Uprooted with No RAFT By Marilyn R. Gardner
Note: This essay was originally published in September 2020 on the blog A Life Overseas. We felt that it would be especially helpful to our TCK community right now, and Marilyn was gracious enough to share it in this issue.
I
t is mid-September and six months since borders closed, masks became mandatory, and life changed for people around the globe. While fall is always a time of movement and change for expats and third culture kids, for TCKs transitioning to college, and for those who have tried to make transitions during the summer from their lives overseas, the tools many of us have used and used well in the past are not necessarily helpful in this new world. Many of us have seen and used the RAFT acronym (Reconciliation, Affirmation, Farewell, and Think Transition) developed by David Pollock and Ruth Van Reken, our iconic leaders on all things TCK related. In fact, I wrote an essay on transition
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Among Worlds
a few years ago, citing their acronym and connecting the dots to my own experiences. As I think about the acronym in the year 2020 and the unexpected chaos and uprootedness that a worldwide pandemic has caused, I think we may need another acronym that gives us a different tool for unexpected departures, virtual goodbyes, and long periods of waiting in the in-between. With this in mind, I offer a few tips with an acronym that I’m calling CRAFT, because a Crisis before the RAFT changes everything! A full disclaimer is that I have been uprooted unexpectedly myself a couple of times, but never in a worldwide crisis like the one we have faced these past six months. I come at this from a public health nurse perspective and as a writer, a TCK, and three-times-over expat. Though I have been through several difficult transitions, they were far different than what I know many of you are experiencing. So, keep what is worth keeping and blow the rest away.
