Writing – Megan C. Norton

From Relational Poverty to Relational Wealth

This weekend I devoured Dr. Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey’s book, “What Happened to You: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing.” The succinct case studies Perry described intersected with Winfrey’s poignant debrief questions created an expected rhythm in each chapter while incorporating digestible (and understandable) neuroscience facts (basically breaking down how the brain works and why it’s relevant for relationship-building).

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It offers a paradigm shift in how we approach our understanding of why and how someone behaves is in direct relationship with their past experiences and worldview. It’s a matter of both correlation and causation. Three principles I’ve extracted from this read are: be present, be intentional, and be rhythmic in building and maintaining relationships.

Be Present

We live in a distracted society. If we are not being fully present with someone, we are sending them the message: You aren’t important enough to hold my attention. Dismissiveness is creating both disconnection with and detachment from others. As a result, we are seeing more maladaptive behaviors such as people seeking forms of unhealthy attention-seeking, self-sabotaging, and self-destructive behavior. Oprah points out on page 258: “Isolation and loneliness are an epidemic.” Perry agrees and describes how social media connections are often “hollow.” Authentic connectedness is getting better at listening and reflecting; at having more interactions with people who are different from you. The challenge I walk away with is: Pay attention to, focus on, and learn about relationships. This is being present.

Questions to ask yourself about being present:

What does active listening look like for me? For them?
How do I practice reflective listening in my relationships?
What does support look like to them (relationships)?
How can I nurture them (relationships)?

Be Intentional

Maya Angelou always said, “You teach people how to treat you.” Everyone’s life is busy. We have different challenges and demands. If we are intentional to understand our own patterns of routine and rhythm, we can in turn be intentional in the way we improve how we treat ourselves and others. It may be that we incorporate more rest, exercise, and entertainment to regulate better; or it could be that we cut down on these things. Intentionally engaging in regulating and relating ways with others can be profoundly healing to them; to know that someone is invested and cares to be present and to play witness.

Questions to ask yourself about your intentionality:

How is my schedule impacting how I am intentional with others?
What is my intention in doing this?
What does safety look like to them?
How can I make them feel seen? Heard?

Be Rhythmic

The power of rhythm is undervalued in our understanding of resilience, regulation, and relating to others. Perry points out that there is significant research and history that showcases how regulating one’s rhythm through dancing, shooting hoops, doing needlepoint, walking, drumming, etc. is a significant way to have control over how to create space to recover and process. The power of rhythm comes into play when we want to connect with others in their ongoing stress, distress, and trauma. Perry writes, “Instead of saying, ‘Hey, tell me what you’re thinking about,’ you need to let them control when and how much they’re going to talk.” (Page 198). Be present and be intentional in how you engage others in their routine and rhythms.

Questions to ask yourself about rhythms:

How do I self-regulate?
What about my routine grounds me, centers me, calms me?
What are some other activities I can explore to incorporate into my regulating routine?
What are some activities that work well for me that I can suggest others try for themselves?

Ultimately the claim posited by Perry and Winfrey is that if we shift our approach to asking others, “What happened to you” instead of “What’s wrong with you,” we have the ability to create spaces for understanding, resilience-building, and growth in community.

In my forthcoming book, “Belonging Beyond Borders,” I explore these concepts more deeply. In each chapter I offer a self-guided reflection exercise and debrief questions to consider how to belong more holistically not only to self but also to others. Perry writes on page 203, “Most healing happens in community… a healing community is full of hope because it has seen its own people weather – survive and thrive.”

I love this quote because I offer in one of my chapters, “Hope is not passive. It’s active. When you’re hoping, you don’t wish for something; you work and do your part in expectation that things will work out for your good and well-being. We can foster hope and nurture it, but it also involves other people, places, and even possessions—all external forces outside of our internal hoping. Hope takes a willful commitment to be uncomfortable and to seek discomfort. Hope will get you to speak when others say be quiet, to stand when others say sit down.”

Relational wealth and health involves being present, being intentional, and being rhythmic. If you would like to be aware of when my book is released, please connect with me at adultthirdculturekid.com.

A Sunday Reflection on Braving Fear & Raging Peace

It’s five o’clock on an August Sunday and I feel the weight of the world although I am safe and unharmed on my couch in the sunroom. The screen door is open and I hear the rustling leaves and light traffic on the main road. It’s quiet. It’s unhurried. I’ve just finished a book I bought on Friday and reach for my phone — a default transition habit. Scroll after scroll I am bombarded with the fears, pain, and unknowns of people I know and that I don’t know. I wonder if we as humans were ever designed to consume so much visual and written trauma in one setting (or sitting!) through one medium. As my current world is in relative equilibrium, I feel for those whose worlds are upside down and broken. Granted, I have my own traumas, suffering, and brokenness to navigate and heal from; but in the security of my home and with the freedom and ability within my power, I decide to do what I can to encourage and thank those in my sphere. Perhaps that is the purpose of this moment to brave fear and rage peace.

Encouragement.

As I sit here in comfort and abundance I know that it is my calling in this moment to invest encouragement into others. We are all going through hard things. Our hearts feel dry. Our hearts are hurting. At this moment I am compelled to say “persevere!” I want to scream “how can I help?” At the same time I’m tempted to panic. And yet I look at what is within my reach and my ability – who can I encourage with a word, a smile, a handwritten note? I feel inadequate, but I move bravely and sometimes awkwardly to encourage. To encourage means “to inspire with courage” and so I share hope and my heart in love.

Gratitude.

In this season my heart is awakened to those who anchor me. Who teach me. Who challenge me. Who invite me. Who invest in me. And I am deeply grateful. To build relationships is an extraordinarily brave act. To be vulnerable with a select trusted mentor who helps settle your soul is an extraordinary gift. I am grateful for those who entrust me with their prayer requests, their pain, their hurts. I pray. I am grateful for those who nudge me to reconnect with someone in my sphere who could use a kind word; those whose worlds are collapsing around them and need to know that I see it too. Be grateful for your people.

Purpose.

Am I listening to my soul? Am I encouraging others to listen to theirs? Our souls are crying for purpose and for stability. It is within my power to purposefully pause to grant my soul grace. For the unknowns, the mistakes, the judgments, the assumptions. It is within my power to grant other’s grace. For this is what I know: the world is suffering. There is heartache. Can we commit to grant more grace to each other? Perhaps that is our purpose when we don’t know what else is.

***

In the coming days, months, and even years, may we have the courage and commitment to welcome grace more – for both ourselves and for others. May we reach out more to connect intentionally. May we be extraordinarily brave as we wage raging peace on our souls, minds, and bodies.

In these days, may our fear not overwhelm our faith.

I pick up the book again and thumb through the pages. I stop at one of the sentences I’ve underlined. I’m grateful for Ann Voskamp’s words: “Fear is what we feel but brave is what we do.”

Go brave the fear. Each day.

Tell it.

“A story is never complete until it is told, heard, and understood.”

As an Adult Third Culture Kid, I have a lot of stories to tell of my global background. Of my safaris, my international school field trips, my advice on luggage, my speaking three languages in one sentence, my definition of home, my favorite restaurant in Tokyo, etc. When I was a K I D moving to another country, I found it a bit easier for others to understand me – and my story/stories. As just another foreigner in the foreign school, I had an understanding that most of my friends had just moved from another country as well…not their passport country necessarily. We just got each other…as kids do. And we loved each other’s stories. [You bet ‘Show & Tell’ looked a bit different in the international school compared to a homogeneous one].

But now, as an A D U L T, I’m finding that my global stories are not as well received when I tell them to my coworkers, family, or even fellow adult friends. The stories are considered, sometimes, as bragging and/or exaggerations. Too Exotic. Too unbelievable. The (non)reaction I perceive and experience has silenced me on more than one occasion and I have downplayed – or even hid – my international upbringing. Sometimes, I don’t mention my TCKness identity in order to fit in with my new community. I don’t want to alienate myself because of jealousy or misunderstanding. But this is a T R A G E D Y. People need to hear my stories. Stories of diversity. Stories of adventure. Stories of what has (re)shaped who I am today. But it takes an effort on my part to (re)frame these stories so they are heard and understood. I can try to link them to a frame of reference or compare them to someone else’s story.

But not be silent.

In telling my story, perhaps I can discover someone else who has struggled with reentry into their passport country and we can tell our stories together, or someone else who has felt marginalized as a minority, or someone who has even used a wooden toboggan to sled down a Swiss alp at 10 years old.

Hey fellow travelers, TCKs, wanderers, nomads, friends: tell your story so it’s heard and understood.

Post 1: This Adult Third Culture Kid “Non-Blog”

A couple months ago in Western Michigan, I had coffee with Michael Pollock (son of David Pollock, co-author of “Growing Up Among Worlds”) (and by the way the newest edition is hot off the press: “Third Culture Kids”). We talked about our (non)writing thoughts and discussed the posts we have in our (non)existent blogs and what a (non)blog might look like. Months later…this is my attempt at a (non)blog.

My non-blog looks like this (right now): the majority of the blurbs are short, most of the posts are succinct, but all of the thoughts produce additional ones.

Perhaps, as this venture proceeds, I’ll have longer posts. Perhaps, I’ll have a lot to say about something. Perhaps, I’ll want to get back into writing more after recovering fully from my second master’s degree academic papers. But for the beginning, expect short. I have the ATCK change mentality, so expect a mixture of both long and short posts long-term.

I am excited to share with you my

Adult

T H I R D CULTURE KID

thoughts, inspirations, and questions.

To be clear, I’m going with the classic definition of an “Adult Third Culture Kid” : an individual who has spent his/her developmental years living outside of his/her passport country………..And is now grown up.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, inspirations, and questions on this ATCK identity!

Yours,

Megan