What are you?

I can’t count how many times I have heard this question. Growing up as a bi racial kid in a small town I was immersed in a world that didn’t look like me or sound like me.

I was not Asian enough to be Korean or white enough to be Caucasian… I felt like a misfit and a mistake. It caused me to be introverted and insecure. Through a series of transformative events and encounters I reconciled this identity and realized that what I thought was a mistake was in fact, divine destiny.

Being exposed to the work of sociologist Ruth Hill Useem and her work on Third Culture Kids I found some framework and terminology to process my life experience. It helped me work through who I was and evolve into who I am becoming.

So now my wife and I have committed ourselves to this work of helping people understand and discover their true identity. Not one that they choose or that they feel is forced upon them.. but rather a beautiful and powerful unique collaboration of culture and influences that produces the most unique expression of existence. You. The only one that will ever be.

So for us, Third Culture serves as a metaphorical representation of our identity. We are not just any one thing. We are a collaboration of many things that meet in our intersections of identity. We want to encourage others to discover who they are and hopefully along that path they will also discover whose they are. Third culture is for everyone. We are no longer foreigners…We belong here.

So what are you? We believe that can all proudly say… I am third culture.