What childhood experiences did you encounter as an ATCK?

I personally have had both positive and adverse childhood experiences as an ATCK.

 What positive childhood experiences (PCEs) did you have growing up as a Third Culture Kid? 

Well for me, minus the one deadly secret that we had to keep inside the walls of our home of being a disengaged alcoholic family, my childhood overseas was truly beautiful and culturally rich!  

It was filled with cherished memories of an abundance of creative, imaginative play, adventure, and exploration of all the natural habitats, wildlife, and resources that a thriving island could provide. 

My teen years were full of friends, festivals, local foods, and fun traditions. Every summer vacation was spent traveling and visiting new countries or islands in the Caribbean. I was so blessed to have my childhood years filled with such rich cultural diversity.  

It was this very richness, however, that ironically kept me from understanding the significance of losses my cross-culture lifestyle had rooted in me throughout my developmental years. The loss of familiar customs and traditions, and of a country and land, that I dearly loved, but as a foreigner none of which were officially mine. There was also the separation and great losses of the families and friends that were lifelines throughout my developmental years. 

 

What adverse experiences has growing up as a Third Culture Kid had in my adult life?

Well as an 'adult TCK' with lingering alcoholic family coping patterns, I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve wrestled with where exactly I belonged. Especially in this country that I now call ‘home’ and with my poor coping skills I’ve often struggled with how to manage that lonely feeling of rejection. 

 

Unfortunately, my diminished coping skills caused this lack of belonging to grow into a deeply rooted thorn of rejection, with each year that unresolved grief and loss accumulated. This cancer went on to affect my vocation as a wife and in-law to a mono-cultured husband with family history roots that stemmed all the way back to the colonization days of the Mayflower. Then later this deeply rooted sense of not belonging affected me as a mother. While raising my children I can remember back to many situations and circumstances where I struggled with feeling like an outsider in my passport country, and just had to standby and watch as each child developed yet another monocultural bond with this foreign land, its proud history and the people that grew up here. A bond that their father and his family of origin understood and identified with, but one that I could never fully comprehend.

 In hindsight, I can now see how I silently fought and rejected those unpreventable bonds, and due to my poor coping patterns I caused unnecessary hardships and hurtful consequences in several of my relationships along the way.

What about you dear sojourner, have you considered that your childhood experiences might have affected your relationships today with a spouse or family members?

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I pray you found what you needed today. Please leave a comment below, I would love to continue this conversation and understand how it might have been helpful for you.

 

May God Bless You,

Leslie

What hidden wounds have you diagnosed?

 Another commonality of identifying as an ATCK is that we often suffer from the hidden wound of never knowing where we belong. 

As an ATCK, I certainly was no exception. This one hidden wound of not belonging has plagued me my whole life. I distinctly remember a time when this hidden wound reared its ugly head with blinding consequences.

It was back when Facebook was first created and I desperately went on a search for as many of my childhood classmates as I could find.  During that process, the most unexpected series of events happened, that completely blindsided me. 

As more and more classmates started joining our Facebook group and we were reconnecting I noticed I could not understand their conversations. The slang they now spoke, was really difficult to understand and next to impossible to read. The local places they spoke about meeting up for group events… I had no clue what they were talking about. The carnival, fêtes, and other local festivities that were a big part of their daily lives were not even on my radar. 

I was living a very different lifestyle now.  

I felt like such an outsider. I didn't belong anymore.

Then I started noticing they were inviting people to join our Facebook group, who weren’t even from our class in school. People I had no prior relationship with, but were actually friends and classmates of my siblings. 

My former classmates had befriended these people in the years after I left. The life I once knew had moved on, and I was no longer a part of it. Looking back that was truly more than I could bear.  The 'home' that was once a lifeline for me during my childhood, no longer existed.  

Unfortunately, that unacknowledged wound of not belonging stayed hidden under layers aka years of loss and unresolved grief for far too long after permanently moving to my passport country.

Not only did this have negative implications in my current adult relationships but also within my own body which definitely kept the score.  This is a topic I have addressed in other posts.

What about you dear sojourner, have you considered that your current ailments might be from unresolved grief, loss, or an unhealed hidden wound?

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I pray you found what you needed today. Please leave a comment below, I would love to continue this conversation and understand how it might have been helpful for you.

 

May God Bless You,

Leslie

What are your masks?

One of the commonalities of identifying as an ATCK is that we become very adept at learning how to hide under numerous masks.

When I first read about this I thought, "Me? Have masks? No way!" I was always confident that I was an open book. Upon further examination, though I've come to realize I was not as transparent as I thought or as other people used to say.  

Actually for decades after moving permanently to my passport country, I've only recently started unpacking the numerous masks I had learned to put on, starting all the way back during my first year here when I attended twelfth grade of an American high school, and the following decades after going to an American University.

I wish I could say those were joy-filled and easy years, but unfortunately, that was far from my case.  During the first decade of my repatriation I would say I encountered some of my most traumatizing and painful experiences. Some of these were of my own choosing, but they all came from a desperate place to be accepted and a deep need to belong in this foreign land. 

 

However, in trying to navigate those incredibly difficult years with nowhere to go, and no one to help me process all my confusion, unresolved grief, pain, emotions, and suffering, I mastered the art of posturing, with many many masks, under a deeply hidden sheet of fear, and a heavy heavy blanket of anger. 

While my anger intensified, I unknowingly became a terrible listener.  All my unrealistic expectations of others grew into bitterness, and being judgmental and harsh. I had no desire to stop and understand others’ perspectives because I was too busy trying to blend in and be accepted. I truly lacked self-awareness, which I now tenderly call being “introspectively challenged.”  

Ironically the more I thought I was blending in, the more I gradually morphed, from someone who was once known as “kind and sweet” in her teenage developmental years to someone who was now being labeled as a “big personality”, “too much”, "too intense", “too angry”, "too insensitive”, among several other negative labels.

Those negative labels led to even deeper wounds in my body and soul. Unfortunately I not only started listening them but after time I started believing they were true. Those lies and false beliefs slowly and silently seeped into the core of my identity, which made for a lot of toxic relationships, with God, myself, and others over the past forty years of my life.  

You could say as I adapted to others' negative labels of me, I slowly mastered the art of posturing, all in an attempt to keep those external labels under control.  Well, at least that’s what I thought because, in reality, the posturing turned out to be nothing more than a cheap cover in attempt to hide my addictive behavior patterns, which provided zero self control. 

As an imposter I became very proficient at using different methods of self-medication, such as eating, TV, social media, impulsive shopping, compulsive cleaning and busyness, which I know now were my wounded attempts to numb and steer the fear and pain away!  Tragically one of the greatest consequences of my years of self-medicating was the growing number of hidden God-holes I had silently carved into my body and soul. In retrospect I can see that my self-medicating habits were nothing more than attempts to satiate these all consuming God-holes with ungodly self-reliance, pride, escapism, and selfishness.

Decades of wearing so many different masks made me became more and more blind to my own emotions and very adept at living in other people's feelings and circumstances.

It was almost 38 years after living in my passport country when the Lord put a holy and beautiful grief counselor into my life, named Charmiel.  She helped me to see, for the very first time, that "my entire childhood identity was ripped away from me!!!"  Those were very strong words Charmiel used, and as she spoke these words out loud to me, they reached a part of me that NO ONE, not even my husband, has ever reached. Honestly it was a Holy Spirit moment that left me speechless. Charmiel proceeded to gently point out how I was never given the proper support and resources that I desperately needed to help process my repatriation. 

Fortunately today there is more awareness, support and wonderful resources to assist TCKs in processing their transitions from traumatic changes and circumstances to all the suppressed emotions that came along with each one! 

My inability to process the emotions had been compounded by the fact that emotional literacy was never taught or practiced in my disengaged family of origin growing up.  So it wasn't until well into my second half of life that I’ve begun unpacking the impact that these past transitions had in my life and I’m learning how to gently regulate those suppressed emotions.   

I'm still very much a work in progress, but immensely grateful, to our good Lord for walking alongside me as I heal these deeply hidden wounds.

Dear sojourner, would you please join me in saying a quick prayer of gratitude to God for Mrs. Charmiel Teresi, the blessed grief counselor who was one of the first people to reach the very core of my wounded soul and put me on a path of incredible healing. Thank you!

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I pray you found what you needed today. Please leave a comment below, I would love to continue this conversation and understand how it might have been helpful for you.

 

May God Bless You,

Leslie