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Hi, I’m Ruth, an adult TCK (ATCK)
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Not being too technically literate on blogs/forums, etc, I hope this is the right place to start…
I’m Ruth, I was born and grew up in Nigeria to American citizens but my dad had been born and raised as a TCK (before there was such a term) in Iran…at that point it was still Persia. I lived in Nigeria until I was 13, returned to the States for high school and college, married, went to Liberia and lived there for nine years, raising my own 3 TCKs in that fine land, tried to figure out at age 39 why, with such a wonderful life, there was this place of often silent depression that I couldn’t name or understand. To work on that I began journaling and ultimately saw the issues of unresolved grief I had never faced from the losses of so much I had loved (like country, family, friends!) despite the incredible, incredible riches of my life. IN fact, I have come to see that it is the riches that made the loss so profound. We don’t grieve if we lose something we don’t love. Grief is, in fact, an affirmation of our lives, not a negation for we only grieve when we lose the things we love. and I loved my childhood, family, and life overseas a great deal!
Around the same time I first heard of the TCK term and had my own Aha! moment so many of you/us have also known. For the past twenty plus years I’ve been thinking about these issues and interacting with many other traditional TCKs. Soon, I also began hearing from many others who didn’t grow up in the traditional TCK experience of going overseas with parents who traveled for the sake of a career but these new friends had been raised among many cultures for lots of other reasons too. They shared similar feelings to traditional TCKs but often felt “uninvited” to discussions on this topic. Hence the term CCK or cross-cultural kid was born and I continue to interact with many in this broader community as well as the traditional TCK community. I’m personally interested in what are the things shared and what are the things that are slightly different between the various subsets of CCKs just because all of this intrigues me so much! But those are questions for another day.
Only one other word of clarification here to help clear up a common misconception I hear when talking with TCKs. The “third culture” is not simply joining whatever pieces of each place you have lived in as some sort of personal subset “culture” for culture is something that we share with others. It is true that as indwe each adopt certains foods, customs, or whatever from our various places of living, but if you go back to Ruth Useem’s original article written in the mid 1950’s where she first gives us this name, she is talking about a common way of life shared by those who were then living in India but were living as expats outside their passport cultures. what we really see in the TCK lifestyle is a shared experience which binds us together rather than a shared ethnicity or nationality or whatever that would have been a more traditional way of defining culture. That’s why we can connect despite the more typical “differences” others may see…well, many thoughts here but I shall end by saying it is nice to “meet” you and read already such great blogs…thanks! Ruth
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January 11th, 2008 at 8:38 am
Hi Ruth,
Welcome, and thanks so much for your book and essays. You’ve put a name to the feelings and issues my family and I never knew what to call. It’s a relief and explains so much.
Thank you!
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January 17th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
Hello Ruth!
It’s good to see you on here! My parents say hello!
Elizabeth D, Indiana(ish)
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February 4th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
Hi Ruth!
It’s so good to see you here! I only recently found out about TCKs (thanks to my therapist who is one too!), and I’m in the middle of reading your book and I just got through the section on grief. I realized that I had some unresolved grief that were different than leaving friends every few years, but for me, it was the loss of my “Finnish-hood.”
You see, I left Finland when I was a year old, to live in Germany for a year, moved to the States when I was two years old and have been here ever since. My parents decided to buy a house here (thus making our move pernmanent), so that they could save me the pain of having to leave every year. However a part of me wishes that we had. Sure, I spent my summers in Finland, and my parents maintained the language, but I felt so alone among my peers, because no one understood me, and it is only now that I am in college that I really have good, dear friends. I also spent a year there in high school, staying with relatives, which was a horrible experience. (mainly BECAUSE of my relatives)
I have a few questions because of this: Am I still a TCK if I haven’t really moved as much as the others? And how can I help my parents understand what it was like for me? How can I help them understand how that “loss” I felt? My mom tries to understand, but it’s hard to explain it, you know?
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February 5th, 2008 at 6:20 am
Hi Ruth!
Whoa. You really are academic genius. Look at all these people you have helped! I wish there was a way to meet you face to face. Are you doing any conventions to Australia?
I was reading about being a ‘hidden immigrant’ in the TCK book.
I was wondering if it is possible to be one both inside and outside your passport/home countries? For example, i identify with other cultures when i am in Australia but when i am outside of Australia i identify with Australian culture?
I hope to see you around the site.
I can say nothing else except ‘Merci beaucoup’.
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