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

Are you a Third Culture Kid?

Yes, I am a Third Culture Kid.  

To be classified as a third-culture kid means I was raised for a significant portion of my developmental years outside my parent's passport culture.  

 

For me, this is definitely *not* a negative label, but much like a welcomed diagnosis from the doctor, that has provided me with a starting point to help me better understand the confusion and difficulty I experienced decades, after permanently moving back to my passport country.  Most importantly, it has brought me great comfort in knowing I am not alone.

When I moved to the United States in 1985, there was zero support for TCKs like me, except for this one book that was published years later.  I was later gifted a first-edition copy of the book “Third Culture Kid” (TCK) by one of my older sisters, several years after we had been living in the United States.  At the time I was unable to process the full impact of this information, probably because I was still too immature and busy developing masquerading habits to survive the transition.

Anyhow, not too long ago, almost three decades later, I ended up purchasing an audio version of the newest revised edition. This book includes even more updated information on cross-cultural living in our modern world today. I chose to read this book in hopes that it might help me unpack some of that unacknowledged childhood loss and unresolved grief I had been carrying around most of my adult life, and I wasn’t wrong.  

I can wholeheartedly say this newer revised edition is just as much a powerhouse as that first edition. This time around, however, I was also in a better place to receive and apply the information it offered. It was also fascinating to see how third-cultural living has evolved over the past 35 years. I highly recommend reading this book if you directly experienced something similar or if you know someone who did. Gratefully this book has led me to other ATCK resources that are proving to be incredibly helpful and valuable in my personal growth today.

 

What about you my dear sojourner. Are you a Third Culture Kid?

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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

 

Where are you carrying loss and grief?

 

All that childhood loss and unresolved grief I spoke about earlier, had not only taken a huge toll on my relationship with God, my marriage, and my children but on my body too.  

To answer the question, for me, I carry my loss and grief in different parts of my body. My neck, shoulders, lower back, gut, and hands.

I didn’t make that connection until later after reading this profound book. I learned that our bodies, not our minds, are the holders of not only trauma but all loss and grief.

Later I learned about Dr. John Sarno M.D’s work on psychosomatic healing. Another great resource on how the body holds emotions physically. I truly wish this was a more standardized approach to our healthcare system here in the USA.

Sadly, today I live in a culture that holds ZERO traditions around grief.  I have no clue if the person sitting next to me in the pew, or standing in front of me at the checkout lane is grieving. Our American culture thinks there is a time limit for grieving, for example after the death of a family member, you’d be lucky to get one week off, and then it’s time to get back to work and carry out your duties as if nothing happened 😡.  No wonder we live in one of the most self-medicating, emotionally and physically toxic cultures in the world!

 

Did you know there is NO TIME LIMIT for grieving?! The length of time it takes to grieve a loss or death will be directly proportional to the relationship you had with that person or circumstance. 

Whether a person had a great marriage that lasted for 2, 10, 20, or 63 years it could take that person years not days or months, to grieve such a huge loss in their life!  We wane in and out of different stages of grief for as long as needed.  There’s no systematic sequential order to grieving. No boxes to check off.  Someone grieving can be triggered at any moment when a they least expect it. 

 

Take me for example, one day I was talking with a dear friend about common military phrases, one, in particular, being “knock it off”. That was a trigger for me because it happened to be something my dad said all the time at home.  Another time I was in the store and a man passed me by wearing the same cologne or aftershave that my dad used to wear. 

If you resonate with what I’m saying, then please be gentle with yourself. Pay attention to your body daily. Breathe past your lungs into your gut and drink lots and lots of water!  For the love of God, please get healing for any unreasonable guilt, or any unrecognized shame, and get help to acknowledge your losses and resolve your grief, so your body doesn’t need to hold on to it anymore.

Another important piece to my grief journey that I learned about is that loss does NOT need to be a major trauma such as the death of a loved one.  It could be the loss of a country you grew up in… A boyfriend you didn’t want to break up with… The loss of a beloved sister-in-law or brother-in-law from a divorce... A close older sibling who went off to college... A treasured friend that moved away… A dog or cat you loved that ran away… Being laid off from your first job out of college, that you really liked… A cherished childhood sibling who chose to be estranged from the family with no explanation… Your last child who grew up and moved out of the house… Your adult child who decided to leave the Church… Your grandchildren are being raised without Faith. You get my point, right? Regardless of what type of trauma a person suffers every single-loss-and-unresolved-grief-is-carried-in-the-body! 

 

So for me, personally no matter how many times I tried to avoid facing painful memories of my past, by self-medicate present day triggers with TV, food, social media, and my biggest default busyness, I was met with the same outcome. These buffers would temporarily numb my mind and distract my thoughts from any fear, anxiety, or pain, however my-body-never-forgot.  As long as I remained blind and continued carrying unreasonable guilt, unrecognized shame, and any loss and grief in my life, and blindly left it unacknowledged and unresolved, my body has always paid the price. 

 

If you relate, then my recommendation for you dear reader is to tune in and listen to your body. Do you suffer from any physical ailments? Fibromyalgia, Constipation? IBS? Stomach issues? Heart issues? Headaches? Shoulder, neck, hand, or foot pain? Visual or hearing ailments? Do you struggle with anxiety? Anger? Depression? There is likely a high probability that you are carrying unreasonable guilt, unrecognized shame, unacknowledged loss, and or unresolved grief!!! 

 Things that I found helpful on my journey of recovery… I started reading books like this and this and this!   I started seeing a lady from my local community who specializes in inner healing. I later learned about another lady who has an inner healing program online, and she works with people all over the world. I also attended a grief support group at my church. If this is not an option for you do a Google search to find a local grief support group. Look into Grief Share, and if that doesn’t work, any local hospice care facility should have a listing for grief support groups in your area. 

Of all the resources I mentioned above hands down, if there were only one of these that you could choose for whatever reason, then I would say PLEASE try inner healing. Honestly, I’ve been through counseling, coaching and support groups. All of which were helpful in their own way, but nothing has brought me more resolve and permanent relief than inner healing!

During inner healing sessions you engage directly with the Holy Spirit! He is your healer. When invited into those hidden wounds, He helps you unearth any unreasonable guilt, unrecognized shame, unacknowledged loss, and unresolved grief and then He gives you the courage and supernatural strength to face the pain or fear behind each of those past experiences. By the end of the session those God-holes are filled with His unconditional love, mercy, light and a lasting peace.

From personal experience, my inner healing results were more efficient and came with more lasting resolutions than any other modality I’ve ever tried! 

God is our healer not humans.

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Here are two beautiful healing prayers I use often before going to bed a night...

 

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 I pray you found what you needed today dear reader. Please leave a comment below, I would love to hear how this post might have been helpful to you.

 Remember you are not alone! No matter what you’ve done or failed to do you are still loved unconditionally by a very merciful and just Lord and Savior!

 

May God Bless You,

Leslie

Where did I end up?

 

In my previous post, I told you about my amazing childhood homeland. Now I will tell you about my parents' decision to move our family back to the United States. 


Initially, we moved to a small town in North Florida. Instead of admitting me to the local junior college, my parents decided it would be better if I repeated a senior year of high school here in the United States.  

Sadly, what made this decision even worse, than my previous relocation experience which was based on the fact that I was behind academically and had to catch up to my peers, this time my parents felt I was “too naive” from having grown up overseas.

 In hindsight I know many immature 17-18 year olds that go to junior college today. However, back then there was zero support for TCKs far less parents of TCKs.  I know when my parents made this decision they only had my best interest at heart. 

Unfortunately, that one decision contributed greatly to the overall shock, confusion, stress, and trauma of my moving experience to this foreign land.

I really struggled that first year for many many reasons. The biggest one being the whole American school system was so very different from the British school system, which was all I knew growing up. 

First, there were the whole American high school cultural differences.  It didn’t help that I had already graduated high school and now I was being required to repeat my senior year of school. By twelfth grade in American high schools most of the students have already known each other for years and have preexisting friendship groups. So these circumstances combined made my transition incredibly difficult.  

Secondly, the school subjects, fashion styles, current fads, and music preferences completely differed from anything I was accustomed to. 

Thirdly, I was no longer a minority, either in ethnicity or nationality and because I now had the same colored skin as the majority of kids in this school, there were certain standards I was expected to follow that I absolutely could not understand nor did I want to be any part of.  

Lastly, I stood out like a sore thumb between my strong Trinidadian accent and my radically different likes and dislikes, views, beliefs, opinions, and values. I didn't know where I belonged and that led me into a whole lot of trouble!

The only thing that gave my life any kind of grounding and stability during those first two traumatizing years was running on the cross-country teams, both at high school and in college during my freshman year. I will be forever grateful to the coaches who encouraged me and stood by my side. At the end of the cross-country season during my senior year of high school, I ended up breaking the high school record for the women's team. This allowed me the opportunity to run at the local university the following year.

During my second year of transition, by the grace of God, my parents moved permanently to Texas, and I was transferred to Florida State University. One semester later I met my wonderful husband. 

After graduating and getting married we ended up living in the state of Georgia.  

When I look back on those difficult years, I can now see how it was truly my mother-in-law (and father-in-law) who helped to "Americanize" me. I wish they were still alive today so I could thank them face to face.  Love and miss you very much Me-maw and Pap!!

I know I was not an easy person to be around during those difficult transitional years, especially when I flipped out into bouts of blind hatred and rage. However, little by little, through God’s great mercy and my in-law's patience and endurance, a good dose of Southern charm, and a whole lot of Christian charity, they slowly won me over. 

I can honestly say I was never one of those people who had 'terrible' inlaws.  What an incredible grace-filled gift from God that was in my broken life!!

Today my husband and I have been married 33 years as of this posting and we are still living happily in the state of Georgia.   Praise God!!

Dear sojourner, would you please join me and say a quick prayer of gratitude to God for all those wonderful coaches, and in particular for my deceased in-laws Hugh Dorsey and Jackie Adamson 🙏❤️

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I pray you found what you needed today. Please leave a comment below, I would love to hear how this post might have been helpful to you.

 Remember you are not alone! No matter what you’ve done or failed to do you are still loved unconditionally by a very merciful and just Lord and Savior! 

May God Bless You,

Leslie