... a one-word prompt every week, and you have the opportunity to free write for five minutes flat on that one word, then join the link-up...
The Frozen Sadness of Ambiguous Loss is a blog post that conveniently ties together two of the main things I'm reading and writing about these days, so I was excited to read it yesterday.
Marilyn Gardner writes about her Adult Third Culture Kid life and as I've mentioned before (Between Seasons) I started reading her books and blogs to learn about Third Culture Kids (TCKs) but also found I related a lot as a third culture adult. Expat life in a cross cultural family is one of the things I read and write about most at the moment, and TCKs are part of that. The losses of the TCK is what she was writing about here, but buried at the bottom of a paragraph I found this bit which I bolded:
"I move on and find out there are two types of ambiguous loss: One is that the person/place/family is physically absent, but psychologically present, in that they may reappear. This can be loss from divorce, moving, boarding school, migration. The other is that the person is physically present, but the core of who they are is absent. Examples of this are people with dementia or alzheimers."
It reminded me of a post I wrote back in 2012 when my husband was sick. It was like when he was physically present he was actually absent (being absent feels like he is more present). At the time I couldn't really explain to anyone how painful that was, and it felt like there was no reason why it would be painful. This unexplainable struggle is the other main thing I've been writing, the impact of chronic illness in the family, and here it is, mentioned in a post about TCKs.
"This is it!"I felt like yelling.
And I read on, the author had the same moment ..."At this point, it comes to me: this is it! "
Just jotting down how life is now before it changes....
New! Baby chicks hatched while we were at church the Sunday before Christmas. Soeun got home first and was surprised to see them walking around the yard. And the family recently brought a second rooster from the province, so with the babies and new rooster its pretty noisy!
New! Since early December Soeun has been playing soccer weekly with a group of teenage boys from the neighbourhood.
New? Sundays have always been a juggle, we have tried lots of different combinations over the years in terms of local/expat church. Most of the time if feels like we can't be fully part of either. And this was all before kids and chronic illness joined the family. With the kids getting older we may need to adjust again...
New year... Soeun invited a few guys over to eat duck in the evening...20 people later and 5 more ducks....
New creations by the kids. They love building... the last half year we have had "spaceships", "houses", "boats", all big enough to climb into. This month the indoor preschool construction isn't one you climb inside. It's a carrier with some jet fighters etc, as well as some other boats. See photo. He took millions of these photos.
New perspectives on homeschooling. So I read about deschooling ages ago, and now looking back on the last half year it feels like the first few months with the kids at home were the hardest. They say not to do any school work at first, if you are taking your kids out of school, as getting used to being altogether at home needs to happen first. Feels like that how it worked out for us, not that we are doing any schooly type work yet anyway. Which makes me wonder how school families cope with school holidays! Kids would never be home long enough to get used to it?
New! Favourite song of the kids this month is Flawless by MercyMe.
... a one-word prompt every week, and you have the opportunity to free write for five minutes flat on that one word, then join the link-up...
“Mummy, you’re so
tiresome.”
This made me laugh, we
don’t use that word normally so it sounded strange coming out of his mouth. But
I know where he got it from. I had been reading an Enid Blyton book to him, which
he LOVED! I hadn’t expecting it to influence his speech like that though.
Which made me think-
what do I read? How does it influence me? Over the last years I have mostly
been reading this blog which I wrote about here: A Life Overseas, and books and
blogs associated with it/similar to it. I guess it’s fascinating
to me as it’s written by and for other expats Christians living outside their
passport countries and facing similar issues to me.
So when one of the
writers feels differently to me, it’s really noticeable. For example to day I
was reading a blog by an American missionary (not on ALO, somewhere else I can’t
remember) she mentioned how she can only get real rest when she is back in her
own country, she can never truly rest in her host country. I feel very differently,
at least so far/ in this stage of life. Visiting my passport country (Australia) is hard
work, the prep, the being there, the recovering. My best rest is in my host country (Cambodia).
And another noticeable
time was when I was reading a book by an ATCK (adult third culture kids) and she mentions she likes
travelling, like she needs to travel. That highlighted for me, I really don’t
like travel at all. Our best holidays/vacations are at home, we only go away
for things we need to.
From reverse culture shock, to renting, moving house, bringing up cross cultural kids and English teaching- here are some lists of my expat life to date:
Soon after we got married I felt like my husband was lying to me. He was sick with a cold. At one point I asked him if he was better. He said yes. So the next day when he was still obviously sick I felt betrayed.
"Hey, I thought you said you were better?"
It turned out he thought I was asking if he was better as in, not as bad as before. In his native language, Khmer there is a word "more good"/ "gooder". But I actually wanted to ask if he was completely healed already. We speak English and most of the time I forget he only learnt it as an adult.
We kept laughing about that misunderstanding and referring to it over the next few years. Little did we know it would feature in our conversations even more as in our 5th year of marriage he developed a chronic illness. The first 2 years he was debilitated and mostly not diagnosed. But these days we know how to live with it. We are enjoying out a new normal as we celebrate our 12th wedding anniversary.
He is never going to be completely sick-free until the Final Healing, but some days are not as bad than others. Better but not better.
She screamed out in
horror when she saw me coming. Approaching the soy milk seller was amusing this
morning. She was calling others for help as she doesn’t speak English. It’s not
the first time I’ve scared someone with my white face.
I got a very different
reaction from my regular sellers who work at the back of the market.
“Haven’t seen you for
a long time! Where did you go?”
They usually see me a
few times a week and they know I can speak a bit of Khmer so no need to be scared. Between eating foreign treats for Christmas (bought at
the supermarket) and having Khmer relatives stay over New Year (so they did all
the shopping and cooking) I hadn't been shopping for a couple of weeks.
Like the reaction of the sellers, my success at zero waste was also mixed. . As I wrote about here our rubbish is piling up: Breaking up with plastic.
We have no garbage truck to whisk away our bread bags and milk cartons since we moved out of town. All our rubbish stays with us in one form or other. If we can’t compost it, or send it out to be recycled we either burn it (breathing in the smoke), or bury it (so it becomes part of the soil that gives us our water and food).
Horrifying! Is this a mini version of what’s happening on the whole planet? All the rubbish/trash has to go somewhere.
Success this morning
included taking my own bag for vegetables and box for eggs. Now that the
sellers are used to my weird habits it’s easy. Even though some of them need to
use a bag to weigh the produce, they know to tip it into my cloth bag. And the
egg lady has finally given up trying to give me a plastic bag.
This morning’s fail
was buying chicken and beef while my meat boxes were at home with pork in them.
You can see in the photo the sellers had to put the meat in the single use
plastic bags. And I mean really single use, they often break before I even get
home. Not like the supermarket bags which you can actually use many times. The
ones from the market are too small and break too easily to ever really use for
anything.
A new rule recently
came in that we have to pay for supermarket bag; a step in the right direction.
But there are only a handful of supermarkets in the major towns in Cambodia as
far as I’m aware, and the majority of shopping is done at markets where vast
amounts of really thin plastic bags are used.
I’m not sure whether
to call buying soy milk a success or fail? I’ve been meaning to do it for a
while. A few months ago a dog broke open our rubbish bag during the night and I
spent the morning picking up the mess. It was really interesting to see what we
throw out! One things is milk cartons and bottles. With no local dairy industry
I don’t think I can go anywhere to refill reusables. But locals make soy milk.
Maybe we should try to swap? There are some issues with that though but I was
happy to finally take the flask and get it filled today. Baby steps in the
right direction. Even if I did scare the soy milk seller!
If I had a magic wand to make suffocated emotions, plastic waste and tiredness disappear I
wouldn’t be writing this post.
On pondering 2018 with this month’s A Chronic Voicelink up prompts I noticed 3 things I learnt that caused to me
consider some new habits. It turns out all 3 of them involve toxins/nutrients
cycling though a system. So here they
are: In 2018 I learnt about the importance ofEstablishing,Breaking and Allowing.
Establishing good eating habits
Disruptions to our family life came in the form of my
fatigue and other symptoms. Over the last few months life for my chronically
ill husband was forced even slower. Unconfirmed, but likely due to anaemia from
me not absorbing enough iron. (At this point I can hear everyone getting ready
to tell me to eat leafy greens and make sure I have Vit C with that.)
Although this isn’t new information for me, the
importance of it was driven home last year, something so simple and obvious.
If I want to have energy to support my
husband and look after our energetic, curious children I need to get the right
nutrition.
Breaking up with plastic
We have no garbage truck to whisk away our bread bags
and milk cartons since we moved out of town. All our rubbish stays with us
in one form or other. If we can’t
compost it, or send it out to be recycled we either burn it (breathing in the
smoke), or bury it (so it becomes part of the soil that gives us our water and
food).
Horrifying! Is this a mini version of what’s happening
on the whole planet? All the rubbish/trash has to go somewhere.
My parents were upcycling before the word was invented,
so thinking about the environment and waste is not new. But if my yard and house are filling up with coffee packets and shampoo bottles I’m going to need to pay
more attention to moving towards zero waste.
Allowing Emotions
A familiarsightcaused me
to double take while scrolling Facebook. It was a picture of the emotion chart my counsellor gave me that
I didn’t know I needed.
The colour coded wheel starts with general emotions in
the centre and fans out into more specific ones (see photo, credit unknown). It helps identify what
you are feeling.
Invisible emotions can spring from invisible illnesses.
So much loss and grief at the time, but it wasn’t allowed or acknowledged.
The ubiquitous yard stick of health problems kept
appearing “At least he doesn’t have cancer”.
Papering over the pain with thankfulness helped me get
through each day.
When I tried to explain what was happening people
reacted as if I had a paper cut on my finger when really it felt like my finger
had been hacked off by a blunt axe.
It actually felt like my husband was gone and I didn’t
know if he was ever coming back. (I’ve since been told losing a spouse is one
of the most stressful life events.) But that was too huge to feel and also felt
silly to say out loud as the doctors said he was fine, all his tests were
normal. And the doctor I went to see
about my mental health also said I would be fine in a few months. Plus, Soeun
was the one in pain, why was I complaining?
On the surface Soeun was just dizzy, and mostly
without a diagnosis, medical tests ruled out all the diseases he didn’t have.
And he’s pretty much fine now. So what’s the problem? When I’m explaining the
circumstances I feel like there is no problem.
This is what I see out my window. Even in "winter".
Using the emotions chart revealed something unexpected.
It was like the shock of opening the curtains and seeing the palm trees in
tropical Cambodia covered in cold snow. When the counsellor asked me to check
off which emotions I felt during that season it revealed huge losses and grief!
“Because of course, feelings you don’t feel don’t simply go away. They
don’t seep into the ground never to return again. In fact, it’s more like the
water cycle. Whatever the earth absorbs eventually comes back as rain. Except
in this version of the water cycle, the more water that goes unused and unprocessed,
the bigger the storm. Water you ignore comes back with fury, demanding your
attention, raining big, angry drops on your head.” So I don't have a magic wand to deal with the tiredness, trash and tears but potentially I could turn these into new year resolutions. I'm not willing to make such a commitment on the internet though, but it will be interesting to ready this again next January.
******
Another article and video also helped me to keep thinking through "Allowing Emotions". Have a read & watch. It makes so much sense and was so eye opening for me.
