TCK Academy Class

How do you belong?… and if you never had a sense of belonging to
a place, can you ever get it?

According to Donna Musil… the answer is no.

You can’t get this sense of belonging in the “traditional sense”,
but you can get it by being around people who had similar experiences…

An interesting question from an attendee was: “if you can live
anywhere, then where on earth should you live?”

Donna suggested to live in multicultural and cosmopolitan cities.
Vancouver, San Francisco, London… are where TCKs usually
feel most comfortable. What is ‘normal’ for TCKs is being in a
place where everyone’s different. It took her 40 years to figure
that out, because she was trying hard to fit in with the dominant
culture… instead of reaching out to other brats and TCKs.

Judging from my own experience, I believe that’s true because I
always feel so much more comfortable in muticultural groups.

After all, I used to live in London, England, and decided to settle
in Vancouver, Canada…

I love the fact that most people aren’t from here… they’re
“outsiders”, just like me.

No more itchy feet for me.

Donna’s advice to TCKs who want to belong is: “find the brats in
your neighborhood”.

I love the idea of simply standing up and asking people at your
school, work place, or activity groups if they grew up overseas…
because you just never know who has lived similar experiences.

There were a lot of interesting stories, questions, and books
shared. Overall, I was very pleased.

What some attendees have said:

“These past few weeks of the TCK Academy have been more help in
tying so many threads of my life together than years of on & off
therapy with a number of therapists. I expect that I am not the
only one with these reactions to the classes.”

“Really good, Brice …I thought it was gonna be mostly about brats
and her film, but many nice things were covered!”

“What a breath of fresh air to have at last some practical
observations and advice on TCK issues. .”

If you missed it, I’ll send you the recording very soon… but if
you’d like to hear a sample right now, or want to email others
and encourage them to join one of our teleclasses, you can send
them this Youtube video.

Watch the video here:

What is next?

We have a teleclass on grief coming up soon… and more experts
lined up for an interview series!

I received a few emails from people who didn’t receive the early
notification… so I’ll make a registration page soon so you can
get the announcements for all those teleclasses.

Many thanks for participating and supporting this project!

Talk soon,

Brice Royer
TCK Academy

Related links:

TCK Academy’s 3rd Teleconference with Donna Musil, Brats: Our Journey Home

Donna Musil’s Brats Our Journey Home website

Brats: Our Journey Home DVD

Edit: … Wow, for some reason Amazon has nothing listed under $199?! Just thought I’d let you know that you can order Brats: Our Journey Home DVD on Donna’s site too!

If you would like to leave us a feedback for Donna Musil’s: Brats Our Journey Home Teleconference please answer the following questions in the comments:

1. How, specifically, did this teleconference help you?

2. What would you say to a friend who was thinking of sigining up for a teleconference – but wasn’t sure?

3. If you feel it is warranted, feel free to leave us an audio testimonial by clicking in the comment box below:

Leave an audio testimonial

Please call the toll-free recording line and leave your message at: 1-800-609-9006. Extension number 3775. International callers may use 678-255-2174.

Thank you.

I know many of you want to discuss, network and exchange
email, so I made this blog post for you to discuss this teleclass and
connect with other attendees. What did you think of the teleclass?

Hi everyone,

This is Brice from TCKID. Wow, I’m still getting my head wrapped around what we just
accomplished on Monday.

Ruth is right, we made history. For a first-time teleclass, it went
better than I expected. I could barely get any sleep last night
because I’ve been swamped with emails from attendees.

I’ll share a few:

- “I have tears just falling from my eyes. I hear tears from others
too. It is powerful to hear so many others validate my experiences.”

- “It makes me feel like a bird happily flapping around in a bird
bath. I felt so ‘at home’ with you all yesterday.”

- “I would strongly recommend the teleclass to anyone thinking of
joining in. It was a both a joy and a relief to listen to others
who really CAN understand, and most of all, are actually willing to
work through the challenges we have all faced as TCK’s.”

I’m so happy to hear this!

But the truth is I didn’t really do much — all thanks should go to Ruth and
Paulette, Joyce from FIGT, Margie from Among Worlds, Girl scouts of
the USA, Team Expansion, and all of our partners and friends for
your support. This wouldn’t be possible without you.

So what happened on this teleclass?

Ruth gave a great overview, there were insightful stories, a lot of healing,
new connections, and intimate conversation.

One caller shared this quote: “We are each other’s
country”. It’s a perfect metaphor for this teleclass because
everyone felt and shared a deep and meaningful connection.

Here’s what I did NOT like about this Teleclass…

Background noise! When we opened the lines for the Q&A session, we
could hear the sound of an AIRPLANE JET ENGINE from someone who
called from an airport!! It made me laugh, because it’s so classic
for a TCK conference.

So what is next?

There is another teleclass! Now that we covered the overview, and
the “WHY” behind those concepts, it’s time to focus on the “HOW”.

My goal is to get EVERYONE the results they want right away and
leave them with some practical tools they can use immediately. I
want people to take action.

Personally, that’s where I always had difficulty. I understand the
concepts, but how do I get started? What do I do exactly?

Well, I’m happy to tell you that we have lined up expert guests in
the next teleclasses to give you practical information you can use
immediately!

You can now pre-register to the next teleclass. I’m amazed
that 45 people already signed-up yesterday, and I get a
feeling the next series will be even bigger.

Again, this will be completely free!

We have an early “sneak-peek” registration page for you and others on this
list until we get an official page ready for the public:

Here’s where you can get more details:

http://tckacademy.com/class/002/

Warm regards,
Brice
TCK Academy

P.S: For those of you who attended and sent questions online, Ruth
has a little surprise for you … so stay on the lookout.

PART 5 – “How to relate to Non-TCKs”.

By Ruth Van Reken.
Being a TCK becomes a way to frame or describe my life experiences
but that it does not define my total identity.

If I believe this, then I also want to get to know the other
person. I don’t need to wait for this person to ask me all about
myself but I can begin to explore who he or she is as well. As I
hear common themes emerge in our life stories, I can connect the
dots at these emotional places. Let me give an example of what I
mean.

When Paulette Bethel, my friend and also participant in TCKID.com and
TCK Academmy, share our stories with each other, the details are
profoundly different. She grew up in the States as an African
American/Creole in New Orleans, Louisiana. I grew up as a white
American child in Kano, Nigeria. Her minority status included
having to sit at times in designated areas because of her race. My
position as a minority was one of economic and educational
privilege compared to the vast majority of those around me.

Could our stories be more different?

Ironically, however, when Paulette first read Third Culture Kids,
she contacted me because her sense of emotional identity with the
TCK story ran so deep. We have spent much time considering these
commonalities and now understand that while my cultural world
changed with an airplane ride every few years, hers changed every
night as she was bussed to school in another part of her town each
day and then had to “reenter” her home culture every evening. I
could go on and on with all I have learned from Paulette alone that
has helped me put my own experience in wider (and hopefully more
usable) context. The point is, we share a common experience of
moving between cultural worlds and both of us know the feelings
associated with trying to understand and assess the operative rules
in each place we are in, even if one happened internationally and
the other nationally.

There is a lot of hope. I have seen countless adult TCKs deal
successfully with these very types of questions through counseling,
through journaling, through friendships, through various other
means and find the healing they need so they can move on to use
with delight the gifts of our background as well. There is so much
to celebrate about your life as well. So after you make a list of
your losses, make a list of your gains as well and dare to live in
the paradox of both realities.

Simply put, this is my bottom line advice. Look for the choices you
can make to move towards where you want to be…choices to stay and
work things out rather than running away, choices to seek to learn
about others rather than waiting for them to ask you about
yourself, choices to dare to find joy in the journey – even if it’s
something as simple as taking a ride on a roller coaster and
reflecting on how this might be a metaphor for your life…wonderful
ups, some scary downs, but overall a great ride!

May you seek and find the answers your heart longs for and may you
realize the reality of what Garth Brooks sings in his song, “The
Dance” …”I could have missed the pain, but I’d a’ had to miss..the
Dance.” Dance with joy, my friend.
Thank you for following this mini-course and I hope you found it
helpful.

You can find heaps of other tips on how to improve your
relationships and fully develop the gifts you received from this
TCK experience by attending the Teleclass and asking your questions!

Looking forward to helping you.

Kind Regards,

Ruth Van Reken