Welcome to another week of Recommended Reading! I’m still catching up on great content from March – but these posts are too good to miss sharing! Lots of great advice for those parenting and supporting TCKs, especially teeangers and young adults. There’s also a selection of different topics related to expat life more generally, and a really powerful long read to savour. Enjoy!

Also, if you missed my recent blog posts on TCK Tattoos and my own tattoo story I encourage you to take a look! I go into some of the reasons tattoos can be particularly meaningful to TCKs and others who live internationally. I’ve been getting great feedback on them this week!

The Hidden Shame of the TCK
TCK Training
This is a powerful and very important piece on the role that shame plays in the adaptibility demonstrated by many TCKs. This is SUCH a key topic. There is so much fear and anxiety at play in many TCKs’ inner lives. Understanding the role that shame plays is game changing.
“The underlying reason for mastering the trait of adaptability was shame. For many teenage and young adult TCKs, this shame dictates their life. They put an incredible amount of energy and emotion into looking like they belong out of fear that they will be found out. Out of fear that they will misstep and someone will see it and mentally shame them for their cultural faux pax. Out of fear that people will confirm their feelings and they truly will never fit in. Shame is not often talked about in the TCK world, though I believe that it is a significant issue for this growing population. If you are a parent of a TCK, or are working with TCKs, consider bringing “shame” into your vocabulary. Spend a significant amount of time helping your TCK to wrestle through the things that are core to who they are. How do those core traits play out in their life? What do they do because it is a part of who they are, and what do they do out of fear of not blending in with everyone else?”

The no 1 thing your teen wants you to do after moving back home
Keeping It Real Me
Great post sharing the experiences of teenage TCKs going through repatriation – how they feel in the midst of it, how hard it is for parents to watch their kids struggle, and how parents can help their teen TCKs. The bottom line is that teenage TCKs want their parents to LISTEN – to provide space for the TCK to talk about what they’re going through, and not try to fix it. This is the same thing I’ve heard repeatedly from teenage TCKs around the world, not just in regard to repatriation, but to all kinds of transitions. They know it can’t be “fixed” – and they don’t want you to pretend it can be. They just want you to be there, to listen, and comfort, in the midst of the hard feelings.
“They also felt that they couldn’t really talk about how they felt because they didn’t want to come over as a spoilt expat brat who didn’t appreciate all the opportunities they’ve had. So they kept it all in. Pushed those feelings away. A coping mechanism all to familiar to the average TCK teen. . . We feel this guilt as a parent because we made the decision to live this expat life. And even though we can justify our decision with very valid points – our kids didn’t ask for it. Yet they have to adjust, start over and leave again. . . You know what the number 1 thing is that a teen needs from you as a parent? It’s for you to not do anything. Just listen. When they’re sad. Or mad. Or struggling. They want to be able to talk about it. Complain about it. Cry about it. They don’t want you to fix it.”

Third culture kids: How parents and teachers can support young global nomads
Study International
An article full of solid information, perspectives, and advice. Lots of top-notch experts in the field quoted! Not a deep dive, but definitely a helpful read. A great recommendation for anyone you know who is new to raising TCKs!
“So how can one lend support to TCKs? Engage with them. Instead of asking them questions about where he or she is from or what’s troubling them, the report suggests asking the child about where they have lived, what they’ve left behind to open the doors of communication and to listen carefully to what they have to say. This gives them the time, space and permission to remember and mourn.”

Blackbird: Sisters in Flight
The Black Expat
Great story about the comfort, encouragement, and sanity that comes from the solidarity shared between black women living abroad. Now, obviously I am not a black woman, but it’s important for me to listen to the stories of expats who have different experiences to me. It’s important to truly understand that we all experience this world a little differently.
“I can’t count the number of times I’ve been saved by a Black woman. The Black woman who knowingly smiles at me when we’re the only two Black people in the whole place, even if we don’t speak the same language. The group of Black women who can meet at an event and talk for hours about where to buy Black hair care products in a predominately white country. The Black woman who works in the mayor’s office who responds to my cold email inquiry, introducing me to four other Black women leaders who can help me reach my professional goals. I’m so grateful for the countless Black women who are walking paths that can be similar or distant from mine – paths that connect us at just the right time, offering me those life-saving moments of familiarity, comfort and sanity.”

Shock and Testing: Two More Twists on the Road to Grief Recovery?
Good Therapy
An interesting overview of research around grief modelling, and how it does (and doesn’t) work for many people.
“In his book Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief, David Kessler argues that the quest for meaning might be the final stage of grief before acceptance. While the original model was presented as sequential, most grief experts now argue that a person can go through the stages in any order. They may also repeat or revisit stages, especially during times of intense emotional distress. For example, a person grieving the loss of their father might become angry over his loss when he is not present at their wedding, even if they already experienced the anger stage years before.”

The Challenges and Opportunities in Managing a Health Condition Abroad Part II
Families In Global Transition
This is part two in a series on managing health conditions while living internationally. (I noted the first post in an earlier Recommended Reading post.) I was particularly interested in this post given my own international health issues over the past six months. This paragraph in particular really spoke to me:
“Looking back, those patients who describe a real sense of personal power and satisfaction around how they coped with their healthcare challenges are those who also claimed some authority over their own bodies and medical history. They’ve honed in on their intercultural communication skills, persisted if dismissed, got creative, and kept searching for a physician who shared their values.”

Empathy Is Admitting You Don’t Understand
Sojourners
On a totally different note, I appreciated this post on empathy. Many expats and TCKs run into a lack of empathy in others who do not understand (or recognise) the difficulties they struggle with as a result of international life. Often these are dismissed with a comment about the great things that we get to experience abroad. I can imagine the incredible difference it would make to the thousands of TCKs I have known if they experienced true empathy from the people in their lives.
“Sympathy is what we offer to another when we acknowledge that a situation or experience is unfortunate, and leave it at that. Sympathy lets us claim that we “feel bad,” but absolves us from any further responsibility to learn or change. Empathy, however, calls us to consider another person’s story and reflect on their experience. Empathy calls us to be compassionate and to truly consider how another person feels. It calls us to want to learn, grow, and evolve toward love.”

Uncertain Ground
Longreads
I’m finishing with a post that is really fascinating and worth reading, but I’ve left it til last because it is a long read (obviously!). It’s something to put time aside for, to meander through and enjoy, not skim through quickly. In it a TCK (an intersectional TCK, at that) talks about grief and geography. Such a deeply important and emotionally powerful piece of writing.
“We were a curious cultural hybrid: a family of Taiwanese origin living as American expatriates in a British territory where we resembled the local Chinese population, but did not speak the same language and had little in common with them. . . Even though my mom and I had not lived in the same country for more than two decades and my memories of her were from another time and place, I was unhinged by grief. There was no grave to visit here, no church that would say prayers for her soul, no community of the also-bereaved. Everyone who was close to my mom lived in Taiwan. I came “home” to California where no one experienced her absence profoundly, where no one had to deal with canceling her prescriptions, washing her laundry, throwing away her unopened mail or staring at her empty chair. My grief was overwhelming because there was no context or container for it. Its free-floating shapelessness terrified me because that meant it could strike anytime, anywhere, without warning. One year later I went back to Tienpin to place my dad’s ashes next to my mom’s, and complete the engraving on the plaque that marked their final resting place. The day of my mom’s service, it had been bright and sunny. The day we brought my dad’s ashes to Tienpin, there was a violent thunderstorm. I was happy they were reunited, but my own grief multiplied. In Chinese folklore, wandering ghosts cause the most trouble. Now I understand it’s because they want what we want – to be grounded, to be claimed. Grief works the same way. The more restless it is, the more damage it does. It too needs a home.”