Cycles of Renewal: A Reflection on Inter-connectedness and My Interpersonal History
Prelude
That night, I broke down in my bedroom crying. It might have been several months after I arrived at my host parents’ house in Ohio. No friends I could connect with, no freedom to explore around without a car, being accused of “eating too much” or speaking Chinese at home, and the unpredictable fights between the host parents I had to bear with … it was getting too much. At that moment, I really missed home. I really missed my parents. This was weird because I had hated them for so long and all I ever wanted was to escape. Yet, strangely, now that I had escaped to a small town on another side of the world to live with a new pair of temporary parents, I had only started to relate to my family of origin.
Part 1: The Setup
Despite being born into a stable family and a resourceful city in a rapidly growing country, I did not feel safe for most of my childhood and adolescence. To be exact, since a very young age, I understood that I could not fully be myself with my family. I had to watch their emotions, listen to their commands and adapt my expression to their likings. Because if I didn’t, what would wait for me were criticism, judgment, dismissal, or full-on attack. While everything I learned from our heavily Confucianism-infused culture told me I was doing the most right thing by obeying my parents, I was still extremely confused — their love for me seemed so conditional. They seemed only to like me when I fulfilled all the expectations for piano practice, straight-A grades, modest clothing and polite language.
In eighth grade, my friend Kiki invited me to spend Christmas at her house, but since this was China and we didn’t really know what Christmas was, it just meant that we would spend a night together eating pizza, singing songs, and decorating a tiny fake Christmas tree at her home. It was my first time celebrating Christmas, and I had so much fun that I arrived home two hours later than my curfew. Before I could share with my mom my excitement and offer my apology, she commanded me to kneel on a tiny stool reflecting on my wrongdoings while she berated me on how undisciplined I’ve become and hit me with a clothing rack. She wouldn’t stop even as my skin turned red and I begged in tears.
As I knelt there, allowing the pain and the scolding to pass through me, feelings of, unfairness, resentment, abandonment and despair all swirled up in me yet found nowhere to land. Why would my parents punish me for having fun while Kiki’s celebrate with her? Why did my mom have to be so cruel to me? Why she never cared for how I feel? After I wiped my tears, uttered apologies and promises and went to bed, all the questions and emotions found a dark corner inside me to hide so that the illusion of peace and normalcy could live on. Yet since then, I had already chosen to be a different person, growing more and more emotionally distant from my parents and my repressed parts.
For many years later, I had struggled to accept labeling my childhood experience as “abusive.” Part of me believed that it was part of the culture. However, it was not hard for me to name it “lack of emotional support,” or in Wadell’s words, “insecure containment.” Wadell states that the degree of containment a child has experienced in her relationship with the primary caregiver will determine the level of her emotional engagement in later life (Waddell, 2002, pp. 46- 47). Indeed, I would wrestle with the challenges of extending relationships and risking change for at least another decade, searching to compensate for the missing internal and external emotional attunement by learning from my many mistakes.
Part 2: The Upheaval
I didn’t expect that I would miss my parents after leaving them and the hometown where I had lived for sixteen years of my life. Willfully joining an exchange student program in the hope of a new life yet somehow was randomly assigned to the middle of nowhere in Ohio, I didn’t understand what that choice would mean to me in terms of change and loss. Language, family, friends, placement, culture, personality, identity — it was all reset. From wearing the same uniform, taking the same class and reading the same book as all the other kids at school to suddenly be the only international, Asian kid in the entire school. From earning popularity through my quick-witted humor and cultural references to not understanding most of what other students are laughing about and feeling too shy to ask. From being highly involved and extroverted at school to only have books, drawings and movies as my outlets. Though completely unprepared for this sudden removal of my shell, I was forced to molt and rebuild my sense of selfhood and relatedness.
One of the major transformations I went through was the development of my racial identity. Before, I was a girl. After, I was an Asian girl. Before, I was invisible as and amongst the dominating ethnicity. After, everything I did and said represented my country, my culture, and my race. Every day I received some new introjection of racial representations of myself. Every activity I joined taught me something about where I could stand out, fit in, or belong. Tatum describes the process of racial identity development as often circular or spiral instead of linear. One might revisit the same question and challenge in different stages of the process (Tatum, 1997, p.83). The spiral staircase of my racial, ethnic, cultural identity development certainly had an intense upward curve beginning that year. This process of distinguishing truth in the battle between my self-perception and external input turned out to be one of my most valued tools for growth.
One crucial truth I discovered during that year was about my parents. It was when I could accept my disillusionment with my white Ohio host parents and the US in general that I began to see my old family dynamics and my upbringing in a new light. The truth was that they did not intentionally want to hurt me, that they were strict with me because they valued me highly, and that they loved me but could only show love in ways that they were familiar with. Yes, my parents did not provide me with emotional attunement nor encouraged my authentic expression. Still, they did their best to establish a baseline container for physiological security and economic and marriage stability. Yes, they did not know how to speak words of love and affection or hug me as my Ohio host parents would, yet they gave me the best of what they understood as love through acts of service and letting go.
Later I would learn about my parents’ life paths dedicated to providing for the family. My dad was the first to graduate college and moved out of the village in his family. He earned a master’s degree and climbed to a respectable position as an engineer in a state-owned electricity company through diligence and determination. As an accountant-turned-stay-at-home-mom, I never had the chance to ask my mom if she had regrets about her career, but indeed she devoted most of her energy in organizing and managing the house so that I could have the best growth environment. Both the eldest child in their family, they were indeed the most responsible and giving, helping the siblings and relatives as they looked up to us as the better-established family. My intelligence, work ethics and moral standards directly reflected their gifts, which pushed me through college, work and graduate school.
Part 3: The Cycle
The cycles of self-renewal rolled on and snowballed as I ventured into adulthood. Not only my racial identity but also cultural, social, sexual, professional, spiritual identity burst and evolved, so did my understanding of identity, selfhood and existence in general. What remains consistent is my quest for belonging.
Despite my English had improved significantly, and my desire for diversity was fulfilled after moving to California, the struggle of wanting to fit in continued through my college and early work years. In that small liberal arts school, I attempted to join different cliques, but the hardship of balancing coursework, social adventures and my crippling self-doubt forced me to recourse to the old pattern of misidentifying academic achievement as self-worth. I graduated with an honors thesis, two majors and a full-time offer as a software engineer in of the top tech companies in the Bay Area, but also a lingering sense of loneliness, insecurity and depression.
This wrestle with self and community finally erupted into intense fights and reconciliations when I started working and living in San Francisco. For the first time in my life, I had the freedom and agency to explore my interests in an urban playground that could satisfy all my desires. I frequented salons and events, joined community houses and online dating, and came out of my bubble of Chinese-student-ness. As I ventured out of my comfort zone, my need for recognition and connection only grew stronger.
Through intense confrontations between my mind and reality, I started to reflect on my tendencies and narratives. One day I set out to attend a cuddle puddle at a friend’s house, an event designed to allow people to experience platonic physical intimacy. I was quite nervous, as this was one of my first cuddle puddle experiences. During my Uber ride, I called my partner to check if he had already arrived, so I didn’t have to enter the house alone. When I heard that he would be at least thirty minutes late, my mind instantly was triggered by images of me trying to start small talk and initiate physical contact with a room full of strangers. It escalated into me standing outside of the house, refusing to go in and crying nonstop even after my partner quickly arrived because now I worried that people in that house would judge a sad, socially anxious Chinese girl. Yet the surprising thing happened: my partner grabbed me, took my into the room and yelled “Everyone come hug Michelle! She’s crying and needs support!” When I realized what happened, I was embraced by warm bodies and kind faces who later formed a cuddle puddle around me.
That moment vividly portrays a breakdown of my illusive perception of self and the world. The outer reality of acceptance and support from people in that gathering was a mirror that disclosed the distortion of my inner storytelling. When my emotions that carried past traumas and energies manipulated my subjectivity, it created a familiar story of not fitting in to avoid the pain of confronting fallacy. What I wanted was for people to accept my vulnerability and imperfection, but I could not see that as a possibility because I was rejecting that part of my own self.
Sullivan talks about the concept of “inner and outer relatedness” that acts as two interdependent bases for emotional health (Sullivan, 2010, p. 2). Through external relationships, we co-regulate to learn the skills needed for attending to the inner self. As the dissociated parts of myself was embraced by my new friends, communities and therapist, I learned to listen and sit with my sadness and anxiety. The peace and acceptance I felt then enabled me to offer holding space for other people. Tuning in to my desires and passions, I began my studies to become a therapist, and doing the inner work became my work.
Part 4: The Reversal
It was not until this summer did I put together an essential piece about my upbringing and everything. My grandparents on my mom’s side told me over lunch the story of their marriage and family development after I became curious of the history. Their turbulent life started when my grandpa, as a child, escaped Nanjing during the Nanjing Massacre in WWII. Later on, they would witness and experience the upheaval of a newly established country through its civil war, its participation in the Korean War, and the political, social and economic struggle during the Cultural Revolution. As a translator who accompanied the army, my grandpa was often separated from my grandmother for months at a time. This separation and lack of freedom were exacerbated during the Cultural Revolution, during which my grandparents were forced to locate and work in two regions far apart in China and could only visit each other less than once a year. This lasted for a whole twelve years, which meant my mom, the eldest child, could only be looked after by her grandfather in Nanjing alone without her parents’ companionship. Her grandfather was old, which meant most of the time, it was her taking care of them both instead of being taken care of. She did not reunite with them and her younger siblings living in the same house until she became a teenager.
When I heard the story, it all made sense. Why my mom was the independent, assertive, industrial woman she was. Why she was so good at cooking, cleaning and taking care of the logistics. Why it was hard for her to show emotional understanding and support for me. Why every time I cried, she didn’t know other ways to attend to my sadness except telling me to stop. I could imagine my mom as a little girl, spending most of her time with her reticent and stern grandpa, stuffing down her emotions around not being able to be close with her parents.
It all made sense, what they call intergenerational trauma. The turmoil, violence and displacement my grandparents underwent directly caused the absence of their parenting to my mom. With a mother or father figure that could protect and indulge the child she was, she learned to be the adult way too early.
Menakem explains how trauma compounds by a pyramid diagram: on the bottom, it is historical trauma, which leads up to intergenerational trauma, institutional adverse experiences, adverse adulthood experiences and more and more severe impairments of children with early deaths as the worst manifestation on the top. Unhealed trauma is passed on and compounded through bodies in a household. Over time, trauma becomes decontextualized and can look like culture (Menakem, 2017, p.35). The tendency within my family and the Chinese culture at large to reserve direct emotional expression and fear of conflict and authority is indeed the aftermath of traumatic memories of oppression in war and political revolution.
However, not just trauma is passed over, but also resilience. Despite poverty and chaos, my grandparents did the best they could to support their children and care for the family, just like how our collective culture promotes. As farmers, educators and nurse, they best embodied generosity, responsibility and hard work, which my parents inherited. Then, through their hard work on top of the upward development of our country, my family had the opportunity to enjoy social and financial stability, which gave me the privilege to study abroad for academic and psychological growth. I am the first one in a long lineage of Chine women that have the autonomy to freely choose my education, career, marriage, social group and who I want to be. As Tatum said, “The legacy of loss is accompanied by a legacy of resistance” (Tatum, 1997), I feel the blood of resilience and power in me as I look up to my ancestors who survived invasion and revolution of thousands of year and the people of my generation who all start to do the work of confronting the unresolved past.
My previous narrative is one of victimhood, but now I want to retell my family’s story in the voice of the empowered. Looking back at the pyramid of compounding of trauma, I see that its reversal also stands as the compounding of healing and growth. As the first in my family to receive therapy and work on psychological burdens, I had the luxury to do so because of the direct and indirect support from my parents and the bigger context. The generation after me will continue the healing work to address problems embedded in a larger tapestry of trauma, history, systems and culture. The progression of such healing and growth on a generational level will also not be linear, but cyclical and spiral, just like the evolution of human history. Moving away from the previous narrow perspective to a larger frame makes me see the other side of unresolved suffering is unexpected strengths. The other side of loss for a child could be expansion for an adult. And the other side of my separateness and loneliness could be inter-connectedness.
This is my newest sense of belonging. My problems and traumas do not belong entirely to me, and my healing and growth will not only benefit me. The more I am engaged with integrating parts of my repressed self, the more I could partake in the adventures of the relational external world with a loving presence that supports others. I could see that the split between my psyche and reality becoming smaller and smaller, until one day I am in my center both inside and outside, and I become the mirror others see themselves.
References
Menakem, R. (2017). My grandmother’s hands: Racialized trauma and the pathway to mending our hearts and bodies.
Sullivan, B. (2010). The mystery of analytical work. Hove, East Sussex: Routledge.
Tatum, B. (1997). “Why are all the Black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?” and other conversations about the development of racial identity. New York: BasicBooks.
Waddell, M. (2002). Inside lives: Psychoanalysis and the growth of the personality. London: Karnac.
