My Journey as a TCK (well … parts of it)
I was born in Indonesia, the youngest of five children. My parents were from the U.S. My dad was born in the city of New York and my mom was a TCK herself, born in northwest China of missionary parents from the U.S. Of course, that was before the term “third culture kid” was coined.[1]
Early years. From birth until age 6, I lived with my parents on the island of Bali, where they were stationed for their work. They had followed in the missionary footsteps of my mom’s parents. My memories of Bali from my early childhood are sparse. I have an overall sense that I was safe and provided for, even though two deadly series of events happened in Bali during those years. In 1963 and early 1964 multiple eruptions of Mt. Agung killed thousands and left tens of thousands homeless.[2] The bridge over the river at the eastern edge of the city where we lived was washed out by mudflows of rainwater and volcanic debris. The second series of events was the brutal aftermath of the failed Communist coup attempt of 1965 in Indonesia. An estimated 80,000 Balinese were killed.[3] My brother has written a captivating novel of historical fiction, Bones of the Dark Moon, which explores the horrific events of that year.[4]
At age 6, I started to attend mission boarding schools, first in Bandung, West Java and then for junior high and high school in Penang, Malaysia. During my 4th grade and 10th grade years, I attended U.S. public schools in Wheaton, Illinois, when our family was on furlough. That 10th grade year in the U.S., I joined the school soccer team and the track and field team. I loved to play various sports, but being an athlete was also one way for me to perform, to achieve. That’s how I knew to fit in back in the U.S., at least on the outside. Inside I didn’t feel like I fit in.
College years: mixed emotions. After graduation from high school, I attended Westmont College, a small liberal arts college in Santa Barbara, California. I had flown back to the U.S. that summer before college by myself. On orientation day for new students, the organizers included a get-to-know-you ice breaker of various questions. One question revealed that I had traveled the farthest of all incoming first-year students to attend college. Again, as in 10th grade when I was in Wheaton, I joined the school soccer team. Later that first year I also joined the college choir. My pattern of pouring my energies into performing and achieving continued.
My memories of those early adult years in college leave me with mixed emotions. I recognize now that I enjoyed tremendous privilege even just to be able to attend college. What’s more, the Westmont campus was in beautiful Montecito, near to the beach in Santa Barbara. Yet, I have an ache in my heart too as I remember those years. I achieved outward success, playing Varsity soccer all four years and graduating with multiple academic and student honors. But whenever I would leave campus for a break and return, it didn’t feel like I was returning to a place of belonging and joy. I stumbled through a couple romantic relationships, breaking hearts in the process. I vowed that if I married, I would only marry another TCK, because I felt for sure that only another TCK could truly understand me. Happily, that vow crumbled. I began dating a vivacious, lively and caring non-TCK woman. We were married just a few months after college graduation.
Early years of marriage: the importance of supportive friendships. Cindy and I were married young. She was 21 and I was 22 years of age. Not only did we not know each other well, we hardly knew ourselves! More than a decade later, after I had started to grow in self-awareness, learning to share my pain and receive healing, a family friend commented to Cindy, “Jamey is different. He’s not hollow anymore.”
Even though we really didn’t know ourselves well during those early years, we had loving and supportive family. We also joined a group of young married couples at a local church in Southern California. The supportive friendships of those early years helped to safeguard our young, untested love. To this day, as a life coach, I know the importance of asking those I coach, “Who are the family and friends who can help you? How will you seek their support and help?” TCKs and global nomads need to make sure they invest their hearts in relationships that will help them stay grounded and keep growing over a lifetime.[5] It’s too easy to hold back part of ourselves, since we know we will be moving on again to the next global destination.
A key time of transformation. In our late twenties Cindy and I moved to Indonesia. We worked with a faith-based nonprofit organization. We were eager, committed learners of language and culture. I already spoke Indonesian, so I increased my fluency and started as well to learn the regional language of West Java, Sundanese. But even as our outward commitments to language and culture flourished, I experienced conflict with a colleague. In addition, I was unaware of the hurt and pain that I was causing my wife because of my own insecurities.
About a decade into our married life, I began to experience an extended season of inner revelation and heart change. One of these times of heart transformation happened in 1999. Our family (we had three children by that time) was attending a conference on the island of Bali. My parents lived only about eight miles away from the conference center. My father had been diagnosed just a few months before with an inoperable, cancerous brain tumor. His condition was declining, and my heart was heavy. Meanwhile, on the last morning of the conference, I asked a friend if we could spend some time together that day. He responded, “Sure, we can meet, but I need to talk first with my coach to go over my ‘hard targets.’” (“Hard targets” was the phrase we used to talk about our measurable goals). Well, even though my friend was not rejecting me, I took his words as rejection. I turned around angrily and muttered, “What’s with all this ‘hard target’ stuff! When do we ever get together just to relate?!” And I walked away from him. Thankfully, he did not take offense, but sought me ought later that day to spend some time with me. To this day, he remains a good friend who listens to me, encourages me, advocates for my wellbeing, and has invited me to collaborate with him.
A few days later, back at my parents’ house, I was talking with one of my brothers. We were sharing some of our sadness at growing up in boarding schools, separated as TCKs from our parents for much of the year. As I shared, I started to sob. I was suddenly aware of why I had reacted the way I did to my friend a few days earlier. I recognized a pattern of responding to any real or perceived rejection from older brother and father figures in my life. This was wounding my own heart and keeping me from deepened friendships with others, including my own wife. As a life coach, I know now to encourage those I coach to seek the professional help they need toward emotional and mental health and wellness. From that place of wellness, they are then much better poised to take steps toward personal growth and professional success, without being stuck “back there” in crises, traumas and broken relationships.
A Perfect Storm. Eighteen years into my life as an expat in Indonesia, I entered a season of outer pressures and inner turmoil. I write about this time in my life in a previous blog: https://www.couragelifecoaching.com/blog/where-is-home-for-tcks. I explain there how the loss of colleagues moving on from our city, our own children going through life transitions, a medical emergency, and requests for financial help from neighbors who were trying to get their children into school all combined to create a “perfect storm” that made landfall on my heart. The storm stirred up core questions from my upbringing as a TCK: “Where is home? Where do I belong? Where is my community?” I felt that I could not go on with “life as usual,” ignoring these questions and simply continuing to perform and achieve in my outward life. Our family took a month away from our city on the beautiful island of Bali, where my mother and an older brother and his family still lived. During that month I read books, journaled, took long bike rides, and swam at the ocean. In front of the house where we stayed was a trellis with beautiful flowers hanging down over the courtyard. Mesmerized, I watched as bees buzzed around the flowers, lightly touching down to seek nectar, then moving on to the next flower bud and the next one after that.
That month away led to a profound spiritual encounter. I began to have a deeper, experienced sense of my worth and acceptance, anchored not in achievements but in my identity as one who was simply loved of God. Period. To this day, as I coach – with clients who share my religious faith convictions as well as those who do not – I know the importance of affirming their intrinsic worth as human beings who are simply to be loved. Paradoxically, those who are most secure and assured of their own intrinsic worth and “belovedness” often achieve success, sometimes noteworthy and outstanding but usually just quiet, steady, and lasting. Conversely, those who achieve success through drive and ambition, lacking that inner assuredness, often brown out or burn out. They are unable to sustain success over a lifetime. Or their success is hollow, often leaving a string of relationship casualties in its wake.
Move to the United States. My wife and I moved back to the United States in 2016. The last 5 years have not been what I expected. I thought that our transition to a measure of stability would happen within two years or so. That is not what happened. I pieced together several part-time “gig” jobs: being resident managers (with my wife) of an apartment complex, helping lead cohorts of seminary students as a “vocation formation” small group leader, even being a barista at a small coffee shop in the courtyard of our city’s central library. For 11 months I did have a full-time job, helping international students at a local high school and coordinating their living with homestay families. The job turned out not to be a good fit for me, and I resigned. And oh, yes, a pandemic happened.
Meanwhile, I have steadily grown my work as a life coach, especially for TCKs and expat professionals. I have been certified by the International Coaching Federation. I’ve also collaborated with others in crafting a creative venture that is fully online and cohort-based. We seek to nurture personal growth, friendships and lasting life contributions for expat professionals. Recently, I led a live online group discussion with friends calling in from Southeast Asia, North Africa, Ireland, the Netherlands, Pennsylvania and Arizona.
In this season of my life, my heart is tugging at me to stay simple and uncomplicated. Paradoxically, outward circumstances require that I stay active, engaged in multiple platforms of communication and adapting to fast-changing environments. To help me stay grounded and renewed regularly in belief, hope and love, I am cultivating disciplines to nurture a slowed-down and attentive inner life. I also need constant reminders of who I am and what strengths I bring to help others, simply because anxiety can cause me to “lose the plot!” One way I do this is through journaling (not daily, but regularly) and rereading my journal entries. Seeking the support of friends and family members who know me and care for me is another way I do this.
As I close this biographical sketch, let me ask you, “What parts of my story resonate with you? And what is one simple step of continued growth that you can take? How will you do that? Who will help you?” Your story continues to unfold!
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[1] Ruth Hill Useem, who was a sociologist from Michigan State University, first used this term based on research she and her husband John Useem (also a sociologist at Michigan State University) conducted in India in 1958. They studied the interaction between US Americans working in India (representing US or US-based institutions) and their Indian counterparts. While engaged in this research, Ruth Useem took note of the wives and children of these US expatriates. “Many of the wives were involved in establishing an American School for their children, thus Ruth took a special interest in their children. She dubbed these children, who were growing up in the third cultures established by their parents and Indian counterparts, Third Culture Kids.” (Ann Baker Cottrell and Richard Downie, “TCK – The History of a Concept,” in FIGT Research Network Newsletter 5.1. 2012 http://tckresearcher.net/TCK%20Hist%20%2712%20FIGT%20res.%20Newsltr%20copy.pdf. Downloaded April 19, 2022. See also Appendix A in David C. Pollock, Ruth E. Van Reken, and Michael Pollock, Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds. Boston, MA: Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 3rd ed, 2017, pp 397-400.
[2] According to https://www.britannica.com/place/Mount-Agung, 1600 died and 86,000 were left homeless. Another source puts the death total at 1900 https://geology.com/volcanoes/agung/. (Both resources accessed April 19, 2022)
[3] “Between December 1965 and early 1966, an estimated 80,000 Balinese were killed, roughly five percent of the island's population at the time, and proportionally more than anywhere else in Indonesia”(https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Indonesian_mass_killings_of_1965%E2%80%931966#Bali, accessed April 19, 2022)
[4] Richard E. Lewis, Bones of the Dark Moon: A Contemporary Novel Exploring Bali’s 1965 Massacres. Denpasar, Bali: Saritaksu Editions, 2012.
[5] I write about the importance of nurturing long-term friendships in “Friends of the Road and Friends for a Lifetime,” in Among Worlds, https://issuu.com/amongworlds/docs/aw_october_2021/s/13584388, Volume 21, No. 3, October 2021.