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Intergenerational trauma has many definitions, but the concept is pretty linear. Throughout this journey, I’ve been able to identify the role that intergenerational trauma has played in my family, along with its impact on my life and who I am as a person.
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They spent days huddled among strangers and eventually made it to their final destination of Minnesota, where a large portion of my family still resides.Īlmost five decades later, I’m in extensive cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to manage my anxious thoughts, all-or-nothing thinking, and reoccurring guilt of living life the way I want instead of the way I was taught. In 1975, my teenage mom followed her lead when she fled Vietnam with her siblings, my great-grandma, and my grandma to escape political oppression and poverty. She taught herself how to read and write while selling food on the street for extra money.
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Growing up, my grandma was fiercely independent. In the 1950s, my widowed great-grandma managed to escape North Vietnam with her three children, including my grandma, on the last plane to South Vietnam. The truth is that I come from a line of resilient women who learned to survive despite their circumstances. Anything that hinted at the implication of struggle was a sign of failure. I was raised through moments that my mom turned into one important lesson: Never show weakness. Looking back on my life, this was a pattern in my home.