Hey everyone, I’m Jay and I’m a third culture kid, also known as a TCK.

You'll like this if you've lived in many different places, have met many different people, experienced many different cultures.

You may have more than one home, you may not even define home as a place but where your family is, or where your friends are, or where there is wifi... because it means you can talk to the people who you love the most.

By definition a third culture kid is someone who has lived somewhere else, for longer than they have in their parents’ passport countries.

Coming from someone that has lived in 5 different cities by the age of 23, has attended 5 different schools, has been on more plane rides to ever be scared to fly and has eaten (and loved) food from EVERYWHERE <3: Globalisation isn't just happening to the way we do things, it is happening to who/what we are:

People are getting married to people from different nations, having mixed raced chilren, living abroad for more years than their own home countries (and loving those countries as their own),

travelling EVERYWHERE and are becoming "third culture/international kids"and whatever comes after that who are starting to share bits and pieces of different countries.

Yet, there are travel bans still occurring, people are getting kicked out of countries they have fallen in-love with and for those foreign students in America who have made it their home... have to win a raffle and get lucky to stay there.

A few months ago, I couldn’t find a place online actively dedicated to third culture kids, so I created one. I began collecting stories from my third culture kid friends around the world to share on the blog.

While collecting stories, I realised so many third culture kids don’t just want to share their stories, they want to connect with other third culture kids and create awareness of what a “Third Culture Kid” really is.

The world needs to not only be aware of the existence of ‘Third Culture Kids’, but to address it and be mindful of it.

Why?

Can you imagine feeling like a foreigner in your own home country?

Can you imagine being kicked out of a country that you have now made your home? (#today's immigration issues)

The process of a TCK re-adapting to a new environment – which in many cases is their original home, can be extremely challenging.

It’s also difficult to find others like ourselves because “third culture kids” are not openly spoken about...

and when people don’t talk about something, they tend to be less informed, less comfortable about it.

My friends had no idea that I was one, until I explained. They were stunned at their lack of knowledge about it, and also felt it should be talked about.

So, I built a website for third culture kids to share their stories not only with each other, but with likeminded people who may also find similarities with third culture kids.

I did this to show TCK’s that even if they feel alone in the world at some point, they’re not.

To go a step further, I want to be able to record real third culture kid stories on video.

With these stories I will create a series on youtube where third culture kids can view other real-third culture kid stories.

I want to create Humans of New York -for third culture kids.

By doing this I hope to create awareness of who/what third culture kids are, to raise awareness of the seriousness of these immigration laws and how they are affecting people from around the world -people who just want to remain where they are because they have made it their home.

And I want to give comfort to those third culture kids around the world who may be feeling alone at times.

If you are a third culture kid or have friends who are, please know that I understand what you may be going through when you feel like "you have no home" or feel like "it's hard to relate to people" because of your upbringing.

By normalising the third culture kid population, you may not have to feel those ways anymore and you may be able to relate to more and more people! I promise, I am working on it!

With all my cultured love,

Jay

My third culture kid website - incase you are interested :)