Category: Work

A Waiting Sea

Published on by Marilyn4 Comments

Over the long weekend we went to our beloved cottage in Rockport. While most holiday weekends provide us with rest and joy by the sea, this weekend was a work weekend. We have needed to do some renovations to our cottage for some time, and finally made the decision to move forward. Despite our own frequent moves and life changes, or maybe because of them, we were always dragging our feet about changing things in the cottage.

On the same week that I had major surgery, a contractor started in on the cottage, taking the pictures in our heads, and moving those pictures into three dimensional changes. We had not seen the result until this weekend. Instead of going to examine colors, textures, and concrete things like paint, sinks, tiles, and toilets, I boldly picked out everything online. I’m not usually that bold, but it was either that or wait a long time for the contractor to be free to do the work.

The results are beautiful. Creativity and craftsmanship went into every detail, and we are so pleased. Along with the pleasure came the chaos of renovation. Every picture off the wall, every item out of closets, and a layer of paint dust from floor to ceiling awaited us, threatening to overwhelm.

So, the weekend was a lot of hard physical labor, little rest, and no thought that just around the bend was the ocean in all her beauty.

It was the final day that we took a walk to sit by the sea. The sea had been there the entire time, barely a block away, but we didn’t see it. We worked while the sea waited for us.

The day could not have been more beautiful. A slight breeze, bright sun, the deep blue of the ocean and the glorious colors of spring merged together, the perfect setting. It was a moment I wanted to capture even as I knew that there is no way the one-dimensional picture would ever do justice to all I saw and felt. The exhaustion of physical labor, emotional and physical healing, and all around chaos of life broke, like the waves we watched breaking over the rocks.

We go about our busy, fractured lives and all the while nature waits for us, longing to bring us in to calm serenity. We clean, we gossip, we travel across worlds, we work, we work some more, we grow weary, we complain, we stress, we gossip more, we grow resentful, we yell at each other in various ways and on various platforms, we self-righteously judge others, we forget to be curious, we grieve and then pick ourselves back up, we age, our bodies hurt us, our families and friends annoy us – and all the while, the sea is waiting.

Waiting with its beauty, its reminders that long after we leave, it will still be there. Waiting with memories, waiting with solace, waiting – not necessarily with answers – but with peace that we may never find answers. Waiting as God waits – with patient persistence, always there when we finally arrive, exhausted, at its shores.

Success Redefined

Published on by Marilyn17 Comments

It has not been an easy week.

From difficulty with websites to difficulty with people, there are times when I would like life to be easier.

I’m sitting now at one of the two coffee shops in Rania, listening to Adele on repeat. Adele is easy on the ears, and I find myself gradually relaxing. Just before I left the university today, I spoke with two colleagues. “I don’t know how you do it” I said. “You face barriers in every single thing you do, and yet you don’t give up. You continue to face life with hope, joy, and laughter.”

This is the honest truth. Most of our Kurdish friends have life circumstances that are much more difficult than ours. Yet, I don’t hear them complaining. They face every day with far more joy and hope than I have. This is remarkable.

Much of what my husband and I face here is learning to redefine success. Success at our jobs in the United States was easy to define. We had deliverables and performance reviews. We had deadlines and targets. Our lives were both dictated by grants and all that goes into them: problem statements, proposed plan, graphs, evidence, tables, objectives, outcomes, conclusions, and attachments. All of it wove together to create a fairly concrete system of success. It was easy to know if we were doing our jobs well.

We have entered into a system where none of that exists; where we search and search and search to find grants that our university is eligible to apply for. Once we find those proverbial needles in haystacks, we search and search to see if they fit with our universities capability. The amounts of money are tiny. I was used to dealing in hundreds of thousands to a couple million dollars while my husband was used to dealing in millions. Now, we get excited when we see a grant for five thousand dollars. The smaller the grant, the more the funder seems to want in terms of paper work. So we end up spending as much time on writing a grant for five thousand dollars as we used to for a million.

There are times when we are convinced it is a losing battle. We set up our ‘to do’ lists, only to be outdone by lack of electricity, no internet and hard to describe infrastructure challenges.

Lately I’ve come to not try to redefine it. I’ve come to realize that success is an arbitrary losing battle. But faithfulness – that feels possible.

Success is defined by performance. Faithfulness is defined by constancy.

Success is defined by accomplishment. Faithfulness by devotion.

Success is defined by achievement. Faithfulness by commitment.

Success is defined by attaining a goal. Faithfulness by being true to a promise.

As long as we posed the question “How do we redefine success?” we were still coming out as losing. We felt like failures. But changing it to “Are we being faithful?” This feels helpful.

Maybe, just maybe, it’s not just us. Maybe there are others out there that are defining their lives by success when that leaves way too many people out of the equation. Maybe changing the paradigm to faithfulness would change society in indescribable ways. The person who is considered “mentally challenged”, the refugee with no job, the elderly who struggles to move in the morning, the one who is chronically ill, the child, the newborn…. how do they fit into our paradigms of success? How can our world be changed to include faithfulness or mere existence as markers of value?

So what does faithfulness mean to me at this moment? It means that I’ll not complain about lack of resources. That I will learn to love across cultural differences. That I will not rage about no internet. It means that I will be kind and honor others, that I will communicate in spirit and in truth, that I will love hard and pray harder, that I will love God and love others, that I will read, speak, and write words that honor God, that echo truth.  

“Just be faithful.”

Just be faithful – it’s something I’ve written about before, and so I’ll close with some words I wrote some time ago:

The words continue “Marilyn, I know you’re tired. Just be faithful. With my strength be faithful.” There is now a heavy rain falling and those of us on our way to work are leaving the subway. There is a puddle three inches deep on the platform right before the stairs, just deep enough to seep into shoes before going up to dark clouds and rain. I’m still tired but I walk with One who knows tired, with One who knows pain, with One who knows what it is to live out faithful in this beautiful, broken world.

Goodbye 250

Published on by Marilyn24 Comments

I get on the bus and swipe my Charlie Card, my ticket to discounted rides for the last ten and a half years. The bus driver nods as I say hello. There is room to sit down, but I stand. Central Square is a 12-minute walk from my house, but the bus is a wonderful back up when I’m running late. Or when it’s hot. Or when it’s cold. Or just because it’s there and it’s morning, and in the morning I’m a slow mover.

As I step to the side to hold onto a bar, I see that my bus friend is there. Bus friends are those special people that become a part of you and that cynics tell you are not your real friends, but you know better. This particular ‘friend’  works at Simmons College and we have seen each other a couple of days a week ever since I moved to Cambridge. We exchange greetings and I compliment her on a new hair cut. She laughs. It’s not the cut she says – it’s the glasses. “Ever since I got new glasses I’ve had compliments on my hair!” I laugh and say whatever it is, it’s a good look. We older women need each other. We know that our youth is gone. We know that our bodies and our faces bear the marks of life, sometimes well-lived, and sometimes just lived. We know that worship and attention go to the young, and so whatever we can give to each other, we give with abandon.

I get off at Central Square and walk down the steps to the subway. I do all these things without even thinking. They are second nature. I am now the person that strangers in the city approach – I earned the right to belong without even knowing I had earned it.

The subway ride is short. I know every station before we even get there. I know the pictures that form the tiles at Kendall/MIT. I know the coming out of the darkness and into the light of Charles MGH, the Charles River – beautiful, no matter the season. I know the sailboats on the river, their sails identifying the schools or organizations to whom they belong. I know the view of Boston from the subway. The subway moves on, going underground again to stop at Park Street. I get off and make my way up the stairs, into the light of Boston Common.

Park Street church, with its church bells that ring every day at noon, stands solid in front of me. Suffolk University School of Law is just down Tremont Street on the right. The gold-domed Statehouse stands tall up the hill to my left.

An ambulance bears down on the street, disrupting the early morning calm, as if reminding all of us that this is a city, and cities are never really still.

I begin to walk up Tremont Street, realizing that this city has become a part of me without me even realizing it. The beauty of the city with its walkability, its green spaces and its old charm is a part of me. The ugly of the city with some of its past abuses is now in my conscience. The good that I have been honored to be a part of through my job, watching community health centers and hospitals work with those most in need, is on my shoulders and in my body.  I know the names of some of the homeless. I know people who serve at the restaurants around me. I know the doormen at the Omni Parker Hotel. My husband would tell you that I know the manager of TJ Maxx, but I would quickly refute him.

From Tremont, I turn right at the Omni Parker, famous for Parker House Rolls and Boston Cream Pie, and continue down School Street, soon turning left onto Washington Street. I stop in front of the revolving doors of 250 Washington Street and take in the moment. I look at it hard. I entered these doors to work, first as consultant and then as full-time employee, in April of 2008. I have never stayed at a workplace for so long. Until this job, I never had to work through staying when the work gets mundane. I never had to work through bureaucracy and the patience it produces. I never fought so hard for programs to serve communities that I love as I did in this job. I never had the honor of working with community members who fight every day for their communities to get what they need. I have never laughed so hard or so much with colleagues. I have never shared myself the way I have with these colleagues, many who are now friends. I have never fought so hard, worked so hard, or felt so much joy with the results as I have these past ten years. It has been hard work and it has been such a privilege. I leave knowing what it is to quietly and persistently fight for what you love. We have been able to do work in the foreign-born Muslim community that I never thought possible. We now have a 5-year grant with a focus on women’s health in the Asian, Black, and foreign-born Muslim communities. I’ve learned the joy and strength that comes from fighting hard to serve those you love.

Somehow along the way during these ten years I have become a part of something bigger than myself and I have become from somewhere. It happened without a fight or a big bang. Instead, daily putting one step in front of the other I became a part of this city and her people, and she became a part of me.

And today is my last work day. The last day that I sit in my cubicle, answer emails from my official email account, and answer the phone in my official capacity. Soon I will leave Boston and Cambridge. A plane will take me thousands of miles away to a small apartment on the other side of the world. I will leave a place I love to go to a place I have begun to love. Who is so fortunate? I ask myself this question every day. 

And when people ask me where I’m from, I will say with some pride, and no hesitation “I’m from Boston.” Those are sweet words indeed. 

Physical Therapy, Editing, and Sanctification

Published on by Marilyn1 Comment

 

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I try to relax as a skilled professional stretches my muscles. My leg goes up, far above my head; far higher than I could imagine. He holds it in place for 30 seconds, teaching me, explaining what he is doing and why. He has me lie on my left side and works the muscles on my right leg. His name is Alex and he is a gifted therapist and teacher. I have already done the bike and the leg press machine. This physical therapy is hard work. I want it to be easy. I want a quick fix. But instead, it is a slow and arduous process. But I see results. They are small and don’t seem significant, but to me they are huge steps forward. Yesterday, for the first time in two months, I did not limp to work. I breathe deeply as Alex stretches my muscles again. There are so many times when I want to give up, when I want to admit defeat and say “I can’t do this. It’s too hard.” But I keep on going and my leg gets stronger.

///

This past year I have watched an initially chaotic set of writings become an actual book that is almost ready to be birthed into the world. Good editors have taken my words and they have worked and reworked them like Alex works my muscles. I have had to give up control and let others take away words and sentences and then tell me to add other words and sentences. The goal: that a cohesive story emerges and my voice is not lost in the process. It has been a difficult but essential process. The final proof to my book arrived last week. There have been months, weeks, and days of wanting to give up, wanting to admit defeat and say “I can’t do this. It’s too hard.” But I keep on going, and a book is born.

///

I went to confession last Friday. It has been weeks since I have gone. This process of admitting sin, admitting wrong doing – it is so hard. But when I finally go, I breathe a sigh of relief. This is not something that will get me to Heaven, it isn’t a litmus test, but it is so healthy and freeing. Like the Psalmist David, I can say “Against thee, and thee only, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight…” My spiritual muscles have been weak and mushy. Like my physical muscles, they need work – stretching to make them stronger. Like physical therapy, there are many exercises that I have learned. There’s confession, spiritual direction, prayer, meditation, being a part of a faith community that challenges you and forces you to forgive and grow. There is a big word for this used by theologians – sanctification. It is the “act or process of being made holy.”  There are so many times when I want to give up, when I want to admit defeat and say “I can’t do this. It’s too hard.” But I keep on going – because to give up would be to deny what I believe and love. So I keep on going and slowly, my faith gets stronger.

My body, my book, my beliefs – they have more in common than I could ever imagine.

Let’s Talk About Lack of Choice in the Workplace

Published on by Marilyn4 Comments

 

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This past week Brenda Barnes died. She was 64 years old.

You may not know much about Brenda Barnes, but she is an interesting role model for women looking at work choices. Brenda was the first CEO of PepsiCo. She broke the proverbial glass ceiling, but for her it wasn’t enough. After working as CEO for one year, she quit her job. Her reason? So she could spend more time with her family. Her decision made national headlines and anyone and everyone felt they had a right to comment on that decision.

On one side she was seen as a traitor of sorts — how dare she quit! Didn’t she realize that she owed it to all business women everywhere to stay in the job and do well?

On another side she was hailed as a hero — look at her! She gave it all up for the kids.

But this post isn’t about Brenda Barnes. This is about the lack of choice in the workplace in the United States of America.

Let me tell you why I think I have a right to talk about this: I have worked full time for the past 14 years while raising five children. Prior to that, I worked part time for 9 years (24 to 32 hours a week) so that we could put food on the table and gas in the car. Before that, I was a stay-at-home mom living overseas and navigating life in another culture. I’ve been in a place where I honestly didn’t know if we would have the money to make rent and fix our car to a place where I occasionally have extra and can help others. I’ve seen and done it all.

It is the year 2017, and I see just as much rigidity and lack of work-life balance as I did fourteen years ago. Maybe more so. Why are employers so non family friendly? Why do we have such poor working options for parents? Why is maternity leave a paltry three months if you’re lucky, leaving women crying in bathrooms as they attempt to pump breast milk for their three-month-old? Why do employers think more work can be completed in a cubicle, then in a home office? These are just a few of the many questions I ask all the time.

And so I pose a question: In the year 2017, why is it that the two most flexible jobs for women are as nurses and as teachers? This is assanine. Female engineers, chefs, software developers, public health professionals, and doctors (to name just a few) are married to rigid schedules and employers. Pitiful earned time policies and lack of options for women who want to work part time all add up and take their toll on families. In the eyes of employers, our children do not exist. They are neither seen nor heard.

If a woman does take time off to care for her children, it is extremely difficult for her to enter the workforce. The unsaid question is “What did you do all those years that was significant?”

Well, let me tell you what she did:

  • She managed a household and kept a budget, ensuring that her family did not go into debt.
  • She chaperoned hundreds of little kids on field trips, showing her amazing ability to organize.
  • She kept up with children’s extracurricular activities, hustling them back and forth from home to soccer to music to church and then back home.
  • She went to parent teacher organizations and organized plays and dinners for fund raisers.
  • She made sure that immunizations were up to date and kids had braces.
  • She answered to a world that asked her “what she did all day?”.

She could run an entire company single handedly, yet the interview team has the audacity to ask her what she did that was “significant”.

I’m telling you, when it comes to the lack of family friendly workplaces, we need a revolution. It is ridiculous.

So, what are my solutions?  I don’t have solutions, but I do have thoughts.

  • First of all, for god’s sake don’t condemn a woman for her work or home choices. I know how hard it is to make choices on work and home. Every April, I went into a panic thinking about the summer and what I would do in the summer. I got criticism from stay-at-home moms when I went back to work; and I got criticism from working moms when I stayed home. This is what fellow women do to each other and we can’t blame anyone but ourselves — we criticize each other. Remember the mean girls from high school? Well they never really go away. They just have different names and different clothes. They also get a lot meaner.
  • Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever ask a stay-at-home mom what she does all day. I repeat: Never.
  • If you are an employer or manager, please consider offering flexibility. Offer compressed work weeks; offer part time positions; offer job sharing; offer work from home. We are 2017! These should be no brainers.
  • Today’s working women: Fight for better maternity leave. Fight for better time off. Fight for more flexibility.
  • Figure out what works for you and guard your choice. If you choose to work, don’t assume that stay-at-home moms will always be there to help you. If you choose to stay at home or work part time, don’t whine about not going out to dinner as much as you want.

Lastly, always ask yourself the question “Who do I want to like me when I am 80?” I guarantee the answer will not be your employer. I look back all the time and think “I was so often in a hurry, rushing to get kids here or there. What did all that rushing get me?” A sore hip – that’s what it got me.

Brenda Barnes left an interesting and important legacy, one that I wish was talked about more frequently. Her daughter, Erin, was interviewed this past week by NPR and in the interview, she talked about being influenced by her mom to change her own profession. What did she pick? Nursing.

At Brenda’s funeral, her daughter thanked people for coming, saying “My mom would want me to tell you, ‘Don’t work too hard.'”*  Indeed. 

*https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/24/opinion/brenda-barness-wisdom-and-our-anti-parent-workplace.html?_r=0

Get a Life

Published on by Robynn Bliss2 Comments

“Oh, for God’s sake…get a life, will you?”–William Shatner

 

Connor left nearly a month ago to return to the University of British Columbia. As he and Lowell pulled away from the house I felt the bottle of grief shaken within me lose its scarcely screwed on lid. Before I knew it I was drenched, inside and out, with sadness. I came into the house, sat in my chair, gently held my coffee cup and cried.

In my sad spot I remembered that this is our Adelaide’s last year of high school too and a fresh wave of grief dragged me under. It felt like my heart would break.

I wondered at the strangeness of parenting. We wrap our lives and our hearts around these miniature people. We tend, nurture, guide, direct. We attend concerts and games, plays and competitions. We give up our rights to complete thoughts, finished sentences, sleeping in on Saturdays, uninterrupted conversations, Sunday afternoon naps, free time, long showers, the late show. We trade it all in for diapers, runny noses, giggles, knock knock jokes, princesses, pirate ships, play dough, lego towers, swing pushing, nail painting, homework helping, eye rolling, door slamming, curfew pushing kids! And if we get a minute we’d admit that it was a fair trade. For the most part we’ve loved it—!

In that sad moment in my chair I wanted those days back again. I wanted another turn at it all. I wanted to hold fiercely on to the childhood of my children. They said it would go fast and for the longest time I thought they were mocking me…but now I realized with horror at how right they had been. It was over with my kids before it had really begun in me.

As I sat sipping my coffee, which now oddly tasted like nostalgia and sorrow, I thought to myself, “Robynn, You need to get a life”! I suppose it was a mild rebuke from my more sensible self to my emoting sobbing self. Even as I thought it another thought quickly jumped up in defense of me. Wait a minute…I do have a life!

I do. I have purpose. I’m a spiritual director in training. My brain is being stretched and stimulated by the program I’m enrolled in. I have a broad worldview. I’ve had the humbling privilege of travel and crossing cultures in varying places around the globe. I’m a part of an Environmental Missions effort. I’m passionate about climate change and its effects on the world. I care deeply about the oppressed and long for justice. I have deep friendships with interesting people who expand my world in significant ways. My thoughts are often outside of my inside domestic duties. I read books, I engage in conversation, I watch the occasional documentary, I listen to intellectually stimulating podcasts.

Honestly I think that’s one of the best gifts I’ve given my children. They’ve seen my heart for others. They know I have a wide circle. They’ve heard me rant about racial injustice, about welcoming the immigrant, about caring for the poor. They’ve seen my eyes fill with tears with concern for friends that are hurting. They know I have dreams and goals and longings outside of our home.

I attended an international boarding school in the Himalayan foothills of Pakistan. Multiple times a year we’d have to say goodbye to our parents. It was devastatingly difficult. But I’m convinced it was made marginally easier because we knew my parents had purpose. We knew they loved each other well. Their marriage was solid. We knew they’d be ok without us.

Kids need to know that their parents are going to be all right when they’re not around. It’s too much pressure for a child to believe that his mother’s or his father’s emotional well-being is connected to him. He needs to know they have a life without him.

There are ways we interpret our obsession with our kids that sound noble and self-sacrificing. But I wonder if we scraped those notions back down to the frame if we’d find something more self-serving than we originally thought? Does it give us a sense of importance? Are we tethering our identity solely to our role as caregiver?

I’m not saying that being a parent is not an important vital job. By all means it is! But the goal is to work yourself out of a job. We want to raise adults that are independent, that no longer need us for their daily cares. We want to train up people that know what it means to contribute in valuable ways to the world around them. They will not know about that unless we show them. It will be important to your health and the health of your progeny that you have some other meaningful thing to give yourself to.

I suppose there’s no real easy way to say this….but moms and dads –you have got to get a life! I don’t care what age your kids are now, begin, even today to imagine a little life outside of your children. Start researching ideas of what you might want to do. Pray it through. Take up a hobby that energizes you. Are there distance education classes you could enroll in even now? Are there places you could meaningfully volunteer? Are there courses offered in your community that might spark your imagination? Do you have dormant dreams that you used to think about? What would it look like to fan some of those back into flame? The little people won’t be little for long. Start now and get a life!

 

 

On Work and the Third Culture Kid

Published on by Marilyn6 Comments

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A couple of months ago I did a series called “Finding Your Niche.” This series was a set of guest posts by third culture kids who have found places that fit their multicultural pasts. The theme of the series – “How do I connect my multicultural past with a meaningful present?” The essays were excellent. From law to international development to living in an expat community to seeing yourself in the light of your family history, everyone had a story of finding their niche.

It’s a question that so many of us raised between worlds ask ourselves all the time. How do I find work that has meaning? How do I fit into the cultural values of my passport country when I know so little about it? Do I matter? Does my background matter or will it just fade into oblivion, like an old file into a file folder, only to be dug up long after I’m gone?

How can I take the invisible skills that served me so well for so long and connect them to where I now work?

Some people find it easier than others. Whether by sheer luck or strategic career choices they land in a place where they can use the best of who they are as third culture kids in their places of work. Others struggle. They live in rural Iowa, or small town Vermont, or any number of places where diversity is the one adopted kid on their street, and the only ethnic restaurant is bad Chinese food at a take out place – food that those from China would never recognize.

It’s easy to point to the adult third culture kids who have jobs in, let’s say the White House, but then there are the rest of us. The TCK from Nigeria who has lived all over the world and is trying to settle into a role in Lagos; the TCK who grew up in Pakistan, now settled in a tiny town in the UK that hates Pakistanis; the TCK who looks at Valerie Jarrett and President Obama and thinks “I could do their job!”

This is incredibly tough. It’s not being a baby and discontent to admit that nothing in our lives prepared us for small, seemingly narrow-minded spaces in our passport countries, it’s accepting reality.

Coupled with that is the natural restlessness, the sense that we need to get to the airport and catch the first plane to anywhere just to relieve the ache in our souls. The restlessness when we feel like others take too long to make decisions, aren’t willing to see the point of view of those different from them, or simply seem too monocultural in their approach.

“Often from a young age, TCKs are unofficial ambassadors to other nations, representing one country while living in another. TCKs know from life experience that there is nothing more important than the relationships that are formed between people and, because of this, TCKs are often able to look past things such as differences in nationality, religion, and culture in the interest of forging new friendships. Moreover, TCKs also have multiple identities, often able to easily adopt the culture of their host country, and eventually creating their own hybrid culture.” from Career Choices and the Influence of Third Culture Kids on International Relations

Sometimes the solution is to find another job. It really is. Sometimes there is a better fit for us, a place where those ‘best of’ skills can be used. Other times we are to stay put. Stay put and look at the big picture. What can we offer to our company? To our place of work? Where can we listen, learn, and challenge the status quo in a given situation or work place?

With a mobile childhood, life choices differ. Some people never want to move again. I have moved my kids from the proverbial “pillar to post” and I know that has worn on them, made them alternately restless and longing for roots. A couple of my kids may never end up moving again. Others may be similar to me and my husband, restless at 6 years and moving at 7. But even though life choices differ, some of what we bring to our work and our communities is similar.

I think this is a time when we need to look at some of the research, some of those characteristics and traits of the TCK. It’s not to put us in a box, not to down play our individuality, but rather to help guide us so that we can see what we can bring to our jobs in small towns and spaces. For instance we know that “Only 21 percent of the American population (24 percent of men and 18 percent of women) have graduated from a four-year college. In sharp contrast, 81 percent of the adult TCKs have earned at least a bachelor’s degree (87 percent of the men, 76 percent of the women). Half of this number have gone on to earn master’s degrees and doctorates.” [ ©1993, 1999, by Ruth Hill Useem and Ann Baker Cottrell.]

We also know that when surveyed on adjusting to their passport countries the response was that they “never adjust.” Not really. Let me quantify that by again quoting Dr. Ruth Hill Useem “The answer to the question of how long it takes them to adjust to American life is: they never adjust. They adapt, they find niches, they take risks, they fail and pick themselves up again. They succeed in jobs they have created to fit their particular talents, they locate friends with whom they can share some of their interests, but they resist being encapsulated. Their camouflaged exteriors and understated ways of presenting themselves hide the rich inner lives, remarkable talents, and often strongly held contradictory opinions on the world at large and the world at hand.” There is much more research available but this gives a window into education and gifts that you may bring to your place of work.

Along with some of the books and resources available are other TCKs who are a step ahead of us. They seem so amazing, so well adjusted, but what we see on the surface, the contentment and satisfaction, comes with a story. Hearing that story can be encouraging and life-changing. Knowing they walked through a path of trying to find their niche and figure out where they fit gives us hope and helps push us to action or gives us patience to wait.

As I’ve said so often, I have done no research; all I have is earned fact. So here is what I believe in general third culture kids bring to the workplace:

  1. The art of negotiation – this is huge in today’s world. One has only to look at the abhorrent comments section on any controversial article to know that too many in our world are unable and unwilling to dialogue. Unwilling to look at a middle ground and negotiate. As third culture kids we have had to do that since birth.
  2. Flexibility and a high tolerance of ambiguity – when you spend a huge amount of your life in travel, airports, missing flights, rearranging schedules you learn that life brings you surprises. We can model this in our spheres of influence.
  3. Sensitivity – We know what it is like to feel different, to feel marginalized, to feel ‘other.’ What a gift in today’s world! Look around you – who is ‘other’ in your community? Who struggles with belonging? Who wears veils – not literal ones, figurative? Who hides who they are and needs someone to come along side them. There are many. Mother Teresa famously said:
    “Stay where you are. Find your own Calcutta. Find the sick, the suffering, and the lonely right there where you are — in your own homes and in your own families, in your workplaces and in your schools. You can find Calcutta all over the world, if you have the eyes to see. Everywhere, wherever you go, you find people who are unwanted, unloved, uncared for, just rejected by society — completely forgotten, completely left alone.”We can do this! Indeed I’ve seen it many times.
  4. Cultural competency and humility – If you define cultural competency at its most basic level, it is about learning to communicate and function effectively across cultural barriers, cultural differences. So no matter where you live in the world, cultural competency is a useful, even necessary skill. In our increasingly diverse societies, it is indeed a critical life skill. The term cultural humility was developed in 1998 by two physicians: Dr. Melanie Tervalon and Dr. Jann Murray-Garcia. They proposed that this was what the goal should be when it comes to looking at outcomes in patients. They say this: “Cultural humility incorporates a lifelong commitment to self-evaluation and self-critique, to redressing the power imbalances in the patient-physician dynamic, and to developing mutually beneficial and non paternalistic clinical and advocacy partnership with communities on behalf of individuals and defined populations.” I propose that the same principal can be used in other relationships by taking the first part of their definition and applying it across our lives, wherever we may be. Cultural humility incorporates a lifelong commitment to self-evaluation and self-critique. 
  5. Fun and a sense of adventure – In our stressed out world, who better to help people relax and not take themselves, or their work, too seriously?

When you think about those characteristics, they can be used in any work situation. While they seem best used in international settings, at least to those of us with one foot in the air, they are life skills and they are valuable.

With every strength comes a weakness, and we are not going into that today. That’s for another day. But if you are a third culture kid or an adult third culture kid be encouraged! Your background gives you an amazing perspective. May we all be able to do the sometimes hard work of making it matter!  

 What would you add to the list of what adult third culture kids/third culture kids bring to the workplace?

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