Blog
Control and Third Culture Kids
"I feel like a control-freak!" OR "It just sort of fell into my lap..." I've heard both from the Third Culture Kids I work with, and from myself too! I've noticed over the years that TCKs can have a complicated relationship with control. Some of us (or some of us some...
Third Culture Kids and Character Development
The Third Culture Kids I work with often feel their characters to be as fragmented as their stories. Instead of a story arch that sees a character develop over time, our stories can feel broken up, with distinct versions of our main character showing up in their different chapters. We can feel stuck with a plethora of under-developed protagonists, a sense of amorphous character ‘shape’ and unclear about our story’s direction as a result.
Third Culture Kids & Stability
Stability. What does that word invite in you? What do you see in your mind’s eye? It’s a word I’ve had a mixed relationship with all my life. I would crave it, try and find systems or plans that would get me it, and then as soon as I had it in hand, there would rise...
The light returns… does anything else?
Today the light returned. I joined the livestream from Stonehenge as people from all over the world joined in person and online to watch the sun rise between those ancient stones. For all our cumulative scientific knowledge that gives us assurance that the sun will...
Third Culture Kids and Repatriating Well
A client shared with me recently how they had been looking for accounts of Third Culture Kids repatriating, and how little they had found to very little to inform them. This challenged me in more ways than one – first to consider why the narrative of TCK repatriation...
Third Culture Kids and Adverse Childhood Experiences
I knew it’d be hard to read Tanya Crossman and Lauren Wells’ recent research. I was right. As much as I eagerly read the methodologies and results of their work, “Caution and Hope: The Prevalence of Adverse Childhood Experiences in Globally Mobile Third Culture Kids”, I could feel a heart clench of pain for the many TCKs I work with who know the pain of adverse childhood experiences all too well.
The Third Culture Kid drive to “be good”
I’m currently sat at my desk in a mild slumpy grumpy space. It’s because I’ve eaten too much sugar, and drunk too much coffee and now I feel I need a good long lie down. I want to hide from myself, because I’m cross that I over-indulged. However, given that I’m me, I’m feeling curious as well as grumpy – why did I do it? Why did I eat and drink more than was good for me? Now I’m getting all philosophical and asking the BIG question – why do we do what we don’t want to do, and why don’t we do what we want?
Moving Furniture, Telling Your Story
I’m really excited to be sitting here at my desk, writing to you. I had a ‘TCK moment’ yesterday when I realised I needed to move all the furniture around in my office to get my writing mojo back – and a few hours of mess, one dismantled desk and a big bag of rubbish later – I’m in a much better place. Literally.
Third Culture Kids and the Winter Blues
How are you doing? I mean, really? Something I’m hearing a fair bit of right now is how people are suffering from the ‘winter blues’. This seems to be a fairly common phenomenon in the northern hemisphere, and not a particularly Third Culture Kid issue. Humans need a certain amount of vitamin D, daylight, fresh air and physical activity to feel good – and winter typically messes with these elements.
Third Culture Kids – Strategies in Seasons of Change
Change can be a sticky topic for Third Culture Kids. We lost so much. We can learn to fear seasons of change, having built an enormous data set for moments of change that have brought us grief, change that we didn’t choose and that felt like a tidal wave of loss.
