Year: 2010

TCK links: WikiLeaks founder a global nomad

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I started Denizen in 2008 because no one was documenting the modern Third Culture Kid experience, even though the number of global nomads was steadily rising. I believe this is changing. This bimonthly column will round up news and links about Third Culture Kids. If you see relevant articles or blog posts in your travels across the web, please drop me a note at steph@denizenmag.com. 1. Julian Assange: Global nomad sheds born identity With no permanent address and having moved 37 times by the time he was 14, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is the ultimate global nomad: both everywhere, online and connected, and nowhere, all at once. Author Brigid Delaney discusses how the old rules of nation states are struggling to deal with a nomads of a borderless, digital world. [Sydney Morning Herald] 2. NYTimes blog post features expat kid “We were well-designed for espionage,” Mary H.K. Choi says about expat kids living in Hong Kong. In her post on The New York Times’ Opinionator blog, Choi illustrates the parallels between the expat social circles of Hong Kong and …

Book review: Home Keeps Moving

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When Heidi Sand-Hart was 21, she got her hands on the TCK Bible: “Third Culture Kids – The Experience of Growing Up Among Worlds.” After devouring it, she became even hungrier for personal literature out there for TCKs. She soon realized that there wasn’t much at all, so she decided to write her own, which is called “Home Keeps Moving.” “Home Keeps Moving” is a collection of memories that Sand-Hart gathers from her cross-cultural life, moving from Derby to Norway to Sussex to London to India. As I read the book, being pulled into someone else’s description of feeling between worlds, I enjoyed tagging along on someone else’s global journey. Compared to Pollock and Van Reken’s book, “Home Keeps Moving” is a much more personal, lengthy description of the actual experience of having a home that is anywhere and everywhere. With most personal memoirs though, inevitably you can feel like a tag-along to the story itself. On rare occasions, you are brought into the narrator’s seat. While I enjoyed the book, what I really loved …

Dealing with TCK grief and depression

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In the tearful process of leaving South Korea after graduating from high school, I can distinctly remember a good friend of mine saying, “Ohhh… it feels like we’re at a funeral!”  In many ways, we were. Whether from my own life growing up among worlds or from working with hundreds of TCKs over the past decade at Interaction International, it’s becoming increasingly clear to me how central grief and loss are to the TCK lifestyle. Grief is a very human experience and one that many TCKs begin to know from a young age.  The kinds of feelings that come with grief, which is an emotional response to loss, require much care from both self and others, especially considering TCKs often undergo “complex grief,” a phenomenon that can happen when multiple kinds of loss occur all at the same time. Since grief for TCKs can be multifaceted, many find it helpful to spend time intentionally identifying the various and specific losses that have been suffered.  Contemplating these losses and allowing the time and space to feel …

How does a TCK define “home?”

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It is 5 a.m. and I am sitting in a café at Frankfurt International Airport waiting for a flight that will bring me to the United States in a matter of hours. Eight hours! That is how long a healthy person sleeps at night, how long the train ride from Luxembourg to Hamburg takes, how long a typical day at school is. Eight hours and you can be on a different continent with a completely different culture. It’s nothing new: globalization is bringing people closer together, creating more intercultural relationships and complicating the meaning of “home.” Conventionally, “home” is associated with a geographical location. But, what shapes “home” in a world that is more and more connected? What means “home” to someone who has home everywhere? How does a TCK define “home”? The more I thought about this question, the more it drove me nuts. I had touched upon an issue that is omnipresent in the lives of most TCKs – the question about our roots, about what defines us, about where to go next. …

Now departing: without me.

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I’ve avoided doing this for so long and for good reason. But here I am, saying goodbye at an airport, breaking my cardinal rule because I can’t help but use up every second I’ve got with her. We get off the bus and walk hand-in-hand into the terminal, luggage in tow. She checks in, her eyes starting to water. I can feel mine moisten, but I get it together as the ticket agent looks taken aback. I take a few breaths, trying my best to be steady even though the realization of what this moment means starts settling in, the anxiousness gathering momentum. Airports have never been complicated for me. I’ve always been indifferent about them; the only things worth getting emotional about were flight delays and exceptional (or terrible) food at the gate. I’ve rarely been upset at airports, even when leaving a country that had been home for the past couple of years. If I’d felt anything at all, it was intrigue and excitement over what awaited on the other side — but …