Unlearning the Shame of Living with My Parents As an Adult
I’m already leading a different life than the nuclear family I’d envisioned. There’s freedom in stepping away from that, but I find it uncomfortable too.
I’m already leading a different life than the nuclear family I’d envisioned. There’s freedom in stepping away from that, but I find it uncomfortable too.
In that motel room I saw my father forever altered, with lasting wounds, like the scar on one of his hands—hands I’d studied and knew by heart.
After a few moments of fawning and cooing, I interjected from outside the circle with a shy raised hand: “Hi, I’m the mom.”
Maybe it’s unnatural to talk to my grandparents about Partition like an anthropologist rather than a granddaughter.
After her arrest, I started to understand. All the racist slights and foolish men my mother had endured. More reasons to be angry than I could count.
I find myself looking at the same memories with new eyes now that you’re gone.
I made a promise, too, that I would bring her back to you.
Helen Young Chang on remembered racism, both explicit and subtle, and what her parents brought from Taiwan to Southern California.
My kin may have erased themselves, but I won’t erase them. Just as I may be their wildest dreams, they are also mine.
I dug my hole trying to keep up with a social calendar I couldn’t afford, which is often what happens when you feel like you don’t belong on the social calendar to begin with.
My connections to the country and its people, my family, didn’t require control or even words. Touch, color, and togetherness were enough.
Just like plants, we inherit some traits from those who came before us, but when I spend time with my siblings I’m amazed by how different we are.
I know by worrying about a room of mostly white readers I undermine myself, but it’s become instinct. And, honestly, I just get tired.
I see a wall as tantamount to rejection: to create a physical barrier is to reject the possibility of familiarity.
I’ve read that trauma disrupts time. That violent events are recorded differently in the brain.
If I could save her, I would. I needed to feel that it was in my power to save her, to save something. I didn’t need her to be uncomplicated. I didn’t need a good dog. I needed her.
This was not the information I was looking for. This was not the truth I wanted.
As a young girl, running away is considered a flight of fancy. As a grown woman, people think it’s just flight.
Briefly, I was part of that mysterious organism, a biological family; no one cared about my virtues or my bad behavior.
There are times I envy art’s effectiveness in a bilingual context, its ability to transcend language.