Hello. I’m a writer, speaker and crisis counsellor based in Dubai but I was bred in Bahrain but I’m half English, half Greek. That’s what my Instagram bio says at least. And it’s pretty straight-forward, uncomplicated and does what it says on the tin – but does it really? Because although I say I am these things, in practice it’s a lot more nuanced and tricky to navigate when you are a Third Culture Kid.

@millimidwood, has lived in Dubai for 28 years, originally from the UK.

Click here to watch Milli’s Third Culture Kid video. 

I guess because people like myself – where you might be the offspring of country-hopping missionaries, diplomats, members of the military or internationally-minded, go-getting parents – are a sum of parts. But it doesn’t really make up a whole – it’s not like a pie chart that is perfectly cut into different slices. No, it’s more like a lot of different shapes that don’t do the Tetris thing and fit together. We’re kind of all over the place. We’re all living between worlds and we make up our identity as we go along. It can truly get overwhelming in coming up with a descriptor for who we feel like we are. It’s definitely not a hemmed in definition, it’s a feeling, one that meanders and moves as much as we tend to. For us, otherness rather than sameness is the default position.

There are so many different strands in this knot – some are thicker than others, some are easily pulled apart, others are disintegrating, others are growing new roots – I mean there’s no uniformity or conformity, it’s just dr*$5#253wd– sorry, I don’t know how to put it into words – but I guess that’s very telling of the identity crisis experience which is why many of us on the hot mess express question – who are you again? Because there’s so much going in this situation…

@ameniesseibi, has lived in Dubai for 17 years, originally from Tunisia.

Click here to watch Ameni’s Third Culture Kid video.

The classic social leveller we ask one another: “Where are you from?” seems straightforward, right? No heavy lifting required, it’s not a trick question. Yet, for those whose sense of identity is a scramble thanks to a swiggly life, it becomes a little sweat-inducing. I think, ‘do I give you the simplified or the complex answer? What can you handle?’

People expect me to say somewhere based in Europe and they’re absolutely right insofar as 100% of my blood and ancestry is there. If, “where are you from?” means where were you born, raised, educated or better still, which place goes deepest inside you, then I feel terrifically liberated. You see, convention doesn’t sit right. It’s less textbook and more Tex-Mex book, if you will.

@yaraaziz, has lived in Dubai for 12 years, originally from Lebanon and Canada.

Click here to watch Yara’s Third Culture Kid video.

So, how come TCKs have fresh relevance now? Well, I’m not sure if we or any kind of cohort have ever been irrelevant but since the pan-sh*tty was foisted upon us it reduced social capital, and raised thinking capital. Basically, I have had a lot of time to think. And because time doesn’t really mean much anymore especially without punctuations of occasion or events, it’s just a humdrum routine which smudges all the days together, it proffers a wild amount of unsolicited introspection.

I’ve been trying to bring this patchwork existence into some sort of alignment and streamline an inner storm since I lived in the UK for five years, over 10 years ago. As a child the Gulf was a portal for comfort, familiarity and security. I lapped it up. In tandem though, I increasingly felt that pang to live life outside of it because we were always told the Gulf wasn’t real life (side note: when you don’t have a reference for any other kind of life, doesn’t that make it a legitimate life?). But then, the reality of being ‘home’ was so stupefyingly boring, it suspended me somewhere between sleep and almost sleep. Even though I could technically call the UK ‘mine’ I didn’t want to. It felt too easy and fixed. I wanted to float. It caused me more emotional stress being in the motherland than in the otherland, so to speak. Through our suite of cultural intel tools, TCKs have the ability to make what’s not theirs, theirs. And so, like a lot of us, I went back to my adopted roots and became an adult TCK and it just felt right.

@imanfawazb, has lived in Dubai for 30 years, originally from Lebanon.

Click here to watch Iman’s Third Culture Kid video.

But, a big part of adulthood – whether TCK or not – is unlearning all the things you were taught and starting from scratch. And as wonderfully accepting and open we can be, there is a lot that is said and done in the wings which can be unappetising.

By dint of ‘package’, we can experience a lot of intersecting privileges: from living in safe compounds to travelling many times a year to ‘off-the-grid’ cool places. A lot of the times this amount of privilege is amplified by engendered enclaving and echo chambering. When I came back to the region as an adult, with more life behind me and perspective, I realised just how much we would deploy stigmatic narratives and get away with it, safe within our bubble. As much as TCKs advocate for an inclusive existence, we can very easily fall into the ‘us’ and ‘them’ way of thinking, reducing the amount of space we hold for each other because it’s just easier to turn a blind eye on what could potentially crinkle our comforts.

@haifazakariaa, has lived in Dubai for 36 years, originally from Iran and India.

Click here to watch Haifa’s Third Culture Kid video.

Now, driven by the radical honesty of social media, those in the shadowlands are coming to the fore and lifting the lid on their experiences by dispelling myths, confronting hard truths and creating a broader world view for those with limited lines of thought.

One of the best resources for expression and transparency in the region is The Letters Project, a platform for people to write in their bristling stories about things that don’t get natural airtime in public unless draped with a veil of anonymity as this space offers. The diversity of diverging stories covers large human geography and it’s up to us to read, listen and learn – after all, isn’t curiosity an inbuilt tenet of TCK-dom to then make considered choices with how we interact with those around us?

@jessicacoxdxb, has lived in Dubai for 28 years, originally mixed Indian.

Click here to watch Jessica’s Third Culture Kid video.

The reason why we so desperately try to find the answer to ‘who are you?’ is because every human being has a need to belong. We have to have some place that we know and are known – for every part of who we are – all the strokes and stripes. The self is not singular but a fluid network of many identities – and the idea of ‘home’ operates with the same sense of plurality, too. The beauty of a nomad, whether from birth or not, is that home really doesn’t have to be where the soil is, but where the soul is.

Head to our Youtube channel to watch all 6 of our Third Culture Kid videos, powered by Hyundai.