Kind Curiosity

 This has been a long and strange season for me. I have found myself, for the first time ever, being the person who has “been here a while” and it still throws me off. 

I lost a husband. I own a house. I’ve been employed by the same place for five years. I know where things are and what places used to be. My world timeline has stretched longer than I can believe. 

But, I still breathe easier in airports, and always eat my Korean food with metal chopsticks. I taught my students an Indonesian word because it was easier than finding an incorrect substitute. I prefer to sit cross legged. I planted palm trees in my back yard. I wear my batik and I don’t know where to wear my galabeya. My frustration is in Spanish and when I’m tired my English grammar fails me. 

I am surrounded by a deeply insulated monoculture that is not my own and it is hard. This long staying in a place that is not my culture but seems like it should be is hard. It is harder than living in the Middle East, or South East Asia, and harder than learning any languages I have learned. 

People ask me questions to get to know me but it seems that they are the wrong questions or I give the wrong answers. The longer I stay the more obvious it is to me that my culture is different. I have been thinking a lot about that classic TCK image of the culture iceberg. The majority of the cultural values and ideas are underwater and it turns out I’m not so good at swimming here. I cannot count the number of meetings I have sat in where I find myself incredibly confused, not with the what, but with the why and how. I have sat in meetings where I see the same confusion on the faces around me as I speak. Forget being on the same page, we aren’t in the same library.

Grief tipped my iceberg over and no one knew what to do, including myself. I noticed that I don’t have TCK friends. That’s been hard. I MarcoPolo my dorm sister now and ask her if I’m crazy. I might be but mostly I’m different. 

I went with some of my people from this world to Spain to work with TCKs. One of them said to me that I seemed peaceful. I said, “I am. I’m with my people. I’m in my world. I’m eating rice pudding twice a day.”

But now, back in this tricky place, where I am staying, where I have a place of belonging but don’t actually belong, I find myself repeating a phrase again and again to myself and those around me:

Kind curiosity. 

The kindly curious have been my life savers. They are the ones that will stop after making a cultural reference and give me context just in case then ask if I knew that one. They are the ones who will ask that one question further. What was the dorm like? Do you miss it? Is it hard to be here? 

I remind myself of the same. Even though I understand the language and know my way around, I am still a stranger here and I need to learn. I am still asking the dumb questions and I am still learning how very different this place is, and how very different I am. 

And maybe that has been the most interesting part. I am learning so much about myself. I found out greetings are so important to me. I discovered my heart holds to honor/shame. I was told that using someone’s name as you debate can sound manipulative and it still doesn’t make sense to me. I am trying my hardest to be American on-time, which means early. I realized I don’t ever know what time it actually is or what time things happen. 

TCKs will never have a box to check on a customs form. We will not have a cultural moment in this world. We will probably walk widely undetected through spaces that we will borrow. But every once in a while we will find a moment where a curious mind wants to know more, and by letting them in we will each find more of ourselves there too. 

Be kind.

Be curious.

Hidden Immigrant

 Imagine you walk out of an airport and someone comes up to you and begins speaking in their native language. You are mistaken for a local but you aren’t and you don’t understand a word they are saying. You glance around for help but the person is getting frustrated with you and you don’t know why. They walk away angry and you stand there confused. 

Hunger sets in and you wander into a bakery, drawn by the tantalizing smell of fresh bread. You look around. There is a cash register, there are trays, the bread seems to be accesible with tongs, but when you reach for one someone behind the counter starts yelling at you. You put it back and go to the cash register. The people behind the counter are whispering and you manage to butcher your way through an order. They have to count out the money for you as you hold your hand open with coins. As you leave with your warm bread you can hear them all laughing at you.

These experiences continue with different reactions and by the time you are headed to bed you are exhausted and so confused. You brush your teeth and as rise from bending and spitting you see yourself in the mirror. You look like a local. Your parents share a heritage with this country. You even know some words and songs from when you were a kid. But the experience of the days blunders confirms that you are not from here.

This is an amplified version of the life of a TCK when they return to their passport country. I am six years into living in my passport country, three years into working at the same organization. I am burnt out. I am culturally exhausted. 

It can feel like no matter how many times I explain that I am not from here at the end of the day I am held accountable for all of the ways I am different as wrongs. I am a hidden immigrant.

The term hidden immigrant is used for TCKs who return to their passport countries. They look and even sound like the people around them, but inside of them is something very different. The struggle that differentiates this kind of difference from that of being in another country is the assumption of sameness. When someone is clearly a foreigner there is an extension of awareness that said person would not know the customs or the culture. This often comes with, if not grace, at least an offering of explanation. When one is assumed to be the same there can be a severe lack of both. 

Most TCKs experience this the harshest when they return to their passport countries for university. The world they grew up in seemed “normal” because everyone around them was also in that world, but placed in a space where everyone else seems to know a different world can be a shocking revelation and often feels like being plunged into cold, deep water and having everyone around you ask you why you aren’t swimming, after all, you have legs to kick and arms to paddle. And you may learn how to tread water or doggy paddle, but you will not win any races and your butterfly stroke will probably always lead to a mouthful of water. Without having learned to float you will get exhausted. 

In these kinds of circumstances there are two great helpers. The first is the more seasoned TCK, who has learned how to float or knows where to find a life jacket. The second is the curious person who not only asks why you can’t swim but takes time to teach you how to float and asks what you used your feet and arms for before. They are the person who explains the swimming terms for you, just in case, because they know you didn’t grow up with them. 

My non-TCK people, love your TCKs by researching, asking questions, listening, and using your imagination to try and understand. Teach us how to float. Remember we aren’t great swimmers even though we have arms and legs.

My TCK people, I see you flailing your arms. I too have swallowed a lot of water and my body is tired. Make time to take a deep breath and lay on your back and rest. Look up at the sun, hold on to the edge. Share my floatation device. Our legs can run and jump, and even sort of swim. And because we know what drowning looks like from experience, we can spot others who are drowning too and help them. It’s okay to stay in the pool. It’s okay to get out of the pool sometimes too. It makes sense that you are tired of swimming. I am too. Let’s float together and talk about running on grass before we start to kick again.

Icebergs

I have been living in this country for 5 years now. And I have been in this apartment, at this work, with these people for almost 3 years. I am restless and also exhausted. It is hard to explain this to my monocultural friends. They hear escapism and struggle to understand why I would feel that I don’t fit in even though I am accepted and loved in my communities. Especially since it has been 3 years.

Many days I find myself listening to things happening around me, wondering if I understand motivations, processes, or even joys or offenses. If culture is an iceberg, then 3 years has allowed me to explore most of the top of this iceberg. 5 years means I can tell you where everything is on the top of this iceberg. But I cannot tell you what is underneath. I can guess, but I cannot know.

It is hard to find out that someone is upset with you and have no reference to know why. It is even harder to not know that someone is upset with you and yet, you will never guess it because the thing you did “wrong” isn’t even on your radar of what wrong is.

I have talked before about the idea of “normal” and how it is a very slippery term that can be as unique as skin tone or DNA. But, how can you know what you don’t know? For most of the people in my community, there are things that were never overtly taught to them but were infused into them and their thought processes and understandings of the world. This is true for me as well. When one lives as a majority there is very little to challenge or highlight those formations. But, if one lives as a minority, those things are challenged often. 

For the TCK, life is almost always lived as a minority. The TCK culture, though found in many people, is rarely concentrated into a populace but rather spread and scattered in smatterings across the globe. What does this mean?

For me, in this season of life, where I find myself to be a hidden immigrant and in the overwhelming minority culture, it means I am always adjusting and guessing what sits below that water. It is hard work. It can be stressful or interesting. Some days I am endlessly curious, other days I am frustrated. 

But God help the monoculture human who finds themselves in a space of majority TCKs. It can be a shock. I am hungry for that space. In the meantime, I am eternally grateful for the friends who make room for the top of my iceberg. The people who ask if I am familiar with a cultural reference (with no judgement) before moving forward to reference it. The people who ask curious questions. The people who listen to my strange stories. The people who remember my “unnormal” things and thereby make them slightly more normal. They are not my TCKs but they are my people.

Happy Holidays

Pandemic

I just sat in a very long meeting where several people stared across a table at masked faces trying to make decisions for the many students, families, and teachers that come to this building to learn and grow together. We tried to make choices and policies for a community with a glaring lack of solid information and a plethora of contingent situations. I sat and listened and inside I was in mourning.

This is not the hardest season of my life.

I think back on the moments, growing up in Ecuador when we had to navigate what school was as volcanic ash descended on the city. We sat in dorm rooms with packets of worksheets, windows taped shut as dorm brothers sang, “it’s the end of the world as we know it,” making the youngest kids cry.

I think back to watching a tank roll down the empty street in front of me. Tear gas and the sound of gunfire still lingered in the air, and with a quickened pulse and a packed bag of essentials I waited for news of a fallen government, evacuation orders, or both.

I think back to laying in my bed after having just thrown up. I  painstakingly dragged myself across the cool tile floor, exhausted from this Dengue Fever chewing away at my blood, covered in rashes, too weak to lift water to my mouth, and burning up.

I have been through worse, is what I think looking around at creased brows surrounding me at 6 foot intervals. 

And still, I want to mourn. I am a TCK who has walked in and out of many cultures, communities, and scenarios. I know this digital space we are forced to live in because all of my people live on the other side of the world and thus the other side of a screen. But I want to mourn. I know what can be lost here. That’s what this is. Loss. And I know that saying goodbye in loss is valuable and important. So tonight as I plan many virtual tutorials, attempting to use the gifts life has given me in adjusting and adapting to guide others, I will take time to mourn what this Virus is dropping my community into: loss. And then, like I have experienced again and again, life will move forward, things will end and other things will begin. This is the turning of the earth. Remember: it is hard now, but life will not be like this forever..


How have your previous life experiences prepared you for this season of life?

Trapped (a poem for this time)

I am trapped in between.
I am standing in a world that says, “if you have experienced this you are a person of color” along with, “if you look like this you are white and have experienced something else” and I feel trapped.
I read the stories and listen to the feelings of my dark skinned friends and I nod because many of those stories echo my stories and many of those feelings are my feelings.
But then I look in the mirror and I am white. My friends look at me and they cannot help it, they see white. The blanket placed over my world and life is white.
But underneath I hold so many colors. I am a minority. I am diverse. My stories are often unheard or my feelings are often discredited. I cannot tell you how often I am told to feel and think differently, because that is how I am “supposed” to feel and think. White people feelings and thoughts.
But I picked up that story of the black girl running from everyone else who wanted to touch her hair and something in me said, “that’s my story too”. Only I’m not black. My hair isn’t big and curly, it’s  just red.
I listen to the hearts of men saying that they are tired of learning everyone else’s histories and I think of how many histories I have learned to countries I feel I don’t belong to. But what even would a history textbook for me look like? Its impossible.
I lean in as I hear that lovely woman cry out that she has always had to listen and adjust to the culture of the white person, and I think of every world I have lived in where I was the one listening and adjusting. Every. World. Always.
And I want to celebrate these movements toward listening, I want to elevate and amplify voices that have gone unheard, stories that have gone untold.
I want to right the wrongs that have been engrained in the sweeping proclamations spoken over a people group because of the color of their skin and deciding for them what life should or shouldn’t be.
I want to see diversity flourish.
And yet, I am painfully aware that there will never be a movement across the world that declares that the TCK voice needs to be heard and that our stories need to be understood.
There will never be a hashtag to combat the way I am treated as a white minority amongst colored countries that I love but that target me for the color of my skin deciding what I am by it.
I will always be the white person who is more at home but never belonging to the diverse spaces and the diverse voices because I don’t know any other way to be.
I am trapped between these worlds with no way to move.
I don’t want to move for so many reasons. I guess. But still.
I make myself small, again, for the bigger stories around me while hearing that it’s time for the people of color to stop making themselves small. And the people who grew up being big stand next to me, trying to be small for the first time, nodding at me like I have finally found my place, unaware that this is where I have lived my whole life.
It is where I will continue to live.
I guess that’s okay. It’s just hard to know that history will never be made for me.
I am trapped in between.
I will hurt in ways people may never understand as I listen to the hurts of my colored friends.
I will work towards justice because I always have, in extreme ways and in everyday ways, valuing every person, seeing unseen people, hearing quiet voices, like I always have, but in places you will never travel to, with people you will never know, in ways you may never understand.
I will use this white privileged you give me to try and bridge gaps, to pull people from one side to the other since I am already trapped in between.
I will be silent as someone declares that I have never experienced what they are saying even if I have because they will not hear it through my skin.
I will be gracious when I hear frustrating dismissals and take on false assumptions of my childhood, worldview, and understanding because to correct will not help anyone but me. .
I will try and celebrate my own stories quietly in my heart.
I will try to mourn my own stories quietly in my heart.

I will try to be quietly trapped in between.

헷갈려

Sorry, it has been a little while since I last updated this blog. A lot has been going on in my personal life including some identity changes. Anyone know what that is like? 

In Korean there is a word, 헷갈려 (hesgallyeo), which means confused. The beginning of the word 헷 means futile and the end 갈려 means to be divided. To be divided futilely, or confused. Eg: Whoa, that TCK is so 헷갈려...

I heard it first from a TCK and immediately fell in love with it. (I already love language, more on that later.) It’s a word for the thing you feel when in one country you are the American and in the other you are the girl from Ecuador. It’s what happens when you are identified by your heritage in a culture you know and your culture in your heritage country. It’s what happens when you aren’t sure how to answer that dreaded question, “where are you from?”

I’ve moved once again. This was number 32 in my 29 years of life. It came unexpectedly. I don’t mind change, or maybe I don’t know anything different so it is comforting. But whenever I start over in a new place I have this strange opportunity to decide, who am I going to be? I am always me but what parts of me will these people know?

Sometimes we get to be intentional about what parts of us we are known for, sometimes they are decided for us, but with every move we get to reveal what we want to about ourselves. We get to share as much or as little of our story as we want. 

So here is the question, who are you?

In this season I have been struggling to feel known for the things I am used to being known for. A wise friend of mine asked me, “what do you WANT to be known for?” It’s a good question worth pondering. 

Right now I am in Alabama with a wonderful organization called Kaleidoscope that works with TCKs. My last trip with them was incredible; this one is too. Nothing is better for a TCK who loves to talk about what being a TCK is than getting to do that with other people who want to do the same thing and with a bunch of TCKs. I’ll do it next month and again in January because sharing and talking through what being a TCK is and means is so important to me. But also, being with a bunch of TCKs is where I feel most myself. Where the things I don’t bother to explain don’t need to be explained. 

I’m already thinking about moving again. Am I crazy? Probably. It will be in at least a year but after that I don’t know what will happen. If I move to a new community, who will I be? What will define me? I hope that all of us who live with a little 헷갈려 in us will remember we aren’t alone. Everyone changes and grows. Let’s all give ourselves a little bit of room to be confused and be ourselves. Let’s listen to stories and wait before we put people in boxes. 

Who are you?

Mountains In My Blood

I was born in Lima, Perú, a city framed by ocean and mountains. Not just any mountains, though. The mighty Andes Mountains. I wonder if that is all that it took, to be brought into this world looking out over water and up at rock. If it wasn't enough, the years I spent in Quito, a valley surrounded by volcanoes and mountains, did it. The mountains seeped into my blood.

There is something about when the wind blows and the sky clears, and a mountain stands before me. It reminds me that I am anchored to the earth, that there are things that hold out and hold on. Placement. Protection.

In Pennsylvania I found myself feeling so lost and adrift as I looked over flat cornfields. I could see, and see, and see, too far with nothing to stop my mind and eyes.

When I was flying into Los Angeles my heart heaved such a deep sigh as I looked out the window to mountains and water. This place can hold me, it can be my home.

Malang, Indonesia, on a hilltop practicing riding a scooter on bumpy roads with no guardrails, the sky was clear and there stood a mountain. Yes. I can be in this place, my heart sang out.

My husband and I are buying a house. It terrifies me. I have never owned a house. I have never lived in a house we owned. It seems so permanent and if I think too long, I run out of changes to make, and run into a long stability that I have never experienced or known. I try to think what it would be like to just stay. Stay. To be the person watching others leave. I will do that next month. To know the same people and the same places. To have the same friends as the year before and the year before. What will we talk about? Will everyone get sick of me? Will I be able to do this? I have never done it before.

Austin doesn't have mountains. It has a lake of water and city, food and people. But no mountains and when I think about living here without my mountains I get nervous. But it is appropriate. Buying a house, "settling down" feels like a place without mountains. It keeps going with few and small interruptions but no stopping points. Small changes but with the on and on.

Once in Austria, we took a train down into a town shrouded by fog. We walked, talked, ate and shopped for a few hours, and then suddenly a breeze swept in and we looked up and there was a massive mountain standing, looming over the little town. It had been there the whole time, only hidden by fog, but now with the sun shining down it was impossible to miss.

I got a tattoo. It's behind my left ear. It is small, just a wave and some mountains. Simple. Whispering to the outside what courses strong inside of me. Ocean and mountains. Always a part of my story even if you can't see them. Just like every TCK, carrying their stories on the inside, the things that have shaped them and run through their blood that you cannot see until the wind blows a certain way and the sky clears, their hair blows back, and then there they are. The mountains.

What things make up who you are?

Places we carry

The air was heavy with unfallen rain, and my jersey was dirty and drenched in sweat. The family in the car parked across from mine said their goodbyes in Spanish. I was tired and satisfied from running hard and playing hard. As I drove home I suddenly realized I had to turn off the music and drive in silence. It hadn't happened in a while but it came over me so quickly. I missed Ecuador.

I had flashbacks to soccer during rainy season. To walking home in cleats and shin guards to eat my weight in a late dinner. To tin roofs and high walls. To a sun that shines closer and a world that moves slower. To rich, warm coffee and people with dark hair and dark eyes. 

And I had this distinct awareness that I carry this inside of me. When I walked by the display for the upcoming Latino Heritage Celebration at the school I coach at, I looked for my flags. My flags. When people speak Spanish there is a place inside of me that feels warm and comforted. When the other coaches are yelling "goal" I realize that I am yelling "gól". When I say my name to myself in my head it is in Spanish. 

I don't usually miss Ecuador because the memories and people that make that place to me are gone or have changed. But that place is a part of me. Those mountains, now etched into my skin, have been etched into my heart for a lifetime. It can be uncomfortable to carry around though. 

Yesterday, when it hit me, I drove home in silence, trying to learn how to sit in that moment and allow that part of me to actually be a part of me. I let myself miss those places and moments. I don't know if I did it well. Did I stay too long? Did I let go too quickly? I'm not sure. I'm still learning how to balance this world and the ones I have left. 

I hope I can go back to Ecuador one day and see my mountains, smell the rain, breathe the thin air. 

What places do you carry in you?

Starting Over

Scrolling through job postings all I could think about was how I didn't want to start over again. It was the same thought I had as we walked toward the ice cream social our new apartment complex was having. I don't want to start over. 

Starting over means introducing myself. Starting over means small talk. It means not being known and trying to be known. But worst of all it means that I left a place.

It means I had to say goodbyes and don't know how to keep a hold of the people I left and also reach out to new people. Inevitably, I end up sitting someplace between, not having the people I left and not having new people. It's uncomfortable but living between is something I am used to, between cultures, between worlds, between here and there, the home I left and the home I am learning to make. Again. 

As I press submit on an application, I feel like I have also started a complex machine with levers and pulleys and shoots for a little metal ball to slide down that ultimately ends in the pressing of a reset button. It's one step toward starting over.

So I raise my head up and sit tall and look ahead to what I know, from the many times I have done this before, lies ahead of me. New and beautiful friendships, stories of people I have never met before, the culture of a new place, delicious foods and experiences. The road to those things may be awkward and I know I will have to sit on the side of it along the way and mourn the things I have left, but it will be okay. 

When I was young I thought starting over meant I got to choose who I would be, and in some ways I do get to leave behind the things I don't need if I want to, but now I think maybe it means I just get another chance to be who I am. 

What does starting over mean to you?

Share Your Story

The room was full of people chatting and laughing, checking their phones and searching for people they knew. And I sat there quietly listening. Here was a room full of people who were dedicated to people like me.

It's a strange thing to sit and listen to people talk about you without realizing they are talking about you. But that is what I did all this last week. I went to an entire week dedicated to educating kids at international schools, meaning educating international kids which often means TCKs (with the good ol' CCK, Cross Culture Kid, mixed in). So on the one hand, I was listening to ways that I could do my job better, talking and interacting and teaching TCKs, but on the other hand, I was listening to people talk about me. I was listening to people talk about how to best deal with that strong-willed child (me). I was listening to people talk about the issues that come up with international kids (me). I was listening to stories of adjustments and problems in schools (just like mine). It was strange.

High School Maia. Not much has changed.

At one point I was sitting at a table with several other people who work in the international education world and we were asked to answer the question of whether our job was a career or a calling. Was this our job or our heart? We ran out of time so I didn't get to answer and, honestly, I was a little bit relieved. As I sat and waited for my turn I began to realize that this isn't just my career, this isn't just my calling, this is my life. My life is international school. My life is international kid. I have and am living those things they were talking about and theorizing about.

And as I sat in that room full of people I knew that there were several other people with whom, the thing that they are doing isn't their career or their calling, it is their life. A TCK stood up to talk about how international schooling prepared him for the world and he thanked all those people who were dedicated to shaping people like him and my eyes teared up. I glanced over to another TCK I know and his eyes were teared up too. Because while the people sitting next to me were there and dedicated to TCKs, there were some of us in that room that were the TCKs.

I've always intended this blog, this space, to be the start of a conversation. The hope being that a TCK will read here words that speak to a part of them that may have been silenced or may have been forgotten or may have just felt too different, and suddenly awaken a very important part of who they are and validate that in them. The other hope being that the nonTCK will read this and begin to ask themselves if the TCKs around them see the world the same way and maybe venture out to ask the TCK about their life, about their worldview, about who they really are.

I once talked to someone that told me that I was the first TCK they had ever met and I told them that I didn't think it was true. There are TCKs everywhere. You might not realize that's what they are (we are pretty good at blending in when we want to). There are some people who might not want to admit that that is what they are (a lot of TCKs work hard to be "normal"). But whether you know it, or they admit it, or not, it is a part of their story. It has shaped them and how they think.

And honestly, I think that was the best part of the conference I was at. Over and over I got to hear TCKs tell how international education shaped their story, which means I got to hear the TCK's story told over and over. I got to tell my story over and over, maybe not in completion but definitely in meaningful ways. And there is something so important and special about TCKs sharing their stories with other TCKs and having those nods of understanding and smiles of shared experience. It is a rare thing to have someone know that part of you.

So let this be the start of a conversation. Share your story. Share your heart. Ask someone else for their story. Listen to their heart. You don't know how much it might mean to them.

What is your story?

Growing Up Expat

Hello all. It's been a busy summer and I have had about a million ideas for things to write but haven't sat down to write any. However, I did write something for a friend's blog over at Growing Up Expat.

Go take a peek at my post and then stick around for the others. She is awesome and there is so much more to come. Seriously, go look:

http://www.growingupexpat.com/558-2/

And I promise there is more to come here.

Tradition!

I can still hear the music of an eerie yet beautiful climb of the violin leading into a strong and defiant, "TRADITION!"

After my high school did the musical Fiddler on the Roof, we boarding students sang the songs ad nauseam while we walked around the dorm, each song spurring on another. I have no doubt it was due to their contagious melodies but the more I live amongst TCKs and their families the more I am convinced that those songs may be meant for crowds like us.

List I made this year of Family Christmas Traditions

In my family, Christmas Traditions have grown a bit into a fun-loving, warm and cuddly monster. We were gone at school for most of the year so we didn't have time or opportunity to have traditions for any other holidays or moments which led to the time we did have as a family at Christmas being cherished and often christened as momentous by a plethora of actions. The worried face I have in this particular photo is due to being far from family, far from the familiar, but suddenly finding myself very close to the holiday with so much to accomplish without any knowledge of how.

The list isn't all about the little goofy things we enjoyed so much that they have become tradition. It is compiled of German traditions from my Dad's family,  special things from my Mom's Finnish family, pieces from my brothers and extended family, even little hints of left over dorm traditions. Some traditions were born from when we were children, others are rooted in the more modern times. And a surprising amount were founded in where we lived, or how we lived in different countries, which we have brought with us to each and every following country and Christmas season.

No matter where they are from, each tradition is special to me and this last Christmas, away from family, hit me hard. The traditions mean a lot to me.

Another TCK (grown up now and raising TCKs of her own) told me about a fantastic tradition they have involving pizzas and picnics and basically it's made of all things lovely and delicious. It was a tradition squeezed from a hard time but it has become hard to find a way to squeeze this tradition into the everyday life they know now. They do, but it's hard and looks different sometimes.

I think traditions are really important to TCKs. There is so much change in our lives, so many things we have to adjust to, so we hold on to the little things we can, in the midst of it all. Traditions are really important. They let us depend on something. They let us feel we have some sort of control or some sort of steadiness in our lives. I always tell parents of TCKs and in doing so, remind myself that it is really important to have traditions in your family that you keep no matter where you go. Everything else might change but your kids will settle into those traditions and even in a new place they will feel like they are home. 

But how great is that tree, right?

So, this last Christmas I found myself drowning in a busy schedule and with no time for traditions. I don't even think I sang the song once! (What a terrible Grandma Tzeitel I've become.) I was emotionally wasting away. After a pointed and tearful talk with a friend of mine, I realized it was time to make room for some traditions. I dragged my husband to the store to try to buy things you aren't supposed to have in Indonesia, like molasses (which turned out not to be molasses at all) and held back tears when the Ace Hardware store didn't have Christmas lights but remedied the situation by indulging in a few cookie cutters. I attempted the 4 hour long process of making Finnish Biscuit alone for the first time and cut out and frosted about 30 German Love Cookies made with whatever it was I bought that wasn't molasses mixed with a random amount of (vaguely) brown sugar. I bought candles for an Advent wreath I didn't have and set up a host of bamboo angels with no manger scene to sing over. Our house was decorated with left over church decorations after the Christmas Eve service and we taped a paper star to the top of our hand made wooden tree.

Because, quite frankly, TCKs are raised to adjust, but also, somewhere in the constant making room for others' cultures, we need to learn the importance of making room for our own. I had to let myself mourn what I didn't have this year and then dried my tears and made the most of what I did. And when I think about it, our greatest family traditions were born out of adjusting to changes and places around us. I'm starting to think that maybe all the best ones are. 

So make room for your traditions: let that goofy song, the puzzles or foods, the sayings and ideas that follow you, beat on steadily to the rhythm of h-o-m-e.

TRADITION!

What are your family's favorite traditions? Which ones were born out of change and which ones lasted through change?

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?

TCK Relationships Part 1-ish

When it comes to relationships and TCKs I have about a million things to say. Things about interactions, about culture, about digging deep quickly, about letting go too soon, about the wealth, about the shallowness. I want to say them all at once, but I know I can't.

So let's consider this Part One. Is that okay? Can we talk about this for a while? I feel like it is the most important and complicated part of being a TCK. But I want to dig into it. It is really where my passion lies. Let's talk about depth.

I'll begin with the pub in the Great White North - Canada. The dim lights, the loud, boisterous crowd, the familiar faces relocated to an unfamiliar place. Across from me is my old dorm brother who is peeling his paper coaster, wadding up the pieces, and tossing them toward my unguarded water. The act is familiar and in some senses sacred. It is an ancient tradition unearthed here in this new time and place. Beside me is my old dorm sister, someone who knows me almost as well as I know myself. She periodically leans over and touches my arm as she speaks and the touch reaches my soul. We have no space bubbles between us. I know I have lived too long in a place where to touch someone might be unwelcome because where I would have just passed it off as mundane, here I am cherishing the familiar. But neither of these moments tells a story so plainly as what will happen next. Next, a person who I only know by association and name will sit beside me and I will ask a deep question in jest and, not to my surprise, I will receive a serious and genuine answer. It might be the only time I ever talk to this person, but I am a TCK. He is also a TCK. And while we nibble on food and laugh there will also be a genuine exchange of person and experience. Why?

Maybe it is because we feel a need to make this moment worth something. It doesn't matter that I am a female and he is a male. It doesn't matter that both of us are married. That he lived in Africa and I in South America. This is about TCKs making the most of such a short time out of habit and necessity. His wife will point it out to me proudly and I will beam back at her. This is just what we do. Growing up in a place where people are suddenly removed will form this in a TCK. And though I asked the question in a joking form, I still hoped for a genuine answer, something that would make this time worth the time it took. I will not be disappointed. I will see a slice of my own self being formed from his words and I will nod seriously. And then when it is done it will be done. That will be it. A night of familiarity with TCKs and their spouses where a bond is formed across a long table and a short night. It is burned into my soul and I cherish the singularity of such a genuine, isolated moment.

Meanwhile, tonight, I sat in a group of incredible people (only one other is a TCK) who have somehow forged a space where this genuineness is being grown. It has taken time, and uncomfortable silences. So many uncomfortable silences. It has taken small talk. I cringe. I hate small talk. But it was necessary and I am slowly bringing myself to that realization. It has taken safe spaces and random events where we all just do something together, along side each other, something non-threatening. But tonight I find myself asking deep questions, not jokingly, and soaking up every moment of it. I feel I can answer with the things I have wanted to answer with for a while, but unsure of how it would be taken. We are working our ways into each others lives and I love it. But it has taken time, time that I don't always feel like we have enough of.

I won't talk about walls, yet. There is a serious place for talking about the depth that a TCK is willing to get to and where that depth comes to a sudden and very hard halt. We can talk about that next, I guess.

Here I want to acknowledge the TCK who will answer honestly if given the space, if asked the question. I want to encourage the person who is awkwardly wading through small talk wondering whether it will be worth it in the end. It will. Give it time. I want to sympathize with all the TCKs who stepped out of their TCK environment and into muddy water, accidentally bearing their soul and making an attachment they didn't mean to. You know what I mean. That moment when someone thinks you like them more than you do because you told them something meaningful, when really, you tell everyone something meaningful. It is okay. You will learn to bide your time. To shut your mouth and listen and watch. You will dive into relationships and fail. You will dive into relationships and flourish. You will hear someone call you their closest friend when you least expect it and then realize that you are right where you should be.

And then, when you least expect to, one day you will tear down one of your deep, deep walls and you will see some new side of genuine that you didn't know.

And man, all that small talk sure will be worth it.

Where have you been surprised by a genuine response? When have you had to wade through small talk? Was it worth it in the end?