Trick-or-Treat: Halloween a TCK Holiday

Today Halloween is observed with candy exchange all across the USA. People dress-up in ghoulish costumes and other outfits of fancy. It makes me wonder why. As a TCK, I find myself looking in on this tradition from the outside the culture. Growing up in Ghana we didn't celebrate Halloween.

I've done a little research into Halloween and it seems the tradition has it's roots in the Celtic past. History.com has quite an interesting piece on how we in the States have come to observe his day.
http://www.history.com/minisites/halloween/viewPage?pageId=713

Halloween is a mix of traditions built upon one another. (Celtic mysticism, Roman paganism, & Christian traditions.) Different cultures have shaped its practice and meaning.

Halloween and how it as evolved is a great metaphor for what makes a TCK a TCK .

So... will you Trick-or-Treat this Halloween?

Connecting Bridge a social network for TCKs

I've been thinking a lot about the value of living a connected life. being on a journey alone has its own benifits but I beleive we were made to be connected with others to share life ( our joys nd sorrows) with others along our journey or those whose loves interesect with ours.

So I've decided to start a social network for Third Culture Kids. (TCKs) of which I am one. Feel free to join if you spent a significant part of your childhood in one or more cultures that are different from your parents cuture.

The topics we will share and discuss there relate primarily a shared exprience of life spent living multi-culturally.

there are two avenues of Conneting Bridge they are

the connectingbridge blog

the connectingbridge social network

please feel free to join or follow either or both!

What have I done?

What have I done??? This question can be answered allot of different ways or taken in allot of different directions. It all depends on where you place the emphasis. for example:

WHAT have I done?

What HAVE I done?

What have "I" done?

What have I DONE!

Each have a different meaning depending on the emphasis and tone. The context in which the statement is uttered also has a significant impact on the meaning. Change the word "I" to "you" and a whole new complex set of meanings arise.

Communicating accurately and effectively is an intricate business. In the heat of passion or stress it is easy to miss communicate with the ones most dear to us and it's easy to miss read signals by those trying to communicate with us.

I tend to speak before I think and that tends to get me into trouble. I am working on thinking before I speak so that what I say will be clearly understood by those listening.

What do you think?
I challenge you to give your communication style a second thought!

SUCCESS: Where do you get it? What does it look like?

SUCCESS. What do you think of when you see or hear that word? Say it to yourself and take note of your reaction. What feelings and emotions does sit stir up? Intuitively we know what success means to us but it is not always easy to define. We tend to get our definitions of success by look at other people and measure ourselves against them . Yet if we really were honest with ourselves we might find that having another persons life, or wealth or job would be not really be our true definition of success.

I've come to the conclusion that to be successful in my life I've got to start with defining success for me and no one else. I alone can live my life, no one can live it for me. Its the same for you.
Doing the inside work of pealing off my desire to fit, to be liked, to please others is where I'm at. It's the hard work of really examining what my core values are.

Core values... two words that we hear allot these days. I believe core values describes and relates to the essence of who I am in personality and character. Working from a clear understanding of who I am this is a good place to start when it comes to defining and reaching for SUCCESS. I've found that most of my beliefs about success have been built on other peoples values and not on my own and I haven't really own them so they haven't worked for me. Rebuilding a picture of success based on my my own strengths and talents is the real challenge. It takes courage to look inside and aknowlege that the changes need to be made, make the changes and head in a new direction.

I'll let you know my new picture of what success is when I cleared the the space inside me of all the "should" I've heard from others. Time to pitch the crap and live from who I've been born to be.

What about you what's your view of success? Are you living from the essence of who you are -your core values?

Learning new things & picking up old dreams

Back in 2005 I thought about starting a blog for Third Culture Kids and I've decided to have a go at it. You can check it out out at Connecting Bridge. Let me know if you find it helpful and give me suggestions of what kind of resources you would love to see on there. Check the links there for other more established TCK sites. In the near future I'll have my podcast up there. Tell me what issues you would love to hear about.