Tag: Adult TCK

Dear TCK College Student: Take Care of Your Nervous System

by Aylin Merck

Dear College-Bound TCK, 

Twenty-four years ago, I was right where you are now. I landed in Ohio for the first time as a cross cultural kid (CCK). While I was born in the Dominican Republic, my father is full-blooded Palestinian, and that deeply shaped my family’s culture, values, and sense of identity as well as my own. I had meaningfully interacted with both Dominican and Arab cultures all of my life. Coming to the States as an international student in those formative years changed my sense of identity even more. 

That move to Ohio would become the first of many cross-cultural moves. Since then, I have moved back and forth from the States and the DR several times and lived in a couple of countries in the Middle East. In many ways, I am an adult TCK and am now also the delighted and grateful mother of three TCKs. 

You may be tired of hearing about the TCK/MK identity. You may know that you are so much more than a TCK. You may be deeply rooted in the sense that you are ultimately and foundationally made in the image of God and that is what matters most about you. 

I want to honor that. I am aware that you have a distinct story, which may include some aspects of the TCK experience and not others. There are opportunities and challenges that will be very similar for everyone starting alongside you as a freshman. At the same time, there are opportunities and challenges that may be unique to you as you transition to life in the States. I want to offer tools to help you flourish in this season as a human remade in the image of Christ. 

Something that has become precious to me in all my comings and goings is that as we cross the transition bridge and begin a new normal, we don’t leave belonging behind. Belonging is a new creation birthright that we carry with us even as it is also a gift we offer to others. It is because belonging is a gift we have been given that it also becomes something we steward. 

To be able to belong, then, we need to begin by stewarding who we are and how we face life. I want to share with you some things I have learned about belonging as stewardship and about the opportunities that come with each transition. 

Steward Who You Are

While we don’t ultimately belong to ourselves but to our Father who made us and to Christ who gave His life to free us from brokenness and from the stranglehold of our enemy, we do have a sense of ownership, agency, and autonomy that God has given us to steward. God calls us by name, gives us specific gifts, skills, and a particular story. When He redeems us, and when we live by faith through Christ, we also somehow become more fully ourselves when we own who we are and use our agency to use the gifts and skills we have been given. 

The opportunity with this new transition is that you get to know yourself better and get to live from the heart that Jesus gave you. You can choose what you value and live in light of that. 

There is a lot that has been chosen for you throughout your life — places to live, teams to be a part of, friends that become like family. But now you are here, and you probably get to have more agency than any other time in your life. 

Over the next few years, practice compassion and curiosity about the things that you are drawn to and the ones you are not. As you get to know others and their cultures, some things will change about you. You will become swirly. Some values will change. Some expressions of what you value will change. 

TCKs (and ATCKs) tend to be chameleons. We develop skills of observation and adaptation because we need to learn to belong. In her book, Incredible Lives and the Courage to Live Them, Rachel Cason writes, 

A chameleon is more than a colour changer — it is also the supreme watcher. Eyes spinning in opposite directions, it has 360-degree vision. So do we, hyperaware as we are of all the various interest groups surrounding us. We spin, scoping out the opinions, the demands, the competing expectations of both individuals and groups, trying to find one we can home in on: one set of expectations we can camouflage to, adapt to, belong to. We spin, seeking acceptance. . . . After all, successful adaptation is successful living — surely?

But, is it? Yes, our adaptations are skillful. They keep us able to move between different worlds But often behind our spinning eyes there is fear. That kind of adaptation doesn’t necessarily take into account that chameleons also have legs and can move to the environments they best thrive in. As adults now, you have a sense of agency you didn’t have when you were a kid. And even when you make mistakes, you have the opportunity to practice discernment and wisdom and make choices that honor not only the Lord, but also your own integrity. 

I have a friend who moved from the Middle East to the Midwest a few years ago to go to college. I told her I was thinking about this article and asked her what things she had learned that would be helpful to keep in mind to share with you. She said something to the effect of, 

I think that you have to learn to accept that you are living in a transitionary period. You have to be mindful when you jump head on to things like how we TCKs do. Often TCKs jump into the deep end of things, and it’s okay to let go of things if you realize they are not helping you. TCKs often have transition thrust on us (people leaving/moving) but sometimes we have to be okay realizing something isn’t for us and being OK with bringing that change on ourselves. Sometimes we jump into things and they end up being unhealthy, and it’s okay to move on and not have certain people in your life. The idea of leaving someone/something else can be very jarring, and you feel like you need to stay committed to place/situations/people to belong, but integrity is key.

She went on to say, 

I just had to realize that I would rather have no friends than have friends who treated me like that, and as soon as I did, I was able to make those good friends because I finally had the space and energy to.

Steward Your Responses to Life’s Challenges and Opportunities

A year after we first moved overseas, our family went to Colorado for a cross-cultural training. One of the exercises was called, “What are your true colors?” We went through a drill, practicing who we are under stress. In a very claustrophobic space, I ended up having a panic attack, and felt so much shame for years after that. I felt like my true colors had been revealed – my narrative was “I have a weak faith.” 

But since then, I have learned so much about the way God wired our brains and nervous systems. So much about our response under stress has to do with the circumstances that have shaped our nervous system and what our brain interprets as a threat. 

When we go through transition and change, our body’s response to stress is not immediately evidence of where our spiritual strength is. It has a lot more to do with our nervous system’s capacity. So as you go through the next few months, get curious and compassionate about your responses. 

Do you find yourself in situations

  • Feeling suddenly antsy?
  • Racing/abnormally beating heart?
  • Sweating?
  • Dissociating (like you’re outside of your body)?
  • Feeling emotionally numb or shut down?
  • Seeing stars/feeling like you’re going to pass out?
  • Feeling sick to your stomach?
  • Uncontrollable emotional responses such as rage or intense sobbing? 
  • Any thoughts of self-harm or suicide?
  • Feelings of panic?

If you experience these, it means that something is more than your brain and nervous system can handle at the moment. This doesn’t mean that you have a weak faith, that you’re not cut out for this, or that there is something wrong with you. It just means that your nervous system needs care, and it needs to know you are paying attention and that you will communicate safety to your body so it can regulate and your window of tolerance has shrunk. 

The window of tolerance is that space where we can think clearly and feel our feelings at the same time. Within our window of tolerance we are consciously living from our Spirit-led self. So, when your body is sending you the signals I mentioned earlier, we want to regulate our nervous system, so we can be in that space of both thinking clearly and feeling our feelings. It is that space where we are human-sized. 

Here are some things you can do regulate your nervous system and help increase your window of tolerance: 

  • Take a break
  • Drink water
  • Go for a walk 
  • Take a shower (preferably a cold one)
  • Wrap yourself tightly in a blanket
  • Go outside barefoot
  • Do some tapping
  • Breathe in for 5 seconds and out for 8 seconds
  • Drink chamomile/lavender tea
  • Call a good and safe friend

Maybe you are surprised by the turn that this article has taken. You may not be used to thinking about belonging as something that has anything to do with self-leadership and stewardship. And while belonging is more than this, it starts here. It starts with you knowing and owning who the Lord has made you, living with integrity in light of that, and learning how to steward your body and the impact of the life God has called you, so that you can live with the values that make you you. 

I hope this college transition is filled with tangible expressions of the presence of God offering you His deep belonging. Resting in His love, may you experience deep safety and a joyful sense of knowing who you are.

With you on this journey,
Aylin

~~~~~~~

Aylin Merck is a soulful and contemplative human who lets those traits color everything she does as a wife, mama, writer, coach, and soul care and trauma care provider. A Dominican-Palestinian, Aylin holds a rich cross-cultural perspective, having not only immigrated to the US but also lived in the Middle East with her husband and family for almost ten years. Expat life in many ways fits her like a glove. She thrives in collaboration and mutual partnerships, in companioning others in their healing journeys and in experiencing friendship with the Triune God through Jesus Christ. Her soul grows three sizes whenever she gets to read by a lake, savor laughter and heart-to-heart conversations with kindred friends, and listen to rain with a Highlander Grogg latte at hand. You can find Aylin on Substack.

The Power of Art Processing for TCKs

by Megan C. Norton-Newbanks

I grew up attending international schools: one in South Africa, one in South Korea, two in Germany, one in Japan, and one in Israel. As a U.S. Foreign Service family, we moved to another country every two to three years, and one school elective I always looked forward to was art class. 

Art classes were a safe space for me, and I loved learning about all the techniques and textures I could discover with different mediums. In my final year of high school, I took AP Art, and my capstone theme was “the journey we take.” I explored this theme through the lens of growing up as a Third Culture Kid. I crafted molds of shoes from clay and self-portraits from torn magazine tones. I used recycled materials to showcase movement and change. Most of these creations remain in my parents’ house and remind me of how I’ve continued to create in different ways.

What I have found in working with TCKs across the world is that we gravitate to art to articulate our stories. Various art forms, from visual renderings to photography to poetry, often capture our stories in ways that essays or books cannot fully capture because we are more focused on the process rather than the outcome. Through drawing, painting, and other forms of making, internal experiences become visible and tangible, offering a way to process change and better understand one’s story.

Some of my favorite processing with TCKs is done through inquiry-based art. Instead of asking them to verbalize or write out the cultural influences that have shaped their identity, I provide a blank piece of paper or other art medium where they can express their “many selves.” It can be helpful to provide simple prompts such as, “What might belonging look like as a place?” or “How does home feel?”

In my own experience, engaging with art has provided a way to revisit moments of transition and identity that I did not fully understand at the time. There were feelings I could not name as a child, such as grief over leaving, confusion about belonging, and the tension of holding multiple cultural worlds, and yet when I began to create, those experiences found expression. Understanding often came through the process, not before it. It became less about creating something to show and more about creating in order to discover. 

Sometimes there can be resistance to engaging with art processing. I often hear, “I can’t even draw a stick figure” or “I’m not an artist.” But art expression and processing is more about curiosity than skill. There is no need to share or explain the outcome unless you want to. At the same time, sometimes it can be helpful to reflect afterward with a few gentle questions such as: What stands out to me? What surprised me? What might this be saying about my experience?

There is something universal about art that transcends culture while still honoring individual expression. Jemina Watstein, an art educator, explains in The Belonging Project podcast episode, “How Creative Kids Navigate Life Between Cultures,” that children across the world move through similar stages of artistic development, yet their environments shape how they create and what they express. For globally mobile individuals, this often results in a rich blend of influences that reflect their unique journeys. Activities like blending patterns, symbols, or artistic styles from different cultures can help make this diversity visible.

Within families, art processing can encourage meaningful connection. Simple creative practices, such as collaboratively creating a shared artwork that reflects each person’s experience, can help children process transitions, build emotional awareness, and maintain a sense of belonging even in the midst of change. In these spaces, art becomes more than expression. It becomes a bridge between stories, identities, and relationships.

When I met the very talented artist Simona Wiig, a fellow TCK, we connected over our creative practices. She has done research and held art exhibitions on the interrelationships between belonging, identity, and a multicultural upbringing. Together, we have offered workshops to TCKs to express their stories through various art mediums. We love hearing about how multimedia art inspires TCKs to share their feelings of home and belonging.

Last year, Simona and I released the book A Work of Heart, a collection of over seventy artistic expressions from Third Culture Kids, Cross Cultural Kids, and global nomads. Each piece is paired with personal reflection, forming a powerful mosaic of identities and memories. 

Several families report using this book as a debriefing tool with TCKs and family members by inviting thoughtful reflection in considering questions like:

  • Which art piece resonates with my own story?
  • What memories or personal experiences do these art pieces bring to mind?
  • In what ways might this content be inviting me to view my story differently?

The book ultimately serves as an invitation to think about your story differently: through art. You do not need to be an artist to begin. A simple sketchbook, a favorite pen, or a small creative practice can become a steady companion wherever you are in the world. In the act of making, you find space to process, to connect, and to belong.

Simona and I are already seeking contributions to Volume 2. Please consider submitting your piece here.

~~~~~~~

Megan C. Norton-Newbanks, MA, MS, is an author, CCK/TCK consultant, intercultural trainer, podcaster, and writer. Megan grew up in six countries and has since lived in four more as an ATCK, in addition to six U.S. states. Her book, Belonging Beyond Borders: How Adult Third Culture Kids Can Cultivate a Sense of Belonging, equips and empowers readers to recognize their cultural competencies and apply them in various contexts. Megan also spearheaded the books Letters Now Sent: A Collection of Letters from the Globally Mobile and A Work of Heart: A Collection of Artwork from Multicultural Individuals. In 2022, she launched Beyond Borders Publishing, a platform committed to amplifying cross-cultural voices and stories.

Learning to Stay (a TCK story)

by Sangita Shresthova

I never thought I’d be the kind of person who put down roots. Having grown up between Nepali and Czech cultures, I have always thrived on change — the desire to leave, to be open to new possibilities, and discover something new. For decades, I was always on the move. Colombo, Ahmedabad, Brussels, Frankfurt, Berlin, Boston, Prague, Kathmandu. I didn’t just adapt to transience; I sought it out. Home was wherever my suitcase landed. Rootlessness felt like freedom.

Then, somehow, I settled. 

It didn’t happen overnight; it crept up on me. I fell in love. I had a son. I grew to care about my son’s school, the community around the church children’s choir he joined, the trails our family hiked together, the coffee shop that always got my order right, the streets I biked, the neighbors that waved.

Slowly, quietly, place began to matter. One day, I realized that I had somehow unpacked my suitcase in Altadena, California. Don’t get me wrong, I still sometimes imagined leaving, but for the first time, these desires didn’t rise to the deafening levels that had pushed me to move on before.

And then, on January 7, 2025, everything changed when Altadena (our Altadena) was destroyed by the Eaton Fire. Overnight, sixty percent of our town burned down, and the places I’d come to love disappeared. The coffee shop, the park, the trails, my son’s school and church. Though our home (thankfully) survived, we were not able to return for months, and when we did everything was different. I was overwhelmed and surprised by the depth of my grief. I had lost places before by leaving them, but this was different: the place itself had disappeared.

Through the pain, I felt my old instincts return. I was prepared for this moment, I told myself. My cross-cultural upbringing had taught me to adapt and move on. I know how to start over. I know that rootlessness can be a strength. And so, my first impulse was to do what I had always known how to do: leave and start again somewhere else.

But then, I also remembered what I had learned about the power of connecting (really connecting) to a place and committing to being shaped by geographies as much as cultures. I also thought about my now eleven-year-old son and his emerging Czech, Nepali, Indian, and American cross-cultural identity. I thought about how much his church choir community meant to him.

I realized that I wanted him to know that staying in a place is just as meaningful as having the courage to leave it. I wanted him to understand that resilience can take many shapes and that his cross-cultural upbringing does not mean that rootlessness is his destiny.  

So, despite a strong urge to pack those suitcases, my family and I decided to stay (for now) and become part of Altadena’s long journey to rebuild. I committed to being part of the local community, to holding space for what Altadena may become. I make it a point to visit the restaurants and coffee shops that remain. My son composed a song about Altadena to perform at local events and wears his Altadena tee shirt with hope.

I have adapted and embraced change, while staying in place to grieve for what we have lost, knowing it will never be the same. Through it all, I have learned that living across cultures can teach us how to adapt, move on, and let go. But it can also teach us something I am still learning: how to stay.

~~~~~~~~

A Czech-Nepali mother, writer, former dancer, and current professor at the University of Southern California, Sangita Shresthova currently lives in Altadena, California. She recently published The Cross-Cultural Parenting Handbook, to share what she learned about parenting across cultures through her conversations with more than thirty cross-cultural parents and caregivers.

As an Adult TCK, I Was Resistant to Grief Processing. Here’s What Changed My Mind.

I first learned about the Grief Tower model while taking a course on providing care for Third Culture Kids. Some things weren’t new to me. I’m a TCK. I’m married to a TCK. And I raised two TCKs. But some stuff was. 

In the course we learned that global childhoods are ampersand in nature and that we can honor both the good and the hard things that shape our backgrounds. We learned that global kids are twice as likely as monocultural kids to experience harmful risk factors—but that their international upbringing is also full of deliciously unique potential.

We heard how much expat parents love their kids—but also how goodbyes, starting over, losing people, exposure to trauma, and relationship disruptions can stack up during childhood until the body finally says, “This is enough,” and our health topples over, often when we least expect it. 

These things made sense to me. For other TCKs at least. I could picture the faces of kids I knew who had experienced Big T traumas, and I began to understand why that first or second year of college was disastrous for so many, as they suddenly developed risky behaviors and health problems. They must have been going through a lot, and it all caught up.

Part of me wanted to interrupt the instructor with my perspective as a TCK and let all the eager participants know that most of us still love TCK life. But I held my tongue, literally between my teeth. Even when I disagree with someone or don’t like what I’m hearing, I believe in keeping an open mind. 

So I tried to think of these new thoughts, the ones I was resisting, on a personal level. I thought back to my first year of college and remembered the unexpected turn my life took. If my parents hadn’t planned a home assignment for that same year, I don’t know where I would be today. My thoughts about “those” TCKs suddenly turned personal. I’d had some hard things stack up too. But in my fierce love for growing up global, I had brushed them off.

Our class was instructed to make a timeline of some of the harder life experiences that stood out to us. A disquieting malaise settled over me. Were we ever going to get to the good stuff? The adventures of my childhood in Cameroon felt strangely compromised by this exercise. I needed people to know that global childhood is wildly beautiful.

At the same time, I knew these instructors were experts in TCKs, and my single experience didn’t tell the whole TCK story. They were coming at it from a research background, while mine was totally anecdotal. But this exercise still didn’t feel very ampersand-y. It felt more like a betrayal to my entire life. So, do I say something? 

I decided to wait and see if we would get a chance to write about our positive experiences too. My pen was ready to wordify the memories flooding my mind—

My whipping ponytail flying down dirt roads with five friends piled high on my bike. Stirring corn flour into fufu over eucalyptus embers. Joining the beat of goatskin drums and Cameroonian choirs to worship God in the way that became normal to me. Twisting horsehair into birdtraps and roasting our reward with my friends. Huddling around the radio to listen to the BBC chime of news every evening. My family of six devouring Mom’s pancakes made from precious flour and sugar from the capital city. Muddy soccer wars in torrential tropical rains with my high school friends. Learning from the actions of my international school teachers that Jesus doesn’t recoil from our ugly parts, He leans into them. 

These were a massive part of my childhood, and I wouldn’t feel comfortable writing down the bad stuff without also acknowledging the good. It wouldn’t fairly represent me or my experience. And it might just scare my classmates off from the good work of raising their own kids abroad. 

I was forming a model in my head for how the class could better balance the good with the hard. Then came the instruction: “When you’ve drawn your timeline of grief blocks, go ahead and write two emotions you felt under each block.”

I could no longer keep silent. I’d watched some TCKs get stuck there on an unforgiving path of retelling their hardship. So I formed my concern as a question: “Will we go back later and write down some of our childhood highlights? Those are really important to me.”

Her knowing smile told me she’d heard this before. Her look wasn’t patronizing. It was gentle.

“That makes sense. The good stuff is so important to honor. But the reason we focus on grief for this timeline is because the good stuff doesn’t weigh us down. Unprocessed grief does.”

If I’d been struck by lightning, the accuracy of her words couldn’t have cut any faster or truer to my heart.

The good stuff doesn’t weigh us down. 

It’s there. We honor it. We remember it. We celebrate it. But the good stuff is not what caused some of the TCKs I knew in college to suddenly engage in risky behaviors, try drugs for the first time, abuse alcohol, start having nightmares, develop hair loss, become hypervigilant, have health crashes, or harm themselves.

It was the hard stuff that caught up to us. We ignored it because we were so busy focusing on the good stuff. Or we thought we couldn’t do anything about it anyway. Or we had internalized messages that anger and sadness are bad. Or it felt like betrayal to our rich experiences to acknowledge anything remotely negative. Or we simply hadn’t learned how to hold two truths in tension—that life can be both good and hard. 

God was at work beneath my resistance, and the tectonic plates of some un-nameable thing in my core began to shift. I realized that I had learned the ampersand truth in my faith. Wrestling with God through hard seasons, devastating seasons, I’d learned deep in my cells that He could hold all of me, not just the best of me. He could hold my questions, my anger, my unhealth, and my valleys, alongside my gratitude. 

But I’d not applied the same full care to my TCK story. On some level I had acknowledged the hard parts, but I hadn’t honored them with the space they deserved. For my spiritual life, grief and tension felt appropriate. For my global childhood, sitting a bit longer with the hard parts felt like a betrayal to the wonder that it was. 

I began to sink my teeth into deeper truths about the incredible gift of a global childhood, but this time of acknowledging and honoring some of the harder things about globally mobile life truly impacted me.

And I didn’t get stuck. I didn’t negatively or irreversibly polarize my experience. Quite the opposite. This exercise unlocked an even deeper appreciation for my full life—all of me and all that shaped me. 

I began to hold some of the beliefs I’d built up to the light and re-examine whether they were helping me, and whether I wanted to carry them into the next decades of my life. Beliefs like processing the hard parts diminishes the gift, anger is bad, and acknowledging hard stuff betrays someone or something.

My faith already had ampersand depth. Now I was being asked to apply that same depth to something I cherished as positively wonderful — my TCK story. God had already taught me the beauty of holding truths in tension. Now I was inviting Him to show me how to hold this full truth in tension. I was inviting Him to help me honor the goodbye to Cameroon that sucker punched me, the reverse culture shock that bewildered me, the cultural isolation that marked periods of my life. 

This exercise unlocked something else of equal or greater value. The ability to hold all of my family and all that shaped and is still shaping them. My husband. My daughter. My son. 

And this kind of ripple effect started to spread outward to other relationships.

I no longer feel compromised by making space for all of life—not only my own. As I work with expat families and their children, there’s a fuller and newer space for their entire story. We can synthesize the whole story—including the parts that haven’t taken up enough space—whether good or bad. We can talk about the joy of friends and the missing of parents at boarding school. We can talk about the thrill of travel and the hardship of living in a war zone. 

If their story is mostly great, we can acknowledge the hard parts they might have glossed over—the lonely birthday party after a big move or the long, empty nights of a parent disappearing into the overwhelm of their own mind. And if their story is mostly hard, we can honor it and still be curious about the hidden sweet moments that may have been overshadowed for years—their host country nanny picking them ripe mangoes or the tropical sun streaming through banana leaves on a steamy morning. Because either extreme of grief—ignoring it or getting swallowed whole by it—isn’t helpful. 

And now I understand better why some TCKs get stuck. They don’t get stuck because they’ve dared to examine the hard things—they get stuck because they’ve never had enough space to process them. Maybe they’d been rushed past their hardship too many times, told to focus on the adventure, the privilege, the good. Or maybe they weren’t told anything, and the silence was thundering. They never got a chance to catch their breath from those hard stories in the safety of loving arms. As a global community we need to make space for the full TCK story, not just the instaperfect parts we’re comfortable celebrating.

I’m reminded here of God’s tender provision to make a shade plant grow quickly over Jonah as he sat exposed and vulnerable to the sun’s pounding heat, grumbling about God’s grace to Nineveh. Scripture tells us the plant was to ease the discomfort that Jonah faced as he listed his grievances (Jonah 4).

Even though Jonah had just been the recipient of immeasurable grace himself, God didn’t shut his frustration down. He provided shade and a receptive place for Jonah’s reflection. And when Jonah still couldn’t escape his negative mental loop, God allowed the sun to touch him again, sparking an honest and welcomed conversation. 

If God could hold space for Jonah’s fury without rushing him past it, then maybe I could learn to do the same. For myself. For the expat families I work with. For my own kids. I have a living picture of a God who didn’t say, “Get over it, Jonah. Focus on the good,” but made room for the mess. First He offered the comfort of shade, and then He initiated an honest conversation. He didn’t recoil. He stayed present to hold the whole story. It didn’t start with a lecture, but with shade.

In a way, all this grief processing brought me back to the same place I started. I have a more full appreciation of the hard and painful parts, and still I’d like to raise my hand to the whole global classroom and say, “And it was wildly beautiful. All of it. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”

Hearing the Good and the Hard of Missionary Kid Lives

I have been working in TCK research for over ten years. That includes six large scale surveys (with 200-2000 responses) and over 600 interviews. The data I’m currently analysing comes from TCK Training’s 2024 survey of 1,643 TCKs around the world. It was a long survey covering a lot of topics and I wish I could spend ten hours a day delving into the details! For now, the initial data on missionary kids has a lot to say about their experiences. (The full First Look data drop is available paywall free.) 

In this post I will share with you four key things we learned about missionary kids (MKs) through the research:

  1. Most missionary kids are glad they grew up abroad.
  2. Good things and hard things are often intertwined.
  3. Missionary kids feel a lot of pressure.
  4. Emotional support and mental health are key.

1) Most missionary kids are glad they grew up abroad. 

Throughout my research I have learned many hopeful things about how TCKs perceive their globally mobile childhoods. The vast majority have positive things to say about their experiences, even though they may in the same breath acknowledge that there were also difficulties. In this latest research we learned:

  • 91% of MKs said growing up abroad was a good experience overall.
  • 76% of MKs said it made their family closer.
  • 72% of MKs said it was “the best way to grow up.”

2) Good things and hard things are often intertwined.

Life is rarely black and white. To truly understand the lives of missionary kids, we must hear the nuance in their stories — that there were hard things along with the good things. Even many MKs who had the most difficult experiences of childhood also saw positives in their upbringing.

  • 98% of MKs said, “I can see both good parts and hard parts in my story.”
  • 96% of MKs said, “There were hard times, but it enriched my life.”
  • 83% of MKs said, “I enjoyed my childhood, but I think some things could have been handled better.”
  • And only 7% of MKs said living abroad “ruined my life.”

3) Missionary kids feel a lot of pressure.

When TCK Training asked TCKs about various childhood experiences connected to their parents’ work, we found that missionary kids were much more likely to feel certain pressures when they were children.

  • 69% of MKs felt “pressure to ‘perform’ while visiting our passport country”; they were twice as likely as other TCKs to feel this pressure.
  • 54% of MKs felt “pressure to be ‘perfect’ as my behavior reflected on my parent’s employer.”
  • 27% of MKs said that as children they felt “anxiety as a result of duties assigned to me (i.e. tour guide, translator)”; they were twice as likely as other TCKs to feel this anxiety.

Through my interviews I have also learned that many missionary kids try to hide their stress from their parents, as they do not want to cause additional burden to their parents. They love their parents and recognise the strain they already carry. 

4) Emotional support and mental health are key.

While those of us working to support missionary kids have long seen impacts on their mental health, when the results came in, the numbers were still heavy. 

  • During childhood, 37% of MKs lived with someone who had a serious mental health crisis.
  • 34% of MKs reported experiencing a serious mental health crisis themselves during childhood.
  • 40% of MKs had been diagnosed with a mental illness during their lifetime.
  • 86% of MKs experienced symptoms of at least one mental health concern during their lifetime.

We’re also seeing that missionary kids are less likely to receive diagnoses than other TCKs. For example, while 47% of MKs experienced symptoms of PTSD, only 12% received a diagnosis (which is still nearly double the rate of PTSD diagnosis in the US population). 

Missionary kids are experiencing the impact of not only their own mental health struggles, but the struggles of their parents. One thing I’ve seen over and over through our research and working with thousands of TCKs and their families around the world is that when parents are doing well, they have the energy and capacity to care for their kids better. So not only do the TCKs need access to quality mental health support, but getting the parents this kind of support is crucial!  

There are a range of issues contributing to a lack of mental healthcare for missionary families. Many families lack access to quality mental health services due to a remote location, financial stress, frequent mobility, language access, or a combination of these factors. 

Stigma around mental health can also play a role in preventing MKs (and their parents) reaching out for the support they need. It is important that we talk openly about mental health and the ways we benefit from getting support.

Prevention Matters

The saying “an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure” (attributed to Benjamin Franklin) is appropriate here. I believe this data demonstrates the importance of preventive care for MKs and missionary families. My hope and desire is that we support families in such a way that we see rates of mental health concerns drop over time, and MKs flourish — on the field and throughout their lives.

One of the many reasons I love my work at TCK Training is that we believe that international life is a good thing and that it can go hand in hand with a healthy family life. We work to create quality preventive care resources, and we share our research freely because we believe quality research is a critical component of exceptional TCK care. We want caregivers, parents, and supporting churches alike to be equipped to care for TCKs well! 

 

This article expands on data shared in “Key Takeaways for TCKs” in Mission Frontiers, May/June 2025.

Photo by Kasturi Laxmi Mohit on Unsplash

Research and Resources for Improving TCKs’ Mental Health

When my book Misunderstood was published, I was immediately asked if/when I would write another book. At the time I felt I had nothing left to write. I’d put everything into those pages. Yet within a year a new idea started to form: a guidebook for Adult TCKs, showing that they are not alone in their struggles and sharing strategies for moving forward in healthy ways.

Since 2018 I have been doing both qualitative and quantitative research in aid of this project. It has been paused for multiple major medical issues and an incredibly disruptive unplanned pandemic relocation, among other reasons. During that time some wonderful resources for Adult TCKs have been released, which I regularly recommend. (These include Incredible Lives and the Courage to Live Them by Dr Rachel Cason, Belonging Beyond Borders by Megan Norton, and Girl Uprooted by Lena Lee).

Yet the dream of my wide-ranging guidebook persists. I have about 200 hours of interview recordings with 120 Adult TCKs from a variety of backgrounds, plus a survey with data I am starting to analyse. 

The survey was originally intended as a quick effort to guide my research by distinguishing which topics Adult TCKs thought were the most important to talk about. Due to my medical issues, I left it open far longer than originally intended, and it attracted over 800 complete responses. Not only that, but with such a large pool of responses from Adult TCKs of different ages, I learned some really interesting information as well. (You can find the survey information and data analysis here.)

In this post I share a few key things learned about ATCKs’ mental health, plus resources for supporting TCKs and their families.

Unresolved Grief

3 out of every 5 ATCKs said their adult lives were impacted by unresolved grief. Another 1 in 5 said their adult lives were ‘sometimes’ impacted by unresolved grief. 

While this won’t come as a surprise to anyone working with TCKs on a regular basis, it’s still a huge number. 80% of TCKs are impacted as adults by grief they haven’t processed effectively. This underlines the importance of giving TCKs of all ages (from young children through to adults) the tools to express their emotions, feel their feelings, and unstack their grief towers. 

I am so grateful that there are now excellent grief processing resources I can recommend for every age and stage! 

For young children, the picture book My Tower is Tumbling. 

For parents of children from toddlers to teens, the short book The Grief Tower, available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook, and the workshop Unstacking Your TCK’s Grief Tower. 

For both teen and Adult TCKs, Unstacking Sessions with an ATCK coach can be great. 

For Adult TCKs working through this themselves, there’s the short book Unstacking Your Grief Tower (ebook and paperback) and the Unstacking Your Grief Tower Self-Guided Course. 

For parents and caregivers who want to learn to support others, as well as ATCKs themselves, the workshops Grief Tower 101 and 201. 

For anyone at all (TCK or not), What Made That Feel So Hard? (ebook and paperback), which also has a Bible Study guide.

Depression and Anxiety

Half of the ATCKs who took my survey said their adult lives were impacted by depression, and in a separate question half said their adult lives were impacted by anxiety. Another 20% said their adult lives were ‘sometimes’ impacted by depression, and 20% ‘sometimes’ impacted by anxiety. 

This is by no means a scientifically rigorous study, but the fact that so many ATCKs feel that depression and anxiety have played a significant role in their lives should give us pause. Those of us working with TCKs have seen this anecdotally, though it can be hard to know if what you see in your work is true of the wider community or not – which is where large-scale surveys can be helpful. 

TCK Training has a whole section of resources specifically for Adult TCKs, and among the workshops available is one on Understanding Depression as an ATCK and another on Understanding Your Anxiety as an ATCK. 

For caregivers working with TCKs, there is also an annual Counseling TCKs Therapist Training (with 6 CE hours from the NBCC). The next one is coming up soon — on August 28th, 2024!

What do we do with this?

My little tester survey was never intended to be used as much more than a guide to show what needs our attention. These numbers definitely point to the importance of investigating what is happening with the mental health of Adult TCKs.

This is part of why I am so thankful for my work at TCK Training, where I am the Director of Research and International Education. We are currently collecting responses in a wide-ranging survey of Adult TCKs which includes questions about mental health experiences (both screening questions and questions about medical diagnoses) vetted by licensed psychologists and counsellors familiar with TCKs. 

So far there are 1,300 complete responses from ATCKs who are citizens of 85 countries. We would love to hear from even more Adult TCKs, so please check out the survey information to learn more and pass it on to others. The survey closes on August 31st – not much time left!

As with all our research, the analysis of this new research will be freely available with no paywall. You can read findings from our previous research and learn the latest as it appears on our research page. By the end of 2024, we should have more detailed data on the experiences of depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions in the TCK community. We believe that this data will help us as a community to better support families as they raise children abroad and to better support Adult TCKs as they move forward – no matter what their childhood experiences were.

 

Photo by Nik Shuliahin on Unsplash

What Does It Mean To Be A Missionary Kid? 

by Iona McHaney Marcellino

I grew up in Angola, where my parents served as missionaries from 1999 to 2011. People often ask me what it was like to be a missionary kid. I never have a succinct answer.

It would be easier to share a memory, a well-rounded vignette of life in Angola, life on the mission field, that would allow the listener to see how nuanced their question is. It would be easier to sit the questioner down, hand them a cup of tea, and say:

‘I have a memory from Angola…..’

We were standing off the road in a remote area, at the Cascades de Kalandula (Calandula Falls). The absolute beauty of the sight was magnified by its seclusion. I had already been to Victoria Falls, and it was fine, but it wasn’t a memory I’d want to write about. 

As for why I had the opportunity to see these beautiful waterfalls? That’s a more complicated story.

My dad had fallen ill on a mission trip to the interior of the country. I don’t remember what he had. Malaria? Cholera? Marburg? Something obscure and foreign to Western ears, something easily preventable or easily treatable when you’re surrounded by modern facilities and deadly when you’re not. 

I think I was nine. Or ten. I may have been twelve. I don’t remember a lot of the wider details, but I do remember the drive there. 

We drove over 10 hours on dirt roads, bumping along, first in the coastal heat, then in the interior mugginess, and then finding a little relief as we hit the freshness of elevation. We crossed a river on a bridge made of tree logs wedged in between the banks. If I had ever doubted my mum had faith, I didn’t after she drove over that bridge. 

Then we heard that my dad had died. He was so ill that the people he was visiting didn’t believe he could recover. It just didn’t happen in their experience. When he was moved to a bigger city, the rural church announced on their radio that the American Missionary had died. There was a prayer vigil for his family and gratitude for his life. Meanwhile my dad was paying $100 a night to sleep on a foam mattress in a dismal hotel.

I don’t know if I heard about it before we left Luanda, while we were on the road, or after we had my dad back in the car. My memory is not really about my dad being ill and announced possibly dead on Angolan radio.

My memory is of the waterfall. 

The water roared and tumbled over the cliff, rainbows flitting off the spray. The sound was purely ecstatic as millions and millions of water molecules clambered over and around each other, then landed on rocks and plunged deep into a pool obscured by the rising mist. 

We stared and stared at this magnificent, jubilant display of Creation. What a treasure. 

No tourists were flocking with their cameras to get a better view of water they didn’t know and a land they didn’t care about. No one was posing in front of the rainbows for a thousand clicks and then off to their next excursion. No one was traipsing through rained out roads and minefields to see this tremendous display of glory. 

No one, except for us. 

And we were only there because we had to collect an American missionary who had almost died in a rural village. 

I remember staring at the shrouds of mist as they rose back up over the cliffside, the water giving an encore, another wave before wafting off to its next journey. I pulled a woven wrap from Chad around me and shivered, no doubt pretending I was some distant relative of Lucy Pevensie and that this was my Cair Paravel. And in a way, it was. 

I remember turning to eat lunch with my mum. I remember watching my dad, who’d lost about 15 pounds in two weeks, eat his lunch and speak to the team leader (who had travelled with us) in English, then turn to speak to his friend in Portuguese. 

When people ask me, ‘What was it like being a missionary kid? What was it like living in Angola?’ I wish I could somehow transport them into this scene and share with them everything I was seeing and feeling all at once: the juxtaposition of a recovering man, loyal friends, near tragedy, and the absolute, unashamed wonder of Creation at our feet.

I wish I could share that memory and hear people say, ‘Ah, yes, I understand, what a difficult balance to live in.’ 

It’s really difficult to explain that challenging balance, of recognising the good and the terrible all at once, unless you’ve experienced it first hand. 

Being a missionary kid in Angola was living in the constant state of seeing the worst and seeing the best. Watching war ravage a nation and a people, then watching that war end and witnessing peace weave back into a land. Standing by as epidemics hit all around, and also seeing the flood of help that comes from churches when others are in need. Feeling fear at night and being grateful in the morning. Being different and still loved. Being a foreign misfit and still welcomed. Driving all day on roads that would fail any British inspection dismally to reach a father who may or may not be alive, find him recovering, then standing in front of the most beautiful natural wonder I have ever seen and probably ever will see, and giving thanks to God for undeserved provision. 

There are many different responses when I explain my life on the mission field. Many people exclaim how adventurous it must have been – and it was. But the majority of people have more negative, and maybe more naive, things to say about my lived experiences. 

Those are the people I most wish I could somehow share this story with – a strand of my memory demonstrating the reality of living between the good and the bad, between the eternal world and this broken one, between the plagues and the cascades of mercy.

Missionary kids, on any field, live in that space. Some missionary kids spend their childhoods in the back of a four-wheel drive watching the Jesus film over and over. They watch as the Holy Spirit captivates and moves, they watch on Sunday mornings as people grieve, weep, and share about their lost family members, their dying children, their lost homes, their broken land.

Other missionary kids live in a completely different context, some in thriving metropolitan neighborhoods, others in stable, quiet towns, but they continue to watch their parents serve a community, take on its burdens, and give their time and resources to a cause beyond this world. MKs often have a front row seat at the visceral fight for life; there on the mission field we see that precious glimpse of eternity over and over again. 

Some people say I must be relieved to be in the US or the UK and grateful to have left Angola, my home. Others tell me how unbelievable my parents’ sacrifice was. Some press to learn more, asking endless questions. Was I scared? Angry? What terrible things did I see? How is this life justified? Others, I know, are not really interested in hearing anything about a life so far beyond their own context or understanding.

No matter what you think of my experiences, however, my prayer is always that someday you get to see those same waterfalls. I hope that someday you are able to see an immense display of cascading mercy and joy amongst a seemingly impossible trial. I hope you too will be able to get a glimpse into Eternity as you stand on the edges of this world. 

***

The missionary life comes with a lot of sacrifice. It comes with losing time with family, losing time at home, in growing up too fast and in not knowing enough about your own passport country. It comes with extreme loneliness and even greater joy.

Missionary families need support tailored to their experiences, and those experiences are not always easy to understand. I will link to several resources for churches, families, and sending organisations who want to support and care for their mission families at the end of this article.

As an adult who grew up on the mission field, it has taken time to learn how to interact with my past with grace, compassion, and honesty. Living in a country that was not mine and living on the edge of a community as it grieved and grew was not always easy. It has taken years for me to be able to take hold of my story, with its misplaced grief, its perpetual homesickness, and its ill-fitting stories. There is a lot to unpack as an Adult MK.

Thankfully, you do not have to unpack it alone. There are some really valuable resources for adults who are looking back on their missionary kid experiences and trying to make sense of it all. I’ll list them at the end of this article, and I really encourage you to pursue them.

Your memories, your stories, your experiences are worthwhile. They are invaluable pieces of who you are, and navigating your story with grace, honesty, and understanding can be challenging but also restorative. There are unexpected travel plans, unknown illnesses, family stresses, hidden losses, and some grief sidelining most of our stories. But there are also beautiful surprises, like hidden waterfalls, that make remembering the journey a little sweeter. 

 

Resources

For Adult MKs: 
Misunderstood by Tanya Crossman 
Unstacking Your Grief Tower by Lauren Wells 
Unstacking Sessions with TCK Training  

For parents of MKs: 
Our Children, Our First Ministry: Discipling Missionary Kids
How Parents Can Help 

For sending churches, grandparents, and others at home: 
Churches supporting missionary families
Mobility is tough on kids: here’s how you can help
10 Questions Missionary Kids would love to be asked
10 Questions MKs Dread 
Caring for TCKs when you’re not the parents 

For sending organisations:
TCK Training for Overseeing Agencies

 

Photo by Jared Erondu on Unsplash

~~~~~~~~~~~

Born in Scotland to American parents and raised in Angola, Iona McHaney Marcellino is a second generation Adult TCK, a nurse, and a writer. She currently lives in Cambridge, UK, with her husband and daughter. She enjoys working alongside others who are committed to supporting TCKs with research-focused TCK Care, and she interned with TCK Training from January to July 2023. Iona writes about her own experience as a TCK in her blog, authentic unrest. She enjoys connecting with other Adult TCKs, virtually or in-person, and discussing the nuances of the multicultural life.

When Expectations Aren’t Reality: Supporting Your TCKs in the First Years of University

by Lauren Wells

I stood on a grassy hill hugging my parents tight as they prepared to drive away and head back to Africa, leaving me at university in Indiana. I had prepared for this transition. I had visited the school, had already made some friends, had earned my driver’s license on a previous home assignment, and felt ready and excited for this new chapter. It was going to be great.

A few days into the semester, I was required to go to an international student workshop. I was excited, thinking this was the part where I’d meet other TCKs. I was surprised to find that all of the other international students came from other passport countries for the purpose of university and that this was their first time living outside their home country.

I was equally surprised when our workshop consisted of teaching American currency (“This is a dollar. This is a penny, it’s worth one cent.”) and explaining how to dial 911. Having lived in the US until I was 13, I quickly realized I was the outsider in the international student group, so after I’d met the requirements, I never went back. 

As the semester went on, I tried to make friends. But it felt like every time I opened my mouth, the words I spoke didn’t get the reaction I was expecting. My attempts to be funny were met with awkward smiles. My attempts to deepen relationships by sharing about something a bit more vulnerable were met with comments that communicated a lack of ability to relate to my experiences and no invitation to continue the conversation.

I quickly felt like I didn’t belong with the monocultural crowd, but I told myself it didn’t matter. “I’ll only be here long enough to get my degree anyway, and it will be easier to leave if I never make close friends.” I knew what it felt like to leave close friends, so when my initial attempts to build relationship hadn’t worked, that seemed like a good excuse to stop trying.

I became the quiet one who walked through campus trying not to be noticed. I succeeded academically but have no memories of good social experiences. That first Christmas break, I remember feeling like a shell of myself, never having felt that level of emptiness and despair before, and I simultaneously decided that I just needed to toughen up and keep moving forward. 

School resumed, and I took on more classes than recommended, thinking that if I just poured myself into the academics, I could ignore the rest. But then, the grief started to creep in. Not just the grief of that year, but the grief that I had so skillfully pushed down for a long time before that. My Grief Tower was collapsing.

At TCK Training we work with TCKs on both sides of this story – educating families who are raising TCKs on how they can be intentional in caring for the unique needs of TCKs so that they can prevent adverse outcomes in adulthood and serving adult TCKs who reach out to us for support. 

In between the two parts of that story, we have found the need for preventive care and support. Sometimes universities have a wonderful TCK program, like MuKappa, that provides community and support for TCKs in their university years. Unfortunately, there is often a lack of resources available to university-age TCKs to guide them through that season. 

But there is good news! We can be intentional about supporting our university-age TCKs well, especially in those first couple of years. 

  • Set them up for emotional success by making sure they’ve had the opportunity to debrief and unstack their Grief Tower before university. The books The Grief Tower and Unstacking Your Grief Tower can guide you in doing that process in your own family. We recommend doing this at least 3 months before the transition to university so that the grief these conversations bring to the surface has time to begin to heal before they experience the major transition of starting university. 
  • Make sure they have avenues for connection and continued processing with safe people – family, friends, counselors. There will inevitably be difficulty in the transition, but they will not always want to share their hardships with you. Often this is because they won’t want to burden you on top of your international work or because they won’t want to disappoint you at their “failure” to thrive. Take away that shame by regularly asking them what has been hard. Ask them questions, and even when they don’t answer, let them know you don’t expect everything to be easy for them. For more on this, check out KC360’s workshop, “Indicators that University Transition is Going Well (or Not) with Dr. Rachel Cason” included in their free website membership. 
  • Help them develop a support network. There is potential for heavy, hard, or just unexpected circumstances to arise that require the help of a supportive adult. Asking for help can feel shameful, but that fear and shame can be reduced when the TCK has a list of people who have agreed to be a support to them. It is even more helpful when those people regularly check in with the TCK to see how they’re doing and what they need. Have your TCK help create a “supportive adult” list, and then ask the people on the list to regularly reach out to the TCK – both asking what they need and offering tangible ways they can help. For example, “Can I take you shopping for a winter coat? Can I come help pack up your dorm room for summer break?”
  • Teach them to celebrate wins. Adult TCKs often struggle to acknowledge their victories due to consistently feeling the need to adapt to fit the communities around them. The internal need to continue performing at ever higher levels leads to burnout. Celebrating victories, however, allows for rest, builds confidence and a sense of value, and strengthens their emotional bank to handle the difficult waves that come. 
  • Provide them transition support in their first year or two of university. An example of this is TCK Training’s Launch Pad program, which provides repatriating TCKs with a 10-month virtual cohort community, education, and support directly related to adult TCK experiences. There is space to process and grieve, along with regular checks-ins to celebrate victories and continue developing as an individual.
  • Familiarize yourself with Adult TCK resources so that you can support your Adult TCK by sending them relevant resources along the way. There is so much available now that simply wasn’t around only a few years ago! You can view all of TCK Training’s ATCK services, workshops, and resources at www.tcktraining.com/for-atcks 

The first couple years of university are notoriously the most difficult transition for TCKs. We believe, however, that with intentionality we can make these years not only healthy, but years that set them up for long-term emotional and relational health. 

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

~~~~~~~~~

Lauren Wells is the founder and CEO of TCK Training and the Unstacking Company and author of Raising Up a Generation of Healthy Third Culture Kids, The Grief Tower, and Unstacking Your Grief Tower. She is an Adult TCK who spent her teenage years in Tanzania, East Africa. She sits on the board of the TCK Care Accreditation as Vice Chair and is part of the TCK Training research team focusing on preventive care research in the TCK population.