A Love Letter to The Original Trailblazers: Our Immigrant Parents

This might sound like auntie and uncle propaganda but I swear to god, hear me out.

Dear Immigrant Parents,

Thank you for taking the risk. Thank you for taking the risk and uprooting your entire life, leaving all that you know behind and starting anew in a different country. Thank you for being the original trailblazer. The ones who were not afraid and wanted more - for themselves and their future children. Or those who were afraid and held themselves together to provide a life for their children. Thank you for surviving and giving us the opportunity to thrive.

We understand you never had the space or platform to process all the trauma you’ve endured. While you were struggling to learn a new language, understand societal and cultural rules, combat incessant or underlying forms of racism and navigate life in general, as best as possible in a foreign country, we are in therapy, talking about breaking generational trauma. However, we are only able to discuss with our therapists our own parental issues because you bestowed that life of privilege on us.

This letter is not to place blame solely on ourselves as children or relieve you from accountability completely - it is simply to acknowledge that your actions came from your circumstances and we have the ability to step back with perspective and empathize. We are now sorry for our the actions of our youth and the hurt we may have caused because we were simply far too young to understand.

We are lucky to have the platforms we have, where we can freely discuss our lives and have people listen to us and genuinely care about what we have to say. I know that is not the case for you. You carry so many secrets and burdens that I’m sure we cannot even begin to imagine.

As your children, I hope you are happy that we do have the ability to empathize. We are aware you probably did not receive that from your own parents. While we may not always receive the empathy we want from you all, we will still carry that empathy to our own children - your grandchildren. For those of you who do acknowledge generational trauma, I strongly believe we are breaking the chains of it.

This letter only scratches the surface of what so many of us want to say to you all. But it is a start. We want you to know we are willing to listen to your stories and understand why you stood by so many choices that left us hurting. We want to know you as people, not just parents. We want to speak to you as equals, from a place of understanding and respect.

And though we may not always say it, we love you no matter what.