Most 'Third Culture Kids' struggle to find a sense of belonging and ownership in their country of residence - they feel like a foreigner, not a local. I have experienced this in every country I have lived in since leaving home twelve years ago - Norway, America, Canada, Thailand, Finland and New Zealand...everywhere but England...well, to rephrase London. Within the UK, I have lived in Derby, Nottingham and Harpenden over the past six years and only truly feel at home in London. When I think of England, I think of the feeling that London gives me.
London has been my gateway to the world since I was a child...it was from Heathrow airport that I boarded my first flight to India back in 1986 and I think the association of travel - new and exciting adventures waiting around the corner - that helps this vast city feel like a home. I never feel trapped or isolated here...it almost encourages travel with its incredible transport network within and beyond the city and the affordable, low cost airlines that take you to every corner of the globe. Anything is possible...no place too remote to reach.
Londoners get a bad reputation for being unfriendly and maybe it was the one grumpy cabby someone encountered while here for a weekend trip but I continue to find people accommodating and helpful. It is true that we may not know our neighbours by name but I love the fact that privacy is respected here - the anonymity it provides. It is so easy to strike up a conversation at the bus stop or at the pub...yes, it may be something as trivial as "talking about the weather" but it is two human beings reaching out for each other - making the effort.
Heidi Sand-Hart was a missionary kid who spent the majority of her childhood moving from one exotic location to another. Like all TCKs she struggled to find a sense of belonging and a place to call home. The most tangible results of her struggles is the book Home Keeps Moving, which serves as an homage to the global nomadic lifestyle and all the good and bad that goes with it. It is an honest, moving book that encourages all TCKs to do the hard work necessary to find their sense of belonging in the world.
Heidi was interviewed by Susan Adkins, a freelance writer for Parenting While Abroad.
You write very honestly about your experiences as a TCK. What made you decide that this was a book you had to write?
Basically it came about as a result of my search for more personal literature on the topic of Third Culture Kids (TCKs) and the discovery that there were hardly any books out there. I started processing my own TCK journey more than 10 years ago and begun writing Home Keeps Moving then. The task was too overwhelming at the time but as I’ve gotten older, I have realised how exciting, colourful and unique my own childhood was and the desire to share that with others has progressively grown.
What is the main message that you hope readers get from your book?
It is my hope that people with traditional upbringings will understand TCKs a little better and that I play a little part in giving validation to my fellow TCKs (in many ways, a forgotten tribe). I hope TCKs will realise that it’s okay to have an unusual upbringing and not know where we come from or belong! There are many positives to be gained from a cross-cultural upbringing but I‘ve had to convince people of that fact over the years (and still do). Many people expect TCKs to have roots planted the same way as them (in one house, city or country) and view our restlessness as a sign of weakness. I disagree completely. The same logic applied would be to tell someone who has lived in one place their whole life to “move to the opposite side of the planet and relocate every year or two forever”…I can’t see too many reacting positively to that suggestion so why should it work the other way around?
How has your family reacted to this book?
Very positively – my family is incredibly proud of my achievement and my parents are currently distributing Home Keeps Moving in Finland for me. They encouraged me while I was writing it and have been fantastically supportive. My brother Ben provided me with a brilliant contribution for the book and is a very proud older brother.
How has faith played a role in your work and in your writing?
A lot of thought went into how my opinions would come across to the reader and I suppose that was predominantly because I didn’t want to offend people. I made a great effort to take ownership for my views and tried to convey them clearly. My faith helped drive me on in difficult times and gave me the self-belief I needed.
If you could recommend one thing adults can do to ease a child’s transition during a move abroad, what would it be?
Include them in the decision-making process…let them know that their feelings are important and allow them to speak freely. Encourage them to talk openly and focus on the many positives of living abroad whether they be beach holidays, eating out more or camel rides in the desert.
Did you learn anything from writing this book and what was it?
I learnt how hard it is to write a book!! That finishing your manuscript is just the beginning – the process is long, difficult and requires a lot of mental energy and patience.
What was the hardest part of writing this book?
I touched on it earlier…trying to weed out the potential of people misunderstanding me. Being ultra careful to clearly communicate my point and hopefully not offend people in the process! I didn’t want to come across as “preachy” but simply share how life has been from my perspective. It is a very hard balance to obtain. It was also difficult being open and vulnerable, knowing that I was granting the world access to my soul. I worried about how it would be received and still cringe every now and then but I think if you’re going to write your story, it has to come from your heart.
Your husband grew up in a New Zealand suburb. How have his experiences and childhood memories changed your perspective of your own life as a TCK?
It hasn’t changed my perspectives of my own TCK upbringing as much as acutely highlight the differences. It’s nice to see the security and enjoyment that my husband gets from having a very stable upbringing – his mum still lives in the same house – and he is constantly in touch with his childhood friends. I suppose some TCKs could be saddened by the losses or feel jealous by such stability but Paul & I have shared many conversations about the differences and what that means for us as a couple. I am just as secure in my “uprooted” upbringing as he is in his traditional one...
Continue reading: here
"The author’s life as a child of missionary parents may seem like the fulfillment of a traveler’s dream. It quickly becomes apparent, however, that although Heidi Sand-Hart found her frequent overseas moves to be enriching and sometimes exhilarating, she was also left with a pervasive sense of loneliness and a confused cultural identity.
Home Keeps Moving is an exploration of Heidi’s past. It evaluates the effects that her nomadic upbringing has had on her adult life. Her reflections range from a light-hearted checklist on how to tell if one is a third culture kid (a good indicator is having a passport but not a driver’s license) to a heartbreaking recollection of a thoughtless individual on another continent throwing away her birth certificate, teddy bear and baby clothes.
The author seems to come to a certain peace with her history by the end of the book. She and her husband continue her parents’ work of helping the world’s less fortunate, a lifestyle that involves frequent relocations..."
Read full review here.
Book Review by Jennifer Reischel, taken from: Enter Singapore
Home Keeps Moving
By Heidi Sand-Hart
McDougal Publishing 2010
"You own two or more passports. You boarded airplanes before you could walk. And you feel strange surrounded solely by ethnic majorities. If any of these statements ring a bell, you may well be a part of the third culture kids (TCK) phenomenon. Home keeps moving is the penned memoir of a childhood spanning continents, languages, school systems and multi-cultural friendships.
Heidi Sand-Hart’s journey is a touchingly personal account, and yet she stands as a universal voice for all of us who as youngsters knew more about training maids in the Far East than the latest MTV video clips. Combining diary format style writing with chapter headings on specific issues connected to the TCK syndrome generally works well, and is useful when wishing to refer back to certain observations at a later point in time..."
Continue reading: Enter Singapore
Looking for a book about third culture kids based on personal experience? In Home Keeps Moving, Heidi Sand-Hart shares her experience as a third culture kid. She wrote about how her life as a third culture kid and discusses issues many third culture kids face such as finding a sense of belonging and her search for a home. I asked her some questions:
Examiner: Trick question: Where are you from?
Everywhere and nowhere! My father is Norwegian, my mother Finnish, I was born in England and grew up in India, England and Norway. My parents met in London while working with the Asian community so my brothers and I were always surrounded by multiple nationalities and languages. Since leaving home, I have lived in USA, Canada, UK, Thailand and New Zealand (thus far!) and I’m now married to a New Zealander.
Examiner: How has being a TCK impacted your life? (positively and negatively)
Being a TCK has molded most aspects of my life. It was only when I became an ATCK that I realised the full extent of how I had been "ruined for the ordinary". By having such an exciting and varied upbringing, I struggle to find my place in this world and settle anywhere for more than a year or two. I feel like I am always passing through and don't perhaps commit as much as I could at times, to my current surroundings. Yet I love the knowledge gained and the ability to feel "at home" in the most bizarre corners of the globe; the ability to adapt quickly and relate to different cultures in an appropriate way. I have a strong desire to see more of this beautiful world and help as much as I can. There are so many positives to take from a TCK upbringing and if given the chance, I wouldn't change it for anything...
Read the full interview at: Examiner
Growing up is never easy – and there’s no shortage of literature aimed at analysing the finer points of teenage angst or determining what makes children tick and tock during those pivotal years of early development. But about when these challenges are compounded by the pressures of moving and living abroad?
The phenomenon of so-called Third Culture Kids (TCKs) is increasingly common in our globalised world, yet little writing hones in on the specific concerns of the nomadic tribes of children that have been uprooted and moved abroad, often multiple times and to multiple destinations, by their parents during their formative years of development.
Heidi Sand-Hart looks to give these Third Culture Kids a tool that they can use to relate and empathize with in her book “Home Keeps Moving”. Sand-Hart is a TCK herself, and and her autobiographical account invites others to validate their experiences and understand their own muddled emotions.
As the child of missionaries, a Norwegian father and a Finnish mother, she uses her many moves from England to India - with a touch of Norway in between - as an elongated illustration of the unique characteristics TCKs often develop and the frustrations they struggle to keep at bay.
In simple language she maps out her own journey across the big bad world, allowing her audience to stop at signposts and take note of the direction that she believes TCKs are often unknowingly wandering in: this way for difficulty in dealing with the abstraction of “home”, that way toward the complexities of calculating “loss”, and straight on ‘til morning toward the slow, creeping sense of grief that many battle to overcome.
Interlaced throughout the work are excerpts contributed by other Third Culture Kids who, using their hard-won hindsight, shed some light on the many skirmishes they fought with having such a mobile lifestyle during childhood, and what happened when it was time to make their own decisions about the future.
Sand-Hart doesn’t pretend to have all the answers, and she certainly isn’t an author that force-feeds her audience opinions they’d be hard-pressed to swallow. Rather, she’s incredibly open and honest about her own emotions, and in being so, from time to time the book takes on a self-reflective and confessional quality. This is particularly evident in the reactions she had to a life that was specific to missionary children, an element that seems to have inspired a great moral dilemma and a delayed period of “rebellion”.
Some Third Culture Children may not be able to identify with these particular issues, but otherwise, she paints her own picture in the soft but helpful light of subjectivity, and helps others to take up a brush of their own....
Read the full review at: http://www.expatarrivals.com/
Reviewed by Carol Kingston-Smith
Home keeps moving. A glimpse into the extraordinary life of a “Third Culture Kid” by Heidi Sand-Hart is an engaging narrative of a 1980’s child-hood spent negotiating several different countries and the attendant array of cultures, homes, schools and relationships. Heidi, a “missionary kid” (MK), with parents from different European countries, weaves perceptions and reflections of her own experience in a kaleidoscope world of changing realities in and out of contributions from other “Third Culture Kids” (TCK’s). As Ruth E.van Reken, co-author of Third Culture Kids: Growing up among Worlds, helpfully points out in her forward to Heidi’s book; the TCK experience is one which has resonance and meaning in a rapidly globalising world, where mobility and cultural interchange has increasingly replaced static, monocultural lifestyles. Essentially, this is a book which presents the joys and challenges, frustrations and successes of lives and identities negotiated and re-negotiated in transit lounges, passport queues and baggage reclaim -those places which are neither here nor there but somewhere between worlds. I call this the territory of the expanding identity.
As a TCK myself - albeit one with a far less complex history - I can readily identify with the issues Heidi raises: the mixed loyalties, the acceptance of difference (and the attendant anger and dismay at those who don’t), the restless search for identity, feelings of rootlessness and yes, there is also the undercurrent of tidal grief which ebbs and flows through memories and experiences and friendships come and gone. Heidi and others share their struggles of faith and are real about the questions and the rebellions as well as the potential strengths afforded by their “untraditional” childhoods. One catches a glimpse of both the potentials and the pains of identities forged in the fissures between times and places (and for some TCKs these are multiple). How these identities flourish, it seems to me, depends to what degree one can integrate an expanding identity and let go of ones idealised identities…however many they may be! To embrace the reality of our complex fusion of worlds and peoples, cultures and values and perceive ourselves, not as “broken reflections” but rather as part of an expanding representation of what it means to be human is perhaps the deepest gift a TCK has to receive and make sense of. It is, as such, a gift to be shared; a gift of grace in a globalised world where increasingly integrity and wisdom are needed to negotiate the kaleidoscope of hybrid identities. Heidi points us towards that path of grace and suggests that yes, it is possible to live fruitfully in the expanded middle, beyond the boundaries yet within them. If you listen deeply you may hear the subconscious plea which many TCK’s carry, in the words of a well known TCK, Salman Rushdie, “For God’s sake, open the universe a little more!”....
Read full review at: Oscar
BUY YOUR COPY OF HOME KEEPS MOVING NOW: http://www.amazon.co.uk/shops/heidisand-hart
"That unnameable something, desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World's End, the opening lines of "Kubla Khan), the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves."
"It is sometimes felt as a longing for a far off country, but not a particular earthly land which we can identify. Furthermore there is something in the experience which suggests this far off country is very familiar and indicative of what we might otherwise call "home". In this sense it is a type of nostalgia, in the original sense of that word. At other times it may seem as a longing for a someone or even a something. But the majority of people who experience it are not conscious of what or who the longed for object may be. Indeed, the longing is of such profundity and intensity that the subject may immediately be only aware of the emotion itself and not cognizant that there is a something longed for."
Deeply moving--literally!, | By | Haru |
I came across Heidi’s memoir only two weeks ago. Home Keeps Moving is about how her life as a Third Culture Kid (TCK) and Missionary Kid (MK) has shaped her identity and affected her life in ways many find the words to describe. I was immediately impressed. Not many people in their twenties write books based on their lives. Many wait until their forties or beyond before they feel they have enough to say. But Heidi has plenty to say. This book is theory in action. It as, as the Families in Global Transition conference likes to say ‘where research comes to life’. Indeed, Heidi was inspired by the work of Ruth van Reken and Dave Pollock and their seminal book, Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds.
In chapter three of 'Home Keeps Moving' (“Nothing Is Weird, Just Different”), I start off by saying "Life was relatively normal during my early years" (heavy emphasis on relatively) and just want to clarify that in fact those years were also very transient.
Fåberg, Norway
l Road, UK
and Cornwall. This is where Chapter Three in the book picks up so I need not say anymore...
