EPISODE 58: WHAT IF YOUR FAMILY DOESN’T LOVE YOU?
SHOW NOTES
For today's episode, you're going to get a glimpse into a little bit of the trauma that I've processed or am processing. How do you handle the heartbreak when your family of origin doesn’t love or accept you? Is this considered “trauma”? In today’s episode, you’ll hear a vulnerable share about my relationship with my siblings and how your heart can break for reasons both within and beyond your control. Listen to an intimate story that involves immigrant parent dynamics, being a parentified child, and having a daughter of my own now… realizing I won’t be able to give her the tight knit family I wished for and still creating a modern family dynamic that can involve extended family made of friendships and community.
Sometimes, there’s too much hurt and time that’s gone by, and not enough tools to reconcile the vast space in between, so where do you go then? How do you have conversations? How do you repair the broken bonds? We’ll explore more of that on Wednesday’s episode with licensed therapist and Psychological First Aid Responder with The Red Cross, Kimberly “KJ” Nasrul."
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FULL TRANSCRIPT
Judy Tsuei 0:06
Welcome to the F*ck Saving Face podcast. I'm your host, Judy Tsuei, and together we'll explore mental and emotional health for Asian Americans, especially breaking through any taboo topics. Life may not always be pretty, but it is indeed beautiful. Let's make your story beautiful today.
Judy Tsuei 0:23
Hello, and welcome back to the podcast, I wanted to share that season one is almost over, can you believe it, there will be over 60 episodes by the time Season One is done, which is remarkable considering I think we started this podcast in March of this year. So it's a lot of content. And I'm taking a break so that I can appear on other people's podcasts, some upcoming incredible online events. And just simply spread the word as I build out season two. So I already have incredible episodes ready for that, and more and more guests who are reaching out to me who want to come on the show.
Judy Tsuei 0:59
So we will be talking about subjects like politics, which is definitely something that I did not learn about growing up, we're going to be talking about entrepreneurial ism, and how there is a lot of systemic racism or prejudices, or you know, difficulties in building a business. If you are a female entrepreneur, if you are an entrepreneur of color, and how to heal more relationships, especially if you potentially grew up in different cultures. If you didn't just grow up in the States, you grew up internationally as well. And all of what that means as we redefine what it means to be Asian in America today.
Judy Tsuei 1:38
Thank you, for all the love so far for your ratings and reviews, if you could do me a favor to close out the season. And to wish me happy belated birthday. My birthday was on July 16. So I spent it with an incredible trip to the wine region of Mexico. It's close to where I live in San Diego. And that was really incredible. But if you would like to gift me something I would be honored if you would take some time a few minutes to go hit five stars on the iTunes you know, algorithm, and to leave your thoughts share something that you've walked away with this season that's really potentially shifted your perspective, you know, maybe healed a bit from the mindfulness practices, or that you're just walking away a more conscious, more compassionate, more joyful person.
Judy Tsuei 2:25
I think that I'm always endeavoring to grow, which is what happens when you have a brain that works non stop wanting to learn everything under the sun. But I'm also learning to temper that with just learning how to be present and know that I am enough just as I am, which is another reason why I'm taking a break from season one so that I can really focus and rebuild, renew my energy and come at Season Two with some exciting new developments.
Judy Tsuei 2:51
This week, we're going to be talking about trauma and that's trauma with a capital T as well as a lowercase t. On Wednesday, I will be interviewing licensed psychotherapist Kimberly Kj nurse rule who is also a psychological first aid responder with the Red Cross and helps essential frontline workers recover their resilience. The conversation that we have is really incredible because we will talk about how to handle everyday stresses, and then how to manage and deal with those bigger things that happen.
Judy Tsuei 3:18
She's seen a lot of trauma firsthand because she's been one of those first responders and educates other first responders on how to help other people. So she helps to navigate those stress cycles and then close the stress loops. It's a really fascinating conversation and I hope you will join us on Wednesday. For today's episode, you're going to get a glimpse into a little bit of the trauma that I've processed or am processing. When I was in the depths of my postpartum depression and my very unhealthy marriage. I was so terrified of everything that I couldn't let any control go because I ultimately had none.
Judy Tsuei 3:54
One of my brothers was getting married and I was living in Austin, Texas at the time. He had planned a destination wedding in Big Sur. He told me my daughter wasn't invited. Wait, what? I said, She's your niece. Yeah, but we're not having kids at the wedding. But she's your niece. She's not a kid. She's family. To me, it felt like the equivalent of not asking my sister to attend the wedding. My daughter was my blood. She wasn't just a kid. When I shared this with my husband, he said why don't want to go. And then I didn't want to go because I didn't want to go without him or without her. codependency was running strong in that relationship. I went to the wedding.
Judy Tsuei 4:34
We flew into Los Angeles and rented a car and drove up north because the rest of the time my husband my daughter and I would be staying in my parents house to visit with them. My daughter is the only grandchild, the only niece or nephew. There's no other child on my family side other than her. My daughter didn't attend the wedding ceremony. She stayed in the hotel room with her godmother who had written her motorcycle down the coast and a badass road trip from Oakland. My daughter didn't attend the reception. But she was there on the property at this destination wedding.
Judy Tsuei 5:07
I pulled her into a photo after the wedding ceremony when the photographer was calling for all of our family members together, because I didn't understand why our distant cousin was in this photo, but not her. My brother and his wife were livid, which I couldn't tell at the time, both because of my deep, deep depression. And also because we were taught to save face. So we weren't going to raise a ruckus, none of us, even though they were very upset. I had asserted my needs the way I always had when we were growing up me as the eldest, me thinking I knew best. I tried to make amends.
Judy Tsuei 5:44
Years later, my sister tried talking to the both of us to get us to repair. We went to a bar one night, she and I, and she was telling me that I wasn't doing my part. Jeanette, I told her, their whole issue with me is that I assert myself with what I want. Do you think that me doing even more to try to make things right when they've told me they needed time is going to be helpful or harmful? Later that night, she asked, Why do you have to bring Wilder into everything? Because she's my daughter. I said, none of my siblings have children.
Judy Tsuei 6:19
When I share these stories with my friends, they say, Oh, that's why they have no idea. That night at the bar, my sister began to shout at me. We were in a small enclosed space. And the bartender was right there. And she began to get louder and louder, telling me all the ways in which she was frustrated or disgruntled with the status of our relationship of our family's relationship of how she felt like she had to keep it all together, and she was going to be the one in the end, who helped take care of my parents the most. I told her honestly that she was probably right, that I had a daughter to take care of.
Judy Tsuei 6:53
And I know that that was the wrong thing to say when it comes to filial piety in traditional Chinese families. But I wasn't gonna lie. I felt like the way she did before. I felt like I had to be the glue until I realized that there was no concoction of connection I could create that would ever be enough. After my daughter was born, I hand wrote cards and mailed them to each of my siblings. I tried to take responsibility for being a bully growing up for being placed in the impossible situation that I had to be their parent instead of their sister. Because our actual parents were overwhelmed with life and money and being immigrants and couldn't do it.
Judy Tsuei 7:31
I am three years older than my sister. I am seven years older than one of my brothers. I am nine years older than my youngest brother. I was nine years old when my youngest brother was born. And I remember when the earthquakes happen in LA, I had gotten up early to lie down next to him after he was born before I would walk myself to elementary school. And as the house started shaking, I immediately picked him up and ran for cover. I changed my siblings diapers. I bathed my siblings every night. I made their lunches for school.
Judy Tsuei 8:08
As I got older, I advocated for them. I advocated for my sister to go on an abroad trip when my parents asked me if it was worth it, because I knew that she would have an incredible experience. I advocated for each of my siblings, for school things for things that I had experienced that I didn't get, because my immigrant parents didn't know. They just had no idea of what it is that we needed, or what would benefit us. Perhaps one of the times that I advocated for them the most was one night, when I was helping my younger brothers take a bath and I saw a bruise on my brother's but shake the size of the palm of my hand.
Judy Tsuei 8:43
My father was the patriarch of our family. He was the strong man. He was the one who we all were supposed to respect. We did not start eating until he lifted his fork and began. I loved my father, I put him on a pedestal. I was so like him in so many ways. And that night when I saw that bruise on my brothers, but I told them to wait right there. And I walked over to my father having dinner reading the Chinese newspaper, and I told him if you ever hit any of my brothers, ever again, I will report you to the police. And then I turn around and walk back and finish their nighttime routine.
Judy Tsuei 9:28
I had to mediate between my parents marriage, which never worked. They would ask me questions and I would give them my advice and then they wouldn't listen to me and then they would get mad asking me Who do you think you are telling us what to do? I had to raise my three younger siblings when I still needed a parent. I parented them the way that I was parented which meant shouting and yelling and discipline and feeling totally overwhelmed. When I became a parent, I read the whole brainchild realized that my brain was just developing, I didn't have the capacity for that I didn't have the ability to rationalize or have logic, I was in over my head. And so I failed. I failed a lot.
Judy Tsuei 10:14
But failure in our family was never an option. Because of this, my younger sister got to be my brother's sibling. While they have forever seen me as this terrible authority figure, they'd rather have nothing to do with. Or at least, that's the way that I perceive it. Because I know that my sister has plans with them that I'm not invited to. None of my siblings responded to receiving those cards that I had mailed, asking for forgiveness, telling them that I wanted to create a different relationship because I now had a daughter, and I wanted them to have an aunt and uncles.
Judy Tsuei 10:50
That night at the bar, I let my sister rant at me, I knew she needed to vent. But when it came to my daughter, when she said that she went to New York to help watch her friend's kid for a month or so, so that she knew what it was like, I stopped her there. No, I said firmly, you can yell at me about all the other things, and I will take it but you cannot tell me that you know what it's like to be a parent until you become one. Because I had no idea. Once I became a parent, I realized how shitty of a friend I had been to all my friends who became parents before me, because I had no fucking clue.
Judy Tsuei 11:23
I told my sister, I want you to go ask each one of your friends who has a child if they knew what it was like before they became apparent. And I guarantee that every single one of them will tell you they had no fucking clue. There is a clear before and after the life after becoming a mother the life after. And this is why my heart breaks even more, because I have a remarkable little girl who doesn't know her uncle's or their wives her aunts. I tried to make it right with my brother and his wife, I apologized, I wrote an email, I explained the depth of my postpartum depression and my unhealthy emotionally abusive marriage, that they said they needed time. So I have to let it go.
Judy Tsuei 12:07
My brother and his wife bought a house a few years ago, and they haven't yet invited me or my daughter to see it. I am not a perfect person. And they are wonderful people. I know that each one of my siblings is a wonderful human being. I know that they were upset about their wedding. And every action after that, even though it wasn't purposeful. I don't think I could get it right. I think it would always look wrong. My current partner has a beautiful relationship with his family, with his parents with his brothers here and has a brother with the same name as mine.
Judy Tsuei 12:39
This last trip he took to the east coast with his daughters, I became scarce from the west coast. He didn't want to flaunt it in my face, the connections they have, and I didn't want to take away from his joy. I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to get it right. I know I won't get to go back in time to be a different sister. I know I won't be able to take that trip back when I brought my daughter and didn't respect their wishes. I know that each time I see how close my sister and my brothers are, it will remind me how far away I feel from them. I know that my heart will continue to break each time I think about my daughter not knowing who they are.
Judy Tsuei 13:17
Or honestly Me, me not knowing who they are either. I know that I have friends who are like family. And I have built a beautiful community around me. But there is something about when your family of origin your blood sees you as less than in a moment of frustration. Today, I asked my neighbor who's more like family, is she always going to put them on a pedestal is my daughter always going to put her down on a pedestal. And my neighbor reminded me that at her age, this is exactly what she needs.
Judy Tsuei 13:51
Because it would be too much for her little heart and her little mind to handle if she saw anything but and that brought this moment of compassion in my heart. To know that sometimes we can only do what we can, even if we create an illusion, because the heartbreak of reality is simply too much. It occurred to me the other day that one of the reasons I have such a hard time loving myself is because I don't understand how my parents could have hated me so much growing up, how they could have berated me incessantly the way that they did, how they could have put me in impossible situations. I would never when.
Judy Tsuei 14:30
I am a mother now. And I see that I would never do that to my daughter. Or at least I try that when I make a mistake. I feel terribly about it and I try to make it right to her. I take responsibility. I say that I'm sorry. I am to hear how she feels. I try to find that reconnection and reconciliation. After I had my daughter, I thought that I would become closer to my mother, that we could become more like kin because we now share this role in life, mother, but what I came to realize is that Yes, life is hard. And we all go through terrible things, that I am the adult, and my daughter is the child. And it is my job as the adult to give her every possible chance to become healthy and whole, to always feel that way.
Judy Tsuei 15:15
That innate, pure enoughness the way that she was born, I have compassion for my parents. I know they were raised in even harder circumstances than I was, in a time when emotions and mental health weren't important. I went back to China, I went back to Taiwan. I know a little of the things they went through. But I also know that I went through hard things, too. And well, I still believe that we all chose to come here as a stellar constellation of souls, with contracts we agreed to before we arrived. And now we're fulfilling them. I am the kind of Mother I try to be because of the kind of mothering I had. I have the kinds of relationships I do.
Judy Tsuei 15:56
Because of the deep heartache and loss and grief, I feel every single time the relationships that I want are not the ways that they are. My sister has done a remarkable job of shifting her relationship with my father with everyone. She's done it with me. It's admirable. And I think sometimes if I had more bandwidth, less, as a divorced mom figuring out how to live well in California, then I could devote more attention to that. But I am not perfect. And as my friend Brett said, I can only do the best that I can. That's all any of us can ever do. We can only do the best that we can. I love my siblings. I wish that things were different.
Judy Tsuei 16:37
I don't know if they ever will be. And so I sit with that grief a lot. Especially when I see my friends with their close relationships with their families. There are some things that I cannot give. There are some things that I will not get. And that is what we all experience as being human. As I mentioned earlier, on Wednesday, we'll be speaking with licensed psychotherapist Kimberly Kj nos rule, we'll be talking about trauma, and how in general trauma is defined as this psychological emotional response to an event or an experience that can be everything from disturbing to deeply distressing.
Judy Tsuei 17:14
When you experience a trauma, it can cause feelings of loss of control, betrayal, and abuse of power, helplessness, pain, confusion, loss, and it varies from person to person. Some of the basic common responses to trauma could be sadness, anger, denial, fear or shame. You might have insomnia, difficulty relationships, nightmares, or you can feel nausea. You can have changes in appetite, headaches, and you know, you might have PTSD or be feeling depressed or have anxiety, maybe even substance abuse issues. We'll dive deeper into this on Wednesday.
Judy Tsuei 17:56
But I just want to let you know that pain, human can be really challenging sometimes, and doing the right thing and continuing to have an open heart with healthy boundaries can also be very challenging learning how to be vulnerable, and continue to show up in the midst of things that are not exactly as you'd hoped. One of my friends often shares with me, you know, this alert of Oh, well, that's grief. Because again, as a culture and a society, I don't think we're really taught how to hold or process or move through grief in ways that are acceptable. So you're not alone in whatever it is that you're going through.
Judy Tsuei 18:31
If you do need additional support or help, I hope that you will reach out to the resources that are available to you. And I'll help you remember the thing that I often say which is life may not always be pretty, but it is indeed beautiful. Make your story beautiful. You are an empowered, incredible human being you have the ability to heal and to change. Nothing is too late. Even the relationships that I mentioned in today's essay, those are not too late. You never know what's going to happen. And each moment each day we make new choices, and we continue to show up with greater knowledge and greater insights and wisdom. And that is all we're all doing. So we're all trying our best to have a beautiful rest of your day. And I look forward to seeing you in the upcoming episodes.
Wilder 19:14
Please rate my mom's podcast. Give her five stars. If you want to chat with my mom, go to goodpods[dot]com. That's where you can follow and talk to your favorite podcast hosts like my mom.
Judy Tsuei 19:34
Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If you liked what you heard and know someone in your life who might also benefit from hearing this episode, please feel free to share it with them. Also, if you'd like to support our show, you can make a one-time donation fcksavingface.com. Or, you can make a recurring donation at patreon.com/fcksavingface. That's “fck” without the “u.” Subscribe today to stay tuned for all future episodes.
