Column: Immigrant parents deserve to be understood

I’ve recently started to, when necessary, view my parents as the children of their parents. I think about the loss they had to contend with at such a young age, their journeys to the West, and the places they left behind along the way. 

I wonder how it felt to discover that America wasn’t how it was made to seem, and what it felt like to come to terms with such a realization. I struggle to imagine carrying the weight of supporting family back home. Even more difficult to carry, I imagine, is the burden of feeling as if they can never say no.

The experiences of our immigrant parents don’t excuse how low they can make us feel or justify their inability to understand us as much as we so deeply wish they could, but they support my belief that their anger is rather a more complex, unexpressed version of sadness.

Not many capture the immigrant experience well.

The news often reduces it to political stereotypes, fixating on illegal immigration or oversimplifying it into caricatured narratives. They don’t show our parents on TV. They don’t ask them about their stories. They don’t capture the varied ways in which their experiences are a testament to the will of determination.

Since I was a child, I’ve watched my parents and how people treated them — what years of being misunderstood have done to their psyche. I’ve witnessed the frustrations and feelings of shame reserved for the safety of home. Yet, I’ve never heard my parents verbalize how these things affect them.

They are trained not to "be weak.” But in their perceived strength lies a glaring weakness: not taking their mental health seriously and, as a result, taking their pain out on those closest to them.

The immigrant experience is often lonely. Your culture, language and customs are now part of the “othered” minority in a new land that invalidates the basis of your identity. The immigrant experience is being told that your university degree counts for nothing and that you must begin again. It’s having to work long hours at jobs where disrespect must be tolerated. It’s enduring microaggressions and having to smile through them because your continued survival in this new land depends on it.

The immigrant experience also means having to delay necessary personal development in the name of survival and a “better life.” How can one learn to regulate emotions or express vulnerability when there is no time? Our parents missed out on the luxury of rest and reflection because so much of their story was written in survival.

Our parents need someone to validate their experiences. They need someone to help them see that they have survived despite unimaginable circumstances. But this rarely happens, as the training from their childhood doesn’t allow it. They cannot see themselves with self-compassion and grace if they’ve never learned to. So the frustration and shame from their past build and transition into irritability and fear, felt strongest by their loved ones.

They yell at us. They make us feel small at times. They adhere to logic and sense that seem unreasonable and malicious. They’ve inflicted deep wounds that hurt to this day. Their effect on us, their children, cannot be ignored. They have rejected their feelings for years, for which we pay the price.

And so, I say all this not to justify behavior, nor to erase it from our memories out of pity, but to employ a more open-minded, holistic view of our parents and, when necessary, see them within the context of their experience and where it has brought them. In wanting better for myself, I want better for my parents, our parents.

I had to find peace in understanding them. Our parents are not mad — they’re sad in ways that no one has allowed them the space and compassion to speak of.

@dthopinion | opinion@dailytarheel.com