Dear Ruth, I’m still searching for my “home”…
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Dear Ruth,
I am a 29 year old TCK and am still searching for my ‘home’, mostly
by traveling as far away from everyone I know whenever I get the
chance. I feel very isolated in most places simply because I don’t
end up in areas where there are TCKs to relate to. Although my
parents are becoming more aware of TCK issues, they still do not
understand the grief that was involved in our lifestyle for myself
or my brother and this has lead to many issues that we still cannot
resolve in our lives. For my brother it is breaking off
communication in a form of rejection that is not
intentional but subconscious to pay back my parents for a time he
felt they abandoned him. For me it is moving as often as possible
to the next place that will finally make me feel whole, but it
never does and I am
finding it harder and harder to make meaningful connections in my
life.
These are my questions:
1. What is the best way for TCKs to go about trying to make deeper
connections with the people around them when they find themselves
in situations where they are the only TCK?
2. How can a TCK come to terms with grief that has not been
resolved after many years when they don’t have a support system
around to help them deal with that grief in a safe way?
Signed: Wondering
——
Dear Wondering:
Thanks for the questions. They reflect so many of our stories.
To begin, let me say that it’s great you realize the behavior patterns you see in yourself and your brother are reflections of deeper realities in your life.
This is a huge and positive headstart – to not blame the circumstances you’re in per se for your reactions.
Once we recognize, as you have, that although our circumstances may change but our responses do not, we can begin to look for the choices we can make within our circumstances to bring about the changes we long for.
That’s why I love your questions because what I really believe you are asking is, “When I am not feeling my needs for relationship are met and I don’t know what to do with my grief, what other choices besides running away do I have to try to meet these needs?”
What a perfect place to begin.
Although it may seem to some that you are asking about two separate things – a lack of connection and unresolved grief – my sense is you already know they are connected.
For many TCKs, the pain of losing so many relationships in their lives results in a certain guarding in future relationships. Consciously we long for the very intimacy we unconsciously run away from for fear of one more loss.
It’s a rather amazing paradox, isn’t it?
In Part 2, I will make a couple of points on the issue of “How do I find relationships that are meaningful?”, such as the emotional “distance” we put between the people we love, before we move on to talk about grief and how the two are related.
You can download the full series for free, here.
Looking forward to helping you.
Kind Regards,
Ruth Van Reken
P.S: Please reply to this post and let me know what you think.
Table Of Contents for the 5-Part mini-course:
Part 1 – “Dear Ruth, I’m still searching for my “home”…”
Part 2 – “How do I Find Relationships That Are Meaningful?”
Part 3 – “Why Unresolved Grief Affect Your Relationships… And
What To Do About It”
Part 4 – “The #1 Most Common Myth About TCK And Relationships”
Part 5 – “How to Relate to Non-TCKs”
12 Comments
Dear Ruth,
As a 35 year old ATCK, I can completely relate to the situation my fellow TCK referred below. I have actually been in therapy for several years now, because around my late 20′s I realised that there was something fundamentally wrong with my lifestyle. I would literally switch back and forth between Italy, U.S, and Ireland on a yearly basis (those are the three countries I grew up in).
I finally settled in the U.S in 2001, but after seven years, I have stilll to establish any meaningful relationships. Every other day I consider moving somewhere else, thinking that somehow I will find my “home”. I’m a also a little frustrated with my therapist, because she would support my decision to move, as long as I felt it was the right thing to do. In a way I respect her for this, since she is showing faith and encouraging my ability to direct and take responsability for my own life, but at the same time I think she is missing out on the “big picture”, because I have tried this “home hunt” for many years, and it never worked out the way I intended.
After expressing and releasing my despair in therapy, I always end up coming to the conclusion that moving is not the solution, but my therapist always let’s me end up on that conclusion myself. I’m not sure if she does this on purpose.
Anyway, I apologise for bringing this up, but I mention it more to point out my continuing restlessness. I feel like Diogenes with his lantern, except that I am not seeking a noble soul as he was, rather waters in which I feel I can swim as I wish. Yet as Diogenes, I feel my quest is not completed, and I retreat back into my “pithari” (the large pot in which he lived), not really “living” anywhere.
Often I am deeply discouraged.
Thank you for offering a place to be heard.
Regards,
Sira
Dear Ruth
Thank you for your emails so far. They have been very interesting and insightful! I did not realise I would get such personal feedback! I agree with everything you have pointed out so far so it is nice to have these things reconfirmed or brought more to light. I look forward to your next installment!
Thank you
Angela Gunn
Dear Ruth, I liked your answer to “Wondering”. I felt something inside me
resonate with your answer. Somehow I felt heard.
I am tired of trying to connect with people and then feeling disconnected.
So I decide to isolate. Then I feel worse.
I am upset that my brother who is one year older than I am and was my main
companion all through our growing up years has consistently distanced
himself emotionally and now has further isolated himself from the family by
becoming Jehovah’s Witness. The rest of us are not good enough for him.
My baby sister moved from NC to Idaho. I feel she abandoned the rest of us.
Although she is buying my mom a plane ticket to visit for a week. I have two
sons age 28 and 25 and a son age 17. I am constantly trying to figure out
how to be connected, not dependent, not demanding, not over-involved, not
detached. In other words, I just don’t know how to do relationships in
balance. I feel I have no model. My mom left home as a young single woman
to be a career missionary. These were the days where people didn’t just fly
back and forth whenever they felt a need. Those missionaries were gone from
home for 3 solid years. And no email. No phone. Only slow boat letters.
What was she running away from? As a teenager I asked her why she married
my dad (a widowed missionary)and she said “Because he was lonely and I was
single.” And when we went to boarding school at age 10, she told us THE
HOUSEBOY SAID “the house was cold without us.” I guess she still had no
feelings. I used to think I had no feelings. Now I have too many. BAD
ONES.
I just started crying and didn’t even know I was sad.
Signed,
“Disconnected”
Hi. I just thought I’d add my own thoughts.
I wouldn’t say that I’m sad- at least not now. I enjoy my life and love my family! However, I do long for relationships outside of that. For friends. I can’t really relate to the nationals or trust them completely because we have different faiths. I can’t discuss important things going on in my life with them casue they wouldn’t really understand. I have some friends that are internationals and Christains and I can make friends easily. The problem for me is keeping those friends because the only contact we have is maybe seeing each other once a year and email. Email isn’t the same and it’s difficult to talk on the phone when you haven’t seen each other in so long. People, especially teenagers, can change so fast. It’s impossible to keep up much less when you don’t know anyone very well. Everyone who lives close leaves. Their parents find better jobs. Even the adults I’ve thought would always be there have moved. I don’t have a problem with relating to
people. I can make friends with anyone! I just wish I could have a constant relationship with someone (around) my age that doesn’t live countries away. I’ve lived overseas ever since I can remember. I had a good friend here and there but we’ve lost contact or we’ve kept up but how can you really keep up when you only seen each other for seven days of each year from the time you were both kindergardeners. My “best friend” I hardly know. I’ve taken what opportunities I can to get to know her better but I’ve only had so many. It’s just hard! I know that some of the void I feel in my life from lack of real friends is probably my soul longing for God. I’m trying to get to know him better but I don’t think that’s all of it. How can I deal with having no friends? We live in a big city and the few people there are live hours away- the Christian teens at least. I’ll repeat… It’s just hard! I’m not sure how much this relates to being a TCK- if at all. But
thanks for letting me write anyway!
-looking for friends
I just thought I would add my 2 cents to this conversation as my experience seems to be very different from Wondering’s experience…and yet somehow the same…as if it was just another side of the same coin.
I am a 36 year old half Italian, half American Diplobrat…so obviously a TCK. I grew up in Europe, Latin America and Israel and we pretty much moved every 2 to 3 years or so. Yeah I found it tough but I wouln’t have exchanged the way I grew up for any other life style. My family loves to travel and so do I. I have continued that pattern…since university I have lived in Mexico, Italy, France, and now Canada. It’s just who I am and I accept it and embrace it.
This isn’t to say that I haven’t had to deal with the sorrow of leaving friends…but unlike a lot of the comments I read…well, I throw myself headlong into friendships and my strategy in the romantic department has been to find a travelling companion, and I have…we’ve been together for almost 13 years now.
Which brings me to the difficulties…you see, he isn’t a TCK. He’s a traveller and a professional “expat”…but well…he decided he wanted to go home eventually and after many years of visits I decided that I wanted to try and make his home my home…to “settle down”…and the chosen place is Montreal.
Well, possibly my strategy for coping with constant moves was to have a never-changing home base and no culture shock at home…well welcome to culture shock at home when your husband is part of the host culture! I think possibly my problem is that I have made myself too dependant on this one relationship never changing…and we all know that everybody changes throughout their life right?
Anyway…as far as friendships go…well I have maintained some really strong friendships from high school and university…even though we only see each other ver seldom. But making friends here in Montreal is a different story…it’s been difficult.
anyway…this is all neither here nor there…just wanted to add a different perspective to the mix.
Thanks for listening.
Sylvia
I can relate to Wondering here. I’ve been distancing myself from my whole family- partly as a pay back I guess, and partly because I feel that my own family does not understand me. I know I have these problems, but I guess that even when you want to make a change, saying it is harder than actually doing it.
I have 3 siblings, but we are all lonely soldiers. I am fighting with tears reading your comments and emails. It’s true that I feel most comfortable with other TCKs. I envy and respect people who have stayed in one place all their life, but what is MY place in this world? After 7 months in a furnished apartment, I am now looking for my own apartment, but I have no idea if that is the right decision. I want to stay mobile, just in case! I can’t stand the thought of becoming “chained” to one place. But constantly hastening from one place to the next is so tiring. As Germans, we grew up in Central Africa, went to an American school, then to a French one. My sister lives in the USA, I just got back from Greece. One of my brothers is broken and has to take medication for the rest of his life. I wonder what parents are thinking sometimes.
These comments have pretty much summed up how I feel. I have lived in the US for 8 years, since graduating form high school. My parents moved to Nigeria when I was 2 yrs old, and to me that is still home. I do not fit in here, and I don’t understand why not.
My younger sister has married and they have started their own family. My younger brother had some rough spots, but seems to be ironing things out quite well now, adapting to life in the US–he did have high school here, and never had to experience boarding school (for which he is grateful), so he says he had an easier time adjusting to life in the US.
I have been here the longest of all three of us, but I am still not adjusting. I can’t seem to stay in school long enough to get a degree, or keep a job for very long. Right now I am completing the first year at a job, the first one in my life I have had this long. If my boss wasn’t an African, I don’t think this would have happened.
I am just so frustrated with feeling ‘left out’ of life, and don’t know what direction to try and head. I have to agree with Silvia–What are parents thinking sometimes???
wow, that could’ve been my post. creepy similar. interesting pattern that brothers seem to isolate and sisters seem to wander! or maybe firstborns isolate, while 2nd/3rd/babies wander… while i am sure this is not a general rule, it’d be interesting to see how that pans out across the TCK community.
i’ve decided to go back to grad school to study ethnomusicology because it’s a field that i’m passionate about, but also because the community fosters staying connected while traveling and is rich in people who “get it.” we’ll see if i find my “home” there!
Looking back there are a number of things I did in order to cope with having moved countries. One thing I did do was withdraw and not talk to my parents as they arrived a few months later.
I struggled to make relationships and tended to relate to children who were either being bullied or whose family came from another country. I do remember collecting things in a box a bit like memories, even though they were not African items, I think I must have felt that by collecting them I would have a link to my past and not loose the past.
What did drive me was a desire to go and work abroad which drove me in what I studied and I did more than 9 years worth of studies after finishing school. Eventually I did manage to visit a number of countries but lack of money prevented me from continually moving country.
[...] Dear Ruth, I’m still searching for my “home” [...]
I, like Sylvia, feel grateful and fortunate for having a nomadic upbringing. I didn’t suffer the grief that others have felt upon leaving friends behind, because I have 6 siblings, who came with me in every move, and our tribe gets along well. The only wall I keep hitting is my vision of the future. I have been in an intimate relationship for 5.5 years with a man who was born and raised in Ottawa, Canada, and he is content with the idea of staying there for the rest of his life. When I think of that prospect, I feel panicky and a sense of entrapment. I have big dreams to live overseas again and see parts of the world I haven’t been to yet, such as West Africa and Central America, but at the same time I don’t want to walk away from my relationship. It is difficult to fathom a future with someone who has had such a different upbringing and can’t conceive of following the global nomad lifestyle. Am I with the wrong man, or shall I compromise on my future dreams and settle for a more rooted lifestyle (where fear of boredom and restricted opportunities looms)? I know there are advantages to having roots and a real sense of belonging in one community, but I also think that living overseas is a gift. Is anyone else in a relationship wherein they fear their trajectory doesn’t align well with their partner’s trajectory?
Hi Sylvia,
You may find the solution to your answer on restlessness and roots by downloading the 7 Things Every TCK Needs to Know teleconference.
Page 10, talks about transitions and page 12, #8. “How do these issues surrounding loss relate to our decisions about making and keeping relationships? Or “rootlessness”?”
Download the handout here:
http://tckacademy.com/class/sponsor/?download
There’s also many discussion on relationships with non-tcks who want to settle on http://tckid.com/help.html