Navigating Life Beyond Grief
I remember the first time I saw my dad cry was in high school when my grandma (his mom) passed away in Laos due to old age and he was looking out the window just peacefully shedding a tear or two and I was wondering if he was going to be okay since I never seen him like that before. He would later talk about how much he loved his mom and how his mom really cared for him as the eldest son of 8 children. I didn’t really have much of a relationship with my grandma since she left the states to go back to Laos with my grandpa when I was very young and so listening to my dad talk about her made me see my dad in a very tender way. Not for the strong provider and rule-setter he was in our family, but for someone who had just lost a very important person in his life and was there for him when he first fled to the U.S. after the Secret War in Laos. He would constantly say, “your grandma said she was always going to be there for her first son, no matter what (in Lao)” and this left me the impression that she was truly his ride or die. I couldn’t truly imagine a pain so big and was left thinking about: why don’t we talk about grief more openly?
As I’ve grown older, I have come to understand that grief comes in so many forms of loss and is felt and processed differently per community. As a daughter of Southeast Asian refugees from Laos and Thailand, I have witnessed and felt firsthand the impact of grief of my parent’s migration survival story of starting over with only 50 cents in a land foreign to them. When leaving home isn’t a choice that anyone would make if they didn’t have to, I recognize that as grief. When arguments and disagreements happen at home and the shame it would bring to your family if you told one of your grade school teachers, I recognized that as grief. When I couldn’t bring a Lao meal cooked by my parents at home to school because I would be outcasted or made fun of, that was grief. When I started to lean on adult relationships for emotional support and realized that my parents were no longer the first person I leaned on to help me during difficult situations, that was pretty heavy in grief as well.
As a licensed therapist who specializes in trauma recovery, I’ve seen so many forms of grief unravel in sessions and want to name and identify 3 that are common amongst Southeast Asian communities, however, rarely talked about.
Disenfranchised grief, which is an experience of grief that is not recognized by the social world of the person who is mourning. This can look like the Secret War of Laos not publicly recognized and asking survivors/descendents of the war to just look forward, not backward. Or it can look like the pressures of adult children of refugees to “figure it out” and not have a chance to grieve ancestral/historical trauma because they are perceived to have more of an opportunity to climb the social/economic ladder growing up in the West, compared to family members who live and grew up in Southeast Asia.
Prolonged grief is the type of grief that follows you through different stages in your life and doesn’t necessarily fade over time. This happens a lot in Southeast Asian communities because culturally speaking, we value prioritizing harmony over individual unique needs and therefore, rarely do we address underlying issues of a loved one’s feelings of depression, anxiety, isolation, shame and so forth. When painful emotions are left unaddressed, over time they can grow bigger, show up as addictive behaviors and lead us to feel empty, apathetic, and unable to enjoy life.
Ambiguous loss is a form of grief coined by Dr. Pauline Boss that names a loss that is either physically absence with psychological presence (type 1) and the other being vice versa of a psychological absence with physical presence (type 2). Type 1 ambiguous loss is helpful in understanding Southeast Asian diaspora experiences is migration due to war trauma, and/or what’s currently happening in terms of mass deportation of SEA family members from the US due to increased surveillance/violence from ICE during the Trump administration. There is a physical loss but the emotional connection remains intact. Type 2 ambiguous loss, on the other hand, names experiences where you may grieve a loved one who is diagnosed with a brain disease such as Alzheimer's or dementia; addiction, depression, anxiety or other chronic mental/physical health conditions that distort their memories or ability to be psychologically present in real time.
Grief can feel like an ugly beast, dark shadow or make your world completely small because you not only lose a loved one, but you also can feel like a part of you is missing too. Many people do not realize that grief shows up not only as sadness, but other difficult emotions such as irritability/anger/upsetness, anxiety, emotional numbness, perfectionism, burnout, difficulty sitting still, hyper-independence, chronic fatigue and disconnection from yourself and the world at large. This not only impacts you emotionally, but spiritually, physically, and behaviorally. We want to honor all these aspects of grief and not allow them to prolong anymore, especially because we in the Southeast Asian diaspora deserve a space to heal and understand the function of our individual and collective grief.
Now that we are here, and able to name forms of grief to start, here are some reflection questions to continue processing out grief:
What loss am I carrying that I've never named?
What did my family teach me about grieving?
What emotions was I allowed—or not allowed—to express growing up?
What does embodying self-compassion look like for me during grief?
In addition to these reflection questions, here are some additional steps you can take to continue healing your grief and feeling (better) over time:
Identify any internalized messages/thoughts that make it difficult to grieve and finally give yourself permission to grieve and name it. Normalize grief as part of being human and deepen your understanding of mental health awareness including what is depression, suicide, anxiety, addiction and/or intergenerational trauma and how does it manifest in your family and/or communities.
Join community spaces that uplift your story and start understanding that we do not have to carry loss alone and are not meant to as humans. Healing does not have to be done only in 1x1 therapy or in isolation, and in fact, we heal exponentially in community with those who can understand our story with care and nonjudgement.
Recognize that healing doesn’t mean we forget what happened or the loss, it means learning how to navigate life after and alongside the loss and becoming more self-aware and more compassionate to yourself and others.
Lastly, remember that grief is essentially about love at its core. It is not a sign that we’re broken, but a place for us to visit and give more nurture and care to. It is true evidence that we have loved, hoped, belonged and imagined a different reality. When we make space for and with our grief, our love has potential to grow, and we can fill our cups with more joy, connection and life!
Citation:
Doka, K. (2002). Disenfranchised grief: New directions, challenges, and strategies for practice. Champagne, IL: Research Press.