TCK Grief and Unresolved Loss

The Invisible Grief

Counselor Lois Bushong describes a common pattern in TCKs: a tower of grief built from accumulated goodbyes, each one inadequately processed because the lifestyle moved too fast, or because expressing sadness felt disloyal to the adventure. By the time a TCK reaches adulthood, that tower can be very tall.

What makes TCK grief particularly hard to process is its invisibility to others. The losses are real — friendships, places, schools, routines, languages, versions of yourself — but they do not look like loss to people outside the experience. There is no funeral for a country you left at fourteen.

• What are the specific losses from your international childhood that you have most clearly grieved?
• Are there losses you have never had space to acknowledge because nobody around you recognised them as losses?
• What would it mean to give yourself permission to grieve places and periods of life, not just people?
• What kind of support would actually help with this kind of grief, given that most grief frameworks are built around death?