Maintaining Stability through the Transition Stage
When people ask how they can avoid chaos and confusion during the transition process, we have to say they can’t. They can, though, keep in mind that it’s a normal stage and it will pass if they hang on long enough. Also, there are a few steps we can take to help us maintain some sense of equilibrium and connectedness with the past and to smooth the way for the future stages of entry and reinvolvement.
One way is through the use of sacred objects—those mementos we mentioned earlier that specifically reflect a certain place or Moment of our lives. That’s why the choice of which possessions to keep and which to give away is so important during the leaving stage. A favorite teddy bear pulled out of the suitcase each night during the travels from one place to another reminds the child that there is one stable thing in his or her life amidst the general chaos. At the same time, Mom or Dad may be reading a treasured book they brought along, which reminds them of other times and places where they have read those same inspiring or comforting words.
Other sacred objects are worn. Did you ever look around a group of TCKs or their parents and see how many were wearing some article of clothing or jewelry that connected them to their past? It might be a Tuareg cross hanging on a gold chain or a V-ring on a finger. Perhaps they’re wearing a sari instead of a sweater. Often an ATCK’s home is quite a sight to behold—with artifacts gathered from around the world, all proving that “I was there! It’s part of my history.” Each sacred object serves as a good reminder that the current Moment or scene is part of a bigger story of that person’s life.
Pictures are another way we connect with special Moments and memories in our past. One ambassador asked each staff member to list what he or she would put in the one bag allowed for an emergency evacuation. Photographs headed the list for every person, far above things with much more monetary worth. Why? Because each picture reminds us of some relationship, an experience we have had, a place we have visited. Pictures add a value to our lives that money alone can’t buy. A small picture album with photographs representing significant highlights of our past life and location gives us a lovely place to visit when we need a few reflective Moments in the middle of this sometimes turbulent stage. Pictures can also be helpful for letting people in the new place know something more of our history.
Of course, we recognize that everyone we would like to show these pictures and sacred objects to may not see the same value in them that we do. (And often it’s vice versa when they try to show us theirs!) Why don’t most people particularly enjoy another person’s PowerPoint or video show? Because friends who weren’t there can’t see anything interesting in a skinny cow walking down the middle of a road; it seems rather bizarre to them. And they certainly don’t want to hear a twenty-minute story about the man with the shaved head in the back row of a group picture. For the person who was there, though, that picture or video segment brings back a flood of memories, and every detail is fascinating. That’s why globally nomadic people should make a pact to look at each other’s slides or home videos. It’s how they can affirm their experiences!
Another thing we sometimes forget in this stage is to take time to “stop and smell the roses.” Often we are flying from one spot to the next, suddenly living amid strange customs and languages. While it can be overwhelming, it can also be seen as a wonderful time of exploration. We may not feel ready to settle in yet, but surely we can at least be interested observers. There is much to learn, and to help TCKs learn, about the cultures and places in which we are living on any given day during transition.
Even if we built our RAFT perfectly in the leaving stage and enjoy observing the new world around us, transition is the stage where we often begin to mourn most acutely the loss of things and people left behind. If we think back to the grief cycle we discussed in chapter 12, up until now we have likely been in the denial and bargaining stages, maybe with some anger along the way—but even there, the anger is often directed at those we are leaving behind as part of our preparation for the upcoming separation. Transition is the stage where the sadness and possible depression can hit. We feel unbearable emptiness when we realize we can’t call our best friend to meet us for a cup of coffee. We miss the comfort of knowing everyone in our factory or office by name. The permanence of the move and the irretrievability of the past stare us in the face and we wonder if we’ve made a terrible mistake.
During the leaving stage we knew these losses were coming, but now their reality is here. This is a critical Moment and one that can affect any or all members of the family for years to come. Parents must decide what to do with their own grief as well as that they see in their children. Will they deal with it or try to pack it away—out of sight, out of mind? In particular, will they choose to comfort their children at this point or only try to cheer them up? Sometimes the chaos of the Moment is so great we simply can’t afford to deal fully with the reality of what we are losing, and our only choice to survive seems to be to ignore those feelings. Parents who are not willing to look at their own losses will be unable to help their children. Some children may not be able or ready to do anything but block out the past and survive at this point. That is a common means of getting through this transition stage, and that is okay in the short run. But when that happens, at some point everyone in the family must be willing to go back and do some appropriate mourning for the losses just endured. Too many people get through transition by packing away these painful feelings of loss and never taking them out consciously at a later stage. This is what winds up years later in the issues related to unresolved grief that we have mentioned earlier.
While some people try to survive the transition stage by ignoring their losses, other people, of course, seem to be able to deal more easily with the losses as they are happening. Whenever we choose to deal with the inevitable losses in our move—during this stage itself or later—it is important at some point to mourn the losses we have known even while affirming all the good that is ahead.
MOURNING THE LOSSES
But what, in fact, is mourning? How is it different from grief? A professor of philosophy, Jim Gould, says that loss always produces grief, consciously or unconsciously, and that it will come out one way or another, whether the person intends it to or not. Mourning, however, is the conscious acknowledgment of loss. Because of that, he believes those living these globally nomadic lifestyles need to develop better rituals of mourning to help in that process of dealing with grief intentionally rather than suppressing it. All the suggestions we offered for helping us build the RAFT might also be cited as these rituals of mourning.3 Some families develop a particular ritual, such as going out to a favorite local restaurant the last night before leaving each location and always ordering pizza.
But getting through the transition stage isn’t only about exploring the present or looking at our losses. It also includes the need to continue that planning for the future that we began when we “thought destination” in the leaving stage. Such planning can be something as simple as letting the children know next week we will make a Skype call to say “happy birthday” to Grandma and to let her know we miss her, or it can be helping teens figure out what subjects they will study in the new school they are about to attend. Planning ahead in such ways is realistic, and it also helps us move through the grieving process by reminding us and our children that life does go on in spite of great loss.
Entering Right
Physical arrival alone doesn’t mean we have begun the entering stage. Sometimes the chaos of the transition stage remains for some days or weeks after our initial arrival. The more we have thought ahead about this time, however, and the more we are consciously aware of what we and our family will need to make a positive entry into this place, the sooner and smoother we can begin to positively move into our new life. It’s important for everyone involved, however, to recognize that they don’t have to wait helplessly around for the new community to reach out and receive them. There are many
ways we can proactively help ourselves in this process. So how, then, can we (and the new community) move from the desire to establish ourselves in our new community to actually accomplishing it?
CHOOSING AND USING MENTORS
The key to successfully negotiating the entry stage, particularly in an international or cross-cultural move, is to find a mentor—someone who answers questions and introduces the new community to us and us to it. These mentors function as “bridges” and can smooth our way in, significantly shorten the time it takes for us to get acclimated to the new surroundings, and help us make the right contacts. They can also give tips for the unspoken and unseen “do’s and don’ts” that are operative in this new community and culture.
The problem, of course, lies in finding the right mentor, both for parents and children. After all, the mentor is the person who determines the group of people all members of the family will meet, the attitude each of us will absorb about this new place, and the one from whom we learn the acceptable behavioral patterns. Ultimately, the mentor not only can affect the long-term relationships both adults and children may have to this new community but often determines our effectiveness in it as well. If we find the right one, we’re in great shape.
The wrong mentor, however, can be a disaster—doing for us the exact opposite of what a good mentor would do. If our mentor is negative about the place, its people, the school, or the sponsoring organization/corporation, we begin to doubt whether we should have come and become afraid to try new things. Even worse, if the chosen, or self-assigned, mentor has a bad reputation in the community, others may put us in the same category and avoid us as well.
This issue of finding the right mentor is particularly critical for TCKs as they move into a new place. At the very time when they are in the position of being “outsiders,” often those who are also on the fringes of the receiving community will be the first to introduce themselves to a newcomer. They, too, may be looking for friends while others belonging to the “in” group already have their cadre of friends nicely established and may not be interested in adding more. TCKs or any new arrivals to a school or community are, of course, so happy someone has reached out to them that they can easily jump into a new relationship before understanding what the ramifications of such a relationship might be.
How can any newcomer know who is or isn’t trustworthy as a mentor? How can all members of the family make a wise decision at this point?
Our suggestion is to be appreciative and warm to all who reach out a helping hand during this entry time, but inwardly to be cautious about making a wholehearted commitment to this relationship before asking a few questions: Is this person one who fits into the local community or is he or she definitely marginalized in one way or another? Does this person exhibit the positive, encouraging attitudes you would like to foster in your family, or does this person make negative remarks and display hostile attitudes about almost everything?
When we take a little time to evaluate a potential mentor, we may discover that this person who greeted us so warmly is, in fact, one of those wonderful people who belong to the heart of any organization, school, or community and has the great gift of making newcomers feel almost instantly at home. That person could well go on to be the best possible mentor in the world for any particular member of the family and be a great friend. If, however, we find out that this person who is so eager to befriend us or our TCKs is a marginal member of the community, then we must ask the next question: Why do they want to befriend us?
Some are marginal simply because they, like us, are relative newcomers and are still looking to establish new friendships. While they may not yet be members of the inner circle, they have learned the basics of how life is lived in this place and can be most helpful. In fact, they often have more time to spend orienting newcomers than those whose plates are already full with well-defined roles and relationships. Relationships that start like this often turn into lifelong friendships.
If, however, we find out that the first person who approaches us, and particularly our TCKs, so invitingly has been intentionally marginalized from the community, we need to be cautious about adopting this person as a mentor. Such people are often in some kind of trouble within the community. Perhaps they rebel against the accepted standards of behavior, break laws, or defy teachers, and they often want to recruit naïve newcomers for their own agenda.
Besides using our common sense in situations such as we have just described, there are other ways to try to find good mentors. We can make use of any active mentoring programs already in place. Some agencies or corporations set up “matching families” for those coming to their community. One potential problem is that an organization may have a mentoring program for the adults in the family, but the children’s need for a mentor is forgotten. In such cases, parents may need to be more proactive and ask those in the human resources or employee care departments of their organization if they can give the names of possible families to contact in the next posting. Many international schools have set up a “big brother/big sister” program, with good mentors already identified, to help new students through their first few weeks at school. Getting involved with such things as parent/teacher groups can be a way for parents to meet other parents and help to find informal mentors if no formal mentoring programs are available.
One thing to note, however. In communities with chronically high mobility, we have noticed two interesting, though rather opposite, responses to newcomers. Some, like those just mentioned, have a regular routine to help new members get oriented. There are maps of the town with the key places to shop marked and instruction guides for dealing with the local host culture—all tucked in a basket of goodies. One person is specifically assigned to take the new family around, and the whole system of orientation goes like clockwork because it has happened so many times. It’s great when your family relocates to such a community.
On the other hand, members of other highly mobile communities are so tired of seeing people come and go, they basically don’t do much at all for the newcomer. Their thought process goes like this: “What’s the use? These people will just be gone again,” or “Why bother getting to know them? I’ve only got three months left here myself.” Such an attitude makes it more difficult, of course, for newcomers, who can then begin to feel very angry and withdraw from others too. But with some understanding of why others may seem cautious, and with some patient persistence to reach out to new acquaintances, or by inviting families with children of like ages over for an evening, in time it is possible even in these communities to find a way into a positive sense of belonging to this new place.
Most of our discussion on this entry stage applies to any kind of move. But there are extra stresses recognized by experts around the world for those trying to enter a completely new culture—which is the nature of most transitions for third culture families. Lisa and Leighton Chinn, a couple who work with international students, have outlined four stages of cultural stress that occur during this phase: fun, flight, fight, and fit. It’s important to acknowledge these extra stages, because they often happen in spite of all we have done right to prepare for our move and can make us feel that none of our other preparations mattered. The process can go something like this—sort of a second transition cycle within the larger first transition process.
As we have looked ahead, we have developed a sense of anticipation and excitement for our new assignment. We decide it will be fun to explore the new environment, learn its history, and enrich our lives through meeting new people. The first few days after arrival, we busily engage with all we meet, feel excitement that we can actually answer the greetings in this new language we tried to study before we came, and all seems well. We think, “What fun!” A few more days pass, however, and things aren’t quite as exciting. We don’t like not knowing how to get to the store on our own because we haven’t learned yet how to drive on the “wrong” side of the road, we’re tired of not being understood past simple greetings by t
hose around us, and we wish we could go “home”—back to that place where we knew how to function and where we fit. This is the fight stage.
Soon, however, we get tired of feeling so useless or out of place and begin to get angry. After all, we used to fit. We were competent individuals where we used to live so it can’t be our fault that we feel so lost and insecure, and we begin to blame everything and everyone in this new place for our discomfort. If they would only do things “right” (meaning the way we used to do them), everything would be fine. Internally, and sometimes externally, we begin to fight with the way things are being done here—perhaps even becoming angry at our mentor who is doing his or her best to teach us these new ways.
Knowing these reactions might happen doesn’t necessarily stop them, but, again, knowledge helps us at least make more appropriate choices. In this case we might choose not to be quite so vocal about all we despise in our new situation!
These are the Moments we need to remind ourselves that entry also takes time, to remember that six months from now we can presume that somehow we will have learned to drive here, discovered where the stores are for the things we want to buy, and most likely have made new friends by then. At that point, once again we will fit.
Reinvolvement Stage
The light at the end of the proverbial tunnel is that in any transition, cross-cultural or not, a final, recognized stage of reinvolvement is possible. We settle into our new surroundings, accepting the people and places for who and what they are. This doesn’t always mean that we like everything about the situation, but at least we can start to see why people do what they do rather than only what it is they do. We’ve learned the new ways and know our position in this community. Other members of the group see us as one of them, or at least they know where we fit. We have a sense of intimacy, a feeling that our presence matters to this group, and once more we feel secure. Time again feels present and permanent as we focus on the here and now rather than hoping for the future or constantly reminiscing about the past.
Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds Page 25