I came across your blog by pure chance, but I like coincidences in life as I have grown up in a ’similar’ situation to yours, born and bred in Italy, at the age of 16 I moved to england with my mother and 10 years on I am still, happily, here. However the abrupt change and at an age in which feeling ‘belonging’ was very important I still feel ‘half here, half there’, so although I don’t feel english I actually don’t feel wholly italian anymore. Till not long ago this dichotomy used to make me feel very uncomfortable but now, after completing my studies here in the UK and having met my other half, I am start to really appreciate the benefits of having grown up in this wat and I now consider myself an adopted Mancunian

I completely agree in the fact that my experience and appreciation of life and the diversity of cultures has been heightened thanks to the fact that I have lived ‘there and here’…

my blog ‘where do roots belong’ kinda tries to explore my feelings of wanting to feel belonging but also appreciating that I don’t need to feel anchored

It’s nice to find your blog!

You have a great blog

Just wanted to add that there is another website for TCK
http://www.denizen-mag.com/

Thanks
Sharon
Http://www.expats-moving-and-relcoation-guide.com

Anyway, one day at the dinner table my mother told me and my sister that “it wasn’t normal that we had no friends there”. There were other contributing factors (she was fed-up and in a bad mood for other reasons, so I kept my mouth shut), but it showed that even if a parent has spent decades overseas, if they haven’t grown up as a TCK there’s still a difference. An expat and an adult TCK aren’t the same thing. Even at the time I knew she was wrong – or at least that if it wasn’t normal, it was her fault and not mine. And maybe she wouldn’t have normally said it, but there’s always a reason people say things, even if they’re under stress or some other external factor. Basically it showed me that my parents don’t really get me and I don’t really see how that can change; 6 years after it happened, I still remember it very clearly.

Anyway, sorry about the rant, it’s just something that pisses me off from time to time still, and your comment about parents reminded me of it. As for your blog, despite the strange link I found the post, which was certainly an interesting read! Again it’s easy to think the grass is greener on the other side, but as you say, it’s only human to look back and wonder what if… I hate what ifs! But the choices you made back then you made for a reason, regardless of what you think today.

Thanks for pointing out those two other posts; I read one of them (Identity), which struck a multi-national chord. I’ll get to the other post shortly, but as you can possibly tell from my impressive response time, my real life is severely eating into my blogging life (er, time, I mean blogging time… I don’t have a life on the internet. Honestly.)

Yes, perfectly understandable to be afraid of change, even if the change you are fearing is the ‘normal’ for everyone else. I think what’s hardest for TCKs is that everyone tells them that their normal is wrong (often even their own parents!), so just make sure you’re making your decisions based on what’s actually right for you and not what others are telling you.

But yes, you are right about the grass being greener. Still, it’s hard to not look back and wonder… It’s only human.

Thanks for the compliment on my writing — it’s much appreciated. Not to promote my blog (seriously!), but there are two posts that you might find interesting, from a TCK/expat point of view. I won’t link to them because the links seem to be playing silly buggers, but if you look in the column at the right of my blog, they are called ‘Identity’ and ‘Where Does a Repat go to Die?’

Best wishes,
S.

I agree with your reasons as well, but there’s a (very) small part of me that says that one of the reasons I want to be mobile is because that’s what I’ve grown up with, and it’s just what I do. It’s what I know. So I don’t want to make that decision just because settling down is the unknown in this case and I’m afraid that it won’t be what I want in the end. If that makes any sense. I guess it’s kind of a fear of change – which is normal, it’s just kind of ironic that being mobile is what most people would consider to be change, whereas in this case it’s the other way around.

Then again (and this bit applies to you, me and pretty much everyone else on this planet), the grass is always greener on the other side. No matter what decision I take (assuming I get offered the job and have the choice), there will be times when I’ll look at what could have happened had I done the opposite and think that it would have been better than what I have. It applies to you as well – sure, you look back at what ‘could have been’, but really who’s to say it would have been better?

But then, I realised, I’ve did exactly that, chose place over career and came to regret it (http://potentialandexpectations.wordpress.com/2008/03/31/my-star-now-so-low-in-the-dark-night-sky/), so on second thought, I don’t know if that’s good advice at all…