A TCK LIVING WITH UNRESOLVED GRIEF HEALS THROUGH HER MEMOIR

But behind the scenes, Lee was suffering from depression and drinking throughout most of her twenties.

or a long time, author Lena Lee didn’t know what was wrong with her.

As the daughter of a Korean diplomat, she had a privileged global upbringing. She studied at Oxford University, then started a promising career working at a Big Four accounting firm in London.

“On paper, I had everything going for me,” she says.

I imagine many readers may already be familiar with what’s widely recognized as the TCK bible, but I’d never heard of the term ‘TCK’ before. And boy, was it eye-opening — and so validating!

“In truth, my mental health issues started much earlier; it seemed maybe I was just born this way,” she adds.

Lee’s epiphany happened when she came across the book “Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds.”

“I imagine many readers may already be familiar with what’s widely recognized as the TCK bible, but I’d never heard of the term ‘TCK’ before. And boy, was it eye-opening — and so validating — when I did!” Lee says.

As someone who moved countries every three years growing up, Lee was a “classic” TCK. She exhibited all the hallmark personal characteristics and relational patterns. For instance, her tendency to dive deep into friendships, which she’d always assumed was a personal quirk, proved in fact to be a TCK thing.

Unresolved Grief

But there was one section in particular that really spoke to Lee: the bit about unresolved grief among highly mobile people like her.

“At first, I winced,” she says. “Grief sounded melodramatic. No one had died. But then I started to recognize the many significant losses and abrupt endings in my life that I hadn’t come to terms with, even all these years later.”

Growing up, everything changed every three years. Not only my house, school and friends but the food, the language, the culture, the climate, the color of people’s skin. Everything.

Growing up, everything changed every three years. Not only my house, school and friends but the food, the language, the culture, the climate, the color of people’s skin —everything.

And with change came loss. None of Lee’s friendships lasted over three years. Three years was their shelf life. After that, with one flight, she’d be on the other side of the world trying to make new friends. Rinse and repeat.

Lee vividly remembers saying her final goodbye to her friends in the United States when she was fourteen.

“My mom came to pick me up after our last sleepover, and I sulked in the backseat,” Lee says.

“My friends huddled around, leaning into the car. They tried to hold on as my mom gently stepped on the accelerator. It was like a hearse driving away. My friends wept, and it felt like a part of me really had died.”

Although Lee’s mom would praise her for how well she adapted and how easily she made friends in each country, these losses accumulated in her and manifested themselves as the various stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression. She needed to grant herself permission to grieve, to mourn her losses, so that one day she could reach the final stage: acceptance.

Learning To Heal

For Lee, the healing process took the form of writing. As the first lockdown hit the United Kingdom in March 2020, she tried to disentangle the big mess that was her thoughts, feelings and memories and arrange them into words, sentences and paragraphs. The writing was terrible, and the timeline jumped all over the place. But none of that mattered. She just needed to get it all out.

As part of the process, Lee looked through old photos and memorabilia and was surprised to find herself crying while rereading old letters, some written to her nearly two decades ago. This was unresolved grief.

“I’m proud to say that three years on, the messy first draft has evolved into a published book, ‘Girl Uprooted,’” She says. “It’s my deeply personal story of being uprooted many times over and finding a sense of identity, belonging and home. It’s also my story of healing from unresolved grief.”

Lee’s book is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

To learn more about her journey, scan the code below. cultursmag.com/a-classic-tck-living

By Hayden Greene