Welcome to another week of Recommended Reading! This week’s typically eclectic mix covers TCK research history, boarding school, medical treatment overseas, and several pieces on grief. And don’t miss the last post I’ve highlighted – on the intersection of art and cultural heritage.

Globally Mobile Children: One Tribe or Many? (part 1)
Globally Grounded
I’m starting this week with an absolutely excellent post from Jane at Globally Grounded, looking at the history of experiences and terminology surrounding TCKs and CCKs. A perfect complement to my current series on intersectionality in CCK identities.
“Ruth recognized, regardless of nationality, sponsor or where they lived, TCKs and their families shared a culture of living outside their home, between nations or in between spaces and never being of the host country. She realized this as a culture, based on the shared experience and not geography, nation, ethnic group, race or nationality. “This was really hard for other sociologists to swallow because for a sociologist, a culture is based in a geography or skin color or something like that,” said Ann. Having identified and named this new tribe, Ruth then recruited a lot of people to do PhD research of TCKs. This was the first real body of research on this culture. It helped identify some of the characteristics that we recognize today.”

Third Culture Kids & Knowing a Place “well enough” to belong
Life Story Therapies
Something that’s already coming up in early interviews for my newest project is how to define concepts like home and belonging, and how important they actually are. As I’ve talked with adult TCKs around the world, we have stumbled on a number of words to help illustrate home – and familiarity is one of them. In this post, Rachel expounds on this idea beautifully.
“…perhaps a place becomes significant also by our sheer familiarity with it. While it’s both tempting and natural to align belonging entirely to emotional attachment, might the experience of belonging not simply be about feelings? Belonging to or having a sense of ownership of a place could also be about “knowing it well enough”. For Tanya French, this meant well enough to set a book in it. What does this line of thought do? For me, it opens up the meaning of belonging to place. Those places previously dismissed as less significant to my story suddenly gain in stature. I realise that what they may lack in terms of intensity of affection or cultural memory, they make up for in familiarity and geographical constancy. I know them. Not just the people and memories and experiences they hold. I know the streets, the tricks of light on the buildings, the weather cycles, the transport system! I know them well enough.”

Things I Would Not Say To A Boarding School Mom
Every Single Page
I really appreciate this post. In it a missionary mum discusses in detail what it means for their family that her children attend boarding school – how they came to the decision and how it looks for them practically. Parenting is no easy job! No matter where you are, the decisions you make affect your child’s future – and you have no guarantee that it will all work out. I especially appreciate her honesty in wrestling with how her children will potentially feel in the future. Mostly, I appreciate her openness and honesty with the fact that there are no easy answers.
“Being a boarding school mom is not something I talk a lot about online. Honestly, in part because I haven’t quite wrapped my brain around it yet. In part because in the year 2019, who tells other moms that this is the chosen educational route for your kids? What kind of family chooses this as a schooling option? Especially a family who loves homeschooling, unschooling, world schooling and adventuring together? I get asked a lot of questions about boarding school. I get asked how I’m doing, how are the girls doing, how did we make this decision, what impact has it had on our family. I also get comments and thoughts and opinions, said and unsaid, about boarding school, having our girls away from home and our journey raising third culture kids. For us, this decision did not come easy. It wasn’t something we planned for or happily chose. In fact, it was something I said I would NEVER do.”

Lawnmower Parents
April J. Remfrey (LinkedIn)
And now for a very different parenting post! This discussion of “Lawnmower Parents” and the temptation for a parent to control a child’s activity out of fear of is really interesting. While not necessarily specific to expats, I definitely see a lot of expat parents struggling with fears and anxieties over how international life will affect their children. Here’s the basic concept:
“A helicopter parent is an overprotective parent who discourages independence, hence hovering like a helicopter. A lawnmower parent is one that does whatever they can to clear all challenges from their child’s path, hence the lawnmower which mows down everything. Another way of helping your child rather than mowing down the difficulties for them is to offer two ways of helping: Idea Generator or Intervention Assistance. The question I always ask is this: “Would you like ideas on how to solve the issue or would you like my help intervening with the issue?” Most of the time, students will prefer that suggestions of solutions are given rather than the adult intervening.”

3 Reasons Why We Need to Talk About Grief
Sugi Says
I love this piece. Again, not expat/TCK specific, but so appropriate. Grief is a big part of transience – with every change, there is loss. Every friend who moves away, every home we leave, every person we can’t be closer to. In this short piece, the author builds a case for expressing grief, even though some cultures discourage this.
“I was built around the mentality that I have to be stronger, that I have to push harder. As I have grown older and experienced more losses, I have come to the conclusion that we will experience loss many times in our lives. Whether it’s the end of a friendship, a relationship, or the passing of someone you love, loss just follows us around like an itch we just can’t scratch. We all experience grief and loss in our own unique way”

Woman’s viral thread perfectly breaks down how grieving feels over time
Some eCards
Also on the topic of grief, this viral thread from twitter is doing the rounds. I love it – such an incredible illustration of why grief continues to pop up and again and again over time, long after we think we “should” be over it. After months, even years, of feeling fine – the grief hits, without warning. The illustration goes that grief is a ball, and pain is a button. When the grief is new, the ball is huge, and cannot move around the room of your life without hitting the pain button frequently. But through time and work, the grief lessens. The pain button is still there, and can still be hit by the ball, but as the grief shrinks the likelihood of it running into the pain button lowers.

Ghosts Know No Borders
Medium
And since we’re on the topic of grief, here’s a post I was recently reminded of. Originally posted on I Am A Triangle two years ago, it popped up on Medium two months ago and I thought it was worth mentioning here. In it Jodi Harris describes the way the grief of losing someone follows you around the world. The people you love and care about are part of your everyday life, even when they live – and die – on a different continent.
“Whether intentional or accidental, we escape a lot in this lifestyle. Sometimes it’s not all that bad to be far away. It gets comfortable to not have to deal, to be able to bail or to say — “Oh, it’s just so far. Not this year.” But we also miss so much we never thought we’d have to miss — death, funerals, hospice, chemo. But whether we stay or go, they find us. Ghosts know no borders. By intention or accident, they find us. But that works for us. Expats know how to deal with wandering. We know what it means to carry. To pack it all inside, to take it out again, to look one more time. To remember whenever and wherever you need to, in the corners and crevices of past lives and right now, so that the memory can follow you everywhere — because you’re everywhere. And now the people you’ve lost are everywhere too.”

The Challenges and Opportunities in Managing a Health Condition Abroad Part I
FIGT
A really helpful post about how different medical treatment can be for expatriates – and how those differences translate into extra stress. This is something I wrote a little about in a post on my personal blog, describing some of my experience going to a local hospital for treatment.
“…many expats and travelers, have little, if any, knowledge or information about the local healthcare system until they are faced with a crisis. The process, coverage, and payment protocols differ greatly from country-to-country, but we often make assumptions that our healthcare experiences will be similar to those in our native country (or our last country of residence). Regardless of the outcome, assumption and lack of knowledge add undue stress to an already stressful situation…Or rather, miscommunication, or misunderstandings with healthcare providers due to a language barrier or cultural differences in communication styles and expectations is a real roadblock. Even routine check-ups and screenings can be put off or missed altogether.”

Through Food Art, Asian-Americans Stop ‘Pushing Heritage To The Back Burner’
NPR
Finally, I’m finishing with something a little different. A post about the collision of food, culture, and art. This post shares the art and stories of three differnt Asian American artists who are connecting cultural identity through art that centres food. Great example of the power of art to express feelings and connect people. And some really lovely stories, too!
“Growing up in Central Jersey, Shih thought “you had to be white to be cool, and that being Taiwanese was inherently uncool,” she says. “I pushed my heritage to the back burner. Being [Asian] wasn’t something I was proud of.” … So in July 2018, Shih started sculpting [dumplings] out of porcelain…”I don’t know why, but it was meditative for me,” says Shih. “I fold them just how you make real dumplings. The only difference is that there isn’t anything inside.” … Wilson finds Shih’s ceramic dumplings “supremely comforting.” To her, they represent the Asian-American community — the pride in their cultures and the struggle to belong.”