In this episode, I talk about the curse of generational trauma and how I was conditioned to suppress my emotion because of the unprocessed trauma my parents endured. It is important to remember if we’re a child of immigrants, and our parents had a tumultuous upbringing, they were parenting from a place of unprocessed pain. They were parenting from trauma and without the mental health resources to help them adjust back to normalcy. Getting to a place of compassion, acceptance, and understanding why our parents are the way they are, will free us from the burdens of our past selves.

For so long, I shamed my Cambodian heritage to assimilate to American white culture. But after my tumultuous breakup that ignited my healing journey, I began to unravel my family's history and learn about the story of their escape from the Khmer Rouge regime. In January of 2020, pre-pandemic, I traveled to Cambodia with my family and uncovered the untold stories of my family's experience living in the Killing Fields.