Good at Beginnings, Good at Goodbyes: What Happens in the Middle
Adult TCKs get plenty of practice at arrivals and goodbyes. The middle is the part nobody taught us, and it is where most of what we wanted gets left.
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Writing Our Way Home: Integrating a Scattered TCK Story
Most adult TCKs I work with have never listed their moves in order. When they do, they are often surprised by what they find. This is about integration, what writing makes possible, and the choices we have now.
What We Learned About Sex, and Where We Learned It: Sexuality across the cultures and families that raised us, and how we come home to our own bodies.
For Third Culture Kids, messages about sex and the body came from many cultures at once, and often contradicted. On sexual shame, gender, and coming home.
Untangling Where We’re From: The Cultures That Shaped Us, and the Search for Wholeness Across Worlds
For most, “where are you from?” is everyday conversation. For Third Culture Kids, it is often one of the most challenging questions we face. This past weekend, people from Lithuania, the UK, Germany, France, Finland, Norway, Taiwan, Canada, and all over the United States gathered to talk about that question. That conversation was a…
Untangling Where We’re From: Journal Prompts for TCKs on Culture and Belonging
Where are you from?” is never a simple question for a TCK. Here are five prompts on the cultures that shaped us, the assumptions others make, and what it might mean to feel whole across all of them.
Same Family, Different Childhoods: On TCKs and Siblings
TCK siblings can grow up in the same family and come away with different childhoods. A reflection on our June call: why siblings diverge, the grief of the one left behind, and being each other’s only witness.
When Numbing Becomes a Pattern: TCKs, Ritualized Comfort-Seeking, and Finding a Way Through
What do you reach for when life gets hard? (Not what you think you should reach for…What you actually reach for.) For some of us, it’s alcohol. For others, it’s work, the kind of relentless busyness that feels productive right up until it doesn’t. It might be food, or screens, or the urgent, consuming search…
All of the Above: Understanding TCK Identity — And Why Chaos Is the Point
All of the Above: Understanding TCK Identity — And Why Chaos Is the Point By Andrea Frey Clark, MS, LPC “Our identity is an anti-identity; the only way we can define ourselves is how we are not.” — TCK interview participant (Walters & Auton-Cuff, 2009) Has anyone ever told you that you’re indecisive? That you…
The Things We Kept: On Objects, Identity, and the Grief of Letting Go
Most of us became experts at traveling light. We learned early that attachment was complicated — that the things you loved too much would just become heavier to carry, or harder to leave behind. Some of us got good at not getting attached to anything at all. Others held on to one or two things…
Still Figuring It Out: What the Research Says About Adult TCK Identity
New research on adult TCK identity confirms what many of us already feel: the belonging confusion doesn’t go away with age. A reflection on one year of monthly TCK calls — and what keeps coming up in the room.
