How Do I Keep my TCK's Grief Tower From Crashing Down?

Photo by Austin Neill on Unsplash

I have seen it happen personally. Yes, up close and personal. I have seen the blocks and the boulders stacking . . . taller and taller. 

It isn’t just in the life of one of my children, one of my “Third Culture Kids” (TCKs). I have actually seen it happen in the lives of all of my children and in the lives of other TCKs around us. Other children in families who are also global nomads seem to be carrying the same heavy loads.

Lauren Wells in her book,Unstacking Your Grief Tower for Adult Third Culture Kids, describes her experience working with over 200 Third Culture Kids (TCKs) between the ages of 18 and 24. She discovered that the average “Grief Tower” height for TCKs entering adulthood is about twenty stacked blocks. 

What Are These Blocks? 

Unprocessed grief.

They are the unprocessed grief from the many moves, goodbyes with friends and family, the leaving behind of things TCKs love. 

The list is never-ending.

The blocks symbolize things lost, and little by little, they are collected, carried, and stacked into a tower. That’s what Lauren Wells describes as “The Grief Tower.”

Where Do These Blocks Come From?

According to Wells, “Your Grief Tower consists of anything that happened during your developmental years (0-18 years) that felt difficult.”

These Grief Tower blocks are typically categorized in the following ways:

1. Losses—There are two types of losses. 

The first group are the “obvious losses.” They consist of the first layer of things like losing a loved one, moving to a new country, changing schools, and saying goodbye to close friends.

The second group are the “unseen or hidden losses.” These lie buried below the layer of obvious losses.

“These are the elements underneath the obvious loss that explain why that loss feels so hard. The hidden losses put words to your grief,” says Wells.

Hidden losses might include:

• Loss of being known

• Loss of knowing what’s expected of you or knowing the rules

• Loss of being able to return to a place as you remember it or loss of returning to a place you called “home” and loved

• Loss of being a part of your group of friends “back home”

• Loss of hearing or speaking other languages

• Loss of missing out on something or not getting to do something you were looking forward to

• Loss of familiar sounds, smells, sights, tastes (e.g. “comfort foods”)

• Loss of holiday celebrations and other familiar cultural traditions

• Loss of a sense of “home” and “belonging”

• Loss of a familiar and comfortable climate

• Loss of independence

“The obvious loss may not appear significant, but when you consider the associated hidden losses, you can understand why it would be an influential block on your Grief Tower.”

It’s important to note that to outside observers who don’t have a global lifestyle and a mobile background, these hidden losses often go unnoticed. This makes communicating with monocultural individuals about the extent of the TCK’s grief quite challenging. People who have more of a stationary and monocultural background have a difficult time understanding these losses, seeing them, and relating to them.

This may be one of the reasons TCKs tend to gravitate towards fellow TCKs for friendship and marriage. They just “get each other.”

2. Intense Moments of Fear

These might include:

• explicit fear-inducing events such as a robbery, being deathly ill, an accident, or a sexual assault

• environmental fears or fear-inducing experiences that happened around you, such as a natural disaster, political coup, war, evacuation, or a nearby terrorist attack

• fears out of concern or times you were terrified for someone else’s safety or health

Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash

3. Seasons of Prolonged Anxiety and/or Depression

This would include any season when the TCK, the parent, or a caregiver experienced symptoms of anxiety or depression. Please see our articles on how to know if you or someone you know is experiencing depression or anxiety.

4. Family Crises 

These challenges could include

• an unexpected family death

• a severe illness in the family

• a traumatic event that happened to a family member

• a parents’ divorce

5. Big Boulders

In Unstacking Your Grief Tower for Adult Third Culture Kids, Wells describes “Adverse Childhood Experiences” (ACE), a concept from Dr. Felitti and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the 1990s. They were trying to understand the relationship between difficult experiences and events from our developmental years and our physical, emotional, and mental health as adults. 

Wells calls these experiences “boulders” in the lives of TCKs. These differ from other “blocks” and are often bigger and more significant. 

These “boulders” usually fall into the categories of abuse (physical, emotional, and sexual), neglect (physical and emotional), and household dysfunctions (a parent’s mental illness, parents’ divorce, an imprisoned relative, or a parent who is treated violently).

What Do We Do With These Blocks and Boulders?

For the Third Culture Kid, these hard life experiences—these blocks and boulders—begin to add up. What may seem like “small” traumas to adults are still significant to those who experience them. They can begin to accumulate, and if they are left unprocessed, the adult TCK may develop “Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder” (C-PTSD). Wells describes this as “a physical reaction to experiences that were stored in the brain as trauma.”

Bessel van der Kolk, M.D. explains this in a similar way in his book, The Body Keeps Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. “We have learned that trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the print left by that experience on mind, brain, and body. This imprint has ongoing consequences for how the human organisms manage to survive the present.” 

These moments of unprocessed grief begin to build and stack during the childhood and adolescent years, until “The Grief Tower,” as Wells calls it, may begin to crash down later on in the early adult years.

This doesn’t even have to be a major crisis event. It could be something like transitioning to college, getting married, another move, another friendship loss. Suddenly, the TCK’s tower of grief and loss becomes too tall and too wobbly, and it can come crashing down. 

How can we prevent these blocks and boulders from crashing down later in life?

Start the process early on by facing your or your child’s Grief Tower, unstacking the blocks, and looking at them one by one. We literally have to count our losses!

If you have a TCK or you know a TCK who has faced significant times of grief, fear, and loss, sit with them and help them to begin talking about their lives and processing the pain and hardships. If you don’t feel ready or equipped to do this, find resources or someone trained to come alongside you and your child (a TCK debriefer or trauma counselor). Wells at TCKTraining has great resources for parents and caregivers. See Beyond also has certified TCK debriefers who can help your children process their tower of griefs and losses.

Don’t ignore your Grief Tower or your child’s Grief Tower. Begin to face it now, before it comes tumbling down!

Our very own author, Marci, is releasED a children’s picture book based on Lauren wells’ Unstacking your grief tower. Click here to find her book my Tower is Tumbling!

Guest author, Marci Renée, along with her French husband and four boys, is a global nomad who has traveled to more than 30 countries and has lived in the United States, France, Morocco, and Spain. She loves to travel, speak foreign languages, experience different cultures, eat ethnic foods, meet people from faraway lands, and of course, write and tell stories. She is a published author of children's picture books, memoirs, short stories, and poetry.

You can find Marci and her books on her website.

"The Cultural Story-Weaver," at www.culturalstoryweaver.com