Third Culture Kids Resources | Articles
Grief
Often TCKs push the grief and sadness away in order to move forward in the next stage of life or on to the next country. It is important to be able to talk about your grief and communicate what you are going through.
Sometimes using words or talking isn’t what helps an individual process what they are going through. I have used art to help me process my own grief and it allowed me to see a different perspective rather than just talking to someone.
“I think that learning how to grieve is a really important part of living life, because that is just something that happens in life, is that things change. Even little things that don’t seem traumatic can change and cause us grief. Something that has really helped me is stuff that my counselor has taught me; it’s a lot of just stopping and validating my feelings instead of pushing them away.”
Really good ideas and thoughts on how to say goodbye. Having “goodbye parties”, making picture books and going around saying goodbye to my favorite places, people and food helped me when I was moving to a different country, so I appreciate what the author has to say on this topic.
This article talks about loss and how one can go about sharing and talking about it. One thing that stood out to me is to acknowledge the validity of the TCKs’ pain. Any human should know that they are allowed to feel pain and that it should not be ignored or pushed aside.
I like this article because it gives an example of loneliness in every stage of life, from childhood to living overseas to aging. There are also some tips on how find connection in a season of loneliness.
