“TCKs talk about home and belonging”
Are you a TCK? A third culture kid (TCK) is “a person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside the parents’ culture” (Pollock, 1999). This video explores how TCKs feel about home and where they belong.
Find more videos like this on Ali Jackson’s YouTube channel
Find more videos about TCKs here
Josh Gibson Media – “I think the hardest part is not the memories themselves, but it’s searching for the box of memories and realising how far under the bed it is hidden, and how far away that world has become. But Sometimes it’s important to remember, even if it hurts. It’s learning to let go, whilst not forgetting. Its learning that there was a time for that, and there is now a time for this. Holding on to the memories of a place once called home, and knowing things have changed since. And when no one else can understand, because no one else has seen. Its remembering that God understands, God has seen, he was there. He’s collected those memories, the good ones and the tough. And that…that’s more than ok, that is enough.”
Josh Gibson is a London-based content creator with an eye for detail and a passion to create. Check him out at his website –https://joshgibsonmedia.com/
HOME LYRICS
Boxed up in cars
All memories of ours
are on the go
Like footprints in snow
Autumn leaves change
But I stay the same
Green highways signs
Just wave goodbye
I’m tired of living on the road
I’m tired of leaving what I know
When will I find somewhere to call home
Is it a place or someone I don’t know
Where will I get my last set of keys
Tell me to stay without
without always leaving
My hearts content lies
Left in cement
It was permanent
Or so you said
Same stars, same sky
Same moon at night
But its different
‘Cause you’re not in it.
I’m tired of leaving what I know
I’m tired but now I gotta go
When will I find somewhere to call home
Is it a place or someone I don’t know
Where will I get my last set of keys
Tell me to stay without
without always leaving
Wishing on shooting stars
To know, to stay, to be just where you are
Am I close or are you far
‘Cause miles are like galaxies apart
Right now I have no where to call home
It may be a place or someone I hope
These will not be my last set of keys
Wish I could stay but now
Now I’m leaving
“The first year I came to this country, I swallowed down everything I had ever known and it slid down my throat into the darkness of secrets, or maybe just things nobody wanted to know. Either way I was empty, ready for the sunshine and breeze of this new world to wrap me up in a whirlwind strong enough to block out the rest. I should’ve known better, but somehow I still thought it would be that easy, that I would just keep my old secrets and build a new framework of identity and slide myself into it without losing too much. The first year I came to this country, I forgot everything I had ever learned and discovered a darkness of secrets inside of me big enough to block out the rest, but I lost too much.
In the end I found the pieces I needed, I dredged up my past and did not let it be forgotten. Instead I merged the old and the new together, weaving the different threads into a tangled mess of knots behind the scenes that nobody wanted to know about. I managed the chaos as carefully as walking on a black-night path except this time there was nobody to tell me how to do it with confidence and everybody was there to see when I tripped over the stump and landed in the thorns. Still, I wrapped my cloth around me like a bright mask or a new skin and when my new friends poked holes in it they discovered the whirling dances of a different country underneath, so they named me after my mix of colours and I blurred them all into something resembling stability. In the end I always knew that every story I told had holes and half-truths, but when I put them together they stacked into the pieces I needed to keep going so I held my chin high and taught myself confidence.
Sometimes, still, strangers ask questions. They see me and notice the blurred edges of my names, they catch glimpses of the holes in my skin and they wonder if I am really who they think I am. Mostly I reach into my jar of stories and I swirl the choices around and pick a truth to give them, something to cover up the things they don’t really want to know about. But sometimes I toss my head and laugh, unfurl the bright colours into a banner that declares – I am /never/ who you think I am – because I am not even who I think I am and I’m certainly not who I say I am and who am I anyway? Sometimes I spin in a dance they’ve never seen before and I tell them this too is me, sometimes I write them a poem full of foreign languages and can’t be bothered to interpret it. Sometimes, I am too much for them and I do not care because these are the pieces I need to make sure I don’t lose too much and the confusion of one stranger is a small price to pay for the gift of being complicated and confident.
You can’t catch me, I say, whirling away in a blur of secrets and stories colourful enough to block out the rest.
This year I met a stranger who tried. A stranger who chased after my trail of contradictions and picked up every half-truth I dropped along the way, came up to me with arms full of gathered pieces and told me – look I’ve found such a beautiful mess – as if the tangled knots of my underneath could ever be called beautiful. Messy, yes. I know my stories are messy, I know when my colours are spinning around me sometimes they stain the ground rainbow and I don’t know how to clean it up. But I held up the secrets I had hidden away in the darkness and discovered a mosaic of stained mess that even this country has chosen to name as art, and I wondered why it took a stranger to see that this too could be beautiful. Either way, I guess I was ready for the things nobody wanted to know to become the things I could choose to say, and I added them into my jar of stories imbued with every shred of confidence I have taught myself. After all, who else could show me how to wrap myself up in the sunshine and breeze of a new world without losing the pieces of my history that I needed, how to laugh at the edge of the night-dark and stand up to try again over and over until the blur of my stories swirled with confident colours? There was nobody there but me and the watching world.
So I built my secrets into a mosaic, turned the tapestry of my stories upside down and inside out to show the chaos, stacked my names into the holes of my half-truths and called it brave. Beautiful. A new kind of confident, a bold dance in the middle of the street with eyes flashing and feet stomping and hands clapping rhythms they learned somewhere far away and long ago, somewhere I cannot return but will not forget.
I’m not a line, I say these days. I’m a circle, looping back into myself like a repeating eight of infinity, an endless beautiful mess.”
Background audio is Turning Page by Sleeping At Last – listen here
This is how it starts
A little girl, too young to understand,
Told she is leaving behind an apartment
For an adventure, and she is glad.
Too glad to ask questions.
This is the middle, the
Whole entire story really
Dust and heat and foreign languages,
Friends who look different and
The little girl learns so many things
But it all comes down to this
Nothing ever stays the same, nothing
Ever lasts forever.
This is how it ends
A little girl, too old to forget
Is told she is leaving behind her world
For a new one and she is shattered.
Too shattered to protest.
I guess this is the real
Ending though
When the little girl walks
Onto the plane and flies away
Back to the world of
Apartments and becomes
Someone new, someone different,
Someone called
Me.
By Ghanaperu
Other poems by Ghanaperu:
You’re Invited, You Know
TCK Syndrome
The purity of the air after rainfall –
The sacred smell of sandalwood
Wafting down from the hilltop shrines
Reminds me of something.
My deadweight soul, flapping with airline tags,
Lies gasping, dusted with the residue of long years
Lettered ‘Fragile’ and ‘This Way Up’
Entreating those that handle it to be careful:
To see it safely on its way to wherever it’s going.
Coat-hangers strewn on the unmade bed,
The unwashed floor, the weary bags,
The cluttered tabletops
Which will perhaps retain traces of my having been here
When I am gone:
A few fingerprints maybe,
Scattered fibres from my clothes
Or crumbs of what I’ve eaten.
Otherwise I’ll be on my way
Like the breath in my lungs
And the black blood rushing from my hidden heart
And the voice of Winter groaning in the pipes
And the hissing gas of the stove
And all the unsaid words and murdered thoughts
Bleeding in the sink of my mind
Incognito down the street, keys clinking in my pocket
With the tumbling leaves and the frantic ghost of the city
To a new address.
And maybe I’ll see you again,
But we both know it won’t be the same.
I’ll twiddle my new keys and feel my chains
As though I’m my own jailer.
Because I don’t recognise myself anymore.
Author Unknown (if you have any information regarding the author please contact us using the form)
Do not pity me
And moan over how far away I am.
I already know.
I’m already aware.
And your sympathy sounds like nothing
But words.
Do not claim to understand
That you know what I’m going through
Because you left your child
At a camp five hundred miles away
For a whole summer.
Do not tell me how you cried
The day you left your child
At college in another state.
My parents left me
And flew away
A thousand
Five thousand
Ten thousand
Miles.
I thank you for your prayers.
I thank you for your concern.
But understand:
You cannot know;
You do not know;
Until you have truly lived
This life.
I don’t cry tears.
I don’t mourn all day.
I came to terms
With the reality of my life
Many years ago;
And I am not heartless
Because of that.
Don’t ask me when I will see
My parents again.
If I asked you that question,
Would you really be able to answer?
Maybe I can answer,
But even if I can’t,
Do not respond,
“Oh, that must be so hard.”
This is my life.
This is all I know.
So next time you see me
And ask about my family:
Do not think I am heartless.
Do not claim to understand.
Do not pity.
A TCK documentary exploring the world of seven siblings in Ghana, as they adjust to a new culture and wrestle with the questions about home and belonging that all third culture kids can relate to.
Featuring the Gelatt family, missionaries through ABWE. Filmed in November of 2018. No profit is being made from this film.
Soundtrack created by Spencer Parkhurst – check him out on SoundCloud here.
Filmed and edited by Hannah Mathews – check her blog out here.
Watch more documentaries about TCKs here.
We’ll unpack our suitcases
Begin to embrace this
Unfamiliar place so
Different from what we’ve known
We’ll learn and go exploring
We know our best stories
Happen well outside of
Our comfort zone
We can make anywhere home
Constant changing is our sameness
Uprooting is our routine
We’ll bloom in winter
Our resilience is our stability
I am all the places that changed me
I am all the cities that made me me
I am all the people who named me
Home is wherever I happen to be
Not a number on a street
I’ll send you a letter
We’ll compare the weather
I need to borrow languages to tell you how I feel
You’ll listen like a true friend
Like when we jumped in the deep end
We’ve moved six times since then
That’s how you know that it’s real
Constant changing is our sameness
Uprooting is our routine
We’ll bloom in winter
Our resilience is our stability
I am all the places that changed me
I am all the cities that made me me
I am all the people who named me
Home is wherever I happen to be
Not a number on a street
I’m moving again
Soon you’ll hear it in my accent
Uprooting again
Daydreaming in past tense
I’ll unpack my suitcases
I promise I’ll embrace this
Unfamiliar place so
Different from what I’ve known
I promise I’ll be open
Won’t bury my emotions
My heart’s caught between oceans
But I can make anywhere home
We can make anywhere home
I am all the places that changed me
I am all the cities that made me me
I am all the people who named me
Home is wherever I happen to be
We are all the places that changed us
We are all the cities that shaped us
We are all the people who named us
Home is wherever we’re known and we’re loved
Not a number on a street
Just wanted to explain two lyrics.
“We are all the people who named us” — When you are invited into a new culture, you are often given a new name. In Oniyan (Bassari)in Senegal, there are ordinal names meaning “first son” or “second daughter” that tell your place in the family. In Southeast Senegal I am “Ingama.” In Dakar, I am “Khady” which is short for Khadija, but works for me because it sounds like “Haddie.” In the US, various groups of friends have given me different nicknames, which is different than cultural names but still, in the act of naming there is affection, a sense of relationship, and belonging. And of course, my parents named me Hadassah, and my family is a part of me as well.
“I am all the people who named me” is another way of saying my identity has been shaped by all the people who are important to me.
“Constant changing is our sameness” — sameness being the shared identity of all third culture kids.
Other original songs by Haddie Grace
What keeps you here
I ask my heart
Stranger in a strange land, so white, so clean
These fields in June, she laughs
Your red-stained fingers
A taste of heaven beneath each leaf
And this sky expansive and clear
I wonder why, my heart, you hold
Steady on small delights after
Months of sifting memories
Under grey skies
Testing each day as we
Walk out into this not-all-bad
But still foreign place
I am young, says she –
A child who races, explores,
Finds beauty even here
And welcomes the new, trusting
Inviting sweet existence even
Within this space of not belonging
I hold out for
Simple Wonders;
Encounters with the Presence
Crouched amongst the rows I ponder this
Sifting through the too-soon and the already-past
I find it.
The ripest, the reddest berry
Welcomes me into the perfect balance
Proves to me that
Yes, child, even here, even you,
Have abundant peace.
The taste and texture of now.
By Bree Becker, a third culture kid from Rwanda and Kenya who now lives in Oregon, USA.
