What my sabbatical taught me: Snapshot #3

Independence Arch, Accra, Ghana

Identity is fluid and so is home… The past is only a piece of who you are today…You can make home anywhere because you are at peace with yourself… Own all the invisible layers that people don’t get to see and create a beautiful home for yourself — physically, metaphorically.
— Tayo Rockson

With my parents being from Ghana and Kenya respectively, I have extended family that spans the U.S., Europe, and Africa as families have migrated. It’s fascinating to have such a wide variety of cultures and backgrounds within a family, and it’s a reflection of my mosaic-like cultural identity. Ever since I learned the term “Third Culture Kid” (TCK) in college, I’ve deeply resonated with the term.

TCKs are people who were raised in a different culture from their parents' or the culture of their country of nationality, and also live in a different environment during a significant part of their child development years*. Between my parents' intercultural marriage and moving multiple times within the African continent and the US before I was 9 years old, I’ve never really felt like I neatly fit anywhere culturally.

 

During my sabbatical I met up with one of my European cousins in Spain, and I had a chance to reconnect with my family in Ghana. Not having grown up with extended family, I found it nourishing to experience myself as part of a larger whole. Being outside the US, I also found more freedom to expand in how I experience my identity. What can I say but that as Americans we are very American, deeply shaped by living in a country that is often the focus as a world power, and no doubt those aspects of my cultural identity come to light when I travel. I do find, however, that through travel I experience more richly the other parts of my identity that I miss while in the U.S. The parts of me that I experience as “in between” and that I very rarely feel a sense of connection with others on. It’s not that while traveling I wholly experience a sense of belonging, but rather I feel the chance to light up different parts of who I am. I am continually learning how to embrace my disparate elements and make a home within myself.

*From Van Reken, Ruth E.; Pollock, David C.; Pollock, Michael V. (2017). Third Culture Kids: The Experience of Growing Up Among Worlds (3rd ed.). ISBN 978-1857884081.

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What my sabbatical taught me: Snapshot #4

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What my sabbatical taught me: Snapshot #2