I am a proud daughter of war refugees, and I experienced and survived domestic violence as a child.
My family left Viet Nam shortly after the war ended. Through oral research, I learned that my family came to the United States as part of Operation New Life in 1975. We were one of the first waves of Vietnamese refugees to arrive in the US. However, there were no Vietnamese language and cultural services in the US, and we were living within patriarchal cultural systems. Instead of finding safety in the US, my mother, sister and I endured the struggles of isolation and domestic violence in our own home for years. The war separated my mom from her safety nets and the community that might have been able to intervene. My family knew about the violence, yet they were more invested in maintaining patriarchal systems than helping end the violence against my family.
After years of interpersonal, physical, mental, and financial abuse, my mom escaped with my sister and me. Despite experiencing shame and ridicule from her own family, my courageous mom packed her bags in her car and left. She made sure to pack the TV that she bought with her own money.
Despite getting us out of a violent home, she was met with shame and pressure from her loved ones. We didn’t have a chance to mourn the loss of our homeland, and I didn’t have time to mourn the loss of my family and home. Instead, I became displaced from my home, and my parents. I was raised by my grandparents. My dad was forbidden to see us, and my mother was forced to figure out how to rebuild her life as a divorcee and single mom. At five years old, I became a translator, teaching my grandma English with picture books I received from school. I didn’t have a therapist or any kind of resource to help me identify what was happening. This became the foundation of my experience living in the United States.
As an adult, the gender-based violence and instability I witnessed and survived at home impacted my ability to understand and engage in healthy relationships. The experiences of violence in the home and the added shame and abandonment we endured from our own communities doesn’t simply disappear over time, even if the culture encourages us to stay quiet about it. I am undoing, unlearning, and relearning to recognize unhealthy relationship patterns with friends, partners, family, and myself. And I am also learning that I can create new cultural norms and systems that help end cycles of violence and patriarchy. I do this for all of the women who survived and those who did not survive the impacts of war. I am committed to our survival as a proud daughter of a refugee.