Heart of a TCK, part 1: Everyone Leaves

The experience of living overseas as a child is very different to the experience of living overseas as an adult. The impact of childhood experiences last a lifetime. They are formative experiences – they form us, shape us, make us who we are. Our childhood experiences teach us how the world works.

Deep in the heart of Third Culture Kids are lessons learned from their childhood experiences - experiences of growing up in the in-between, of loving more than one place, of living in transient communities, of constantly saying goodbye, of never feeling completely at home in a single place.

This is the first in a series of posts looking at some of the ways TCKs are formed by their experiences, some of the things many TCKs come to believe about the world, and the support they need to be more at peace with themselves and the people around them.

Everyone leaves

I heard the exact phrase “everyone leaves” in scores of interviews during the research for Misunderstood. Even TCKs who lived in one place a long time (perhaps their whole childhood) were rarely living fully immersed lives in their host culture. TCKs who don’t move on themselves often watch many of their friends leave.

Not only are TCKs affected by the mobility of other expatriates, their own family’s mobility impacts them. Many travel regularly to visit extended family overseas. They connect or reconnect and then have to say goodbye - over and over. Or they attend regular conferences with their parents’ organisations, where they make friends and farewell them year after year.

The end result of all these experiences is that goodbyes form a significant part of the background of a TCK’s childhood.

Bringing it home

It can be hard for adults to really grasp what this feels like for kids – how it shapes them. We’re not talking about the experience of moving to a new city, or a new school. We’re talking about having to repeat that experience over and over. It’s not about how sad it is when your best friend moves away. It’s about how you get ground down watching friend after friend after friend move away.

When leading sessions on transition with young TCKs and Educational CCKs, I ask how many times a close friend has moved away from them. Not just an acquaintance or classmate, but someone they felt close to. I get a lot of wide eyes and dropped jaws – how can anyone expect me to tally that number?? Some just roll their eyes and refuse to even try. One 10 year old lifted both hands and started opening and closing his fingers, representing an ongoing and endless number.

One time, a 5th grade girl got a very determined look on her face – she was intent on counting to an exact number. She took out paper and pencil and kept going while the class moved on to discuss another question. When she lifted her head again, I turned back to her and asked if she had her number. “Yes,” she answered, “it’s 23.” Before even finishing primary school, this girl had said goodbye to 23 people she felt close to.

Internalising the experience of endless goodbyes

If you haven’t experienced this litany of losses yourself, I hope you can begin to imagine how this bruises a young heart. Losing people we care about is painful. Often it’s harder to be the one left behind.

In life, we learn to protect our bodies from pain and injury - don’t touch the stove, wear gloves when it’s cold out, wear a helmet. Similarly, when we learn through repetition that a particular experience causes emotional pain, we learn to protect our hearts from the pain we know will come from it.

Quite rationally, many TCKs develop methods to try to avoid the sadness and emotional pain of goodbyes that they see as inevitable. Some will push others away, so the goodbye will be more distant, less emotionally entangled.

“I lived with a mentality that ‘everyone leaves’. I just recently moved off to college and I had a really close friend get mad at me for pushing her away and trying to do anything I could to minimize the hurt I knew was coming. Honestly I still expect us to eventually lose touch anyway because people move on. That’s all I’ve ever known. – Maddie, 18”
Misunderstood, page 145

Another common TCK reaction to goodbyes is denial - pretending that the goodbyes are not real, or not painful. If I can pretend that someone isn’t leaving, that I don’t care they’re leaving, or that I don’t feel anything about it, I can be numb to the uncomfortable and painful emotions a goodbye is triggering in me.

“I never feel sad until a half hour before the person I know leaves. It hurts too much, so I numb myself to the pain, block it out, and refuse to think about it until it’s actually happening. – Faith” 
Misunderstood, page 153-154

Some TCKs decide it’s not worth the pain to invest in relationships, especially if they know a goodbye is imminent – such as when they will be leaving soon, or the other person will. ‘Soon’ in this case could be anywhere from six months to two years.

“I didn’t want to devote myself to new friendships because I knew it would just be another goodbye at the end of the six months. – Eve”
Misunderstood, page 227

Many TCKs have a highly developed ability to connect superficially – to be warm and friendly and welcoming – while holding back their deeper selves. There is great vulnerability in sharing my whole self when I know that the deeper a relationship gets, the more it will hurt when the (inevitable) goodbye comes.

“I remember feeling ‘popular’ but looking back, the majority of my friendships were quite shallow and superficial. I did not open myself up to the different possible friendships I could have had. I did not properly invest time or emotions in my ‘friends’. I was prepared to say goodbye to those people from day one. – Siyin” 
Misunderstood, page 128

Other TCKs dive deep into relationships as quickly as possible because they don’t know how long they have. This can create friction outside non-international circles, as they may come across as too eager, or be labelled as too intense.

“I would tell people about my life story and my grief and how much I missed Ecuador and my friends, and get that ‘glazed over eyes’ reaction… – Kendra, 24”
Misunderstood, page 233

Whatever method a TCK develops to help deal with the emotional stress of goodbyes, the commonality is that this is an essential survival skill for them. The goodbyes and the losses that go with them can be very overwhelming to a child, especially because it is the only experience they know.

Empathy for the overwhelmed child

Imagine you are 9 years old, and every year of your life you have said goodbye to a close friend, and had to make a new friend. In your world, friends only last a year or two. Is it really worth the effort this time?

Imagine you are 13 years old, and you’ve learned the skill of being warm and friendly and fitting into yet another new circle of friends, but you doubt it’s possible to be truly known by any one person. Am I going to be lonely forever?

Imagine you are 17 years old, your best friend is moving to another country, and this time you’re desperate not to lose them. You think about all the ways to stay in touch and plan around time zones, trying hard to ignore the sinking feeling that it won’t be the same.

How hopeful would you feel, as you look ahead?

Every child’s experience is different, but the weight of having to keep building new friendships, and negotiating long-distance friendships, is something most TCKs experience to some degree.

Losing friends hurts – and that’s okay

The best first step for helping TCKs, especially when they are young, is to validate feelings of loss. Instead of saying “Don’t worry, you’ll make new friends,” it is far more helpful to say “You’re right, this is really hard. It won’t always feel this way, but right now it’s totally okay to feel sad or angry.” Instead of telling them things you hope will make them feel better, ask them questions that invite them to share how they feel right now. Rather than telling them all the ways they can stay in touch thanks to the internet, listen as they talk about all the in-person activities they will miss sharing with their friend.

Listening to a child’s hurt is HARD – it’s painful to hear! But it is one of the greatest gifts we can offer them. Listening well says “I see you. I hear you. The way you feel is valid. You’re allowed to be sad, and you’re allowed to tell me about it.”

The truth is that losing friends hurt – and that’s okay. We hurt because we’re losing something that matters. It’s a good thing to attach to someone enough that it hurts to lose them. None of us can ‘fix’ the pain of losing a friend. I can’t change that this friend is moving away, or that our company is moving us away, or any of the circumstances that cause a child the pain of loss. I can’t fix it. But every time I talk to groups of TCKs about this, they share that they don’t actually want someone to fix it. They know it can’t be fixed – and they don’t like adults acting as if it can be. They just want someone (especially their parents) to listen to them, and say it’s okay to be sad.

And that is something we can do.

The reality of most TCK childhoods is that there really are a lot of goodbyes. Thankfully there are a lot of resources available now to help parents coach and care for their children through this (I’m thinking especially of TCK Training and all of Lauren Wells’ books). But overall, the important thing to keep in mind is that we are not erasing - can not erase - all those goodbyes. They are real. They happened. They will continue to happen.

The healthiest thing a TCK can learn, and the healthiest lesson those who care for them can teach, is how to process the emotions that go along with goodbyes - so we don’t have to hide, don’t have to run, don’t have to avoid. We can choose to live free, knowing we’ll be okay if and when the next goodbye comes.

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An earlier version of this post appeared on misunderstood-book.com