9 minute read
Spotlight Interview: Lauren Wells
SPOTLIGHT INTERVIEW:
Lauren Wells
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Few have made as big of a splash in a short amount of time in the MK/TCK world as Lauren Wells. Within two years, her first book, Raising Up a Generation of Healthy Third Culture Kids, quickly became the new go-to for many parents raising children overseas. Then, her follow-up book, Grief Tower, has been timely and important during this era of ambiguous loss. Lauren’s small stature and soft voice seem in paradox with her grit and passion to positively change the lives of her fellow TCKs. The young girl who grew up an MK in the savannahs of Tanzania is now the mom of two and founder of her company, TCK Training. We hope you enjoy our Spotlight conversation with Lauren.
Tell us a bit about your experience as a TCK.
We moved to Tanzania, East Africa, from California when I was twelve. Between age twelve and heading to university at eighteen we moved four times and lived in twenty-one different houses!
When did you discover you were a TCK? When did you apply that label to yourself?
I discovered I was a TCK when I was fifteen and attended my family’s training event for their organization. It was the first time I felt I had language to explain what had happened to me in the years we’d been in Africa.
Can you tell us about how and why you started TCK Training?
Through my own TCK experience and then working in TCK care for several years, I began to notice gaps in TCK care. Parents were often not being educated in the nuances of raising TCKs nor given practical tools to do so well. Those working in TCK care would often express feeling not qualified to do their job, and we were beginning to see evidence that adult TCKs were not thriving and were actually being negatively impacted by their TCK upbringing. This was all happening while I was having my own struggles as a young adult TCK! My heart’s desire became to see a new generation of TCKs grow into healthy adults. TCK Training began by supporting the parents, who are the best catalysts for preventive TCK care. Next, we added equipping and empowering those working in TCK care roles to care well for families.
Finally, we began to provide resources for adult TCKs who perhaps didn’t receive the care they needed during their growing-up years.
From your experience working with TCKs and families, what do you see as the biggest needs right now?
Taking the TCK life and its impact seriously. Growing up as a TCK can be a great, resiliencebuilding experience, but only with intentional care and permission to grieve the pieces that are hard about it. The amount of compounded grief experiences COVID-19 has brought to the already grief-filled life of many TCKs is staggering, and its impact won’t go away by just pushing forward. Families need to actively use this time to address the grief and loss, not brush it off—and doing that takes time and intentionality.
How do you see your TCK-ness impacting your life today, either positively or negatively?
Well, I just painted a wall in my house because I told my husband, “I need to either buy paint, or we need to buy a new house.” I still crave change and the change of moving is always tempting me. I have to actively work to be settled and invest where I am. Positively though, I love to take my kids on “adventures” which usually means we go explore a new place we’ve never been to. They love our adventures and it’s a good way for me to combat my need for change! I also certainly would not be able to do the work that I do from a place of empathy and understanding if it weren’t for the good and hard parts of my TCK upbringing.
Can you share with us a memorable moment that stays with you that you experienced working with TCKs and their families?
After a debrief with a family, a father looked at the timeline they had written out of all the difficult experiences they had been through as a family. He said, “Looking at this helps me feel so much more compassionate toward my kids.” Then he proceeded to apologize to his kids for making them feel like they weren’t allowed to admit those things had been hard. That was a turning point for that family and I was honored to be a part of facilitating it. It was one of those, “I’m doing exactly what I’m meant to do with my life” moments!
My family out on safari on our beloved Land Rover.
Have you struggled with or embraced the idea of “settling down” in one location? What does that look like for you?
Oh man, I have tried! We were fairly “settled” in Oregon for five years (the longest I’d lived anywhere since I was twelve), but then my husband’s job moved us to South Carolina. I am actively working to allow myself to be settled here, but it is a mental battle. A few ways I embrace settling are hanging pictures on the walls, building community, painting walls, gardening, and doing other things that encourage a bit of permanency.
If you are married, did you marry another TCK?
I did not! He was born and raised in Ohio. We actually met in high school when my family was on a home assignment and we dated long distance (Africa to Ohio) until college. I appreciated that he was very intentional about learning about my TCK life, and while he cared that I was a TCK, he wasn’t so fascinated by it that I felt more like a novelty than a person. I also appreciate that his parents’ home has been the most consistent physical location in my life. When I think of “home” I think of his parents’ house.
What do you wish you had known growing up as a TCK? What supports do you wish you had had access to?
I wish I would have known that so much of what I was going through was common. I didn’t realize that the identity struggles, grief, emotional challenges, etc., were all typical TCK challenges. I just thought something was wrong with me. I also wish our family would have had someone to guide us through our grief. We had significant losses during our first two years in Africa, but we never had access to someone to walk us through debriefing and grieving those as a family. Having that would have been, I believe, very significant for us.
Please share a brief summary of your books. Did writing these books shed light on anything for you personally?
Writing my first book, Raising Up a Generation of Healthy Third Culture Kids, was full of “aha” moments and self-discovery. I constantly asked myself, “What do I wish my parents would have known?” and every part of the book answered that question. I wrote the book from a place of processing my own story, but with a mission to advocate for quality care for TCKs.
My second book, The Grief Tower: A Practical Guide to Processing Grief with Third Culture Kids, actually started as a pamphlet. People kept asking me to explain the concept of the Grief Tower and the process of unstacking it—something I verbally talked a lot about but hadn’t written about in depth. I started putting together a pamphlet and then realized so many things needed more explaining, so I began writing a blog post, and then I kept thinking, “But this is important too!” and it grew into a book. It is a short and very practical view of the grief TCKs carry and how parents and caregivers can help them process through it.
The third book, coming October 2021, is Unstacking Your Grief Tower: A Guide to Processing Grief as an Adult Third Culture Kid. This one has, by far, been the hardest to write on an emotional level. When I got curious about why this is, I realized it is because it’s the first time I’m writing to people like me—to adult TCKs who didn’t have the opportunity to process well as they grew up and are now trying to do adult life while carrying around a tall Grief Tower. I did that for so many years before really engaging in processing all that had happened during my growing-up years. This book feels so much more personal because my experience with the content is so much more recent. As I have been writing, I have been grieving the fact that I didn’t have a map like this, and because of that, had to crawl through thick mud to get to where I am today.
What is one of the greatest attributes TCKs contribute to our world today?
Ah, so many! I think the most significant thing in our current world is the ability to see multiple perspectives. TCKs are very good at seeing more than one “right way” to do things or see things, and in the current global climate that feels so divisive and wants you to choose a side, we need TCKs who can point out the exceptions, grey areas, and reasons why we should give consideration to other viewpoints.
My parents, younger brother, and I out in Maasai Land where we would spend weeks at a time sleeping on cowhides and bathing in a crocodile-infested river.
What is one of the greatest challenges for TCKs in our world today?
I think one of the greatest challenges is not using our great adapting skills to overcompensate for the people around us. We want to fit in and we are very good at doing so. While adapting is a great skill, I worry that many TCKs are not only adapting their external selves but are changing their core (values, beliefs, ideas) in order to fit in. Those things can absolutely change over time, but when they are changed for the purpose of acceptance into a group, that is unhealthy. Because people are so vocal about their opinions these days, TCKs can get easily caught up in shifting to become part of the crowd.
On a lighter note, do you have a funny or awkward TCK moment from your life that you’d like to share?
When we were on home assignment one summer, we were about to go on a trip with a group of family friends. I was fifteen at the time. As we were getting ready to leave, one of the teenage girls said, “All the other girls are bringing Chis so I won’t bring mine.” Super confused, I said, “Why are they bringing cheese?” She said, “Well they are the best! I really want one too, but Mom says I have to wait till Christmas.” Up until a couple of days into our trip I was thoroughly confused about why the other girls were bringing cheese and why she wanted cheese for Christmas. Turns out a Chi was a popular type of hair straightener.
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