Where is home for TCKs?
It was a summer of growing discontent. Finally, a “perfect storm” of stresses and life circumstances made landfall on my heart. Tossed and blown, my heart was longing for a place to feel tethered.
My wife and I were no rookies. We had lived and worked in Indonesia for over 18 years. But that didn’t keep me from acutely feeling an accumulation of life changes, losses and transitions:
our oldest daughter had completed high school and left for further studies in the US two years earlier
we were anticipating our second child leaving the following year for college
an unusual number of colleagues and friends had moved or were planning to move from our city to other locations and jobs
the nearby international school where our children had friends was moving to a new location way outside our city
the international church we attended was going through the throes of leadership change and a possible move
In addition to these circumstances, our youngest daughter, 12 years old at the time, encountered a medical emergency. We hurried off to Singapore within 24 hours for a battery of tests that were traumatic for her.
That summer was also a time of year when many of our Indonesian neighbors were facing great pressures to get their children launched into the new school year. Some came to us, asking for financial assistance. We would take time to listen and determine in what ways we could assist.
One day three different people came to us for help. After the third person had left, I retreated to our bedroom. I held my head in my hands and said to my wife: "I'm not ready for the rest of my life." As I grappled with these losses, transitions, and concerns for our neighbors, deep-heart questions from my upbringing as a Third Culture Kid resurfaced. I was asking questions like "Who is my community? Where do I belong? Where is home?"
Where is home for TCKs?
TCKs grow up in-between or among worlds, and many of their friends do too. They find it hard to answer the question, “Where are you from?” The song “No Roots” by Alice Merton, herself a TCK who moved 12 times over a period of 24 years,[1] could be a theme song for her fellow TCKs:
Ask me where I come from, I'll say a different land
But I've got memories and travel like gypsies in the night …
I’ve got no roots, but my home was never on the ground
Home as people or loved ones
Interestingly, Merton has chosen to answer the question, “Where are you from?” by saying that her home is with the “people who I love.”[2] TCKs who struggle to associate their identity with any one physical location, will often say the same thing. They express that they find belonging in the relationships with friends and family whom they love.
From my current life vantage point, I can indeed point to family and loved ones as an important place of belonging and home for me. But what happens when these family and loved ones are dispersed, living in 4 different countries (as in my case)? Is it enough to identify home as mainly being the “people I love,” if we are still separated geographically?
Home as a place
Others respond to the question, “Where is home”? by looking for a place to which they can belong. The door to that place may open through a secure job or marriage. Or it may open by accepting that – while being a global nomad may have been fun and adventurous – the longing for stability and a place to settle is now simply a higher priority. Ironically, the longing for a place to settle can lead some adult TCKs to develop a “migratory instinct”[3] that keeps them restless and always on the move! “Those looking for a place may move frequently, hoping they will eventually find somewhere that feels like home, a place they belong. Some have a sense they will settle down one day, or when the time is right.”[4]
In my own life, as I grow older, I long increasingly for the stability of a geographical place to call home, where family and good friends can gather. In Indonesian the emotive word that refers to one’s birthplace is tanah air, literally, “land water.” In English the word “homeland” evokes longings for an actual physical space or place to call home.
Home within
Yet another answer to the question, “Where is home?” is to find home within. “I tried so hard to find my place in this world. I yearned so long and hard for home and then one day, I realized there had to be a different way. That’s when I stopped looking for home and became home. I stopped looking for Peace to appear from outside myself and I am owning – slowly and humbly – my part in making Peace.”[5]
In a similar vein, international trainer and expat coach Wiebke Homborg (who is an adult TCK herself) has developed a 6-week group coaching program for multiculturals, expats and global nomads called “Finding Home Within.” She leads others to find home in a strengthened and more confident inner identity, a “home” that can be taken with them wherever they go geographically.[6]
Finding inner contentment and joy is one important outcome of the life coaching that I provide. And it is what I seek for my own heart. “Home is where the heart is,” we say. Certainly, that inner home is an important part of belonging over a lifetime in a way that is nourishing and life-giving.
If you are grappling with where to find home or are helping an adult TCK or expat professional who is wrestling to answer this question, I offer two suggestions.
Cultivate a regular practice of gratitude. It’s easy to see life through the lenses of incompleteness, of what we don’t yet have or what has not yet happened. Gratitude helps us to uncover in ever-widening layers of awareness all that we ALREADY HAVE received. From that place, we can then be more fully present and alive wherever and with whomever we may be. A daily practice of remembering our day and saying “thank you” for simple joys and encounters throughout the day will help to cultivate a posture of gratitude.
Understand that different seasons of life will bring out different responses to the question, “Where is home?” When I was a young adult, I’m not sure I was ready or even able to find home within. I was driven to perform and to achieve. I needed time, a few failures, learning some practices of self-awareness, and patient friends to help me know how to find home within.
Furthermore, the younger adult years are often a time of exploration and adventure, of “trying on” various commitments and roles. During those years, we make friends of the road, often saying goodbye when the next study or work opportunity leads us to part ways. But as I’ve grown older, I’ve longed for deeper friendships with those who can be friends for a lifetime. I also want to spend more time with family, appreciative of our strengthened bonds from a shared history.
Similarly, as I’ve grown older, I’ve yearned increasingly for a place to call home (as I mentioned above) … not to isolate, but to provide hospitality and a place to gather. A place for shared laughter and fun and stories. Home.
*Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
[1] Merton was born to a German mother and an Irish father. She was an international business kid whose father’s job as a mining consultant meant that their family moved often. Read more of her story and the background to her song in the Culturs Mag article found here: Alice Merton's 'No Roots" is Uplifting, Uniting and Nomadic (accessed March 4, 2022).
[2] Ibid.
[3] 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, p. 189
[4] Tanya Crossman, Misunderstood: The Impact of Growing Up Overseas in the 21st Century, United Kingdom: Summertime Publishing, 2016, p. 265.
[5] Idelette McVicker, “Glimpses of a Third Way,” in Finding Home: Third Culture Kids in the World. Rachel Pieh Jones, ed. www.djiboutijones.com, 2018, p. 180-181.
[6] https://chameleon-coaching.com/en/finding-home-within/, accessed March 4, 2022.