Finding spaces of belonging as adult Third Culture Kids (TCKs)
“Where are my people?”
A common experience among many third-culture people is trying to determine what it means to belong. This can show up in how TCAs approach relationships. Many TCKs grow up in transient spaces; if they are not moving then most of their friends or community likely will. As a result, into adulthood, they might find that many of their loved ones are spread across the globe. It can take a lot of skill and organization to maintain connection with them across time zones, borders, and long spans of time between physical visits.
When forming new friendships or intimate relationships, some may find that they develop deep connections quickly. Others avoid deep connections or disengage when someone gets too close in preparation for the seemingly inevitable parting.
Finding belonging among a community, a people that understand and accept you can also be difficult. Cultural rejection affects both personal identity and community belonging. So too does the struggle of finding those who understand transience and the experience of having lived across and between cultures. The question for many TCAs is often not whether they can successfully adapt to living among people with strong cultural roots, but whether they can find people they don’t have to adapt to. People with whom they can be, or discover, themselves in community.
“What feels like home?”
“Where is home?” can bring up a myriad of responses from TCAs. The idea that everyone has a stable, or single, location they call home is a common and wrong assumption (for TCKs/TCAs and many others). For many third-culture people, questions that are more salient might be: “Where have you called home before?” “What does home mean to you?” “What feels like home to you?” Home might look or feel like:
certain people (friends, relatives, other TCKs, those who share certain cultural identities)
foods
traditions and celebrations
places, items, pictures that evoke certain memories
acceptance
safety
connection to heritage
vocation and purpose
specific memories or experiences
sensory experiences (particular smells, tastes, physical sensations like humidity)
Most third-culture people certainly have a sense of home, but one often radically decoupled from notions of geographical location, singular cultural group, or national boundaries, allowing them to find or create home(s) in many places. It may also come with deep grief at the loss of home(s), communities, loved ones, languages, accents, and more. This can affect how they conduct themselves in new places, how they create or find what feels like home in this world, and how they react to life circumstances that ask them to either put down or tear up roots in a place.
What can therapy with TCKs/TCAs achieve?
Therapy can be a helpful space for TCAs not just to process their own identity but also their relationships and wider sense of belonging in the world. Some of the goals TCAs might bring to therapy in this are might include:
Coping with changes and transitions
Reclaiming the power to make choices and pursue their own desires
Being better understood by culturally/geographically rooted loved ones
Grieving lost connections, homes, and lives
Finding or creating a sense of home in oneself and/or one’s current place
Strengthening or balancing relationships with spread-out loved ones
Forming fulfilling friendships, partnerships, and other intimate relationships
These are just some of the ways that TCAs find support, growth, and healing in therapy as they continue to move through this world.
