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Guiying Angel Zhong has always known she loves her mother—but that’s where the simple statements end. Their relationship has long been fraught with deeply-felt tensions and anxiety. The heart of Zhong’s short essay, however, is her eloquent understanding of the roots of such problems, including the special challenges faced by members of historically marginalized groups. In the end, her admiration and affection for her mother count for more than the long memory of pain.
“Intergenerational trauma is considerably more nuanced” than what’s portrayed in Hollywood stories of conflict and revenge, writes Angel Zhong. In real life, “there is no clear hero or villain, victor or victim.”
Her own early life bears out this claim: it brimmed over with love, fear, mysogyny, and examples of dauntless strength, especially on the part of the women in her family (in this case, her grandmother, mother, and aunt).
But these women also passed on the very mental health challenges they helped Zhong to survive. This probably won’t come as a surprise to anyone with a family history of trauma. But such experiences can be magnified by societal conditions, such as racism and marginalization. Zhong sees her own story as reflecting “the struggles many immigrants and people of color face in being tasked with reconciling cultures, belief-systems and generations of pain.”
The good news is that time and carefully chosen educational and professional pursuits have given Zhong an ever-deeper sympathy and understanding of what her mother was up against. They’ve also clarified her own ambitions. “Breaking cycles while breaking stigma—that’s what I’m here for,” she writes. It’s a powerful and uplifting message.
Read the full post on the blog of NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness:
https://nami.org/Blogs/NAMI-Blog/November-2022/What-It-s-Like-to-Inherit-Trauma
Breaking cycles while breaking stigma — that’s what I’m here for.
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