From age 2 to 10, Zoë grew up on two missionary/charity ships. She and her family lived with people from over 45 nations and cultures, while moving from country to country every few weeks. She moved back to the UK in 2009.
A good friend of mine was explaining why I’m such a ‘homebird’ (despite still being terrible at remembering to tell my family when I’ve arrived somewhere safely!), and why I feel most comfortable with my family. Wherever I am, whether it’s a ten minute car ride or a twenty hour flight away, I have to make myself fully at home, be fully with the people I’m with at that moment. I think it’s because I don’t know how long I’ll have with them.
As an MK (Missionary Kid), my family were the only people who understood me, and what I’ve been through. Throughout all of the moving, they have been the only stable (human) thing in my life.
I’ve always struggled to understand people that don’t get on with their families, but I’ve realised that family has a different meaning to some people. For me, they are the stability throughout the change. There’s this bond between us, an understanding that might not be there in other families.
We went through so much together – illness, university, turbulent plane rides, summer camps…there’s a bond that can’t be broken or understood by ‘outsiders’. That’s what family means to me.
Now I’ve started university, and am living away from my family for the first time. I’ve struggled a lot with having people around me not ‘get’ me. I feel this loss of something, this sense of loneliness. But I’m also learning that the people I’m surrounded by now are also the people that will experience and understand this season with me, and it’s okay that it’s not my family I’m sharing it with. I’m thankful for them, and I’m thankful for a God I can rely on through all of these changes. He’s the only other stability I’ve had in my life.
So if you’re in a similar situation, take heart. You will be okay. I will be okay. He’s got us, and in every season there’s a new opportunity for growth.
The worst part about living in globally mobile circles is the constant stream of ‘goodbyes’. What do you do when your friend leaves the country? They’re off to build a new life in a new place and with new people, so would it be best to just let them forget you and move on?
It’s true that they might have less time to talk to you, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t want to! I’m going to talk about this in terms of Third Culture Kids, but this is also true of ex-pats and global nomads.
TCKs often spend good chunks of their lives moving from place to place, in a cycle of new beginnings and fresh starts. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t need stability. If your friend is going to go to a new place, don’t back off. Be understanding that there will be new pressures on their time, but if you can make the effort to let them know “We’re still friends, I’m still here,” you can help them make the transition. You can be a steadying factor in a world that keeps changing: a reminder that their past lives haven’t disappeared. “I’m still here,” can be the most meaningful and comforting words.
And if you’re like me, and you’re questioning whether you were close enough friends to merit staying in touch, or if that person really liked you enough to want to keep talking to you…message anyway! You can make that decision, because the chances of the other person appreciating it are pretty high. And what’s the worst that could happen?
Excuse the bad-quality picture, but one of my favourite ways of keeping in touch with English-speaking friends while I was in China was finding funny translations. For those who can’t make it out, this is a notebook with the following poem: “Rain. / Rain is falling / all around. / It falls on field.”
When I moved to China, I loved my new life: my friends, my routine, my lifestyle…it was such a positive move. I was living my dream. That said, every time I opened my laptop a little part of me was desperate to see a new Facebook message, or a new email from someone from the UK. Every little ‘hello’ from someone who knew me in my ‘old life’ suddenly meant the world to me – even though I was so happy in China. Moving will change you, but it doesn’t turn you into a new person. I didn’t want my UK community to forget me, because I absolutely never forgot them.
And all of this is not to say that long-distance friendships are not hard. They are! They take discipline and effort and creativity. Being an “I’m still here” friend can be as rewarding, as it is emotionally challenging.
What does a good long distance friendship look like in 2019? There’s no one-size-fits-all formula, but here are a few ideas to get you started:
Snail Mail. Post things to each other! Whether that’s postcards, Christmas newsletter, or little mementos from a place you’re both familiar with, being able to send something tangible can make the friendship seem much less abstract.
Voice Messages. Texting is great, but I love sending and receiving voice messages. It just seems a lot less clinical, and it makes the friend feel a lot closer. They are also less effort than having to type, so they can be much chattier!
Remember Birthdays. And other important days – let them know they’re on your mind, even if you can only send a little message.
Send them things that remind you of them. Memes, news articles, jokes, photographs…you don’t have to be in full-blown conversation all the time, but you can keep enjoying the things you have in common! If you have the chance to make your friend smile, just go for it.
It’s not realistic to keep in touch with everyone you’ve ever met. But it’s also not realistic to ask yourself or others to constantly be making new relationships, and forgetting old ones. We can actively decide who to maintain contact with, who to put in that extra bit of effort for. And we can treasure and foster relationship with those who do the same for us.
So if you can be an “I’m still here” friend for someone (even if the ‘here’ is metaphorical), all the better.
Love, Dani
How do you maintain long-distance friendships?
Are you, or do you have an “I’m still here” friend? How has that helped with your/their transition?
Kirstie Sivapalan is a Geordie-born writer based in the south of England. She lives with ME, but spends her time writing stories and poetry, and helping people with social media.
“Change often involves dissolving of ideas, beliefs, relationships and structures in our lives that we may think we are ready to leave behind, but when those changes start to happen around us it can feel like our whole world is falling away. Not only that, we then realise we can no longer go back and even more fright-inducing is the dawning that we don’t know what the world will look like ahead of us […] All you can do is keep moving forward carefully, one foot in front of the other.”
This poem originally appeared on Crystallising Dream, and has been reproduced with the author’s permission.
You’ll find more of Kirstie’s creative work on her blog, which focuses on connection and disconnection with the world around us. She tweets at @KirstieWrites.
I grew up in a globally mobile family. Now I’m in Scotland, I have a job and a community…but even the idea of being here for the rest of my life makes my heart beat faster, and the panic sets in. It’s not that I’m not happy here, or that I don’t like my life here. I just can’t stop moving.
I love meeting international friends, and trying new foods, and exploring new places. And in a strange way, I think I like being foreign. I like that people can look at me without expecting me to immediately understand the culture, or the idioms, or the unspoken traditions. There’s more leeway to be different, because I am different.
On the other hand, I love the feeling of being settled – of having a favourite restaurant, a circle of close friends that you’d trust with your life, and a steady income. So why, when I find those things, can’t I stay?
My brain is set to rhythms of change. My body is on a timer; every couple of years I want to wipe the slate clean, pack my earthly belongings into suitcases, and start over. I’m not a criminal, I don’t think I’m emotionally detached, I’m just…a mover.
Would I like to break the cycle, to settle down and accumulate life souvenirs, maybe start a family, maybe buy a house?
I don’t know. Maybe I just haven’t found the right place yet.
Either way, all I know for now is that I can’t stop moving.
“Being rootless has given me a sense of freedom. I feel grateful for the experiences I’ve had, and I am proud to feel, above all, like a citizen of the world. The possibilities for the future are endless. The sense of being at home anywhere, yet feeling that home is nowhere, is part of who I am.” – Ndela Faye, writing for The Guardian
I’m Dani. I’m biracial – Scottish-Latina, to be specific, although I never lived in either of my parent’s countries as a child.
I spent most of my teenage years (and a little of my adult life) wrestling with insecurities: I was never Scottish enough to be Scottish, and never Latina enough to be Latina. I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere, like I’d been made wrong, and that I would never be able to fit in.
I remember one day at university broaching that subject with a British-born Korean friend. She looked at me wide-eyed for a second, then said, “Wait, you too?”
Living between cultures is a huge blessing – think of all the food, language, and travel people like us get to experience thanks to our multiple heritages! But it’s also a confusing place to be in. Having a friend to talk about these things with was a huge help for me, even just to recognise that those feelings and insecurities are actually pretty normal.
So maybe you’re a TCK, maybe you started travelling as an adult, or maybe you’ve grown up in an international home. Whatever your situation, my hope is that this blog might be your ‘Wait, you too?’ friend – a place where you read stories that you can relate with, and that will help you work through all the challenges, tragedies, and joys of living a globally mobile life.
I hope you’ll stick around. And I hope this content will be as helpful to you as it has been to me.
Tertiary 