Third culture kid – A Life Overseas |

To the New Expat…

A few weeks ago, someone who is moving overseas contacted me. This is her first time living overseas, she is going into the unknown, and wants to be as prepared as possible.

Here is what I said to her:

Dear Lucy (name has been changed)

Wow – I’m excited for you and not a little envious! This is an amazing opportunity, and though I know based on your email that you are scared, I think you may find this is one of those gifts that is given to you and your family for this time of your life.

That being said, you asked for practical, not philosophical advice – so here goes:

Learn the numbers as quickly as possible. You will find them everywhere and it will help you to tell time, understand the prices of items, and tell people how many children you have!
Learn the currency and don’t translate it into US dollars. If you do, you will either spend too much money thinking “everything is so cheap,” or too little money and thus, not get the things you need.
Take things that will immediately make your new space feel like home – a few pictures, candles, a couple of books. That way, even as you’re waiting for the rest of your household goods, you can begin to create a home.
Recognize that your children’s grief is real, real, real. Allow them to be sad without putting caveats on the sadness (eg “I know you’re sad, but think how much fun travel will be…”) Travel may be fun, but it will not give them back their friends and schools. Allow them to grieve, and grieve with them.
You are arriving in the summer, a time when expat communities dwindle, so it will probably take some time to connect with others. Still – limit the amount of time that your kids spend on social media, just as you would limit social media in your home country. You cannot, I repeat, you cannot live in two places at once. Believe me, I’ve tried, and it doesn’t work. So limit the time they spend, and try to get out and explore.
By the same token, don’t allow yourself to spend too much time on Skype, Facebook, or any other social media sites. It will be all you can do sometimes, to tear yourself away. But tear yourself away you must. This is not the end of your world, this is the beginning of a new world. Allow it to be just that.
Don’t be afraid to initially be a tourist. If you don’t explore the area, you may come to the end of your time and find you’ve not seen the world-famous sites there are to see. Use those first weeks to create adventure and have your kids journal about it.
Remember that your culture is just that – your culture. Others have different ways of doing things. They aren’t bad – they are just different. Learn cultural humility, a life skill you will never regret.
News flash: Life wasn’t perfect in your home country. It will be easy to think it was when you are faced with the newness of life and culture shock in its monstrous intensity. But it wasn’t. There are relationship problems, infrastructure issues, and just plain life wherever we live.
You take yourself and your family with you. You aren’t all going to change on the plane. Sure, this is a new start, but you are who you are. At the same time, you are also capable of change and being shaped by the country where you will make your home. Allow that shape to happen.
Have a high tolerance of ambiguity and be capable of complexity. The country where you’re going is dismissed in the western world with a few stereotypical statements. Those are not the complete story. If you allow yourself, you will be able to understand a more complete, and thus richer version of the story.
Give yourself grace. This move is huge! You won’t understand the impact until sometime later, so give yourself, your husband, and your kids grace.
Laugh.Laugh.Laugh. Laughter is a holy gift that will take you through culture shock and culture conflict. It will take you through the hard days and you will be able to look back on them with much joy. So allow yourself the holy gift of laughter.
Most of all, know that “He who began a good work in you, will be faithful to complete it!” God lives in other places. He is alive and well across the world, continuing his good work in the redemption story. You are a part of that Story and He is faithful.

I’ve included a picture here that I think you will enjoy! Print it out, and put it on your refrigerator so you remember these ten commandments.

Much love to you,

Marilyn

What would you add for Lucy? Please share in the comments and we will compile the comments for a new post!

Note: This was previously published in July 2015

If You Send an MK Some Cookies

Inspired by Laura Numeroff—

If you send an MK some cookies, she’s going to want to eat a couple.

But first she’ll ask her mom if she can walk down the street to get some apple soda to go with them.

On her way, she’ll see a stationery store.

That will make her think about buying a card to send to you.

In the store she’ll find one that says, “Thanks You! Very! Very!”

Then she’ll decide to make a card herself.

For that she’ll need some glitter, so she’ll ask the clerk (in his language) if he has some “really small colorful things,” while making “sparkly” motions with her hands.

He’ll probably reach under the counter and pull out a bag of marbles.

She’ll politely decline.

While she’s leaving the store, she’ll see a lizard on the door frame.

She’ll imagine what it would be like to catch it and take it home as a pet.

Then she’ll remember her dog. He’s most likely hungry, and it’s her day to feed him, so she’ll cut her trip short to hurry home.

On her way back, she’ll hear her neighbor calling to her through an open window.

The lady will wave her over and hand her two huge cucumbers and another kind of vegetable she’s never seen before.

She’ll take them home and put them on the kitchen counter.

On the counter she’ll notice a roll of tin foil, and that will give her an idea.

She’ll tear off a strip and grab some markers and some scissors and take everything into the living room.

She’ll color all over the tin foil and cut it into tiny, tiny pieces.

Chances are, she’ll sneeze and some of the pieces will fall under the couch.

When she leans down to pick them up, she’ll find a bracelet that she’s been looking for that her best friend gave her last year.

That will make her miss her friend so she’ll pull out her phone to look up the difference between their time zones so they can video chat tomorrow.

After she figures that out, she’ll add her friend’s name to the “to-do” list she keeps.

She’ll also write down “glitter” because she wants to go back to the stationery store to show the clerk what she’s made and ask him what it’s called.

When she thinks about the store she’ll remember that she never got any apple soda.

That will remind her that she has some cookies.

So she’ll eat two or three.

And that will remind her of you.

[photo: “Cookies,” by z Q, used under a Creative Commons license]

What Growing up in a Muslim Country Taught us About Christianity

By Robynn Bliss & Marilyn Gardner

For Muslims around the world, the holy month of Ramadan ended on Monday night. Here in Kurdistan the excitement as the month ended was palpable. Loud chanting at 4:30 in the morning from the mosque next door marked the end of the fast and the beginning of the feast. The piece below was written seven years ago, but in an age where fear rules and friendship is held back for fear of the one who is other, it feels important to republish it.

*****

As Christians raised in Pakistan our memories of Ramadan days are as strong as our memories of the Call to Prayer waking us at dawn.

As we think about the end of Ramadan and the Eid celebrations that have been going on around the world, our minds and hearts remember what we have learned about our own faith from our Muslim friends.

At an early age we learned that God is not North American. He spans nation and ocean, culture and ethnicity. To bind him to one nation is idolatry. To attach Him to one country elevates our own perceptions of that country. Secretly believing that God is North American justifies our private beliefs that we are superior. It’s not true.

We learned that Christians are not the only ones with deep faith. Indeed the Muslims that we were surrounded by were zealous of keeping to the tenants of their faith. They were sincere. They were devoted.

We learned that worship has little to do with pews or worship bands; versions of scripture or language. Worship has everything to do with the heart.

We learned that as women with white skin we had arrogant tendencies, as though we had birthrights. When our behavior reflected that it was ugly.

We learned that caring for women and children, the poor and the broken was never to be separated from the love of God and his call to holiness. We learned that the invitation of the Father that extends to the those in the “highways and byways” included the beggar woman, the street children, the dismembered, the leper.

We learned that the mud huts and dusty streets of Pakistan were far closer to the streets walked by Jesus than the clean suburbs and white steeples that we encountered every four years in the United States. Our Jesus was brown and slightly sweaty with dusty calloused feet; he wasn’t pink and pressed and clean. Blue eyes he did not have.

We learned that Christian community comes in all denominations and many interpretations, that sprinkling and dunking could be argued with equal passion but would ultimately not change our need for a Saviour. We learned that the strong cultural value of individualism in the west could make it harder to selflessly love. When Jesus reiterated that the greatest commandment was loving God and the second greatest was loving each other he meant it. Love is the language of the community. Any other dialect is suspect.

We learned that the word “Allah” is the Arabic word for God and, while one can argue character qualities of God, to be afraid of that word was not wise. Fear rarely motivates faith and holy conversation.

We learned that people are not the enemy. And costumes, like book covers, are not to be judged.

We learned that bridge-building often means drinking 25 cups of tea and serving 100. Hospitality fleshes out acceptance and leads to friendship and deep loyalty. Those are strong bridges built of steel and concrete.

We learned that Muslims make the best of friends; that to share our hearts with them grew our understanding and faith. We were shown kindness, generosity and acceptance. We grew to understand their love for a good joke;their loyalty, their devotion. We learned that once you have a Muslim friend, you always have a friend. They will grieve your losses as if they were their own. They will enter your celebrations with abandon!

We learned that being invited to break the fast was a gift, not something to refuse because of difference in belief, but something to enter with joy and prayer – prayer for our friends and prayer for their land. A land we called home.

And as we close this post we offer you a taste of the Eid celebrations we enjoyed for so many years. It is the journey of going from the simplicity of daily life and the discipline of fasting to the joyous contrast of color, noise and taste of celebrations! It is deep-fried sweet sticky gulab jamun. It is color-infused sweet rice with chunks of fresh coconut and plump raisins; plain rice suddenly dressed up with fatty morsels of meat and sticks of cinnamon; bread normally made on a flat dry pan now fried in oil and served with sweet oily cream of wheat cereal. Muslims knew how to celebrate and invited us into their celebrations. May we do the same during our joyous feasts on Easter and Christmas.

Through the richness of our lives and watching life unfold at weddings, at Eid celebrations, and at the breaking of the fast, we learned more of the creative mystery of the God we continue to love and serve.

This post was first published by Robynn Bliss and Marilyn Gardner on Communicating Across Boundaries.

An Interview with Sara Saunders, Author of the TCK Book “Swirly”

There have been a lot of books written about Third Culture Kids but not so many for them, especially for young TCKs. Swirly, written by adult-TCK Sara Saunders and illustrated by Matthew Pierce, helps remedy that. It’s a picture book that tells the story of a little girl, Lila, who moves with her family overseas, returns back to her family’s “home” country, and then lands at another, new, destination, all the while trying to figure out where she belongs.

Since 2012, when Swirly was published, I’ve seen it displayed at conferences and included on TCK reading lists, but it wasn’t until recently that I purchased a copy to read myself. I also shared it with my wife, and she read the last few pages to our college-age daughter, who’d grown up overseas. It brought tears to my wife’s eyes.

I wanted to hear more from Sara, so I contacted her, and she graciously agreed to answer a few questions:

First of all, where are you from? Just kidding! Better question—Where have you lived? Tell us about your cross-cultural experience as a child.

I was born in the United States, which is my passport country and both of my parents’ passport country. We moved to Nigeria when I was almost 8-years old and lived there for ten years. But I was away at boarding school in Kenya most of the time from age 14-18. My parents were missionaries for the Seventh-day Adventist Church, serving in a mission hospital. As a young adult I have also lived and studied or worked in the United States, Thailand, Mexico, Nigeria again, Kenya again, Uganda, and now Lebanon.

When did you become aware that you were a TCK—that you had more than one culture swirled up inside you?

I was aware from early childhood that being an MK made me different from the local children where I lived and also different from American children in my passport country. But I did not become aware of the term TCK and apply it to myself until I was a high school student at Maxwell Adventist Academy in Kenya. When I was a junior, a speaker came from Interaction International to explain the concept to us and encourage us in our search for a sense of identity. This was empowering for me. In fact, this is when I first heard the poem “Colors” by Whitni Thomas, which later inspired me to write Swirly.

In her wonderful poem, Whitni writes about being “blue” and growing up in a “yellow” country:

Why can’t I be both?
A place where I can be me.
A place where I can be green.
I just want to be green.

In your book, Lila is a swirl of blue and yellow and “sometimes even blends of green.” Why did you choose this metaphor—of being a combination of several distinct colors—to describe what it’s like to be a Third Culture Kid?

I appreciated Whitni’s poem a lot just as it is, but I felt like I wanted to acknowledge that the different pieces of the cultures that form a TCK’s mannerisms and values can often be traced to where they came from and don’t all melt into one solid new culture. For example, I have a hard time calling my elders by their first name after growing up among the Yoruba of Nigeria, who have respectful titles for anyone even less than a year older themselves. But it is also important to me for the whole family—father, mother, children of all ages-—to eat their meals together, at the same time and same table, which is the Anglo-American way, not the Yoruba way. I would like to recognize and celebrate the different pieces of my unique culture and where they come from.

Though it’s aimed at young children, Swirly‘s message resonates with parents and adult TCKs as well. What kinds of responses have you received from readers?

Many people have told me that it helped them to understand and affirm their children, their friends, or themselves. I have seen adult men choke up when describing how it touched them. I’m really happy to know that it has helped others to conceptualize the TCK experience and a shared TCK identity with Jesus.

I’ve seen that you’re also wanting to create books for another group of cross-cultural children—those in refugee communities. Can you tell us more about that?

I am passionate about increasing access to books that are developmentally appropriate and culturally relevant for all children in the world. Many children have zero access to children’s books in which they can see themselves represented. In fact, many have zero access to children’s books of any sort. As I write, I am in Malawi working with university students here on a project to create children’s books which are in the local language, reflect the local culture, and teach good values. Two years ago, the university where I work in Lebanon also collaborated for a project with World Vision to create storybooks for refugee children in our region. Refugee children are trying to find their identity as cross cultural kids, and often are also dealing with discrimination from their host communities and grief, hopelessness, and depression in their homes. I hope to inspire others to fill in the gaps so that these children and all other children in the world can have reading material which helps them to become successful lifelong learners through strong literacy skills and life skills.

Swirly is available from the publisher at AdventistBookCenter and from Amazon.

[photo: “Marbles,” by Peter Miller, used under a Creative Commons license]

Capable of Complexity

I loved growing up overseas. I loved that I knew how to traverse the globe at a young age, that I grew up on curry and hot pakoras, that I could see some of the highest mountains in the world from the grounds of my boarding school. I loved the colorful stamps in my passport – the story of my life in a legal document; the feel of excitement when a plane took off; the visceral sense of home when I was surrounded by palm trees and minarets echoing a mournful call to prayer. I loved it.

And…..

Ah! That word “and”! That freeing, amazing change agent! And it was also hard. I struggled with belonging, with connecting to place. I experienced long nights where tears of homesickness and grief were shed, with only God and a bunk bed as witnesses. I sat uncountable times in rooms full of people enveloped in a bubble of longing, with the words from Ijeoma echoing through my brain: “too foreign for here, too foreign for there – never enough for both”.

It takes many missionary kids years to accept that their experience was a complicated, beautiful package of good and hard. Owning the hard feels like a betrayal. And might I say, there is nothing that makes an MK/TCK bristle like a condescending adult looking at you and automatically saying “Wow – that must have been really hard. You must be glad to be back in [insert country].” I remember standing up as straight as my five foot three frame could make me and saying, with daggers in my voice and eyes, “I loved my childhood. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.” My voice said “Just try me, lady, and I’ll throw that macaroni casserole in your condescending face!”

Okay – that’s harsh. But I was a teenager, and to be told what my life must be was simply unbearable.

For years, all I could do was claim the positive. I was like the Joel Osteen Missionary Kid, except that my teeth weren’t as bright and shiny as his. My childhood was perfect, thank you very much, and don’t even start with the negative.

The problem is that of course, it wasn’t. There was the good and there was the hard. Trying to be fair to both those things felt like an impossibility, so I stuck with the good.

Here’s the thing: When we talk about the MK/TCK experience we have got to be capable of complexity. I’ll say that again: we have to be capable of complexity. As Tanya Crossman points out so well in her book Misunderstood, the third culture kid narrative is a perspective and not a one-size-fits-all single story. Each TCK story contains things that are deeply painful and other things that are incredibly unique and joy-filled.

I recently read a book called All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir by Nicole Chung. Though born of a Korean family, Nicole was adopted as a baby by a white family. The book is her story of coming to terms with her adoption and ultimately finding her birth family. But it’s much more than that. It’s a story about belonging, about the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of our reality, about the stories that families tell to make sense of their family narrative. At one point, the author says this:

Family lore given to us as children has such hold over us, such staying power. It can form the bedrock of another kind of faith, one to rival any religion, informing our beliefs about ourselves, and our families, and our place in the world. When tiny, traitorous doubts arose, when I felt lost or alone or confused about all the things I couldn’t know, I told myself that something as noble as my birth parents’ sacrifice demanded my trust. My loyalty.*

Though my circumstances were not those of an adoptee, this paragraph made a deep impact on me when I read it. How many of us as third culture kids, as missionary kids, had our own family lore that we believed? How many of us believed that we must trust our parents’ sacrifice, and wrongly believed that we must not let them, or anyone else, know when things were hard?

In my own journey I have found that the things that I found difficult were also difficult for my parents. I have come to know more fully some of the stories that I only knew partially. I have come to realize that saying something is hard does not mean that it was not good.

I wrote this in my memoir, Worlds Apart: The Journey of a Third Culture Kid:

Many of us find it hard to reconcile the good with the bad. For years, I thought it would be disloyal to my parents if I talked about the hard. I have come to realize that most of the things that I found hard, they too found difficult. Reducing the third culture kid experience to a single experience or story fails to do it justice. It’s far more complex than a single story.

Being a third culture kid – like the life of any child – was paradoxical. It was marked by tears at train stations, goodbyes that left a pit in my stomach, early morning wake up on the first day of boarding, confused and disoriented, and the evil of gossip.

Boarding was homesickness and misunderstanding, wishing Mom would be there, only to feel unable to communicate once she arrived. Boarding school with its rules and institutional living wasn’t easy. From bunk beds to dressers, all of our living space was shared. We bathed once a week in three inches of water, and washed our hair once a week unless we melted snow. Boarding school separated us from our families, even when we saw our siblings. We learned to relate to family in a completely new way. We had to learn crowd control and learn who could make our lives miserable, or comfortable. It was community living – at its worst, but also at its best.

Being a third culture kid in boarding school brought with it joys and losses that cannot be dissected until later in life. It was the good and the terrible, the happy and the sad, the laughter and the tears. I learned that grace covers memories, and magic can happen in unlikely places; that one bad teacher doesn’t define your life; and that forgiveness is a necessary ingredient of life. In short, my third culture kid childhood crammed most of life’s lessons into twelve short years.”

This is a piece of my story, a coming to terms with its pieces. Being able to finally admit the hard and the good has made it so much richer. It has changed my story from the Pollyanna version to a solid, grace-filled version that continues to grow and change. If I could see the well-meaning woman who looked at me so many years ago, I would look at her with clear eyes and I would be able to honestly say “Yes. there are some really hard parts to my story. And there are some really beautiful parts to my story – probably much like your own.”

Being capable of complexity is one way to honor third culture kids, missionary kids, and their parents. Crafting our questions and our conversations in a way that honors the complexity is a way to build relationships and open up doors to deep conversations about this life overseas. It’s a way to honor the full story, the person, and the many events that comprise the life of a TCK. It’s a way to honor the work of God and the mystery of faith in the life of what can be a rich and complicated childhood.

*All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung

Fictitious Billy and God’s Highest Calling

Fictitious Billy grew up in Pakistan. He loved Pakistan with all his heart. He loved riding the trains and looking out dirty train windows at the passing scenery. The train would go from dry desert to lush, fertile areas in those long train rides. He loved going hiking in the foothills of the Himalayan Mountain range and the feel of wind coming from pine trees far above him.

Fictitious Billy loved the taste of curry, the spices making his nose run and eyes water. He savored the taste of corn roasted over an open fire, rubbed with lemon juice and hot red pepper. He loved game nights with his family and playing with his Pakistani and Western friends.

Billy also loved school. He got good marks, especially in science and math. In fact, he loved math.

Billy’s dad always told him “Son, when you grow up, you can be whatever you want, but remember, God’s best job is being a missionary.”

Billy sure thought that was true, because he loved living in Pakistan, and he loved his dad, so in his happy, fictitious life, he knew that the best thing he could be was a missionary.

As Billy got older the language changed. God’s “best” job became God’s “highest calling” and Billy fervently prayed that he would respond to that highest calling. On home assignments, Billy was popular. He was smart, good-looking, and fun to be around. You couldn’t not love Fictitious Billy, double negative and all. He was just that kind of kid. His youth pastor took him under his wing, and everyone knew that Billy was Chosen – with a capital ‘C’.

And then he went to college. Suddenly, he realized how much he loved school. He began to dream of being a professor, began dreaming of going on for higher education.

But he pushed that thought aside. After all, the “higher calling” was his destiny! Being a professor might be many things, but it was NOT a higher calling.

And then he met Fictitious Suzie. Suzie was darling and pretty in a nerdy sort of way. She loved chemistry and math and she wanted to go to grad school too. They began spending more and more time together – late night talks in the early fall, studying together in the library, and sneaking holy kisses behind large text books.

It was Suzie who convinced Billy to go on for a PhD. Fictitious Suzie was wise beyond her years. She loved this boy man who had grown up in Pakistan. She loved hearing stories of his childhood, looking up things online about her beloved’s adopted country. She also knew that Billy had an incredible mind and teaching ability.

The summer between his junior and senior year, Billy went back to Pakistan for a month. He felt the deep connection to his adopted country as soon as he stepped onto the hot tarmac at Islamabad International Airport.

The visit began well. He visited his school, saw friends, and ate curry to his heart’s content. He told his family about Suzie, how he wanted to marry her. And then he took a deep breath and told his parents he wanted to go to graduate school. His dad enthusiastically replied “You mean seminary?”

“No Dad. I mean a PhD program. I want to be a professor.”

Silence. The disappointment was all over his dad’s face.

“That’s ridiculous! Anyone can be a professor, but it takes someone really special to be a missionary” Billy’s Mom sat quietly in the background.

The rest of the visit was miserable. Billy counted the seconds before he could get back to college and talk to Suzie, back to his friends and studies. He felt deep shame coupled with a massive barrier between himself and his parents.

Billy was a failure. He was choosing second best, and for many years of his life, this would haunt him.

What is God’s highest calling?

Fictitious Billy isn’t actually fictitious. There are a number of young and older adults who are walking with a burden on their shoulders. A burden that says “You’re not quite enough. You failed in the high calling category. It doesn’t matter how good of a physicist, surgeon, math professor or any other vocation or occupation. You’re not a missionary – and that’s the highest, best thing you can be.”

“God’s highest calling” – those are loaded words. They are loaded with pressure and erroneous theology and we need to be incredibly careful how we use them with children, teenagers, and young adults. The words paint a mystical picture of perfection and an unattainable, elusive something.

In the book of Philippians, chapter 3, verse 14 Paul says these words: “I press on toward the goal for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” But it’s important to look back at what he says a couple of verses before this. Paul says this in the verses that precede the high calling: “That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings.” The high calling Paul talks about is knowing God and the power of the resurrection. The high calling is sharing in his sufferings, no matter where they happen to be. It is not about being something or going somewhere. . Not once does the passage give any career advice; never is there anything mentioned about vocation. Because if there was, many would be disqualified. Instead, the writer pens these words in a way that gives us incredible hope that anyone can know him. The one who finds himself paralyzed, his hopes and dreams seemingly lost through an accident where a drunk driver walks away unscathed; the one who ends up unable to function effectively as a result of mental trauma; the one who has breast cancer and has to stop work to get treatment; the one who gets kicked out of a country they thought they would live in for a lifetime.

God is infinitely creative in the ways he reveals himself to people and in the ways he directs people. This is his world – all of it – and we can glorify and know God in a myriad of ways. The highly trained physicist who studies particles and matter can know and glorify God. The people who mapped the human genome can know and glorify God. The hospice nurse at the bedside of the dying can know and glorify God. The communicator, the kitchen worker, the barista, and the taxi driver – they all have the ability and opportunity to know and glorify God.

We hurt people and we misunderstand scripture when we elevate place and occupation over the truth of scripture.

Because this is truth: our high calling is to know him and glorify him forever. In the words of the Apostle Paul, this is truth: “that we may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.”

On Welcoming the Third Culture Kid

We are in the midst of summer, but I am already hearing and feeling the groans and pangs of how quickly the summer has gone. Summer flies by, especially when you are in transition.

Soon college towns will begin to see old students return and many new ones come in. Among those old and new are those who have lived as third culture kids, those who blend in with the crowd, even as their insides scream “other”.

Once I was one of them. I entered into my college years with hidden fears and insecurities, many of them because my insides and outsides were at odds.

Some of you are parents who are saying goodbye to your own third culture kids and the pit in your stomach is indescribable. Who will come alongside your kids? Who will walk with them in this next stage of life when you are a world away?

This is for those who work with third culture kids who are entering their university years or those who are welcoming third culture kids into their churches, communities, or families.

DOs

Let them talk about their past. They have left so much, let them talk about what they have left.
Ask probing questions
Take them out to a restaurant that may serve foods from the country(ies) they called home
Seek to understand through the lens of cross-cultural adjustment. Don’t assume that they identify with their passport countries.
Offer space for them to process their grief
Encourage them to connect and find their safe spaces
Seek to understand some of the losses that they have experienced
Let them question their faith in safe ways
Understand that while there is a general TCK perspective, each TCK is unique and experiences the world and change in their own ways. Allow them to surprise you.
Help them to do it afraid. What do I mean by that? Tara Livesay in a blog post called Do it Afraid talks about feeling afraid, but doing things anyway. She gives the illustration of her son Isaac learning to walk, how even when he’d left his “wall of safety” and walked into her arms, he would still get afraid. But he did it anyway. Tara says this: “Practicing doing scary things doesn’t really make me perfect at it. I’m still afraid sometimes. I don’t know how to stop being afraid completely and consistently. I’m not finding ‘perfection’ as I continually practice facing both my rational and irrational fears.I only know that sometimes – I have to do it afraid.” So help them to do it afraid.
Help them “remember rightly.” We TCKs tend to go two ways with our memories and stories – either we remember them as perfect, or we dismiss them as absolutely horrible. It can be difficult for us to remember rightly. In my recent trip to Iraq, I was speaking to the art therapist about stories, and remembering our stories correctly. She said that as we tell our stories over and over, we have a tendency to embellish. Either we make them better than they were, or worse. The important thing is to remember them rightly; seeing our past with clear vision so that we can move forward in peace.
Gently challenge them on any visible or invisible bigotry. Yes, TCKs can be bigots. See Exploring TCK Bigotry for more on this.
Learn to speak the language of ‘elsewhere.’ It’s not that hard. There’s no grammar or syntax involved and there is no morphology. Prefixes, suffixes, or infixes are absent. You don’t have to worry about past tense, or present perfect or superlatives. All of us have spoken the language of elsewhere at some point – whether as a tourist or as a resident. This is the language that reaches across the divide and attempts to understand the one who is “other.”

DON’Ts

Tell them to “get over it already!” Instead pose honest challenges to them like: “What would it take for you to live more effectively in your passport country?” or “Western countries are experiencing more and more diversity. What might your TCK background offer to the community?”
Deny their experiences by saying “Everyone feels insecure in college. Everyone misses home.” Denying the experience of the TCK denies their life.
Let them wallow. There is a difference between honest grieving and wallowing in self-pity. The one heals, the other destroys.
Put a time limit on their adjustment and their grieving. We are all different. We grow and adjust at different rates. So don’t put time limits on the TCK. Allow them room even as you continue to love and challenge them.

I’ll close with this thought from Nina Sichel, author and adult TCK:

“So when she comes to you, don’t ask her where she’s from, or what’s troubling her. Ask her where she’s lived. Ask her what she’s left behind. Open doors. And just listen. Give her the time and space and permission she needs to remember and to mourn. She has a story — many stories. And she needs and deserves to be heard, and to be healed, and to be whole.” from The Morning Zen: The Trouble with Third Culture Kids

Readers – what would you add to this list of dos and don’ts?

Blogger’s Note: Elizabeth Trotter writes an excellent article using Physics to explain Third Culture Kids. Take a look at it here!

For more essays on third culture kids, take a look at Between Worlds: Essays on Culture & Belonging as well as the newly released Worlds Apart: A Third Culture Kid’s Journey

This post was adapted from a piece originally published in Communicating Across Boundaries.

Check out this collection of our most-read articles

Consider this the Table of Contents for a book on missions, cross-cultural living, grief, TCKs, MKs, missiology, common pitfalls, transition, short-term missions, relating to senders, and a whole lot more.

I figured it was time to compile our most-read posts and present them to you, organized by topic. So here they are, 85 of our most-read posts ever.

My hope is that this article, this Table of Contents, if you will, would serve as one massive resource for those of you who are new to our community, those of you who’ve been hanging out here all along, and even for you, our future reader, who just found our little corner of the internet. Welcome!

Many thanks to the authors who’ve poured into our community, aiming to build and help (and sometimes challenge) the missionary world and the churches that send. If this site has been helpful to you, would you consider sharing this post with your friends and colleagues and missions leaders?

A Life Overseas is loosely led, with a tiny overhead (that covers the costs of the website), and a bunch of volunteer writers and tech folk. Why do we do it? We’re doing this for you! We’re doing this because we like you and we want to see cross-cultural workers (and their families!) thriving and succeeding and belonging. We’re doing this because we believe the Lamb is worthy. We’re doing this because we believe that God’s love reaches beyond our country’s borders, extending to all the places, embracing all the peoples.

I hope you are encouraged. I hope you are challenged. I hope you are reminded that you are not alone. This can be a hard gig, for sure, but you are not alone.

If this is your first time here or your thousandth, stick around, browse around, let us know what you think, how you’ve been helped, and what you’d love to see in the future. We’d absolutely love to hear from you!

With much love from Phnom Penh, Cambodia,
Jonathan Trotter

Third Culture Kids / Missionary Kids
10 Questions Missionary Kids Would Love to be Asked
10 Questions Missionary Kids Dread
To the Parents of Third Culture Kids
Funny Things Third Culture Kids Say
8 ways to help toddlers and young children cope with change and moving overseas
6 Permissions Most Missionaries’ Kids Need
An Open Letter to Parents of Missionary Kids
3 Ways to Care for the Heart of Your Third Culture Kid
10 Ways Teachers Can Support Third Culture Kids
Sexual Abuse on the Mission Field
3 Ways to Care for the Heart of Your Missionary Kid
My Kids Are Not Little Missionaries

Rest / Burnout / Self-Care
margin: the wasted space we desperately need
Please Stop Running
Ask A Counselor: How in the world can we do self-care when . . . ?
Living Well Abroad: 4 Areas to Consider
8 Ways for Expats Who Stay to Stay Well

Top 10 Digital Photography Tips

Family / Marriage
Missionary Mommy Wars
A Christmas letter to parents, from a kid who doesn’t have any
Nine Ways to Save a Marriage
The Purpose of Marriage is Not to Make You Holy
Why “Did You Have Fun?” is the Wrong Question
Failing at Fatherhood (how moving abroad ruined my parenting)
When the Mission Field Hurts Your Marriage
Dear Single Missionary
Homescapes MOD
I’m a missionary. Can I be a mom too?

Cross-cultural living & ministry
3 Kinds of Selfies You Should Never Take
Missionaries are supposed to suffer . . . So am I allowed to buy an air conditioner?
Introverts for Jesus: Surviving the Extrovert Mission Field
To My Expat Friends
What Did I Do Today? I Made a Copy. Woohoo!
The Teary Expat Mom, Shopping
One-Uppers
A Cautionary Tale: Expats & Expets (What not to do)
The Introverted Expat
5 Tips for Newbies About Relationships with Oldies (From an Oldie)
The Aim of Language Learning

Missiology
Please Don’t Say, “They Are Poor But They’re Happy.”
Let Me Make Your Kid a Buddhist
How to partner with a poor church without screwing everything up
Rice Christians and Fake Conversions
Responding to Beggars
10 Reasons You Should Be a Missionary
There’s no such thing as the “deserving poor”

Theology in Missions
The Idolatry of Missions
When the Straight & Narrow Isn’t
Rethinking the Christmas Story
But Are You Safe?
When Missionaries Starve
Why I Will Not Say “I Never Made a Sacrifice”
The Gaping Hole in the Modern Missions Movement {part 1}
Is Jesus a Liar?

Cautions
10 Reasons Not To Become a Missionary
In Defense of Second-Class Missionaries
The Cult of Calling
Want to see what a porn-addicted missionary looks like?
Telling My Story: Sexual Abuse on the Mission Field
When Missionaries Think They Know Everything
Visiting Home Might Not Be Everything You Dreamed
Misogyny in Missions
The Proverbs 32 Man
Stop Waiting for It All to Make Sense

Grief & Loss
Outlawed Grief, a Curse Disguised
When Friends Do the Next Right Thing
Ask a counselor: how do we process loss and grief?

Transition
What If I Fall Apart on the Mission Field?
Beyond Culture Shock: Culture Pain, Culture Stripping
Dear New Missionary
5 Mistakes I Made My First Year on the Mission Field
Why I Quit My Job as a Missionary to Scrub Toilets
Jet Lag and Heart Lag
When You Start to Pick Your Nose in Public…
You Remember You’re a Repat When . . .
Going Home

Short Term Missions
What to Do About Short Term Missions
Stop calling it “Short Term Missions.” Here’s what you should call it instead.
Your Short-Term Trips Have Not Prepared You For Long-Term Mission
The Mess of Short Term Missions

Relationships with those who send
A Letter to Christians Living in America from a Christian Living Abroad
Dear Supporter, There’s So Much More I Wish I Could Tell You
Staying connected with your family and friends when you live overseas
How to Encourage Your Overseas Worker
When Your Missionary Stories Aren’t Sexy
Facebook lies and other truths
Please Ask Me the Non-Spiritual Questions

If your favorite article didn’t make the list, put the title and link in the comments section and let us know why you love it. Thanks again for joining us here. Peace to you.

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Honor the Grief, Honor the Goodbye

“Make sure you say goodbye” I text these words to my youngest son, followed by “It’s important to say your goodbyes.”

He is only leaving for the summer, he will be back on the same campus next year. But it is critical to me to say this to him. I want my children to be able to say goodbyes, to honor them. I want my children to be able to honor their grief, not suppress it as though it is unimportant, as though it will go away and not leave an imprint on their hearts.

I do the same for my youngest daughter. She is graduating from college, ending one stage and moving on to the next. “Say your goodbyes.” I tell her.

These kids of mine? They’ve moved so much. They’ve lived on different continents, in different countries, cities, and communities. And I am desperate for them to know how to honor the goodbye.

“Most TCKs go through more grief experiences by the time they are 20 than monocultural individuals do in a lifetime.”*

It’s March and for the transnational family or child parties and packing will soon fill all the days and worry and tears interrupt the nights. In a couple of months there will be graduations and school endings, job changes and home leaves; home life will be dictated by lists and deadlines. And the unspoken questions will be will we leave in peace, or will we just leave?

And in the midst of all of this it’s easy to forget that grief must be honored and goodbyes must be said.

So I can’t shout these words loud enough. I can’t speak them clearly enough. I can’t emphasize them strongly enough. Honor the goodbye. Honor the grief that comes with the goodbye.

My bookshelves are filled with books on cross-cultural living, on identity, on belonging, on growing roots in a global world. Every day I think about these things as I read about military brats and third culture kids, kids and their parents who live like bridges between worlds, gathering up their portable lives into suitcases full of mementoes as they move on to the next place. I interact with moms who are worried they are ruining their children, moms who fantasize that life in their birth countries is stable and perfect even as they try to plant roots in countries that are unfamiliar. I connect with third culture kids who never want to move again, who establish their bodies and souls in one place even as they decorate their homes with remnants of their past lives. I also connect with third culture kids who are itching for that next move, that next step – restless and longing in the small towns where they find themselves, unable to see the threads that begin to tie them to these towns.And every day I am more sure of the need to honor the grief, to honor the goodbye.

And I think about what honoring the grief and honoring the goodbye means. We grieve because we are losing places and people that we love. Each goodbye is a little like death, it’s saying goodbye to permanence and the relationships as we know them. They will change, they have to change. Comfort and hope will have their place, and they are part of the process, but sometimes we need to just sit with the grief before being forced to move on. The global transnational family has developed an amazing capacity to adapt, to move forward, but sometimes we need to just stop where we are and honor that moment, honor the goodbye.

Years ago we moved from one part of the city of Cairo to another, a seemingly small move. But the move still came with loss of connection and community. The kids were leaving their school, we were leaving our neighborhood. We planned to move all our belongings before leaving for the U.S for a home leave. After we returned we would settle into our new space. Part of this move meant giving up our small, red Zastava car. The car was tiny and we barely fit in it but we loved that car. We would arrive places and pile out while others looked on in amazement that we could fit so many children in a car that is smaller than a Volkswagen Bug. The night that we watched another family drive away in our red car my son Joel was inconsolable. I remember walking with him that night, his small hand reaching up to my larger one, and hearing his tears, his sobs. The car was symbolic of this move. “Why do we have to sell our car?” he wailed. Walking beside him I remember part of my heart breaking as well. “I’m so sorry Joel. I’m so sorry.”There was nothing else I could say. I look back at that time and I’m glad that’s all I said. Because in truth, there were no other words.

I think that is what it is like to honor grief. It is sitting with it, not trying to push it away, not providing false reassurance, just sitting. Can we sit with it and let it flow? Can we sit quietly with ourselves or with others and not push an agenda of false happiness? Can we learn that grief is good, grief is individual, grief is rarely nicely organized, grief is physical and emotional?

So if you are one of those people, one of those families that is saying goodbye this June, I offer this: Sit with your grief, let it flow, don’t try too hard to analyze, don’t push yourself or others to some ‘right’ response. Just sit with it. Because as the grief comes, so will the comfort.

And as for your goodbyes? Say your goodbyes. The goodbyes will hurt, they will smart. Like a wound feels when the salty ocean water washes over it, you will brace yourself. But just as the salt in the ocean provides healing so will goodbyes offer healing to your mobile soul.

Are you one who is saying goodbye this year? I would love to hear from you on what you think makes a ‘good’ goodbye. Others, what do you think about honoring grief and honoring goodbyes?

A great resource is the RAFT plan: Reconciliation, Affirmation, Farewell, Think Destination. Take a look here for details on this.

Now Available – Worlds Apart: A Third Culture Kid’s Journey “…a must read for those wanting to build bridges.” Ambassador Akbar Ahmed, American University, Washington, D.C.

Portions of this book were previously released under Passages Through Pakistan.

This post first appeared in Communicating Across Boundaries.

One Simple Way to Bless TCKs

“My book is called Misunderstood because that is how many young TCKs feel.” – Tanya Crossman

It’s true. Many kids grow up among worlds and end up feeling completely and totally misunderstood. They may feel misunderstood by the societies they’ve grown up in and the societies they’ve returned too. They may feel misunderstood by the nuclear families they’ve grown up in and the extended families they’ve returned to.

So what do we do?

What can parents do? Parents who know they don’t understand all the ins and outs of growing up globally?

Well, what do we do when we interact with anyone we want to get to know better? Read a book? Google them? Ask other people? Read an article? Maybe.

But typically the best solution is just to treat them like the unique human beings they are and start asking questions.

I think that one of the simplest things we could do to help the TCKs in our life to feel more seen, more loved, and less misunderstood, is to get better at asking questions.

And of course we have to care about their answers.

“Smart parents give their kids lots of answers, but wise parents ask their kids lots of questions.” – Unknown

Questions give value and open the door to deeper intimacy. Questions are Christ-like, with one scholar identifying 307 individual questions that Jesus asked during his earthly ministry.

It’s hard to ask questions, though, because I have to shut up long enough to listen to the answers. Most of us simply prefer giving answers to asking questions.

Oh that we would excel in question-asking! And not because we’re trying to control or manipulate, but because we’re genuinely interested in what people have to say.

Like TCKs.

One teenager who grew up overseas said that she would love to be asked “any meaningful question by someone who was truly interested in knowing the answer.”

No two stories are the same. I’ve had teenagers here in Cambodia thank me for NOT being a TCK. I was a bit confused until they explained: “Sometimes, adult TCKs come in here and think they know everything about us because they grew up abroad too. But they have no idea!” Apparently, I earned points for knowing what it was that I didn’t know, which caused me to keep asking questions.

May we all know what it is that we don’t know. And may that knowledge lead us to ask questions.

May we echo the angel of the Lord in Genesis 16 when he asked Hagar, “Where have you come from?” and “Where are you going?”

May we communicate to the TCKs in our life that we care about where they’ve come from. That we care about their stories; the good stuff and the hard stuff. May we communicate to the TCKs in our life that we ALSO care about where they’re going. That we care about their hopes and their dreams. And their fears.

And at the end of the day, may they feel, as Hagar did, seen.

Understood.

Of course, we can’t fully know or understand anyone, but we can keep asking questions, we can keep being interested.

We can keep reading their book, even if it’s as small as a passport.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tools & Resources

The Key Jar: A fantastic list of questions in PDF format. I screen captured this thing and then just keep it on my phone. Occasionally, when I’m out with one of my kids, I just pull it out and say, “Hey, do you want to do the questions?” Some of my kids like it more than others, but I can tell you that it’s generated TONS of fascinating conversations that we wouldn’t have had otherwise.

Gottman Card Deck: Although it’s designed for couples (you can easily see why), there are some great questions on here that are totally appropriate for kiddos. If you’re like me, new or unique questions are hard to self-generate. I can do, “How was your day?” but it’s a bit harder to just come up with more involved questions. So I use an app. Not all the time, but sometimes. This app is free, so try it out and see what happens.

If you’re interested in more of the story about Hagar and how asking questions is Christ-like, here’s a link to a message I preached at an international church this year: The Questions of God, Hagar, and Genesis 16. [Links to the podcast on iTunes and mp3 download.]

Tanya Crossman’s article on A Life Overseas: Parallel Lives: TCKs, Parents, and the Culture Gap

A popular list of questions MKs would love to be asked, by Taylor Murray. [MKs and TCKs are not the same, but the majority of these questions seem to apply to both.]

Photo by Mitch Harris on Unsplash

Is Calling in our DNA?

“So” said the kindly woman at the Baptist church. “You must want to be a missionary too when you grow up! Do you think God will call you too?”

I recoiled. I hoped she wouldn’t see the visible distress on my face. She was so kind. She was so excited about my potential. How could I disappoint?

But NO, I didn’t. I didn’t want to be a missionary when I grew up. I didn’t want to raise support. I didn’t want to go from church to church in small New England towns. I did not want prayer letters or ‘deputation’. No. No. No.

I was 18 years old. I wanted college and boyfriends and travel and stamps in my passport. And then down the road? Down the road of course I would go overseas again – because that was home! But I didn’t even think about being a missionary.

There are a couple of things that can be huge burdens to missionary kids and their parents.

One is behavior. Missionary kids have just as many reasons to rebel as any other kid. Some might argue, more. Our world contains pitfalls that can catch and take us down. I know. I was one who found marijuana growing in the back of Holy Trinity church, that noble and historic church in the town of Murree that the entire missionary community would attend every summer. It’s easy for us to use excuses of belonging and identity to rebel. And then it’s easy for a parent to feel guilt “if we hadn’t brought our kids half way around the world etc. this wouldn’t have happened…” while the reality is that when a kid is bent on bending rules it’s going to happen anywhere.

The second burden is ‘calling’. Because calling is a word loaded with question marks and misunderstanding.

It was a few years later that I began to really wrestle with this word and idea. I had seen the good, bad, and ugly related to call and calling. I had seen the good that comes from faith and understanding God’s big story. I had seen a kid on the brink of death because a father was so committed to a call that he forgot the call included caring for his children. I had become acquainted with ugly legalism that forgets the beautiful story and call to redemption, reducing it to choking rules and regulations.

In my wrestling, I realized that the kind woman at that Baptist church was partially correct. My parents were called. But their first call was to God Himself. After that, their journey took them places where all was initially unfamiliar. Food, clothing, housing, plumbing, language, faith expression — all of it was new. It had to be learned and learned with humility and willingness to admit mistakes.

Along the way they had babies. And sometimes more babies. And what was unfamiliar to them was home to us, their children. We first heard words and phrases in English, Urdu, and Sindhi. Curry was a staple, the call to prayer the first alarm clock. None of this spelled strange, it was all familiar. Home was 18-hour train rides from the desert of Sindh to the lush Punjab; home was a boarding school community with all the good and the hard of dormitory living away from parents; home was plane trips and passports, learning how to negotiate cross-culturally at young ages. This was home.

So pressure that this life overseas would be a ‘calling’ simply because we were the children of missionaries was uncomfortable and so foreign.

On the one hand it seemed to make sense, like a family business where one by one the kids take their place behind the counter talking to customers and learning how to negotiate transactions. But how many kids actually end up in the family business? How many children of nurses, teachers, and mechanics become nurses, teachers, mechanics? Some do. But others follow another path, walk a different journey.

Ultimately the call of God isn’t a business, it isn’t an occupation. The call of God is heard in the heart and obeyed with the mind and body. It is a word, the Word, that is planted and watered until it grows into an active, living, breathing faith. It is a call to God himself.

Missionary kids are called. But they are called to God Himself. After that – it’s anyone’s guess. After that it could be to a small town in England, a large city in North America, an international consulting business based in Holland, a law office in Seattle, a position in an international business degree program, a tenured professorship at a university, a foreign service position with the state department.

Rarely does it look the same as the parents. Our journey may begin through the faith and calling of our parents, but those roots are transplanted and sustained through our own decisions of faith.

So is calling in our DNA?

Threaded through each strand of our DNA is indeed a Call. A Call described best by the ever-challenging words of St. Augustine to “Love God and enjoy Him forever”. Only that Call is carefully entwined in our spiritual genetic code from head to toe, from heart to soul.

And after that it’s anyone’s guess.

This post has been adapted from an older version originally written in 2012 for Community Across Boundaries.

The Language of Transition

The vocabulary of those of us who are a part of A Life Overseas includes many words that focus on movement.

Journey. Pilgrimage. Moving. Leaving. Re-Entry. Arriving. Transition.

All of these come with stories – funny ones, poignant ones, and hard ones. Beyond the stories are adults and kids who are part of communities and families that are in constant change.

On Monday, writer Kay Bruner offered wise advice and concrete exercises to help anxious children deal with transition. Today I continue the theme in talking about developing a “language of transition”.

It was over a year ago that Elizabeth Trotter wrote this in one of her posts:

“I do want to make sure we have a language for transition and crossing cultures and homesickness and living in a state of between-ness. I did not have that growing up and have found the TCK vocabulary helpful as an adult.” Elizabeth Trotter

I thought a lot about this as I read it.

Like Elizabeth, I did not grow up with a language of transition. My husband, who, much like Elizabeth, grew up as a military kid, did not have a language of transition either. Whether you buy into the term third culture kid or not, whether you use the term cross-cultural kid or not, it strikes me that having a language of transition is critically important.

Though I’m still in process when it comes to a language of transition, I want to use this space to write about what I think it means.

The language of transition means know the importance of goodbyes. We honor the goodbyes. That may look different for every member of the family, and that’s where it gets tricky. Honoring the goodbyes means we won’t make our kids get rid of all their treasures. Yes, I get the problem of space. But that stuffed lamb means more to your little girl than you can possibly understand during the chaos of moving. The doll house? Do NOT give it away! I repeat: Do Not! Honoring the goodbyes means making space for different members of your family to grieve their “lasts.” Their last trip to that favorite restaurant; the last trip to school, to church, to the playground. Honoring the goodbyes means making sure that final meal is with people you love deeply.

The language of transition means knowing the word “Saudade.” That 12^th Century word from Portugal, thought up by the diaspora who longed for the soil of Portugal, but had no vocabulary, no language of transition to express it.

The famous saudade of the Portuguese is a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist, for something other than the present, a turning towards the past or towards the future; not an active discontent or poignant sadness but an indolent dreaming wistfulness. A. F. G. Bell In Portugal of 1912

These are feelings so deep that you can scarcely give words to them. Your throat catches. You experience an intense, but wordless, longing and desire. How do I know this? Because I have experienced it, first hand. What we long to describe is Saudade. It also means we know how to “kill the saudade;” how to find ways to contain the longing so it doesn’t destroy us. Finding the restaurants or the people who know the world that we came from, getting together for an evening of food and talk. Killing the saudade is a sweet and necessary activity in transition.

The language of transition includes building a RAFT. Knowing the importance of reconciliation, affirmation, farewell, think destination. This was an acronym developed by Ruth Van Reken and Dave Pollock in a chapter of Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among World. The entire chapter is devoted to transition and dealing with leaving one place and starting in a new one. It is a constructive and practical look at leaving well, at closure, at saying our goodbyes in peace. You can read a summary of what it means to build a RAFT here.

The language of transition means having a vocabulary for cross-cultural adjustment. For a child, much of the art of crossing cultures is learned from the parents. So if the parents are struggling and resisting the host culture, the kids will pick that up and internalize it. The language of transition means that as adults we will educate ourselves on culture shock and cultural adjustment and work to pass that on to our kids. It’s a verb, not a noun. It takes action on our part. Rudyard Kipling’s famous lines from a poem come to mind as I write this:

And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear: “A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East.”

While that may seem like a harsh ending to a life, the meaning could not be clearer. Cross-cultural adjustment is imperative and having words and understanding of it is part of the language of transition. I would also add that cultural humility is a necessary ingredient to the work of cross-cultural adjustment.

Finally, the language of transition means learning to understand the idea of living between worlds. “Every good story has a conflict. Never being fully part of any world is ours. This is what makes our stories and memories rich and worth hearing. We live between worlds, sometimes comfortable in one, sometimes in the other, but only truly comfortable in the space between. This is our conflict and the heart of our story.”* Learning to be comfortable in the space between is part of the language of transition.

Like learning any language, the language of transition is not mastered overnight. Rather, it takes time, effort, laughter, and tears. We make mistakes, we get up, and we move on. But developing a vocabulary of transition is an important step along the way.

*From Between Worlds: Essays on Culture & Belonging

This blog was originally published at Communicating Across Boundaries