News TCKID

By Angela

Last Saturday, I went to the first meetup from the Taiwan TCK group not really knowing what to expect. We ended up talking for four hours, laughing so hard the management had to tell us to tone it down and hugging everyone goodbye at the MRT station.

Judy, Angelica, Chi and Zoe

Afterwards, we all decided that we benefitted from the group and the meetings would go on monthly in the future. We wanted to reach out to more people who find themselves between cultures to join our group, whether or not they are the typical TCK like Zoe or an someone who found herself drifting away from her home culture later in life, like Chi.

I’ve started this blog as a way of continuing the conversation online. It’s also a way for us to keep in touch between meetings and perhaps arrange additional meetups for fun times like movies or going to the beach B-)

Read more about our first meeting…

The more the four of us talked, the more experiences and attitudes we seem to have in common. And I know on some level that is an illusion because we are all quite different people, I’m sure, and don’t really know each other very well (although Judy and Chi are friends from before). Still, it is nice to air viewpoints and feelings that would not be understood or affirmed by most of our friends not because they don’t love us enough or care enough, but because, perhaps, there is a part of us that is not <i>accessible</i> to them.

Without being too dramatic about it, I think belonging to two (or more!) cultures is a gift, but it is a gift that extracts a penaulty. The penaulty is a nagging sense of never fitting in completely in your environment. You can’t go home if home is not a singular entity. For most of us, most of the time, this loneliness is a managable background presence, easily lost in the noise of the other annoyances of everyday life. But for some of us, sometimes, it balloons, perhaps under a stressful situation or depression into a sense of alienation that is all too clear and painful to ignore.

I hope that forming friendships and sharing experiences with other TCKs, we can laugh and commiserate about the negative aspects of being a TCK and celebrate the positive aspects too.