Among Worlds - Trouble I've Seen - March 2021

MARCH 2021

AMONG WORLDS

Vol. 21 | No. 1

Trouble I’ve Seen: Crises & Disasters

Editor’s Letter Trouble I’ve Seen: Crises & Disasters

Contents

After the year we’ve all just had, I have to admit I second-guessed our decision to make this issue’s theme about crises and disasters. Who wants to read about other people’s trauma right now? Aren’t our plates already full of crisis?

Snapshots on the Edge of Chaos Michael V. Pollock

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Bullet Holes Lois Bushong

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Uprooted with No RAFT Marilyn R. Gardner

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Ukulele Therapy Rebecca Hopkins

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Spotlight Interview: Sebastian Modak

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Unstacking Your Grief Tower Lauren Wells

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On Top of the World Marit Strand

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Chaos in Context: Examining Childhood Crises Rachel E. Hicks

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Chocolate Trauma Jessi Vance

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The Heeling Process Kayla Rupp

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March 2021 • Vol. 21 • No. 1 Editor: Rachel Hicks Copy Editor: Pat Adams Graphic Designer: Kelly Pickering Digital Publishing: Bret Taylor

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But as I read through the submissions collected here, I realized that perhaps we need each other’s perspectives. Learning to survive and even thrive after a crisis or disaster is not necessarily something any of us ever perfect.

Some of us have never debriefed or processed childhood traumas; and as Lauren Wells reminds us in her piece, “we carry the hard with us” into adulthood.

It’s never too late to begin working through events that may still be haunting us. You’ll notice that this theme comes up several times in this issue. Several contributors share insights and practices that come from deep wisdom, experience, and expertise. It is our hope that you will feel more equipped to move forward in your own healing after reading.

“Learning to survive and even thrive after a crisis or disaster is not necessarily something any of us ever perfect.”

Other contributors in this issue offer stories of looking back on crises with a broader and deeper perspective. They help us to look outward beyond our own experiences and ask questions about who else was affected, perhaps even more than we were, due to poverty, vulnerability, or ethnic dynamics.

This perspective is valuable in linking our own stories to the bigger human story. For example, it may help us connect in solidarity to others who have experienced displacement or injustice. Our Spotlight interviewee, travel writer and multimedia journalist Sebastian Modak, describes the posture of community service his international school

community in Indonesia adopted in order to be gracious guests in that country, particularly during large-scale disasters such as the 2004 tsunami.

One thing I’ve found to be true—and that is echoed in this issue—is that it is often the small things that can help get us through to the other side of loss or grief. A ukulele or a gardening tip. Laughter over “surprises” in hoarded chocolate. As you read, consider what small things or events have kept you sane or given you hope this past year, or in another season of crisis.

As always, we would love to hear from you, our TCK tribe! Connect with us on Instagram (amongworlds) or Twitter (@interactionintl) and share your comments or questions about this issue. Please consider submitting your own stories, artwork, photography, poetry, or book/film reviews for future issues. And finally, don’t forget to order yourself or a TCK friend a subscription to Among Worlds magazine! (Submission guidelines and subscription information here.)

May this be a year of strength and hope,

Rachel

AMONG WORLDS ©2021 (ISSN# 1538-75180) IS PUBLISHED QUARTERLY BY INTERACTION INTERNATIONAL, P. O. BOX 863 WHEATON, IL 60187 USA. NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT THE PRIOR PERMISSION FROM THE PUBLISHER. WE LOVE WORKING WITH INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS AND NGOS AND WILL NEGOTIATE A RATE THAT WORKS WITHIN YOUR BUDGET. CONTACT US AT AMONGWORLDS@ INTERACTIONINTL.ORG OR CALL +1-630-653-8780. THE VIEWS EXPRESSED IN AMONG WORLDS DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEW OF AMONG WORLDS OR INTERACTION INTERNATIONAL.

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The mission of Among Worlds is to encourage adult TCKs and other global nomads by addressing real needs through relevant issues, topics, and resources.

“A TCK is an individual who, having spent a significant part of the developmental years in a culture other than the parents’ cultures, does not have full ownership of any culture. Elements from each culture are incorporated into the life experience, but the sense of belonging is in relationship to others of similar experience.”

- David C. Pollock

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Snapshots on the Edge of Chaos

By Michael V. Pollock, Executive Director of Interaction International

“B

oys, I know this is going to be hard, but President Kenyatta has died, and for the next three days, you can’t run, shout, or ride your bikes or skateboards outside. You can be in the yard if you are quiet, but I don’t want you going to the dukas* or out with your friends.

Do you understand?”

It was August 1978 in Kijabe, Kenya, and my brothers and I were standing in the living room of our house which was attached to the tenth-grade dorm. We were ten, eleven, and twelve years old and wide-eyed.

“Yes, Dad,” was the only correct answer. He went on to explain that a three-day period of mourning had been declared across Kenya and that no one really knew what would happen next. Jomo Kenyatta was the first president of Kenya and

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many doubted that the transfer of power would be without violence. My father underlined that our compliance was out of respect to our community and to the nation where we were guests; we also didn’t want to give anyone with a grievance against the expat mission community a reason to accuse. Tensions were already heightened.

I’ll never forget standing in line for hours in the equatorial sun outside of Nairobi to pay respects to Kenya’s courageous leader who had stood up to Britain for the sake of freedom and independence. It was the first time I’d seen a human body without life. *dukas: small shops

“MOVE to the OTHER SIDE of the CAR!” My heart was pounding in confusion as my Teen Mission teammates and I were yelled at by soldiers with red, angry faces and rifles.

It was the summer of 1982 in Johannesburg, South Africa. My team of thirty-six Americans jumped a train for Durban where a truck would take us on to Port Shepstone. Our destination was a camp where we would do construction and programming for a group that—we would later learn—was working to break down the walls of the racial divide within the system of apartheid.

accompanied by hawk-eyed vigilance from our leaders. We returned to camp, and work, with a sense of relief.

Considering the stress of South Africa’s sociopolitical situation, I was deeply grateful that at the end of the summer we would pass through Kenya and visit Rift Valley Academy. I was relieved and looked forward to introducing my teammates to a country I love—where “Harambe!” (pull together) was the motto and where people lived in peace with each other.

We had inadvertently made the mistake of rushing pell-mell onto a train car that was marked “Non-Whites.” (We often don’t see the things we don’t expect to see—even when we have been “prepared” to see them.) As we were herded to one side of the car, the non-white passengers were forced to the other and the soldiers created a wall with their bodies and weapons between us.

Perhaps the white soldiers thought we were doing this on purpose, as protest movements were growing and the country was tense after several bombings earlier that summer. Later, as we debriefed the experience, I felt unease at the “heroic” tone some of our leaders gave to the event; as if we had struck a blow against the “evil empire”—and as if lynching, segregation, and Jim Crow laws were not a part of our own recent past. All I knew for sure as a fourteen-year-old TCK was a sickening feeling that we had caused the other passengers distress and maybe put them in danger with our carelessness.

Throughout that summer news reached us from other parts of South Africa of shootings, bombs, and attacks of various kinds. I remember a “rest day” from physical labor at the beach preceded by numerous warnings and

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“W

elcome to Flight 543 from Johannesburg to Nairobi! We have confirmed that we will land at Jomo Kenyatta International airport where we will refuel, without deplaning, by orders of the government.”

That Sunday, August 1, 1982, a group of Kenyan Air Force officers instigated a coup attempt. The country was on lockdown. My sense of Kenya as an “island of calm” in the midst of other, more turbulent continental stories was crushed. Worse, my friends planned to meet us at the airport and I had no way of contacting them. On the runway, I stared out the window at the tarmac dotted with military vehicles, so that my seatmates wouldn’t see my tears. I would learn later that Scott Gration, an adult missionary kid (MK) who grew up in East Africa and was then an Air Force captain training Kenyan pilots, saved lives and kept innocent pilots out of trouble that day.

“ The world is full of powerful, violent, and armed people who desire more power, more subjugation of others to their will, and for their own glory.”

Our team flew on to Israel to debrief our summer experience, landing at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International airport, which seemed jam-packed with soldiers in mirror shades and carrying Uzis.

Being in Jerusalem felt like watching a little kid play with matches next to an open gas tank.

The following month forces seeking the PLO committed the Sabra and Shatila massacre. It was tense for a reason.

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and social lines. I remember Kenyan leadership dealing with a coup attempt with justice and mercy. I remember the not-unkind smiles of Israeli soldiers who teased me that my duffle bag was as big as I was. And most recently, on January 6th, I witnessed brave police officers stand in harm’s way to protect the US Congress and Constitution.

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n each of these snapshots, I was exposed to the realities of social and political upheaval, aware that there were many tensions and issues under the surface, aware that something powerful could erupt and situations might become violent.

My elders lessened the impact of these “little t” traumas through the examples they set and through debriefing, even if done imperfectly. I was fortunate in that regard.

My experience has taught me that those who love others with open hearts and humility— who serve others with gracious care, who protect others with sacrificial courage, who give honor and glory to a something bigger than themselves—are the ones everywhere who keep their families, communities, tribes, and nations from sliding toward the abyss of chaos.

My hope for us, the tribe of TCKs, is that we would strive to be those people.

When the images from Washington, DC, began to flow across our screens on January 6th of this year, these snapshot memories from my mobile childhood bubbled to the surface. When I heard people asking, “How could this happen here?” I may have wondered, briefly, why it hasn’t happened sooner. The world is full of powerful, violent, and armed people who desire more power, more subjugation of others to their will, and for their own glory. The myth of American Exceptionalism is just that—a myth.

Far from making me cynical or fearful, the experiences of the past give me hope. I remember Kenyans mourning and moving ahead. I see in my mind the South Africans who risked retribution by reaching across racial March 2021

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“ I clearly remember tracing the bullet holes with my small finger.

There were deep, small holes where bullets had exploded on the wall.”

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Bullet Holes

By Lois Bushong

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he small apartment above the church, located a couple of blocks from the center of the city of Tegucigalpa, was dark. The old, unpainted wooden shutters were tightly shut. The large front door to the church property was locked with a heavy drop bar holding it securely shut. My brothers and I were strictly instructed to play inside and not open the shutters even a crack. No one was out on our street playing soccer. We were all safely locked up in our homes.

I could tell by the sober demeanor of the adults who had joined my parents in the apartment that this was serious stuff. This was not the time for our typical sibling squabbles or pranks. Small fighter planes could be heard flying low over the city and our apartment. From time to time we heard the loud explosion of a bomb or the sharp pops of machine guns. When that happened, everyone in the room got really quiet. Sometimes the gunfire was on our street, just outside the door to the church property. Yet I don’t remember being afraid. I only recall it was a time of no nonsense. My main focus that morning was beating my younger brother in Sorry, our new board game.

The next day, when we were finally allowed to go outside, I was amazed at all the bullet holes sprayed along the outside walls of the church March March 2021 2021

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property. I clearly remember tracing the bullet holes with my small finger. There were deep, small holes where bullets had exploded on the wall. It was clearly evident to my five-year-old mind why Dad had been so insistent we keep the wooden shutters closed and not venture outside.

After college I returned to work in Honduras.

During that time we went through several periods of civil war and violence, yet again.

Thanks to the resiliency skills I learned as a TCK and feeling protected by my Honduran friends, I was not overly afraid.

This was how many Latin American countries transitioned from one government to another during that era. Today, transitions are more peaceful. Not to say there aren’t still times when the military breaks into the presidential residence and either deports the current president or assassinates him or her. A civil war is declared and key government buildings are vandalized or destroyed. I recall at least three such civil uprisings during my elementary years in Honduras.

Frequently I am asked if I was afraid. No, I really wasn’t afraid, because my parents did not seem afraid. I knew it wasn’t the time to push any parental boundaries, but I do not recall fear in the midst of an obviously traumatic time.

After years of working and studying trauma in my training as a mental health counselor, I have thought about my own traumatic experiences growing up as a third culture kid. Some areas of trauma have taken a lot of hard work to heal, while other experiences are an exciting adventure to use as fodder for a good story.

One particular incident of mob violence stands out in my memory. The local university was protesting something—I don’t recall the exact cause—that set off the rioters. They were angry at the United States’ involvement in our small country. I accidently got caught in the middle of the chaos as I was trying to make my way back to the safety of my apartment in the suburbs from the high school where I was on staff. The high school was located in the center of the city. As I hurried down the sidewalk, I suddenly realized I was between the riotous mob and my bus station. The mob was carrying weapons, burning a United States flag, and yelling as they looted stores and broke windows on their way toward the central park. As they came in my direction, I was trapped and feared for my life.

As I stopped and tried to figure out what to do, a shop owner spotted me as he was closing the metal doors to his store. He quickly waved me inside. When the mob got to our block, the owner, several customers, and I all huddled together on the floor behind the glass counters, protected by the heavily fortified metal doors to the store. Once again, I felt safe.

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When all was clear, the shop owner let us out and we each hurriedly walked to our individual homes in the suburbs of the city. It took me about an hour to walk home, as I had to continually skirt the streets where mobs were protesting. It certainly was not safe to ride the city bus home as I typically did. I was more fortunate than some of my friends who were blinded from clouds of tear gas as the military restored peace to the city streets. For them it was more of a challenge to get home, as their eyes burned and their sight blurred. They talked of fearing for their lives while they blindly stumbled home. We talked about that day for weeks, comparing our different experiences with the riotous mob. Trauma hits all of us from time to time, in all shapes and colors and in all corners of the world.

“ Sadly, there are other traumas that are often well hidden beneath the surface and missed by some professional counselors.”

the deep, soul-jarring traumas of being left in boarding school at a very young age, or the heartbreaking stories of growing up in a home where there was emotional neglect because parents were distracted by their world or profession. In other situations, children and youth were shamed and guilted for showing natural feelings such as grief due to transitions or saying goodbye forever to a best friend. They talk about the trauma, although some do not recognize it as trauma, of leaving all that was known and moving to an unknown world. These traumas, often missed by your average mental health provider, are just as impactful as civil war.

I have worked with TCKs who were silenced by family or organizational systems, unable to talk about the painful events they experienced.

This is often due to the systems’ fear of looking bad, the loss of power or job, or financial repercussions. Emotions are messy, resulting in TCKs who are highly anxious, guilt ridden, or depressed. Sadly, these TCKs become emotionally frozen at the age when the trauma took place; they are not emotionally free to mature into their true potential.

As a mental health therapist, I work with many adult third culture kids. I have listened to their many stories of horrific trauma. I have listened to experiences of trauma unique to those growing up in more remote cultures or under corrupt dictatorships. I have felt pain and anger from stories of traumas due to civil wars, sexual abuse, kidnappings, rapes, natural disasters, murder, tropical disease, and armed robbery.

Each trauma is unique and brings tears to my eyes as I am flooded with many emotions. I hurt with those who have had to experience these horrors.

Sadly, there are other traumas that are often well hidden beneath the surface and missed by some professional counselors. Those are March 2021

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How can parents help children who experience trauma move forward in a healthy manner, thus lessening its impact on them as adults? What have I learned as I reflect on my own history with traumatic events in Central America? reflect the mood of their parents.

1. Children If my parents had been highly anxious during

those times of civil war, I believe I would have been anxious, too. Some of my peers show signs of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) today, many years later, because their parents were anxious during times of civil war. The parents were unable to manage their own emotions, resulting in their children feeling unsafe. Good resiliency skills were not modeled to them. Some have developed very unhealthy coping skills such as addictions, lack of boundaries, denial, personality disorders, becoming people pleasers, or struggling with anger management, etc., in order to deal with the perpetual anxiety they experience, even during non-traumatic events. It is like they can’t turn off the “trauma” switch in their brain. Everything becomes a traumatic experience, where they are constantly hyper alert, stuck in the original traumatic event.

the trauma has taken place, let children 2. After talk, feel, draw, or play out their emotions.

Recognize this as normal and healthy. This is how children walk through their many normal emotions to healthy functioning on the other side of a traumatic event. My brothers and I often played “guerilla warfare” with fireworks, sling shots, or BB guns as we crawled through our brush forts or bombed our small metal Matchbox cars off the small dirt roads in our crudely constructed towns we carved in the dirt. We always won in our reenactment of guerrilla warfare!

When I work with TCKs who are now adults and stuck emotionally, I have to use additional techniques such as intense therapy, EMDR (eye movement desensitization reprocessing),

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or long-term therapy. If they don’t go back and deal with the trauma, they often fall into one of the following defense-coping skills: Fight (anger, controlling, bullying, critical); Flight (denial, workaholic, perfectionist, anxious); Freeze (shut down, depression, detached, can’t make decisions); or Fawn (people pleaser, no boundaries, can’t stand up for themself, conflict avoider).

Today when I watch the news of riots or mob violence taking place in my own passport country, I have to take care of myself so I don’t develop a harmful coping style. My number-one way of coping with all of the craziness is to limit the amount of time I watch the news. I have to remember I am safe. This is called “grounding.”

Daily, I go outside into the world of fresh air and take a walk in nature so I can clear my head and breathe in fresh air and listen to the sounds of nature. Whenever I sense my anxiety starting to climb, I focus on my deep-breathing skills, maintaining my normal sleep schedule, and eating healthy foods. And most of all, I either journal my feelings or talk to an understanding compassionate, friend who is not over the top with their own anxieties.

As I watched the news of rioters on January 6th descending on the United States Capitol building, I could not help but reflect on the

various civil wars I went through in Honduras and the many bullet holes on the side of our property walls. The news that afternoon was a real trigger for me. I was a little girl once again, putting my finger into the holes left by the bullets. Yet I know I am okay here in my small midwestern town.

What trauma(s) do you trace with the fingers of your memory? After you remember, are you okay? Never forget that tomorrow you can once again pick up the soccer ball from its spot near the front door and safely play on the street in front of your home.

Lois Bushong is a third culture kid who grew up in Latin America. She is the author of the book Belonging Everywhere & Nowhere: Insights into Counseling the Globally Mobile. She is available for speaking and writing engagements on TCKs, expatriates and navigating transitions. Recently Lois retired as a licensed marriage and family therapist and is now working on a limited basis in her own practice in Indiana. Her clients have been internationals, TCKs, and families in the midst of transition.

Website: www.LoisBushong.com.

Find her by name on LinkedIn and Instagram.

Uprooted with No RAFT

By Marilyn R. Gardner

Note: This essay was originally published in September 2020 on the blog A Life Overseas.

We felt that it would be especially helpful to our TCK community right now, and Marilyn was gracious enough to share it in this issue.

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t is mid-September and six months since borders closed, masks became mandatory, and life changed for people around the globe.

While fall is always a time of movement and change for expats and third culture kids, for TCKs transitioning to college, and for those who have tried to make transitions during the summer from their lives overseas, the tools many of us have used and used well in the past are not necessarily helpful in this new world.

Many of us have seen and used the RAFT acronym (Reconciliation, Affirmation, Farewell, and Think Transition) developed by David Pollock and Ruth Van Reken, our iconic leaders on all things TCK related. In fact, I wrote an essay on transition

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a few years ago, citing their acronym and connecting the dots to my own experiences. As I think about the acronym in the year 2020 and the unexpected chaos and uprootedness that a worldwide pandemic has caused, I think we may need another acronym that gives us a different tool for unexpected departures, virtual goodbyes, and long periods of waiting in the in-between.

With this in mind, I offer a few tips with an acronym that I’m calling CRAFT, because a Crisis before the RAFT changes everything!

A full disclaimer is that I have been uprooted unexpectedly myself a couple of times, but never in a worldwide crisis like the one we have faced these past six months. I come at this from a public health nurse perspective and as a writer, a TCK, and three-times-over expat. Though I have been through several difficult transitions, they were far different than what I know many of you are experiencing. So, keep what is worth keeping and blow the rest away.

“Crisis Management.

Response & Resilience.

Aftershocks.

Forging Ahead.

Time.”

Crisis Management. Response & Resilience.

Aftershocks. Forging Ahead. Time.

C

risis Management – First and foremost, COVID-19 has been a worldwide crisis with a domino effect. There are three stages to crisis management: Pre-crisis—or creating a crisis management plan; mid-crisis— the point where all hell breaks loose and you respond to what’s happening in the moment while trying to put the plan into place; and post-crisis—where you evaluate how you, your family, and the team responded to the crisis and whether your plan was effective. This is the point where you refine and change your crisis management plan based on what you’ve learned.

Perhaps your organization never even had a plan to begin with and you were left trying to craft your own crisis plan with little support.

Perhaps your organization had a well-defined crisis management plan, but it hadn’t been fully

tested. This was the first test and it has left leadership reeling. Or perhaps your organization’s plan was comprehensive and well done, but hadn’t ever considered that there may be a worldwide crisis at the same time as the company crisis.

There are all kinds of scenarios. But it is important to recognize that a crisis changes everything.

The general guidelines for phases of crisis management are to: • Understand the three phases of a crisis • Prepare as best as you can to handle each stage • Identify and focus on the most critical phase.* By now, most of us are in the post-crisis phase, but perhaps not. Perhaps a whole new crisis has come along in addition to COVID-19. Perhaps you are like my friend Mariam, who has had multiple crises along with a pending international move. Very few of us really understand crisis management, and it feels critical to have more information and understanding on this.

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No matter where you find yourself in these three stages, know that this is a very real crisis. You aren’t making it up. You aren’t making a bigger deal of it than you need to. You are simply doing what all of us do in a crisis. Trying to figure out what is next.

or share your deepest feelings about what is going on. This may sound obvious to many of you, but I am an empath. The ability to empathize is a gift, but it has to be used in the right context.

Someone who is bleeding out doesn’t need me to sit beside them and say “How are you feeling? How does that blood loss make you feel?” Rather, they need me to do everything I can to stop the flow of blood. Response means you respond to the immediate issue. Responding appropriately to the immediate issue builds resilience for later in the crisis.

A R

esponse & Resilience – This phase utilizes past experience. If in the past you have seen crises handled well, then your response may be far calmer than a colleague or friend’s response. As I’ve faced COVID-19 myself, I have faced it as someone who has never been risk averse, who grew up in the developing world with every year bringing another crisis. These past experiences are really different than those of my friends. In addition, I’ve faced it as someone who doesn’t have health problems. Those two realities have everything to do with the way I’ve responded. We go into any crisis with tools from our past at our disposal.

The key is to remember those tools.

ftershocks – On October 12th, 1992, we experienced a 5.8 magnitude earthquake in Cairo, Egypt. It was considered “unusually destructive” for its size. We were living in an area called Maadi in a second-floor apartment. It was 3:09 in the afternoon local time and I was at home with all four of the kids.

The house began shaking as windows rattled and a major wall in our apartment cracked down the center. I thought there had been a subway accident and that the subway train, a few blocks from our house, was headed our way. The noise and shaking were terrifying. I had no idea it was an earthquake, but gathered the three older ones to me. The youngest one, Stefanie, was nine months old and in her crib taking an afternoon nap. “Kids, let’s pray!” I said in desperation. In a few seconds Stefanie began to scream. I ran in just as a picture flew off the wall over her head and crashed to the ground, shattering the glass. It was terrifying. Equally terrifying were the significant aftershocks felt even days afterward. We would brace ourselves for the shaking and wonder if it was yet another earthquake.

So what’s my point? Aftershocks from a crisis can be as difficult emotionally as the crisis itself.

Aftershocks come unexpectedly and set off previously felt trauma and feelings of shock and One of those tools is to initially focus just on the helplessness. COVID-19 has been a crisis similar physical. The emotional pieces will come, but to an earthquake and its aftershocks bring up all you don’t have the energy nor should you focus sorts of feelings. It is not you being weak. These on them right now. It’s fight or flight, not fight feelings are real and they are hard. Aftershocks

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can continue for days, months, or sometimes even years. The larger the earthquake, the larger the aftershocks.

So, what do you do? You remain on the alert for aftershocks. They will probably come. Keep in mind that crisis management is the first step.

Stay calm—this is a normal part of a massive crisis. Gather your kids to you and talk about what is going on. If you ask adult third culture kids what made the difference in making it through a crisis and building resilience, many will say that it was that their parents and other adults in their lives allowed them to talk about what was going on. Call people you trust. You too need someone who will be able to actively listen to what you are thinking and feeling.

“Maybe all we have is the next second, the next minute. So, we breathe. Because a minute is all you need right now. An hour is all you need. You can redefine time–don’t let time define you.”

as you pour out your heart and, by listening, help you move forward. Who can help with the details of this life that you least expected? Who can help with the logistics of car shopping?

Insurance coverage? Healthcare? All the details that go into setting up a new life? Forging ahead in baby steps sometimes just means knowing who to call for what.

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ime – The last word in the acronym is “time.” In the expat world, we are always looking ahead. Part of this is the nature of the work and experience. We have to look ahead. The task of living outside our passport countries forces us to look at future actions that may include visa or residence permit expirations, transition times, future plans, and the ages of our kids as we make moves. Suddenly the pandemic has put everyone in the world in stop mode. We go from being future-oriented to not being able to plan for tomorrow, let alone what will happen in a month, three months, or a year.

All the careful plans we made have crumbled and the costs in money, time, and emotional health are impossible to quantify. We have to redefine our concepts of time.

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orging ahead with baby steps – People who have had spinal cord injuries have to learn to walk again. It happens step by painful step. This is a lot like what it is to forge ahead when you have been or are continuing in a crisis. There is the acute phase, followed by the maintenance phase. Forging ahead is the maintenance phase. What is the new routine?

What can we put off, and what needs to be done today? What resources are around us that can help us with what needs to be done today?

Gather your resources in a small notebook. Who are the people who can help with the practical pieces of setting up a new household or routine?

Who are the people who can help with the emotional pieces? Those who won’t tell you to count your blessings, but instead will listen

I think recovering addicts have a tremendous amount to teach us about time. A recovering addict knows that all they have is the next hour.

As they face it without drinking or doing drugs

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or doing whatever it is that they are addicted to, they know it is a baby step in the right direction.

They feel like they are climbing the walls. Their skin crawls. Their heart beats faster. And then, the hour is over. A sigh and on to the next hour. The hours turn into days, the days turn into weeks, the weeks turn into months, but they will never forget that all they have is the next hour. Recovering addicts are our teachers in this moment. Do what we must in the next hour. Then when the next hour comes, do what we must.

What about you? Where are you in the CRAFT? How do you CRAFT a way to move forward?

What would you add? What would you subtract?

Maybe all we have is the next second, the next minute. So, we breathe. Because a minute is all you need right now. An hour is all you need.

You can redefine time–don’t let time define you. Expect to be like the recovering addict— climbing the walls but making it through. In the words of an addict: “Over the past twenty-three years, I’ve worked to trick my brain into staying in the moment and not dwelling on the future Marilyn R. Gardner is a public health nurse and writer or the past.”** As I’ve spoken with family members after the recent death of my brother, time and time again the wonderful days and hours preceding his death have come up. By all accounts he had a joy-filled month with joy-filled minutes turning to joy-filled hours. The death that took him shocked all of us, none more so than those closest to him.

But each day of the month preceding his death seemed filled with abundant life. He did not know he would die and we did not know he would die.

It seemed he had learned to live each moment, and in doing so found great joy.

When it comes to time, all we really have is now.

Even as I write, I know that for someone in the midst of transition, reading this could be annoying. We can have all the tools in the world, but still struggle. One of the things I love about my faith tradition is that we honor the struggle.

There is life and growth in the struggle. So, I leave you with that: Honor the struggle. *Understanding the three phases of crisis **Molly Jong-Fast as written in The Atlantic

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who has learned to call Boston home. She grew up in Pakistan and as an adult has lived in Pakistan, Egypt, Northern Iraq, and the United States. She is the author of Between Worlds and Worlds Apart: A Third Culture Kid’s Journey and writes regularly at Communicating Across Boundaries. https:// communicatingacrossboundariesblog.com/blog/ You can also find her writing in Plough magazine, Fathom magazine, Among Worlds, and A Life Overseas.

Ukulele Therapy

I picked up the ukulele. It helped me lay down my trauma.

By Rebecca Hopkins

I

got it for free from another American expat friend who was moving away from our shared town of Palangkaraya, Indonesia. It was in her pile of faded clothes and no-longer-used DUPLOs—things that weren’t worth packing up and moving. I thought it was just a small toy guitar for kids. I brought it home and it mostly sat against a wall, plucked at occasionally by one of my kids or their friends, its strings sounding off-key and rude.

Then a few months later, when I had just a little breather from homeschooling my kids and hosting house guests, I picked it up. I had my reasons to try something new. Actually, I had quite a long list. In the past handful of years, we’d been through crisis after crisis: an airplane accident, an evacuation, life-threatening emergency surgery for our three-year-old son, and the death of a close friend in my husband’s arms. While the various moments of trauma were over, I was on edge and couldn’t sleep.

Some days I could barely breathe.

Somehow, I figured out it was a real instrument, that it had a name—that it was actually a ukulele, and that it could be tuned and learned.

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And now that it had a name, it seemed like this tiny instrument deserved a chance to be heard.

YouTube could teach me how to tune it. It showed me chords and songs. And with softer and fewer strings, YouTube argued, it’s easier to learn than a guitar.

Softer and fewer. Just what I needed.

Music had been a childhood friend of mine. As a kid in America, I learned piano from nearly a dozen different teachers because I moved a lot. And I lived in an Army community that moved a lot—my piano teachers moved, too, even during the years when I didn’t. Thankfully, my piano went with us, bouncing in huge moving trucks that knocked its notes out of tune as it crossed state lines.

I could play that piano loud and hard, or soft and smooth, and these methods all had gorgeous Italian names. I couldn’t have put this into words as a kid, but I was trying to make sense of a transitory life by playing the orderly Bach inventions. And I was grieving lost friends and homes by leaning into the dramatic arabesques.

And I was figuring out who I was by connecting to something beyond myself and something deep within myself.

“ It took all my courage to live my life well. I didn’t have enough left to put it into words.”

(Rebecca Hopkins’s picture of her ukulele.)

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I loved playing the piano so much that I majored in it in college. But then I ran into one teensy problem. I hated performing. I only wanted to play for myself. My piano was my cocoon. With my dad’s wise urgings to find a course of study that would end in being gainfully employed, I knew I needed to find something I could actually share with the world.

I became a writer instead. Writers can write all by themselves with no one watching. Then they can edit it, change it, erase it, redo it. Then maybe they can get it published, leaving it for distant readers to enjoy…or not. It felt like a more forgiving art.

“ I thought of my ukulele, my own pinhole of light. In that moment I felt my own courageous voice return.”

But then the dark years of trauma came.

The losses, grief, failure, trauma, PTSD, and a resulting faith crisis were surrounded by upside-down stories I couldn’t figure out how to right on the page. In the midst of all that, I also went through a major writing failure.

My literary agent for a book I’d labored over dropped me. I entered a season of “not.” Not enjoying the process of writing. Not publishing.

Not knowing when it would get better. Not knowing when I’d feel safe again. It took all my courage to live my life well. I didn’t have enough left to put it into words.

But the ukulele was light and forgiving. I first learned it during the evenings while my husband Brad was away on a flight training trip. I most often played while the kids were getting ready for bed. It was when I had time to myself. It was also when I felt the most fear.

I played next to the window so I could watch the wind blow through the palm trees in my yard.

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the sidewalk, the scuffed heel of a shoe.”

Those small things can then become a “pinhole of light to a story, a character, a universe.”

I thought of my ukulele, my own pinhole of light. In that moment I felt my own courageous voice return. Whole sentences entered my head, some smooth and soft, others loud and strong.

They ran onto my keyboard like tinkling scales.

Many came out a bit rough, out of practice, needing editing, but some came pure and clear, like a long-memorized etude. I had ideas for blog posts, journalistic pieces, novels, comedy routines, poetry. I penned the first poem I’ve written in a decade, then wrote down character ideas, and then a start of an essay. I felt like I’d been holding my breath, and now, with words, could let it out.

(Family picture from Indonesia taken by Susan Wyatt, Rebecca Hopkins’s mother.)

I didn’t finish the chocolate cake.

I did finish this story.

I added a new chord every time I played, enjoying the process of learning. The happy major cords invited joy, reminding me of reasons to be grateful.

The minor ones gave me a way to be sad.

During a particularly difficult week, Brad sent me off to a pretty lobby of a hotel in our Indonesian town and told me to go write. He meant it as a gift. But my stomach tightened and my breath got shorter. I went through the act of packing up my laptop, but I planned to read instead. Or maybe get a massage at the spa. If it wouldn’t have been weird, I would’ve brought my ukulele. Writing was still too hard.

I settled on some chocolate cake, a comfy chair, and a book about writing (close enough, right?) called Still Writing: The Pleasures and Perils of a Creative Life.

Rebecca Hopkins spent the first half of her life moving around as an Army kid and the past fourteen years trying to grow roots on three different Indonesian islands while her husband took to the skies as a pilot. She now works in Colorado for Paraclete Mission Group and writes about issues related to nonprofit and cross-cultural work.

Website: www.rebeccahopkins.org

“Start small,” author Dani Shapiro wrote. “If you try to think about all of it at once, the world you hope to capture on the page, everything you know, each person you’ve met… you’ll be overcome with paralysis. But it is possible to describe a crack in March 2021 2021 March

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SPOTLIGHT INTERVIEW:

SEBASTIAN MODAK Sebastian Modak 23

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Spotlight Interview

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hat is the most times you’ve traveled in one year? My guess is our Spotlight feature TCK has you beat—by a long shot.

Freelance travel writer and multimedia journalist Sebastian Modak spent 2019 circling the globe as the New York Times’ “52 Places Traveler,” reporting from every destination on the NYT’s “52 Places to Go” list. That project won him the Bronze Grand Award for Travel Journalist of the Year by the Society of American Travel Writers (SATW) in its annual Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Awards.

Sometime last year I stumbled upon Sebastian’s Condé Nast Traveler essay, “For Third Culture Kids, Travel Is Home.” In it, he describes how “a TCK’s roots, flimsy and widespread as they may be, cover large distances and bridge divergent cultures”—and as such, “the TCK is a test-case of a more connected, less nationally-focused world.”

That essay, along with his “52 Places” experience in 2019 and its exact opposite—being stuck at home in 2020 due to the COVID pandemic— sparked my curiosity and an invitation to interview him for this issue.

Sebastian has lived in six countries on four continents and is of mixed Colombian and Indian heritage. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Afar, and Condé Nast Traveler, where he was an editor and staff writer. When he’s not traveling the world, he can usually be found in New York City.

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As I looked at some of your work and your website, I realized that besides a New Delhi connection (American Embassy School), we have both also lived in New Jersey and Hong Kong, so I thought that was kind of cool!

Graduated from high school there; went to the States for college. I’ve been in the States mostly since then, although I did live in Botswana twice in the past ten years or so. Then I had a crazy 2019 where I was in a different place around the world every week! That’s the abbreviated story.

Really? That’s cool. I was born in NJ, so “pregrades;” I left when I was two years old and then went to Hong Kong from there.

I read that one of your first memories was in Hong Kong.

Yeah, and it’s interesting, too, because I lived in Hong Kong from when I was two years old to about five, and then I moved to Australia after that, and I lived there for two years. But I hardly remember anything about Australia, while my memories from Hong Kong are really vivid. It’s very interesting what had an effect on me, what stuck with me in my memories.

Can you tell us a little about your parents and their cultural backgrounds?

My mother is from Colombia, from Medellín, and my father is from Mumbai, India. They met in the US in university and moved to New Jersey, and that’s where they had my two brothers and myself. My dad worked in telecommunications, which is what sent him around the world. We left New Jersey and then were in Hong Kong for three years; then Sydney, Australia, for two years. After that we were in Delhi for five and a half years, and then finally we moved to Jakarta, Indonesia, for five years. That’s where I spent high school.

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With some new friends at Tung Po Kitchen in Hong Kong.

Do you have an affinity for either of your parents’ ethnic or cultural backgrounds, or do you feel you’re just a great blend of the two (plus others)?

I think it’s a blend of the two, but also neither, which I think is a pretty common story among people who grew up the way I did. When I’m in a neutral ground—let’s say, like the US—it’s easy to talk about it, or to own it, in a way. But when I’m in India or Colombia I feel like an imposter.

Spotlight Interview And here, honestly, in the US I feel like an imposter, too, despite my American citizenship from birth. So, it’s just what so many people like us have to get used to: that sense of “imposter syndrome,” that lack of full ownership that comes with this kind of upbringing.

So, where is your family living right now? Is everybody spread out everywhere?

Yes—my parents are in Dubai; they’ve been there for a few years. They continued to move, even after I was the last one to leave the nest.

I’ve got one brother who is currently in Florida and another one who is in northern California.

So, the three of us have ended up in the US for now. Like so many other people, I haven’t been able to see them for a while because of COVID.

You’ve written that it was when you were in New Delhi at the American Embassy School where you first learned about the concept of TCK—where you first heard the term used. Can you talk a little about that?

Yeah, I remember very well the first time I heard the term and started understanding what it meant. The school had some kind of event in the auditorium where they had a speaker come in who was talking about the concept of third culture kids—I don’t remember who it was or what their background was—perhaps a child psychologist or author. But I remember them talking about third culture kids, and this lightbulb went off in my brain as I thought, This describes me perfectly!

Thinking about it now, though, I wonder if they would frame it in the same terms today, because I think there is a level of privilege that wasn’t quite acknowledged in the same way at the time. I remember the talk addressing identity and belonging, but not really addressing the fact that we were also the one percent in most of these places in which we were living, you know? I see how the understanding of TCK has changed and become more nuanced with time, but back then I was just a nine-year-old boy hearing this for the first time and thinking, Yeah, cool! That’s what we are—my Japanese friend and my Finnish friend sitting next to me in this auditorium, we’re all part of the same belonging. I remember feeling some comfort in that.

Do you speak any other languages, either fluently or passably?

Yeah, I speak Spanish close to fluently—not quite as fluently as I should, being halfColombian, but almost there. In many families of multiple languages, kids end up speaking one language with one parent and another language with the other parent. I wish that had been the case for me, and I think they tried to make that the rule, but by the time the third kid (me) came around, the rules had sort of fallen by the wayside. My dad didn’t speak Spanish, so at the dinner table it was always English. I’ve also never lived in a Spanish-speaking country, so that’s a big part that’s missing for me. I could get by in Bahasa Indonesia, back in the day, but most of that is gone. I went back to Jakarta a few years ago on assignment and it was like my tongue was weighed down—words that used to come out so fluently were just gone. I was saying Spanish words when I meant to say Indonesian words…

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This could be interpreted as either good or bad, but it definitely informs my choice of profession and why I ended up traveling for a living, and writing and speaking about travel. The obvious side of it is that I was brought up traveling and it’s what is normal for me. I wrote about this in that (TCK) piece, but there’s a familiarity to the whole process of traveling.

But I also think, as a travel writer, it gives me—I don’t want to say an edge—but a unique perspective on issues that come up around travel writing, around authority, around writing about a place—you want a local’s perspective, but do we really have the right to be writing about other places around the world while pretending we have this kind of authority?

Visiting a sculpture by Dasha Namdakov on Olkhon Island in Siberia’s Lake Baikal.

What are one or two areas in which you see your TCKness impacting your life, either positively or negatively?

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And I think I was basically raised to never think I had that authority. I was never an authority on anywhere—including those places where I was ostensibly from. There’s a kind of global outlook and humility that comes from that of just being, like, I don’t know anything about any of these places.

I just lived a surface-level existence in all of them— or at least a surface-level understanding. So, I think that does help me in my work in a way, from going into every place with a clean slate, without preconceptions that I might otherwise bring, or without thinking I already have some sort of authority to say certain things about a place.

Beyond that, I have—like many TCKs—an inherent restlessness about staying in a certain place for too long. It drives my partner crazy.

I’ve been with her for over a decade, and she was born and raised in one town in New Jersey mostly. There’s a constant conversation that happens: “So where else do you want to live?

Where else could we go?”; and she’s like, “Well, where do you want to go, and how can we make it happen?” and I’m like, “I don’t care—let’s go

Spotlight Interview anywhere! It doesn’t matter—you name it, I’m down. We’ll try it out for a couple of years…”

That carries over to other areas of life, too, in terms of a lack of maturity, kind of, regarding putting down roots. It’s a weird way to put it perhaps, but it’s just not necessarily something on my priority list. Or hasn’t been until recently for me, when for a lot of people that comes earlier in life. I’ve just been more restless.

So, those are just two ways my TCK background affects me, but I know there are multiple ways that I probably don’t even fully realize.

I find both of those answers fascinating. The first, because you understand that you’re going in (to a new place) not knowing anything, and knowing that you don’t know anything. I would say that although I’ve seen some TCKs have the same outlook regarding travel, I’ve also seen the reverse, which is, “I know everything…” Some people never do break out of that place of privilege and staying on the surface, so it’s cool hearing you speak about it that way.

And secondly, regarding relationships, I’m always curious about who TCKs end up with in terms of significant others. Some end up with someone who’s

totally from the same place and has never been anywhere, and others have to be with someone who’s also a TCK or from another culture. It’s interesting.

Yeah, and I think no matter what kind of background or upbringing, people end up different—they channel those influences in different ways. I have high school friends who, after living in five different countries and attending international schools, have ended up married at the age of twenty and settled in a small town in Oklahoma. They have two kids by the age of thirty and they’re very happy with that life. Then I have friends who are still living like they’re eighteen and bouncing all over the world.

Those are two extremes, but I think it can manifest in very different ways. I feel the pull of all those ways—on the one hand, I see that friend in Oklahoma and I think, This is what I’ve missed my whole life, because I’ve never had that stability.

But then on the opposite side, there’s the pull to just keep moving and keep seeing new things because you’re addicted to all that newness. I feel both those forces at work, and it’s a matter of navigating it all.

Searching for ice caves on the shore of Lake Superior in Ontario, Canada.

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Some TCKs— probably many— would be envious of your career. Can you talk about how you ended up being a travel writer?

At the Registan in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.

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Spotlight Interview It was never an intentional thing. If you talk to people who knew me as recently as college, I wasn’t like I’m going to be a travel writer. I was always into writing and traveling, but it happened sort of accidentally. In college I had two majors and two minors because I couldn’t decide what I wanted to study. I just took classes I was interested in and hobbled together a degree based on that! I wanted to do writing, but spent time after college doing more academic writing, and then I thought I wanted to get into video. I lived in Botswana and hung out with some hip-hop artists for a year to document their experiences. So, I was kind of all over the board. I’m a musician too, so I spent some time in bands and touring. And then just over time I fell into writing about travel, and as basic as it sounds, it’s just a combination of loving to write and loving to travel. And then realizing I had something unique to bring to it—a unique perspective that resonated with people.

You know, that story I wrote for Condé Nast years ago about TCKs, I pitched it as part of a package, and I remember my editor being like, “OK, I guess.

It sounds like a bit of a self-indulgent project; I don’t know if it’ll get any traction really—but sure, why not? Include it in this package of stories about psychology and travel.”

And it just blew up. For a few weeks I was getting constant messages and I kept seeing it being shared around the TCK community. I was getting emails from people I hadn’t heard from since elementary school saying, “My mom sent this to me!” It was crazy. It went to show how many people like us there are; and it’s not just third culture kids—it’s people who are children of immigrants, immigrants themselves, people who’ve had to leave places involuntarily… this whole melting pot of people who are all in a place not their own. I think that reaction is testament to what I found when I got into this profession: I do

have something to say that does resonate with people, and not even just with those who grew up the way I did.

My next question is probably going to be impossible, but do you have a most memorable travel moment? It can literally be a moment—like “I feel so alive and so connected to the world right now!”—that kind of snapshot moment.

Whew! There are a lot… The ones that come to mind first are the most recent ones, from the crazy 52 Places trip. The commonality between the ones that come to mind first are that they all involve people. I think rather than going to a specific experience, I would say I saw some incredible things over the course of my travels in 2019. I mean, I saw a total solar eclipse, I saw fjords in Scandinavia, I saw penguins in the Falkland Islands, and just incredible things. But most memorable are the people. The family in Washington State who let me stay on their farm. They found out it was my birthday and they didn’t want me to spend it alone, so they killed one of their ducks and made a feast for me and brought me into their home. I’m still in touch with them today. Or, like the guy I met in Uzbekistan who dropped everything to take me around, and drove me to a game of buzkashi, which is a horseback-riding game involving a dead goat.

There are so many people who stopped and opened up their world to me, and it was when they didn’t know I was a journalist for the New York Times—it was really just a human connection.

They were like, “Oh, you’re here alone? You’re

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trying to have an experience to learn more about the place I call home? Let me show it to you.” The most memorable moments like that showed me the common humanity we share and it made me question my own approaches and reactions—like, would I do that? If I was in New York City and I met someone who was visiting for the first time, would I drop everything and show them my city?

It makes you want to be a more generous person

It gives you hope for humanity.

Yes! Especially recently, with all that’s going on, we’ve seen some of the worst impulses of humanity, but I still to this day believe that far more people are good than are bad. I believe that based solely on the experiences I’ve had while traveling.

Visiting a colony of King penguins in the Falkland Islands.

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Our theme for this issue is about crises and disasters. Have you ever experienced a large-scale crisis or disaster in a place you happened to be? How did it impact you?

Spotlight Interview I was in school in Jakarta from 2001 to 2006, so it was right after 9/11. There was a slew of bombings in Indonesia, in Jakarta itself, and then there was the night club bombing in Bali in which I lost people I knew.

Shifting gears quite a bit, is there one thing you always take with you on your travels?

(Passport doesn’t count.)

So, I felt it in a lot of really direct ways, even to the point that the school was closed for several weeks because they’d determined it was one of the top targets of a local terrorist group in Indonesia. We came back to school and they had completely redesigned it into this fortress, which was a big shock to the system: suddenly we were going to school and there were Indonesian armed special forces guarding it from outside.

Yeah, besides the obvious… These days my latest thing is merino wool. Just merino wool everything. That fiber—I know it’s naturally occurring because it’s, you know, wool, but it feels like witchcraft. It doesn’t make sense.

You can wear it for multiple days. It keeps you warm when it’s cold; it keeps you cool when it’s hot—it’s just the perfect travel material. It has changed the way I travel. Now my whole suitcase is basically merino wool.

It’s interesting, because I remember the shock and the grief we all felt when this was all happening, but it’s also interesting how we took it all in stride. In the sense that our perspective shifted and a new normal set in. I also remember the sense of community that came up around it—you know, We’re all in this together and will look out for each other.

So, my last question is, what’s next for you?

I felt that a lot while growing up, and not just in Indonesia. It’s an example of the kind of community that grows within the TCK community. I was also in Indonesia when the (2004) tsunami hit—I remember the way our community would come together with service projects and fundraising whenever there was a disaster. There was this sense that we were guests in this country that was graciously hosting us and the least we could do was use our positions of privilege and give back in these times of crisis. That was a constant for me growing up—there was always a focus within the international school community on service, especially in times of crisis.

I hope to get some more international travel in during 2021 and have more stories to tell, but I’ve also kind of been enjoying learning more about this country—my latest host country, if you will. In terms of bigger projects, I’m still freelancing, writing for the New York Times and other publications. I’m in the early stages of working on a book that will hopefully combine all these thoughts I have about travel, what home means, what travel means in relation to concepts of home. So, hopefully, that will come out sometime in the next, I don’t know, twenty years or so, at the pace I’m going. Besides that, it’s all very open; a few little pipe-dreams I have in the works, but we’ll see.

Check out more about Sebastian Modak at his website: https://www.sebastianmodak.com.

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By Lauren Wells

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he TCK life is an ampersand (&)—both good and hard. Both joy filled and grief filled.

While it is good to talk, think, and dwell on the good, we can’t disregard the hard and the impact that has on our lives as kids, teens, and adults. Unfortunately, the hard and its impact doesn’t go away when we turn eighteen. We don’t get to begin adulthood with a clean slate.

Instead, we carry the hard with us. Throughout our growing-up years, all of the losses and grief-inducing experiences have stacked up like blocks, building a tower higher and higher throughout our developmental years. Because of our unique lifestyle, we didn’t often have opportunities to unstack our growing Grief Tower, or, when we did, the processing only touched on the “key” moments.

In my years of work with TCKs of all ages, I’ve found that most TCKs enter their adult years with a Grief Tower over twenty blocks tall. At that point, it takes only a relatively small stressor (i.e. a difficult first year of university, a conflict with a friend, or a challenging job situation) to tip the tower over. It is common for this collapse to occur between the ages of eighteen to twenty-five.

My Grief Tower crashed down during my sophomore year of university. I had not processed any of the many grief-inducing experiences that March 2021

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had happened during my years living as a missionary kid (MK) in Africa. Instead, I had charged ahead, feeling numb when I thought back to that time and place, as if those memories were emotionally off-limits.

Grief-Processing Questions:

1. What emotions did I feel in that season or situation?

2. How did it feel in my body?

During my university years, I began having horrible nightmares. Often, they took place in 3. How has it influenced my thought Africa and I always woke up screaming, sweaty, processes going forward? and panting. Around the same time, I discovered 4. How has it influenced my actions an unexplained, quarter-sized bald spot on going forward? my head, was battling never-ending cold sores 5. What do I want to take from the on my lips, and had constant stomach aches. experience and what do I want to I went to the doctor and was told everything was fine; that I should take vitamins and try leave behind? changing my diet. Through a series of events, I 6. If I haven’t talked about this aloud yet, ended up in counseling. My wonderful therapist who is one safe person I can tell? specialized in trauma and I quickly learned that every physical symptom I was experiencing was 7. Do I need outside help to move forward in a healthy way? a fairly common response to complex trauma (C-PTSD) and toxic stress. My Grief Tower had stacked too high and I was now experiencing the crash.

So what can we do to prevent or resolve a crashed Grief Tower?

It is important that we take the time to consider the blocks on our Grief Tower and then intentionally process each block.

Think about the losses, grief-inducing experiences, intense moments of fear, and family crises that have occured in your life. List them from present going all the way back to the first that you can remember.

Each of these is considered a “block” on your Grief Tower. These blocks can begin to be processed by thinking through the following questions and considering the answers for each block.

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You can think through these questions while engaging in a variety of grief-processing methods.

Art Processing: Art processing is one of the most effective ways to process grief because it engages both sides of your brain. You can paint a representation of that season or event, color mindlessly while thinking about the questions above, create a sculpture that characterizes that moment or season, etc. Be creative!

Nature Processing: Nature processing simply involves getting outside with the purpose of thinking through the blocks on your timeline and the Grief-Processing Questions. This could be going for a hike, fishing, sitting on the beach, laying in a hammock or anything that allows you to be in nature and free to think intentionally. Often being outside brings a sense of calm and clarity that can help with processing.

Journal Processing: Spend time writing about the block you are processing. You can answer the questions in written form, write as if you’re writing a letter to someone, write out prayers, write your story in third person, use bullet points, etc.

Verbal Processing: Sometimes you just need to talk through it! Process out loud with a parent or trusted friend. It is often helpful if you tell them that you are wanting to process with them, explain what you’ve learned, and even show them the Grief-Processing Questions.

Exercise Processing: Engaging in a physical activity such as running, weight-lifting, yoga, etc., can be a helpful way to process. Take the time to think through the Grief-Processing Questions while you’re exercising (so don’t listen to a podcast or other distracting audio input at the same time!).

Processing is not easy nor is it an exact science, but I pray that you have begun to see the importance of bravely writing out and processing your Grief Tower and that these practical ideas help you to do that effectively.

My book, The Grief Tower: A Practical Guide to Processing Grief with Third Culture Kids gives an in-depth education on the concept of the Grief Tower and how to unstack it. It is written to the audience of parents of TCKs and TCK care workers, but the information can certainly be applied to adult TCKs. In fact, a version specifically written to adult TCKs is in the works and will be available soon. You can purchase The Grief Tower on Amazon and Kindle.

Lauren Wells is the Founder and Director of TCK Training and author of Raising Up a Generation of Healthy Third Culture Kids: A Practical Guide to Preventive Care and The Grief Tower: A Practical Guide to Processing Grief with Third Culture Kids. She specializes in practical, preventive care for third culture kids and their families. She has worked with over 1,000 parents and TCK caregivers and has trained staff from over 60 organizations. Lauren spent her developmental years in Tanzania, East Africa, and now lives in South Carolina with her husband and two children.

Other options: Write a song, write a poem, process while cooking, draw a comic strip, create digital art, write a play script, choreograph a dance.

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“Hope begins in the dark.

The stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.”

– Anne Lamott, Novelist

On Top of the World

By Marit A. Strand

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hird culture kids (TCKs) usually experience returning to their passport country at some point. Since coming back to America, I have had many varied experiences related to my having grown up in China. I have had people tell me:

“Go back to your communist country!”

“Snap out of it—you live in AMERICA.” “You must be really happy to be here instead of China.”

“Did you live in a tiny little hut since it is a developing country?”

I would be okay with all of that, if they had been to China and were giving me an opinion based on real experience. However, that is not the case. They were voicing something they knew nothing about. They were telling me how I should act and feel about my home in China.

In contrast, I feel that if I express an opinion about America, my experience here makes it acceptable. To help you understand what I am talking about, I will tell what typical life was like for me in China.

To me everything in China is “the best.” It’s probably natural that I feel that way, since it is where I was raised. In China, most stores and markets are within walking distance and very convenient. Most parks are within biking distance, and we had many restaurants right outside our courtyard that served our favorite dishes. My favorite was potato strips and I could get it at almost any restaurant in China. One of my brother’s favorites was a cucumber dish with vinegar and green onions in it. My other brother’s favorite dish from the time he was a baby was tofu—any kind, since tofu can be prepared in many different ways. One restaurant that we liked to walk to and take our friends to was the la mian restaurant (la mian is translated “pull noodles”), where the noodles were pulled by hand and thrown into a large steel pot of boiling water.

The noodles were served in soup with green onion, beef, and cilantro on top. We were raised

with food like that, so it is our “comfort food.”

Besides the food, we also had favorite places to go for fun. We lived near the Eden Hotel, which had the best swimming pool and a locker room with gushing hot showers. We went swimming every Sunday and then we would go to KFC for a treat, because it was located nearby. On Saturdays we often biked to Yuhu Park which had many different amusement rides; we got to pick two rides each. We always picked a trampoline as our second “ride,” because it had no time limit and no age limit either. Another park we enjoyed going to was the Children’s Park which had a ropes course, ziplines, seesaw, big slide, and swings. The courtyard where we lived was always busy with Chinese games, rollerblading, and biking. Every once in a while, when the weather was nice, we would bike out in the countryside to play in old forts that were used back when Japan was invading China. It was history and fun at the same time.

In our apartment the electricity would go out frequently. When the power went out, the water did too, so we learned how to salvage the water we had. Most of the time it happened when we were on our way to bed, so at those times we did not care that the electricity went out.

Every week my mom took my brother and me shopping and we carried everything back home in backpacks. There was also a store we went to to get our nails or toenails manicured with a fun pattern or flowers. We also shopped for clothes and shoes, because at the time I was growing really fast. Our neighbor right across from us even made a traditional dress for me to wear for weddings in China. We lived close to a toy store, too, and that made it easy to get Christmas gifts for my brothers.

One other fun thing we did was horseback riding. We had a stable close by and we went riding when friends came to visit, if we had a birthday party, or just for fun. Most of the time we rode ponies, not the big horses. I rode with

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my mom, my younger brother rode with my dad, and my older brother rode alone. When we got old enough, we all rode our own horses. One time we got there in time to see a horse that had just been born; it was only two hours old!

So, as you can tell, I have been reminiscing about China because I love it. What do you feel when you reflect on the country you grew up in?

You probably have similar nostalgic feelings to mine, so surely you can understand how I feel.

How do you handle comments some people in your passport country make about the country that grew precious to you? Many Americans think I was living a nightmare in China, but the truth is, I was living on top of the world. My childhood could not have been better, and it is hard to come back to America and not be accepted for the cross-cultural girl that I am.

Marit A. Strand was raised in China and lived there from age one to fifteen. She now lives in Fargo, North Dakota (US), where she works as an Early Childhood Educator at Hope Kids Day Care. Marit goes to Salem Evangelical Free Church.

Photos courtesy of Marit A. Strand.

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“What do you feel when you reflect on the country you grew up in? You probably have similar nostalgic feelings to mine, so surely you can understand how I feel. ”

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Chaos in Context:

Examining Childhood Crises

By Rachel E. Hicks

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rowing up, my TCK friends and I would sometimes compete to see who had the craziest or most frightening disaster story. (Facts such as whether the crisis happened to us or to someone we knew were sometimes left a little unclear.)

During the coup attempt, we had to stay inside for days…

I was on a hijacked plane at the airport a couple years ago…

My family and I barely escaped the tsunami…

We had to be evacuated while the city was being looted…

My friend’s brother died in the stampede…

There were bullet holes in the walls of our house…

I was there for the big earthquake…

I used to think that TCKs’ chances of experiencing a crisis or disaster were higher than those of our non-TCK peers around the world. I don’t think so anymore. In fact, I think that’s a fairly ignorant, possibly even arrogant, assumption. Disaster touches just about everyone’s life at some point—TCKs don’t have a corner on the crisis market (case in point: the world in 2020).

That said, I’m aware that many of you do have stories. And they are stories you should be able to tell. You’ve lived through some tough, crazy things. Maybe you came out of it fairly unscathed and you’re able to enliven a room of friends or family with your adventures. Perhaps the crisis left a mark on your mind or in your heart that you haven’t been able to shake or understand— especially if you had no chance to debrief it in some helpful way.

How did you process it as a child or teen? Most of us were probably focused on how it affected us, our circumstances, our routines, our family, our school community. It was harder, understandably, for us to see the larger picture—in particular, to see how the crisis affected those more vulnerable than we. That’s natural for children and not something to feel guilty about.

But now that we’re older, have we revisited the crisis with an adult’s perspective? With the clarifying effects of the passage of time? With more historical understanding of the situation in that city or country?

“Oppression, economic devastation, displacement, violence—these are too often part of our common human story.”

We often tell and retell certain stories without thinking. We’re used to telling them a certain way and from a certain perspective. Sometimes that perspective is our own, but sometimes we’re parroting the narrative we’ve heard others (usually trusted adults in our lives) share.

I’ve been thinking about perspective while putting this issue together in light of the most consequential crisis I lived through as a kid.

In 1991, when I was fourteen, my family was evacuated along with other foreigners from Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo (Zaire at the time), after a week of rioting and looting in the city. Referred to as le pillage, the chaos started when soldiers who hadn’t been paid in months started looting stores in frustration at

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President Mobutu’s corrupt administration; equally upset and following the soldiers’ example were many impoverished citizens who were dealing with insane levels of hyperinflation and unemployment. For days the city burned while we hunkered down in our house on the American school compound. At night tracer bullets flashed through the darkness outside our walls, some of them embedding in the houses to either side of ours. During daylight hours, we watched people walking by on the streets outside the fence carrying whatever loot they had found. We even saw someone carrying a door that had been ripped off its hinges.

For years, my main focus in telling the story of the evacuation was on what I had lost—most importantly, my friends. I don’t remember what I packed in my suitcase, or what items I left behind.

But I remember the deep pain of losing my best friends as we were scattered all over the world.

Some of them were on the evacuation plane with me, but others I never got to say goodbye to. I went through the rest of that school year in a daze, struggling with culture shock in a small western Pennsylvanian town.

At all hours of the day and night that week, we kept our CB radio on to listen for instructions from the American embassy. We heard people making frantic calls to the embassy as mobs were climbing over their walls to loot their houses.

“ Hide in the bathroom and just let them take whatever they want to take.”

“Hide in the bathroom and just let them take whatever they want to take,” was the advice given. We met with other teachers’ families on the compound to discuss plans once we heard that evacuation orders were imminent. We boxed up our most valued belongings and stashed them in an attic space, hoping that they wouldn’t be found if our house was looted. Finally, we left in a caravan of cars headed for the banks of the Congo River, each of us allowed one suitcase. We took a ferry across to Brazzaville, where we were processed at the consulate general’s house before being taken to the airport and put on a plane bound for Andrews Air Force Base in the US.

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Sometime in the year following that event, I wrote a poem about it (see poem following this article). It was a rambling, embarrassingly sentimental poem—typical for an emotional young teenager. When I read that poem more recently, I realized that even then I had begun to reflect on what le pillage had meant for those left behind—the Zairois whose city was destroyed along with their economy, yet with nothing to show for their protests. My poem began and ended with my personal losses, but sandwiched in the middle, I’d written about driving in that caravan to the dock and seeing people sitting on the curbs in shock and hopelessness. What was left for them? What would they do now?

My life went on. I moved countries two more times during high school. I never debriefed the evacuation. I told the story now and then, but it wasn’t until many years later—when Wikipedia (and the internet) had become a thing—that I realized I didn’t understand much about the context. I’d known about Mobutu’s corruption, but what led to le pillage? I was astounded to read about how the US government had supported Mobutu in his early years in power, though he quickly established a total dictatorship over the country. I read about the three decades of suffering and oppression he inflicted on his people, and about how he was finally forced from power in 1997, dying in exile three months later. I wasn’t curious about this history when I lived in the DRC for a little over a year as a young teenager. I was happy in my international school bubble, and only began asking questions when the powder keg exploded and it affected me personally.

I’ve moved far beyond the evacuation personally, but the people of the DRC are still affected in many ways from those decades of suffering under Mobutu. When I read news stories now about that region of Africa, I feel a connection to a place I once lived, but what is top of mind is a desire to better understand the complexities of the context, the history behind the current struggles.

To me, the evacuation was an event—a lifechanging, deeply impactful event, but an event followed by years of mostly less dramatic events.

Now that I’m decades older, I revisit that event when I read about refugees fleeing their homes in the midst of war or conflict. My mind makes connections to the broader human story that it didn’t—perhaps couldn’t—make at the time.

Oppression, economic devastation, displacement, violence—these are too often part of our common human story. I’ve seen them in almost all of the

countries I’ve lived in throughout my life—most recently here, in my passport country, the United States of America.

Being able to revisit these kinds of childhood crises through a broader and deeper lens in adulthood is perhaps an unexpected gift. It can enable us to move closer to others in empathy and solidarity. It can help us find a voice, either for ourselves or on behalf of others who are as yet not being heard. And it can help us move about in the world with humility and curiosity as bridge builders and peacemakers.

Rachel E. Hicks is the editor of Among Worlds magazine. She was born in the foothills of the Himalayas and spent the bookends of her childhood in India, with moves to Pakistan, Jordan, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Hong Kong in between. She lived with her husband and two children in Arizona (US) and China. Since 2013 they have lived in Baltimore, Maryland. Rachel writes poetry, fiction and essays and works as a freelance copyeditor. A few of her favorite things include: electric scooters, spicy Sichuan food, hiking, and unhurried time to read. Read more of her writing at rachelehicks.com.

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L’Evacuation du Zaire 1991

By Rachel E. Hicks

The morning sun is reflected in our teary eyes The wind slips through the jungle leaves My eyes, for the last time, take in the beauty of an African morning I wonder if the birds know, as they chirp their usual tunes Shouldn’t they be singing a sorrowful melody?

I wonder if our cat knows his family is not coming back today I feel the worn handle of my suitcase Containing what’s left of my life As I slowly sink into the backseat, my heart starts to break I see the locals watching from outside, and it scares me I pray that if they come to the house, the attic will not be found Our car joins the white train as it glides slowly down the road and my heart and mind are heavy with memories We pass the field, the office, the high school, the new middle school All of it is lost in me; the sadness is surreal It occurs to me that the farther we go on more of me is left behind with the places I love I realize that someone will find my budding new plant and not even think of the one who planted it More and more white cars join the train and sorrow is easily read on everyone’s face As we leave the gate I silently say goodbye and try unsuccessfully to turn my heart to stone I’m not even aware of my tears as we drive through town seeing places we had known broken and destroyed The little boys selling flowers aren’t there today I wonder what will become of them Despair and hopelessness are etched in the faces of the Zairois Their eyes seem to cry out, “Il ny’a pas de l’argent, de l’aliment, de travail, d’espérance!”

I can’t begin to imagine their situation of hopelessness At the docks, I walk to the railing and look out to the horizon The great Congo River swirls and tumbles, all big and brown The country across the river blends into the gray sky and the cool wind blows my hair all around I can’t stop the tears as I take my last step on my beloved Zairian soil and as the ferry takes me away from my home whatever is left of my soul is left behind My friend and I tightly clutch each other’s hand and out tear-filled eyes look back with longing The only thought I can grab hold of at this moment is that this is the end of my life Whatever spark there was in my spirit has been snuffed out and I cease to live hereafter

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Chocolate Trauma

By Jessi Vance

T

he most traumatic part of growing up in Uzbekistan wasn’t the terrorist attack a block away from my school or the medical emergency that temporarily paralyzed my dad or the time basically all of our neighbors got deported. No, the moment that is particularly seared in my memory had to do with chocolate candy.

I don’t know about you, but we used to save our special food—the stuff we could never get in Uzbekistan and that we tucked into every corner and nook of packed-full suitcases when we were returning from a few months in the US. The treats that would sit on the highest shelf in our cabinet for months—sometimes years! My parents were missionaries, and not the kind of missionaries who got a shipping container to move or a travel stipend for “mental health.” No, we were the thrift-shop, local-school, barefootas-much-as-possible, cabbage-soup-for-dinner, suck-it-up-and-don’t-cry kind of missionaries.

So, it had to be a really, really special occasion before it was deemed worthy enough to delve into our treasures of Jello, peanut butter, and marshmallows. The Vance family had a strong tendency toward the sweet kind of snacks, which is one of those weirdly “third culture” things I realize now. I absolutely love the oil-

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drenched cuisine of Central Asia where dried fruit is considered dessert and yet I still crave things like Oreos and cream cheese.

Anticipation whet my taste buds as Dad brought out the coveted Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. With a crinkle of bright orange paper, I raced my brothers to rip it open and take the first bite of salty sweetness. As I savored the melting flavors, my tongue recognized a difference before my brain did. Something was wrong about the texture. Something gooey. And crunchy. And squirming.

lives? How did I preserve my love for chocolate?

“Debrief” is just a fancy way to say “Tell me more.”

We know it’s important to debrief traumas or big moves, but we forget that debriefing the little things helps build those muscles for when we need them the most. Here are three easy ways to add consistent debriefing to your daily life:

1.

Practice with small steps, like setting up a weekly coffee (or Zoom!) date with a friend and sharing a high and low from the week.

2.

Read The Grief Tower: A Practical Guide to Processing Grief with Third Culture Kids by Lauren Wells and do at least one exercise she recommends.

3.

Take a risk and lead a Guide Group with Kaleidoscope to help younger third culture kids debrief their experiences. You’ll be surprised how much you learn about yourself too!

Every third culture kid who grew up in a developing country knows where this is going.

Sure enough, I looked down to see a biteshaped hole that revealed a pile of tiny, wiggling, chocolate-covered maggots. Insert the vomit emoji here. I felt betrayed. Shook. Horrified.

Nauseous. There wasn’t enough water or toothpaste in the world to get that slimy feeling out of my mouth. It’s a genuine miracle I was ever able to eat peanut-butter-flavored candy again.

Here’s the thing about growing up as a third culture kid. Sometimes the crisis we experience is massive and life-shifting and heart-wrenching.

But there are also smaller crises that happen along the way. There is the painful loss when a good friend is relocated; the deep confusion when God-following missionaries disappoint you and suddenly the God they represent feels confusing, too; the sting of not fitting in… anywhere; the frustration with parents who make massive decisions that affect your life; and the trust that is broken when you bite into your favorite candy, only to get a bite of bugs instead.

So, what do we do? How do we keep our hearts open to new friendships? How do we process the conflicts between cultures that teach us opposing values? How do we tell our parents their job is causing us anxiety? How do we trust a mentor when the big life-changing crisis crashes into our

Jessi Vance grew up in Central Asia and currently lives outside of Boston, MA, USA. She is the founder and CEO of Kaleidoscope and survives on a strict diet of coffee and airplane food.

Book: The Grief Tower by Lauren Wells Guide Groups: https://www.kldscp.org/tck-volunteer Instagram: @jessi_rue and @kldscp Webpage: www.kldscp.org

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“ I was no longer reading about plants. I was reading a manual for understanding the crisis my teenage TCKs had just lived through.”

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The Heeling Process

By Kayla Rupp

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n an attempt to placate myself during a bout of anxiety recently, I fell down a rabbit hole online about the obscure horticultural technique of heeling-in bare root plants. Before I knew it, I was bookmarking articles and scribbling notes, tears of passion streaming down my face. On second thought, maybe they were tears of fatigue (by now it was past 2 a.m.) or tears from dry eye after staring at my computer screen too long. More than likely, however, they were tears of relief. Somehow, this funny little topic was giving me a box in which to put my pain. I was no longer reading about plants. I was reading a manual for understanding the crisis my teenage TCKs had just lived through.

The End of the Growing Season As an American Michigander, born and raised, I can only speak to the TCK experience from the perspective of a mother who has raised them. For twelve years, I ran an American midwestern-style household in Chinese-urbia.

We made our own ricotta cheese for lasagna, our own hams for Easter. Come December, stockings were hung by the kongtiao with care.

Family movie nights found us watching Swiss

Family Robinson or The Sound of Music, while the sounds of erhus and late-night hawkers drifted up from the streets. My kids were mostly blond and wore Old Navy clothes, albeit stained with Sichuan chili oil. Their pale-skinned hands were as adept at using chopsticks and counting kuai as they were at controlling joysticks and solving Rubik’s Cubes. They weren’t exactly American. They certainly weren’t Chinese.

And yet, at the end of every day–every spicy, saucy, multicultural day–my kids laid their happy heads on their pillows in the concrete bedrooms of our seventh-floor walkup, under a salmon-colored sky, and they were home.

Until that fateful day in January 2019, when we closed our front door, checked the lock, and hurried to the gate. Our taxis were waiting to take us to the airport for a quick trip to Thailand, where we would attend a conference followed by a vacation. We left the usual clutter in our wake, the usual half-eaten condiments in the fridge. There may well have been clothes in the dryer.

Or did I fold those and put them away?

I guess I’ll never know.

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Dormancy Saves the Plant I feel like a tree pulled up by its roots and tossed on the ground,” my son sobbed, always the articulate one.

There were no words to comfort him. China had closed its borders to foreigners due to the virus.

My son had just been told that the home he left in January without so much as a backward glance was now unreachable. He would, in fact, never go there again.

This came at the end of months in Thailand, washing and rewashing our vacation clothes, buying new sandals for the kids when they’d outgrown those we’d packed. Three days after we’d left home, a strange super pneumonia had sprung up in China. Our conference/vacation quickly spiraled into a crisis. Thailand, which had been our chosen place of respite for years, now felt like a prison. The novelty of night markets and monkeys had long since worn off. Even the mango sticky rice felt like glue in our mouths. We kept thinking the virus would run its course in China and we could finally, finally go home.

Quite the contrary.

The virus had now been given a name, COVID-19.

It was no longer just in China, either. Like seeds on the breeze, it had fluttered down into every corner of the earth, planting death, fear, and disruption wherever it took root.

Watching my son cry, it occurred to me that the virus may not have killed him, but it had killed his life. His happy, spicy days of energized TCK living were as cold on the ground as the bodies piling up in Wuhan. We would have to move to the States now, where he would attend school near where his father grew up. We may as well have told him we had decided to amputate his arms and legs.

He pulled away from us almost overnight. He pulled away from everything, in fact. His eyes became two frozen wells. His back curved protectively around his vitals, it seemed to me, until he looked more like a drying leaf than a boy, more like a withering branch than a young man. And yet, dormancy only looks like death. In actuality, dormancy is a means of survival. When conditions become too harsh, even uninhabitable, the plant goes dormant to preserve itself until the return of warmth and light.

Caring for Bare Root Plants “He’s so ungrateful,” I growled to my husband, whose own frustrations played on his face.

“Here we are, in this nice new house in America, with all our needs met and more besides! You have your new job; the kids have their great new school. What more does he want? He has a bike in the garage, Chick-fil-A down the street. Will anything ever be good enough for him again?”

Not only is dormancy necessary for a plant’s survival, but if forced to come out of dormancy too soon, the plant will die. Instead, a patient horticulturalist will practice something called heeling, which is to lay the uprooted plant on its side, at an incline, and then protectively pack loose soil around its exposed roots. This is done

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to keep the plant from coming out of dormancy before conditions are suitable to do so.

I would like to speak with one of these patient horticulturalists. I would like to ask her how she does it. Does it not break her heart to see her precious plant, once green and upright, laying lifelessly on its side like a forgotten pulled weed?

I can imagine the response from this hypothetical gardener from whom I have sought parenting advice. Her eyes would glitter with wisdom as her hands would snip a cutting from a bonsai and she would say, “My child, you are mistaken. Heelingin bare root plants is not forgetting about them.”

A puzzled look from me would bring further clarification.

“Sometimes,” she would whisper, “the kindest thing we can do for the ones we love is let them be.”

Spring Will Come Again Heeling-in can go on indefinitely, so long as the plant is properly cared for while it lays. Provided

that I keep soil on their roots, damp and fresh, my kids will stay alive until they are ready to be planted in the ground. They still look dead to me in many ways, but now I know better than that.

This is an important time for them. An important time for me. And it cannot be rushed.

There are days when I lock myself in my new bedroom, in our subdivision beside a winding creek in rural Arkansas, and weep for all my kids have lost. For all the goodbyes they didn’t get to say, and for all the closure they will never have.

I walk through our Chinese apartment in my mind, stepping over the creaky boards so as not to waken the youngest. I go into each room in turn, look about me, take it in. Memory and grief mingle with the smells of street food and cherry blossoms. In my mind our apartment is spick and span, even though it rarely was. A bowl of persimmons sits at the center of our table. The loveliness of it all makes me weep harder, until something catches my eye. Handprints. Childsized handprints smudged on the window glass, leftover from happier times. I stop crying.

“ There are things that shape us when we are young in ways that no transplant can reshape. For my TCKs, a pandemic came and pruned them to the pulp.”

Spring will come again for sure. My children will not lay sideways forever. But they will probably keep throwing their toilet paper in the waste basket. They will probably keep measuring temperature in Celsius, weight in kilograms. They will never find an English word to convey fully the meaning of lihai. There are things that shape us when we are young in ways that no transplant can reshape. For my TCKs, a pandemic came and pruned them to the pulp.

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Like all teenagers of their generation, COVID-19 destroyed the world they knew. In their case, however, my kids have the extra layer of loss that only other TCK teenagers who have lived through COVID-19 will understand.

My oldest son goes to school with deer hunters and catfish baters here in Arkansas. Lanky boys with mullets and mud-caked cowboy boots.

Classroom conversations include such topics as how to skin a squirrel and what seasonings bring out the flavor of frog legs.

“Have you ever cleaned and dressed a deer?” my son was asked one day.

“No,” he admitted. “But I once helped slaughter a lamb on a rock in the Himalayan foothills. And then, for my troubles, I was rewarded with a strip of lamb to roast over my fire with my friends.”

Blank stares met his tale at first, but understanding quickly broke through and was followed by smiles, and then guffaws and back slaps.

His surroundings are warming up to him, and he to them. Soon enough, he will be ready for planting and he will take root. He may not look like the sycamores and the cedars all around him, but he will have a trunk and branches and leaves all the same. Until then, I must be patient. I must be willing to let him lie, cockeyed and lifeless. It isn’t what I dreamed of for my children, but then nothing about the past year has been dreamy for any of us. And yet I dream that good things will come of it. I dream that the shared experience of this crisis will close the gaps between us just enough to make conditions suitable for growth.

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“Soon enough, he will be ready for planting and he will take root.

He may not look like the sycamores and the cedars all around him, but he will have a trunk and branches and leaves all the same.”

Kayla Rupp is a children’s minister in northwest Arkansas. A former missionary to China, Kayla and her husband raised four children in a multicultural, multinational context. When she isn’t mothering or ministering, she is writing, cooking, or sitting on her front porch.

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Journey with us!

Among Worlds magazine is accepting submissions for upcoming issues. We are looking for original, high-quality writing, poetry, photography, and visual pieces. We invite you to share your stories and talents with us! Click here for submission details.

June 2021

Code-switching Submission deadline: April 30, 2021

September 2021 Relationships Submission deadline: July 30, 2021

If you or your organization would like to purchase bulk subscriptions or advertise your services in Among Worlds, please contact amongworlds@interactionintl.org.

“ As much as we want to keep ourselves

safe, we can’t protect ourselves from everything. If we want to embrace life, we also have to embrace chaos.”

- Susan Elizabeth Phillips