I haven’t been feeling well the last few days so today’s Recommended Reading is a little later that usual, and a little lighter on curated descriptions. I’ve compensated with longer quotes from the excellent pieces I’m linking to. Which serves the double purpose of not requiring me to cut them down! There is some wonderful writing in this selection, from the perspectives of TCKs and CCKs, and helpful practical advice on supporting them well.

Raising Empathetic Third Culture Kids
Connecting the Pieces
Excellent short piece on why it’s important to develop empathy and practical ways parents can help children. Great advice and well worth your time.

Good Grief: Helping TCKs Navigate Their Unresolved Grief
Taking Route
In this piece a TCK beautifully articulates the grief of leaving your international home, and the confusion of not really knowing what it is you’re going through. Lots of great tips for supporting TCKs through these kinds of experiences.
“And then, suddenly, before I was ready, graduation happened and I left. Not only that, but my parents also moved away that same summer. In the Fall, I found myself in a whole new, completely foreign world: college in America…What I didn’t have words for at the time, and I didn’t even fully realize until several years later, was that what I was dealing with during that lonely season of transition was grief. And what I had been doing was not actually dealing with it, maybe because I just didn’t realize that that’s what was going on, or because I didn’t know how to or that I was allowed to. I knew I had moved, obviously, and knew I had left my home and wouldn’t even be going back at Christmas, but I didn’t really comprehend the full spectrum of all that I had lost.”

A Cracked Mug – Memories & Loss
Communicating Across Boundaries
Another beautiful and emotive piece from Marilyn, this time reflecting on how a seemingly insignificant material object can hold so many memories and emotions. We really need to create more space for this, to acknowledge that possessions can be very meaningful, especially when making decisions about what to pack! That goes double when making those decisions on behalf of someone else, like a child. “Little” things can carry a lot of comfort, and security.
“To see that mug crack made me feel all of life’s cracks and broken pieces. I felt all over again the hurt of goodbyes and the long process of new hellos. I felt the intensity of starting anew and the difficulty of keeping up friendships faraway. I felt the sting of misunderstanding and cultural adjustment. I felt the sadness of living between worlds, the diaspora blues of being – “too foreign for home, too foreign for here, never enough for both”*. I felt the emptiness of lost friendships and the scars of ruined relationships. All of this came over me as I surveyed the spilt coffee and the cracked mug. I felt so, so sad.”

TCK Stories – TCKs & The Imposter Syndrome by Emi Higashiyama
Cross Culture Therapy
Great story from a TCK unpacking the complexities of her intergenerationally cross-cultural background, and how this impacts the way she relates to others.
“I went to a K-12 American school (disguised as an international school), and for one reason or another, it seemed like my only choices for university would have been in the US. I didn’t speak Chinese growing up. I’ve spent the majority of every year of my life in Taiwan, but to me it’s not home. I grew up speaking Japanese but never learned to read it. I’ve never lived in Japan, but I’m “from” there, so when I go there I feel like I’m a broken citizen. I’m so freaking fluent in English but nobody believes it’s NOT my second language because I don’t have matching passports or residences. In every culture, I feel at least a little bit like an impostor because I can’t confidently pass the inherent checklist of what it means to be completely of any one culture. I always feel like I have to justify myself or qualify myself in nebulous terms that monocultural people have never even thought about (because they never had to).”

‘Where are you from?’: How I turned my heritage into a game of self-protection
SOAS Blog
Excellent piece unpacking some of the difficulties inherent in revealing a mixed heritage background. Answering questions can be problematic – because the questions themselves are often problematic. So instead of asking questions, perhaps we ought be listening instead – and reading this post is a good place to start.
“Call it what you want; biracial, mixed-ethnicity, mixed-race, ‘ethnic’, the idea that people who are a blend of races, ethnicities or nationalities are somehow more fascinating, or more ‘trendy’ is pretty problematic. Here’s a little break down of what is going through my mind when the entire conversation descends into a discussion about where I come from: First of all, I am neither an imported fruit nor a mystical creature in a zoo, so comments about how rare or ‘exotic’ I am, and how new and exciting that is for everyone, implicitly suggests that I’m too different to belong. I understand that it is an unusual mixture to you, but to me it’s all I have ever known, it is natural and familiar and yet still something I have to condense into soundbites because here I am, explaining it to a stranger for the fifth time this week.”

Reconciling Heritage and Hope Between Chicago and Mexico
New York Times
A lovely article on taking time to recognise and integrate the different pieces of a cross cultural childhood – even when others don’t understand the need to do so.
““We worked our lives to be here and you decide to go back to what we left behind?” he recalled his father asking him. “It was hard for me to explain what I needed was peace. I needed to reflect on what happened in my life.”… His time in Mexico helped him understand his parents’ sacrifices and their worries over his plans to be a photographer. But it also reminded him of what life is like growing up between two places and cultures where one never fully fits in.”

Here’s how to pronounce my name, and why it matters to me
CBC
I’ve shared a few posts in the last year about the identity of name – when we change our names to fit in and why it matters when someone says our name correctly. I’m planning to come back to this topic another time – and it’s also coming up in interviews for my latest project. So here’s a helpful recent piece on the subject:
“Sometimes, people sidestep the problem by avoiding saying my name altogether. I’ve been referred to as “her” in front of a group of coworkers. I use my Western middle name at coffee shops to expedite the ordering process. And more than once, people have asked if they can just call me by a made-up name of their choosing. A name, however, can carry great cultural and personal significance. Names should be said and treated with respect.”