Third-Culture Kids and Expats: Where is Our Identity?

Written by Bianca Leury-Pieropan

I can't quite remember where I first heard the expression "third-culture kid". Was it when I visited my mother and her husband at their home in Hamburg, Germany over Christmas vacation in 2018 or was it when I visited them at their home in Tuscany at Christmas in 2016? If you can remotely relate to this thought process, you may be a third-culture kid, or TCK, yourself (insert palm to face).

A TCK is described as a child who was raised for a significant part of their developmental years in a culture that is neither their parents' nor their country of origins'. A recent BBC article even refers to us as "citizens of everywhere and nowhere." How depressing is that?

My mother is an Italian immigrant to Montréal, Canada where I was born, and my father a Franco-Canadian. Sadly, he passed away when I was four years-old so I grew up with my mother in a prominently Italian home in the middle of the bustling island of Montréal surrounded by a myriad of other cultures. 

I attended French school and spoke French at home but if you would have peeked into my lunchbox, you would have found hints that I wasn't your typical French-Canadian kid. While other kids ate sandwiches, frozen meals, cookies, chips, and fruit snacks, I showed up to school with vegetable puré soups, leftover polenta and spezzatino, and even homemade gnocchi. Something as insignificant as the content of my lunchbox made me feel different and set me apart from the other children at the lunch table. Unbeknownst to me, what is now my earliest memory of being culturally different would continue being a trend in my life as a third-culture kid and even as I transitioned into an expat as an adult.

When I was 13, my mother met an American. They married and before I could process it all, we were living in Bowerbank, Maine, 26km from the closest village with a petrol station or a supermarket. At such a crucial age when you’re developing a sense of self emotionally, physically, mentally, and more importantly spiritually, I entered a very dark place of depression and at times, dissociation. 

At school, the other teens were different. Or rather, I was different from them. I spoke French, I had traveled a lot and had been exposed to so many people and cultures that I had a very difficult time relating to the small town mentality, and I felt that we had little to nothing in common. 

The church I attended was extremely legalistic and Rockmanite. So, on top of that, I struggled to also adjust spiritually. At school, I could not hide who I was; my French accent was evident, my mentality as well, but spiritually I was able to start performing instead of transforming and the problem with performance is that it’s only outward. Inwardly, you feel an immense void that only God can fill.

I spent three years in Maine before going to boarding school and eventually university in Florida. There, I felt at home with other international students and really felt a sense of belonging culturally. After university, I moved to New York City where one should never feel out of place; even the strangest of the strange have a place in New York. It was in Manhattan that the Lord began to work in my heart. I was in the middle of the most diverse island in the world. Everywhere I looked, there was someone I could relate to, a restaurant that felt like home, a cafe that made just the right espresso, an art exhibit that captivated my soul, but that void and lack of identity persisted, even intensified. I was perhaps at my lowest.

After getting a job as a digital analyst in Fort Lauderdale, FL, I moved there and hit rock bottom. My dissociation episodes lasted up to six months, I was unable to really function, and hid in a false world to escape who I was. I had moved to flee previous problems but not only had they followed me, but others compounded, and I was left with a mess in my life.

After getting a job as a digital analyst in Fort Lauderdale, FL, I moved there and hit rock bottom. My dissociation episodes lasted up to six months, I was unable to really function, and hid in a false world to escape who I was. I had moved to flee previous problems but not only had they followed me, but others compounded, and I was left with a mess in my life.

It was in 2014 that my pastor and his wife recommended I leave my job and go take care of my relationship with God for 6 months in a faith-based women's home an hour from Chicago. It was there that God worked the most in my life. In that home, nobody cared where I came from or what I had done. They didn't care what colour my skin was, how much money I had, or what was in my lunchbox. We could not be more different one from another, but we were united by one common denominator: our salvation. That's when my lack of cultural identity was mended by my heavenly identity.

When I finished the program, I moved to Tuscany, Italy, to live near my family. To my surprise, I felt instantly at home. I finally was surrounded by people who had the same culture as mine! Apart from a few, non-trivial differences, I felt a connection to people I met and fully embraced the Italian lifestyle. But surprise! My sense of familiarity and connection was a one-way street. To the Italians here, I am "la canadese," the Canadian girl. Initially, it was very frustrating. People would describe certain foods, assuming I didn't know what they were -- mind you, my mother cooked these foods homemade -- or would act surprised whenever they found out that my family is Italian.

While I initially allowed the frustration to negatively take over my experience as an expat, it wasn't too long before I realised that it didn't matter if people kept asking me why I have a French accent but speak Italian so well, or how come I can cook Italian food. No, what matters is that my identity is in Christ. It was in Italy that God showed me Ephesians 2:19 (ESV):

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.

 What a privilege! What a privilege it is to be a fellow citizen with the saints and members of the household of God. It doesn't matter that Canadians see me as Italian and that Italians see me as Canadian. How could it matter when I am a child of GOD?

My identity is in Christ, my culture is to please Him, and my home is in Heaven.