Resilience — Stories

My first relationship started in Costa Rica. Running around the city, beach trips, endless sunny days. It was perfect…

In Love, Adulthood, Better Late Than Never, Bouncing Back, Moving, Relationships, Resilience, WomanBy Molly Kaitlin (From Peru, Costa Rica, Minnesota & Florida. Living in Tennessee)24 March 2021TCK, TCK TOWN, Third Culture Adult, third culture adult, culture, story, identityComment

Khadija Gbla's FGM Story Is Changing Africa & Australia

Her voice and her work have shown her local community how important it is to embrace cultural diversity, diverse opinions and outlooks…

Black Lives Matter, Africa, North America, Racism, Resilience, Woman, HeroesBy Ava Senaratne (From Sri Lanka, Dubai & Melbourne. Living in Sydney)13 January 2021TCK, TCK TOWN, third culture adult, black lives matter, Arab, Africa, USA, AmericaComment

Omar Ibn Said and American Slavey in Arabic

It is devastating to think that West Africa lost a highly-regarded member of their community, famous for his literacy in Arabic, to North Carolina, where it was illegal for a slave to even be literate in English…

Black Lives Matter, Africa, North America, Racism, ResilienceBy Danish Khan (From Melbourne, Perth, Karachi & Islamabad. Living in Karachi)9 January 2021TCK, TCK TOWN, third culture adult, black lives matter, Arab, Africa, USA, AmericaComment

Nights in Goryeo

There are Nights in Goryeo when the city never sleeps, and I lie awake in my bed…

How I Learned Nomadic Resilience

I learned at a very young age that flights get canceled, baggage gets lost, water and electrical outages are a part of life, not everything can be purchased in a grocery store, military coups happen, and sometimes one gets evacuated from war zones. My primary hack is to make the journey part of your experience...

ResilienceBy Anthony Arcis (From America, London, Istanbul, Bangkok & Toronto (mainly). Living in The Philippines)29 May 2019TCK, Tck, TCK TOWN, survival, serial expat, Third World, physical resilience, psychological resilience, flight delays, immigration, preparedness, accept, flexibility, adaptability, positive outlook, minimalismComment

Past the Point of Resilience

I never thought that this change I loved so much would betray me. When my dad started talking, tears ran down my face as I soaked in his words and tried to make sense of what he was saying. We were leaving Peru in three days. No one in Peru knew we were leaving...

ResilienceBy Molly Kaitlin (From Peru, Costa Rica, Minnesota & Florida. Living in Tennessee)27 April 2019TCK, TCK TOWN, Tck, Peru, Minnesota, Tennessee, suitcase, change, goodbye, moving, culture shock, home Comments

The Floods Are Coming

The storm was forecast to be a 10 out of 10 in severity, authorities had warned. Jokes about the apocalypse arriving rang between the desks. I’m sure I even heard someone blaming Trump for the huge weather event that was going to hit...

ResilienceBy Ava Senaratne (From Sri Lanka, Dubai & Melbourne. Living in Sydney)5 January 2019TCK, TCK TOWN, Tck, Melbourne, Sri Lanka, storm, trishaws, non-storm, TCK training, took, perspectives, emergencyComment

Sunny Side Down

I find it hard to reach out to my colleagues. In my Australian culture, grief is largely seen as a private affair, punctuated by long and absent silences. Needing a national ‘Are you OK’ day says a lot about us, and how hard it is to have conversations outside socially acceptable boundaries...

Separating Across Tokyo.

Schedules fill with meetings across Tokyo. I might pass through 80 stations on the subway in a day. My mind wanders on the rides. I look at ads and listen to music and the flashes of light on the glass turn into mirrors in the dark tunnels. I can almost see you standing next to me in the reflections like you did when you lived here.

Resilience, FriendshipsBy Paul Kennedy (From The Western Pacific, South East Asia, Europe & Alaska. Living in Tokyo)27 December 2017mate, together, TCK, separation, subway, work, staff, Tokyo, friendship, TCK TOWN, third culture kid, stations, tck, friends Comment

The Richest Poor Man

Born in 1928 in the small village of Bantva near Joona Garh, Gujrat (modern day India), Edhi had the ground shifting beneath him from a very young age...

ResilienceBy Danish Khan (From Melbourne, Perth, Karachi & Islamabad. Living in Karachi)23 December 2017TCK, TCK TOWN, Tck, Bantva, Gujrat, Edhi, Pakistan, Karachi, welfare, shelters, orphanages, cradle, foundation, humanity, meaning, happiness Comment

Dear 2008 You

It is 2008, and our conversation is yet to ride the waves of the internet. Like a bird that seeks to beat a fast-moving train, it is getting harder to pick up where we left off. No matter how furiously we scurry and scribble through each page, our letters tarry to the finish line, lagging three months behind, responding to a stadium that has long emptied.

Better Late Than Never, ResilienceBy Farah Beaini (Living in the land of the Kulin nation)20 December 2017Better Late Than Never, Resilience, TCK TOWN, Tck, tck, TCK, third culture kid, culture, conversation, home, home country, travel, country Comment

Teach A Man To Fish

The three of us viewed the crowded steam venting streets being worked for subway tunnels as an industrial Disneyland. Men swarmed up and down bamboo scaffolding. We snaked our ways along the queues for the old red double decker buses that bumped their way around Kowloon...

Assemble Yourself

What is there to fear? There is no place for fear when this world doesn’t fear for you.

Remember when you were from Yugoslavia?

So what happens when one day you wake up on the other side of the world and the place you come from no longer exists?