Normal

I opened the window to see if I could catch a glimpse of what was happening outside. Then I breathed in deep and grinned. My eyes watered and the smell of the people taking a stand outside swept into our home. With the grin still on my face I turned to my husband.

He frowned.

"It smells like tear gas and tires burning. It makes me homesick, " I sighed.

He shook his head. "That's not normal, Maia. Close the window."

Not normal. That phrase crops up often, in words or in glances, when I am explaining things about how I grew up. Only seeing my parents on holiday. Watching the government crumble around me, several times. Living within walls topped with shards of glass. Eating soup with the chicken foot sticking out of it. Watching ash cover the city like snow.

My response is always the same. For us, it WAS normal.
Normal hardly means anything to me anymore. I understand the concept but I am always aware that my normal is someone else's strange. Normal is based highly on perspective.

The first move back to the U.S.A. that I was old enough to be fully aware of I remember being really confused. I expressed to my parents that the houses felt exposed or wrong. You could see the front doors. Some of them were wide open. "Where are the walls?" It didn't feel normal.
Meanwhile, here in Indonesia, where I live now, a student began to explain why people had gates around their houses I thought to myself, Of course they have gates around their houses! Why wouldn't they?

I occurred to me that many new teachers might not be used to that kind of thing. That it might not seem normal.

My husband said something to me about students having to get visas renewed and how frustrating that must be. Then it was my turn.

"I just realized that you went your whole childhood never having to renew a visa or your passport. Wow. That's kind of weird. For student's here, visa and passport renewals are just... normal."

TCK lives are rich with experiences and one of my favorite byproducts of that is being able to see the world from a different perspective, being able to step into other people's "normal". It is such a wonderful gift that is definitely worth sharing. I love hearing other forms of "normal life" around me. What would it be like to grow up interacting with the same 60 people over and over? What would it be like to grow up in that neighborhood, with those people, those traditions, those customs? You start to realize:

Everyone is a little strange. But it's okay. That's normal.

Okay, some of us might be a little stranger than others

What feels like "normal" to you? What customs or lifestyles seem strange?

Going back

I remember the excitement I felt when we knew we were going back. I would see my best friend again, the one I was writing as religiously as I could manage. I was excited to see front doors uninhibited by walls topped with glass. Excited to eat my favorite cereal again. Excited to be back to that place that I considered my concrete, indisputable, unchangeable home.

And then I was there. The shiny rubbed off quickly and I realized that maybe this was not my home. I don't think I had the vocabulary to put my feelings into words at the young age of eleven or twelve, but looking back now I can tell you that I had changed, moving overseas had made me different.

I want to walk lightly, step gingerly around those memories. As much as I know that my life had moved in a different direction the other side of it was that life there had moved on too. I expected things to be the same and they expected me to be the same. Neither was true.

I remember the word I did have for that experience: disappointment.

I have had this conversation again and again with TCKs, that realization that when you "go back" you no longer belong. It isn't just with TCKs either. Something about travel, about living outside of your original world, about that opening of doors does huge change within.

I had changed and for me that meant the news was now less about them and more about us. The word "normal" was discontinued (more on that later). Every face had a story, every culture had merit, every place had the potential for home. Conversations included more than one language, experiences seemed larger than life but also like just life. I left on an adventure as one person and went back as another.

When we "go back" that world can seem small only because that world seemed so big to us before we saw other ones. I often say to myself, why wouldn't they want to travel, but I forget that once I did not travel. I was young, but it was true. I forget that my heart called that place home just as they do. I forget that in my other worlds there are people who are living the same way, people who stay where they are, who are planted and grow deep and beautiful roots.

Try as I may, I cannot pause each world, keep it from spinning, until I can "go back" to it. Time moves forward, life moves on. I cannot do this anymore than people can keep me from being changed by time and motion myself. It occurs to me here that it is hard for me to "go back", but it is also hard to have me back. And in that, suddenly I approach "going back" differently, walking lighter, looking at my old world as a changed world.

What have you felt when you went back?

Sharing my passion

I'm sorry I haven't posted in a while.

My life has been in transition. My husband and I packed up our life in Virginia, dropped off stuff for my parents who also happen to be transitioning back to the U.S. Then we traveled to and participated in two wonderful weddings where we danced, smiled, and celebrated wonderful people that have been inextricably connected to our hearts, family and friends from around the world. I can't imagine a better send off or a more emotionally charged one.

Then, we set off for our new future in Indonesia where we are teaching TCKs. My dream is here, embodied in the faces of 140 students from corners of the globe, all mirroring a life I know so well. I am working alongside teachers whose hearts have aligned with my visions. I am tired, exhausted really, confused, but so excited and filled to the very brim of my being here.

I've had to stop and take time to reflect on a few things. Things like the way I feel helpless not knowing the language of the world outside of this school. Things like the frustrations of my creative mind striving to structure out lesson plans. Things like the cherished moments I have already had sharing pieces of myself with the open-handed here.

I can't express to you the excitement I had when a teacher told me that they had recently started seeing the students, not as Korean, American, British, or Australian, but as global citizens. I told my heart to still but the grin on my face and the excitement in my voice betrayed me. "YES! That is the best realization you can make when you are approaching these students!"

I can't explain how wonderful it was to have a group of 6 girls sequestered to a van with me coming back from a trip where I could ask them hard questions about going back to their passport countries, how they fit or didn't fit in, how they viewed the places they had left or returned to. I asked how they compared those ideas to the ones they had of friends here in Indonesia who may have the same perspective of things like travel, moving, or change.

So, I hope you can forgive this absence with the knowledge that I will have so much to share, to reflect on, and so much more to process here as I get my feet and interact with all of these TCKs and those interacting with us.

Meanwhile, check out this cool video opportunity I had before I left Virginia to share my passion.

How have you shared yourself or your passion recently?

Extended Family

Name a country. Any country. The odds are that I will tell you about a friend I know there. My husband calls it name dropping but I like to think of it more as door opening. I love to offer connections, homes, people to travelers. And while I have been bringing up a lot of things that are hard on TCKs, like moving, walls, and loss, I want to talk about something that makes a lot of those hard things not as hard. The people.

I think that if you asked most TCKs what their dream place is they would respond something like, "someplace where I could gather all the people I love at the same time." I know that if that place existed on this earth that it would be my answer to "where is home to you?"Alas, that place does not exist on this planet.

In my boarding school dorm there was this tradition/practice where another family or some teachers who cared about us lonely dorm kids would take us for a day or a weekend. They called it extended family time. These people were obviously not related to us, but the idea was that, by being a part of our lives, they also became something akin to family (excuse the pun).

As my husband and I get ready to move (yet again) my mom reminded me that we have also formed a type of family here. While I am packing up she expressed that she wished she could be here helping me, but she knows that the friends we have here will be her stand-ins; the community we have here is our Virginia family.

I love that. I think that it can happen whether or not you are a TCK but that it is so prevalent in TCK lives, due to being so far from blood relatives, and, truthfully, something about being displaced brings people together. It forms an extended family bond quickly and usually out of necessity.

We have this hanging in our home

To me, all those names I drop, those connections, those doors I open, are all people who have played a part in my life and whom I would highly recommend to play a part in others' lives. It is my way of extending my extended family to others. You are moving to Germany? Would you like a brother, or a sister? To Egypt? How about a substitute mother and father or a mentor? To Uruguay? Let me point you to a home cooked meal. Let my people become your people. Let our lines cross, our colors bleed into each other.

We become one huge family, and suddenly there are places and people that we can call home anywhere and everywhere.

My parents just went to a conference for the people in their organization and it overwhelmed me when they said that as they told people about Tim and I moving to Indonesia all sorts of open arms and helping hands extended to us. And my parents were, in turn, able to open up hands back to them for me by pointing people to this blog, which I hope can be a place for you to read words that are familiar to your heart, that connect us througout the globe, that allow our colors to bleed into each other and make a beautiful work of art across this small world. I'm so thankful for the extended family that I have, and for the extended family that I will keep forming.

So, where are you traveling next? I bet I know someone there that you should meet...

How have you built extended families in your life?

PTPD (Post Traumatic Packing Disorder)

In a few months my husband and I will be moving overseas to work with TCKs and we are so excited, but we will only be taking a few suitcases each and as I look around my house I see all the things we will either put into storage, sell, or try and fit into some zippered up bags.

The last time we moved I literally hid from the packing process, and it wasn't even me who had to pack it up. Movers and boxes were coming and I ran away to camp, came home and sat outside with a muffin. Then I closed myself in a room trying to avoid the sound of packing tape and smell of cardboard. I can tell you that my husband was not impressed to say the least.

I have talked a little bit before about the loss we sustain as TCKs in our cultural adjustments but let me focus in on the idea of moving.

I'm the only one with red hair, in case you didn't recognize me

In this picture I am in fifth grade. By this time (about eleven years old) I have moved seven or eight times, I have said goodbye to four different best friends from four different places, and it will be just the beginning because this picture was taken in my first year of boarding school. Which means that from that year until graduation I will pack up my things at the end of every year and head to some form of "home" and then head back to another form of "home" again. Packing, packing, packing. It means a lot of leaving.

This move will bring me to a wonderful total of 26 moves in 26 years. Some years I lived more out of suitcases than others, but the point is this: I know how to move, but the baggage (pun intended) that moving brings with it is loss after loss after loss. Each one brings its own goodbyes and tacks on the new goodbyes I will carry on with me. It is no coincidence that the background of this blog is suitcases. Wanderers carry with them their belongings and their memories and their losses. They carry their hopes and friendships that they may have left behind. I carry that opportunity to dance ballet that I left in Pennsylvania, the loss of two friends who had lockers adjacent to me for years that I do not know if I will run into ever again, the closeness to extended family that I can't sustain from so far away no matter how much I wish to.

It isn't just about leaving those great shoes you love that don't fit in your bag (at least not without breaking the zipper), but it brings up all those other things you have left behind that will never be the same. I am going to call it Post Traumatic Packing Disorder (PTPD), that sinking pit in your stomach when you have to pull the luggage out of your closet, that shrinking back when you hear packing tape unroll, that anxiety that rises up when you look at the boxes and then to all your books.

So let's remember that while going may be exciting, leaving can be excruciating. PTPD means proceed with care and mercy. Packing packs with it all those other things you have left behind. Take the time to say good good-byes and to leave in a healthy way. And remember me as I trudge forward thinking about the loss and packing I will be trying to survive in a few months.

How do you feel when you pack?

TCK Relationships Part 3 (Attachments and Detachments)

I sit there reading her update and I feel it rising in me. I must go to be there. I need to support my friend. It is far, and may be expensive, but I feel like it is so important.

This is my response to a lot of things that happen with my friends and it baffles some people. A friend graduating on the other side of the country. A wedding miles away, a baby shower barely in driving distance, a passing comment to come visit, and my mind is thinking how to fit it all in. The friendships seem to overshadow responsibility. 

Then there are other times when I can't bring myself to answer an email or a text. Where I don't want to leave the house or see a friendly face. Where it all seems like too much effort, and to what end?

I know I am not the only person to do this. This piggy-backs off of the last post on loss, but with a twist. The twist comes in the form of that alternative wretched question, "yes, but where do you call home?"

There are warring concepts in a TCK life that result in this seemingly bi-polar attachment. I think it is why I can cling to a TV show for a month and then abandon it all together out of nowhere. The loss is so real. We have a habit of letting go of things, of people. We feel worn out from that constant attachment and detachment. But then, home is not a place to us. It is people we have met. It is the person who sat next to us when we found out our grandmother died a world away, the person who sat through that rough class and shared notes, the person who borrowed clothes and never gave them back, the person who saw us cry. 

We attach and attach and attach because we have to and long to and love to, and then we let go and let go and let go because we also have to. 

We flourish in new environments and with new people, but we always have in the back of our minds how we will inevitably let them go as well. 

It's why we feel we must fly across the world to be at a wedding, but are afraid to answer the phone. It is why we offer up as much of ourselves as we can spare at a moment's notice, but hide in our rooms when the time to give ourselves up arises. 

It is why the simple act of coffee is both wonderful and terrifying. Hold on, let go. Feel at home, lose your home. Have your friends, lose your friends. Feel loved, feel loss. They go so tightly hand in hand that we cannot separate the fingers but must navigate the paradox of up and downs that each one brings with it. 

Where do you run in and where do you run away?

TCK Relationships Part 2 (Walls)

I've been avoiding writing this post. I am quite aware that no one is making me write it, but also so aware at how important it is to know and recognize this topic.

One reason I have been avoiding it is because it is hard to explain. While we just talked about the gung-ho, jump-in personalities of TCKs there comes a time where this comes to a sudden and very firm halt. Maybe you are enjoying a fantastic friendship when suddenly the TCK becomes distant. Maybe you are in a relationship and out of nowhere the TCK starts pulling away. Where a TCK had jumped into deep topics suddenly a deep friendship has come to a standstill and suddenly you find yourself standing at a very tall wall.

Let me first say that there is a reason (though not an excuse) for these walls. The life of a TCK, while being very rich and wonderful, is also a life of huge loss. The cycle of constantly making and then losing friendships, the hellos and goodbyes do a number on the heart and eventually a TCK will come to a point where it seems easier not to let someone in than it is to go through that feeling of loss again. That is the second reason I have avoided this. I love to champion the wonders of being a TCK but there are also struggles.

A lot of you who have been reading expressed that the concept of how hard it is to maintain a long-lasting friendship resonated with you. Can I tell you why? It is because you are more used to saying "goodbye" than you are to saying "hello, again". In our lives "hello" usually leads to inevitable and often sudden "goodbye".

If you were to read through my journals (please don't, but if you were) you would find this type of thing occurring over and over; something like: It will just hurt too much or I can't do this to them, I know I am going to put up a wall so I won't hurt them when I leave, so I will start to detach now. It will just be easier.
Hint: it never is. That early detachment does more hurt than a final goodbye with all the pain ever would.

But it isn't just when leaving. I wait for people to get sick of hanging out with me and am prepared to move on to another friendship at a moment's notice. In my marriage there has been a strange complexity between being so excited to have someone who will be there with me forever, and also that urge to put up walls just in case it is too good to be true. 5 years in I still fight it.

So, here I want to do two things.

First, I want to tell you that it is okay to feel that loss. You have had your heart broken again and again. I have too. You have had to say goodbye too soon, or too late, or from too far away, or from too near. You have had to let go of things you were holding tightly to. You have been hurt. You have been pulled away. You have lost things you cannot replace. You have felt deep, deep pain, and that is okay to feel. Let yourself grieve.

Second, I want to tell you that you are doing more harm than good. Every time you go cold inside, (you know what I am talking about, the empty, dead feeling you take on) you are not helping yourself. You are making things worse, you are making more pain, and you are hurting those around you. The walls are instinctual to protect, but deep friendships and deep connections are not something you need to protect yourself from. The pain at the end is deep, but the lasting pain of missed connection and love, that is far more destructive. It will take time and practice. It will take many "mind over matter" moments, where you simply decide to feel, where you decide to connect, even when you feel like turning off. It will take many moments where you must be honest with the people around you, where you must give people permission to pursue you when you shut down, permission to scale those walls. And it will take letting wise people give you direction. I do not claim to be one of those wise people, but I will pass on words from someone who is.

When a very close friend of mine was leaving our community in Egypt, I felt myself shutting off. Her mom was there to help her pack up and move back home and one night she pulled me aside and told me how glad she was that her daughter and I were friends. I smiled. But then she told me this:
"Don't you dare pull away from her. Don't you dare. You are too good of friends and it would hurt her too much if you did."

That admonishment has stuck with me. I thought I would save myself but I knew it would do irreparable damage if I did. So I didn't. And let's all just give a short applause to technology which allows us to keep meaningful friendships from far away so much easier than we used to. I have a little whatsapp group of girls who are spread across the world but who I can share my heart with in an instant, and that friend is one of them.

So take a sledge hammer to those walls. Let some people in. Schedule coffee dates, skype dates, cupcake dates, whatever you can. Send a long email. Give a long hug. Share your true heart. Then keep doing that.

And you who have reached a wall with a TCK, please know that it is not because of you. There is a lot of hurt there. Please, be understanding and patient.

When have you struggled with putting up walls? When have you encountered a wall with someone else?