By Lauren Wells
I used to think the discomfort of settling down was just another challenge of growing up as a Third Culture Kid. I was taught that because of the high mobility and transient nature of our upbringing, stability can feel more uncomfortable than constant transition. I saw that play out in the lives of many adult TCKs who, even though they claimed to want stability, couldn’t seem to stay in one place, or one job, for very long.
I saw it in myself, too, as I lived a shallowly rooted life through college and my early 20s.
I deliberately fought against those “TCK tendencies” during the six years we lived in Oregon, where we started our family. I was determined to learn how to grow deeper roots and very slowly inched them down into hardened soil. When we moved to South Carolina, the pain of ripping out those newly formed roots reminded me why I had avoided growing them in the first place.
The relationships we’d built in Oregon were worth the pain, but I knew South Carolina was a temporary layover. So I poured myself into my family and my work, holding a quiet readiness to be transplanted again when the time came.
Two years later, we decided to settle in Georgia. Our mantra was, “We’re here for the long haul.” We bought a home where I imagined raising teenagers. We invested deeply in community, church, and friendships. I made it a point to turn our house into a home from the very first day, hanging pictures before the boxes were even unpacked, as if willing my roots to grow deeper, faster.
We sought out friendships and opportunities to get involved in our new community, and over the years our family’s roots grew longer, fuller, and increasingly intertwined with the roots of the people we came to love deeply.
Four years and a few months later, those boxes are packed again, and my walls are bare. God, and my husband’s job, are leading us back to Oregon. This is not what I anticipated when I chose to let my roots grow deep. Nor what I wanted when I brought my children along for the root-growing ride.
As we prepare to leave, I remember why my younger self warned me against this. Ripping out deep roots hurts. Watching my children’s roots be torn up hurts. Watching dear friends grieve alongside us, when we all thought our kids would grow up together, hurts.
And maybe the hardest part is how familiar this pain feels.
I’ve known it before. At 13, moving to Africa. At 16, moving back to America. At 18, returning to Africa again. At 27, moving to South Carolina. I remember making quiet, protective decisions along the way to avoid feeling this again.
That part of me whispers, “This is why you don’t grow roots. You should’ve listened.” But there’s a louder, steadier truth the Lord keeps bringing me back to, the same one I keep speaking to my girls: “It hurts big because we loved big.”
These years of sinking roots deeper than I ever had before mean this uprooting is more painful than any I’ve known. Shorter roots surely would have been safer. I’m not looking forward to the time it will take for these freshly wounded ones to heal.
But I know this too: In the rich soil of Oregon, they will grow deep again. I’ll fight the battle against shallow, safer roots. Because maybe deep roots were never meant to keep us in place, but to teach us how to love well wherever, and for however long, we’re planted.
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Lauren is a wife, mama to two girls, founder and CEO of TCK Training, and author of Raising Up a Generation of Healthy Third Culture Kids, The Grief Tower, What Made That Feel So Hard?, and several others. An Adult Third Culture Kid (ATCK) who spent her teenage years living in Tanzania, East Africa, she draws on both her lived experience and her background in Child Development and Prevention Science to support TCKs and those who care for them. Through TCK Training, her work integrates research-informed frameworks with practical, accessible resources that equip families, educators, and organizations to cultivate resilient TCKs.
