To the Adult Third Culture Kid
There was a time when we didn’t have a name. When we were forever told to pull up our boot straps and get on with life.
There was a time when we thought we were the only ones, traveling solo in our passport countries, not knowing how to put words to our longings, how to verbalize our pain.
There was a time when reentry seminars were non-existent and it was assumed that we would arrive in our passport countries without incident, when folks said to us “Aren’t you glad to be back home” and we nodded assent, but a part of us shriveled inside. We would assimilate and no one would ever know that part of us that shaped and molded us from birth.
There was a time when we failed to understand that throughout history, God has used place.
There was a time when we laughed at the thought that we had losses, we brushed away any grief. “That’s ridiculous” we sniffed! Other’s have far more losses. Others are far worse off. But then we faced one too many moves and in the back of our minds the whisper of losses began to shout.
And then a man named Dave Pollock came into the picture. And we learned that we were not alone, that there were so many like us. And it was okay to have a name. It didn’t label us as an infection, it gave credibility to who we were and how we had lived. We were real. We could relax and begin to thrive.
Today in her Painting Pictures series on Third Culture Kids, Rachel Pieh Jones features a tribute to Dave written by an adult third culture kid. It moved me deeply as I thought about this man who cared to find out more of what went into the life of the third culture kid, cared enough that he made it his life’s work. I urge you to head over to Djibouti Jones to read Tribute to a Pioneer.
“It’s hard to narrow down what Dave did for those of us TCKs who grew up before all the variety of help there is now, the understanding, the seminars. Dave was the pioneer. For so many of us, he was the first one who helped us find our name. We could accept being TCKs as a rich gift, while at the same time acknowledging the losses it had brought us. ” from Tribute to a Pioneer
