Due to travelling, laptop not working, internet issues and just general busyness since being back, blogging has been rather neglected but now that we're on holiday I'm going to try to catch up. I had some things ready to post which I'll put on now.
Ruth Van Reken:
There is one common factor in every TCK’s experience. It is the repetitive cycle of separation and loss. This includes not only separation from parents but separation from other relatives and friends as well. If it wasn’t my turn to go, it was someone else’s. A whole world is lost when a station or country is changed. Obviously, non-TCK’s and those who grow up cross-culturally in countless other ways also face separations, in a TCK’s world these cycles are constant, beginning early and becoming a way of life. The recognition and handling of the grief these losses produce are critical factors in the child’s development.
TCKs and the adult TCKs they become have coped with their cycles of separation and loss in many different ways. Some have faced their grief, wept at the good-byes, and stayed in close touch with family and friends. Their lives are positive, healthy, and happy. Others, like me, denied our grief but wound up with feelings of depression or quiet anxiety. To others, we appear to be coping, productive people, yet inside is that tender core. We presume we are the only ones who feel it. Some have felt hopeless enough to commit suicide. Still others reject the God they feel has been responsible for these losses. They may lash back at their parents and a whole system by living a defiant lifestyle.
To begin with, those who follow Christ must acknowledge that even separations done for Jesus’ sake have repercussions. We have often pretended this isn’t so. We want our faith to make us immune to them. Truth comes before healing and the truth is that we need to deal well with these types of separations as all others.
Most importantly, when your children do tell you that about their sadness for upcoming moves and separations from places and people, don’t immediately try to ‘cheer them up.’ Comfort before encouraging. Acknowledge their feelings. Help your child to accept his feelings without shame. “I know that leaving is hard, and it’s okay to cry about it. Life has these hard moments. Sometimes we have to do what seems right even when it’s not easy for us either.” Rather than giving pat answers and assurances, show that you care how the child feels. Leave the door open for communication.
*****
A few years ago an adult TCK read something on multiple personalities, now known as ‘Dissociative Identity Disorder’ (DID). She called to tell me I needed to read this book. She believed all TCKs were ‘multiples’ because they had to switch roles so profoundly each time they changed cultural worlds. While her diagnosis was severe and made it sound as if the TCK experience was a pathology rather than a normal way of life for so many, I could understand what she meant.
One huge challenge for me and so many other TCKs was figuring out how, in fact, my sense of ‘Africa Ruth’ related to the ‘USA Ruth’ because my roles and how I operated in them seemed so different. Indeed, as you have read, my response at re-entry to the United States had been to put away my past in Nigeria so I could be accepted as a US teen because I didn’t see any way to integrate the two worlds or my roles in them. But if all of who God is works together in unity, then all of who I am and all my roles are somehow connected.
*****
A few years ago an adult TCK read something on multiple personalities, now known as ‘Dissociative Identity Disorder’ (DID). She called to tell me I needed to read this book. She believed all TCKs were ‘multiples’ because they had to switch roles so profoundly each time they changed cultural worlds. While her diagnosis was severe and made it sound as if the TCK experience was a pathology rather than a normal way of life for so many, I could understand what she meant.
One huge challenge for me and so many other TCKs was figuring out how, in fact, my sense of ‘Africa Ruth’ related to the ‘USA Ruth’ because my roles and how I operated in them seemed so different. Indeed, as you have read, my response at re-entry to the United States had been to put away my past in Nigeria so I could be accepted as a US teen because I didn’t see any way to integrate the two worlds or my roles in them. But if all of who God is works together in unity, then all of who I am and all my roles are somehow connected.
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