Except for me. And maybe for you? I’ve bought new pieces of furniture before. I’ve added to my stash. But my home has never outlived a single piece before. Just let that sink in a minute. I have never replaced an item due to wear and tear and just… time. I’m a Third Culture Kid, growing up with high mobility in childhood, and I’ve always moved away first.