Growing up, Leslie saw her parents send supplies and money to relatives in the Dominican Republic, even as her family struggled financially. It bothered her, but she was afraid her parents would call her selfish if she said anything. Catalina Fortich, a licensed marriage and family therapist, helps us rethink that label.
Our expert this week is Catalina Fortich, a marriage and family therapist with her own private practice based in South Florida, Safe Place Therapy. Learn more about her work here. If you loved this episode, be sure to check out Struggling to Become More than a Dutiful Daughter and She's Stuck in a Family Triangle.
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Juleyka Lantigua-Williams:
Hi, everybody. Today, I’m talking to Leslie. She grew up in the U.S. in a tight knit Dominican family. Throughout her life, her parents sent supplies and money back to the DR to support their extended family. But at some point it began to bother her and talking about it with her parents was never a real option. Let’s get into it.
Leslie: My name is Leslie de los Santos. I am currently in Santo Domingo. I am born and raised Dominican, but I was… I lived most of my life in the U.S. Growing up, I called my mom ma 95% of the time and the other 5% was mom, and my dad 100% of the time was pa. I am the middle child of six, so my dad had two children in DR, and then he had me, and then he had two more with my mom, and then another one in the States. Well, on my mom’s side I’m the oldest, and I’m pretty much the anchor in there because I’m the one with the most knowledge in I guess both worlds, here and the States.
I came to live in the U.S. at age four. My parents immigrated to the U.S. My mom is partly American, so she had a bit of an easier time going through the process, and she really just worked from the ground up. She was able to get a job quickly as a teacher and my father, who worked here in DR as an electrician, was able to get a job at a company pretty easily because he was good.
Finances, honestly speaking, weren’t always the best. Like I knew that we weren’t very wealthy, but I never knew to what extent until now that I’m older and I’m actually able to ask questions. But we did grow up in poor neighborhoods here and in South Florida. I remember growing up, we would shop at thrift stores. Eating out wasn’t really a thing unless it was someone's birthday, like it was a special occasion. I don’t remember doing any extracurricular activities up until I was in middle school and they became kind of like free.
When I first found out that they were saving money to send over to family members, or like putting things aside to send to family members, it really didn’t… It didn’t bother me, because I was like, “Well, they don’t have those resources,” so it made sense. It didn’t really become a question as to is this something that’s necessary until I would say I was about 14 or 15 years old, when I started realizing that some of the things that we were sending over or some of the money that we were sending over was needed. I never said anything about us needing what was being sent over because I… Well, firstly I had the fear of I would be seen as selfish or I would get in trouble for questioning my elders, or it would be seen as disrespectful.
I remember the exact moment. I was a freshman in high school and so I had a laptop to do schoolwork with and that’s really where I did anything I needed to do, and I had… I think it was like one of those Samsung, the smaller Samsung tablets, and I remember one day my laptop just wasn’t there and I was like, “Okay. All right, I can’t do anything about that.” But it was uncomfortable. It was… You know, imagine you’re doing civics work. That’s what I remember I was doing. I was doing American civics homework, filling out worksheets on a screen that was a little bit bigger than an iPhone Plus screen. You know, this tiny thing.
And then a few weeks later, I remember there was a tension in the house because I guess my dad was trying to send over the tablet, as well, but it was kind of like, “How can you take away that resource from your child here that’s using it on a daily basis to do schoolwork?” My mom objected and she said no, because I need it. The root of my resentment towards him in retrospect to that was the fact that I felt like my needs as a child and my other siblings’ were not as big of a priority as those back home.
I think the biggest lesson I’ve taken away from the things I experienced was to make sure that before I’m able to give to someone else, I have it for myself. Because if I don’t have it for myself, I can’t give it to someone else and not have some type of downfall. It might seem selfish and it might seem degrading to the other person, but they don’t know your situation fully.
Lantigua-Williams:
I’ve seen these dynamics in my own family. Leslie’s awareness of the need to keep our own cups full is so powerful, but it can be at odds with the sense of family duty first gens often learn from our parents. To help us find some middle ground, I did what I always do. I called in an expert.
Catalina Fortich:
My name is Catalina Fortich and I’m a licensed marriage and family therapist in private practice in South Florida, and I specialize working with trauma and Latin men, women, couples, and families.
Lantigua-Williams:
What did you hear in Leslie’s story?
Fortich: Well, I heard that she was definitely already on the other side as far as having learned a lesson in a very long road of lessons that sometimes we have to deal with in the Latin community, especially for first generations, and that lesson being those implicit messages of how love is sometimes coated with sacrifice, and needs being selfish. Unfortunately, that is maybe not something that our families want to explicitly share with us, but it’s definitely in that familismo that we want to value so much, right? But at the same time, it has negative drawbacks, too.
Lantigua-Williams:
I’m so glad you said familismo, because we’ve talked about this before. So, talk to us about the threads of familismo that you hear in Leslie’s story, please.
Fortich: You know, familismo is a value that we have that we’re very connected to as a Latin culture. It’s not only Latinos. It’s also Asian Americans, so any collectivistic culture is gonna have some values that are similar and overlap, like dedication, and commitment, and loyalty. There’s a lot of shared time together. With that shared time and with those values, there’s… It’s a two-sided coin. So, there’s positives to that and a lot of protective factors, but there’s also drawbacks to that like sacrifice.
And sometimes that comes tied with what Leslie’s talking about, which is that financial piece where we feel like we need to sacrifice even financially to support others and put others even before ourselves.
Lantigua-Williams:
Do you see this dynamic often when you work with your clients?
Fortich: Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. It’s almost like we think that our family members can hear us even in therapy, because they will apologize even before they’re going to say something that they know is completely confidential. But it’s so entrenched that they’ll say, “You know, this sounds horrible,” or, “This makes me sound selfish, but…” And I always have to remind them like, “You know, it’s just you and me here.” But for them it’s not like that. For them it’s, “This is so entrenched in me that my parents’ internalized voice or my family’s internalized voice lives within me.” You know?
Lantigua-Williams:
So, what do you advise your clients to do when they’re encountering these situations where they’re feeling like unduly put upon or like sacrifices are being made that really impact them negatively, but they also completely understand why it is that adults and parental figures are making those decisions?
Fortich: You know, something that stood out for me is when Leslie said, “At first, it made sense, but then it didn’t.” So, it made sense until it didn’t. And I think that by far we understand that family’s important and we do reap the benefits of that closeness, and we do want to be giving, and caring of our family members, but there comes a point where we even can start feeling, right? And usually, it’ll show up in an uncomfortable emotion like resentment, or confusion, or frustration, or anger even, and when that emotion shows up, it’s like, “Okay, there’s a tipping point here where something no longer makes sense when that collective interest outweighs my individualism, then it’s no longer beneficial.” We move from helping others to being almost like in a state of helplessness. Not to say entirely helpless, but as a child you are helpless, because you don’t have choice. As an adult, now it’s recognizing that you do have choice and that you as a child, even though you didn’t, now you can make choices of living life differently even though your parents, based on their lived experiences, what their values were, what they had to experience, they made their choices. But now you get to make choices for yourself.
Lantigua-Williams:
So, Leslie definitely represents one aspect of that story. Her story to me is so familiar. One of my older cousins, she moved to the States in her late 20s. She worked incredibly hard. And then she opened up her own business, she was very successful, but 30 years later she still doesn’t own her own house because she has spent so much of her income and the profits from her company supporting folks back home. And it is so painful sometimes to just watch her work so tirelessly to do that.
And so, let’s talk about how other people who might be repeating patterns that they may have seen their parents take on vis-à-vis supporting families in their home countries, how can they recognize the hurtful patterns and start to do something about them?
Fortich: So, first I guess it’s do they want to change? Because in order to want that change, you’re gonna have to make some decisions that are gonna be uncomfortable for a lot of people, including yourself. I think it’s also a matter of mindset, of recognizing that it’s not selfish to self-protect. That’s what I usually say. And so many times we think being selfish, and absolutely humans have the capacity to be selfish, but in many instances, more often than not, they’re not being selfish and they’re self-protecting.
And you know, especially let’s say your cousin has a family of her own. If she chooses to start putting more of that money into her children, into her home, she’s self-preserving for her future, for her children’s future, and that’s not selfish.
Lantigua-Williams:
Ooh, that word. It’s so triggering. Because we learn to censor ourselves for fear of being branded selfish. Part of the immigrant mythology is the enormous sacrifice that parents make and one of the things that another guest said early on, when we started the show, she really actually stopped me in my tracks with that one, because she said, “Yes, our parents came to this country, made great sacrifices for us, but this is something that they also wanted for themselves. They came for their own reasons, too.” And so-
Fortich: Absolutely.
Lantigua-Williams:
Can you and I unpack a little bit of that generational guilt that gets transferred? That either keeps us silent or creates these expectations of self-sacrifice that sometimes can go to extremes?
Fortich: How to deal with the guilt, right?
Lantigua-Williams:
Yes.
Fortich: I think first, how we deal with any uncomfortable emotion is normalizing it first and recognizing, “Okay, there’s a backstory to why I feel this way.” And not necessarily being like, “Oh, there’s something wrong with me,” but normalizing and validating, “Okay, this guilt has an origin.” And then you move through it. There is this distinction that I often use with my clients of guilt is kind of a message of saying that the choices I’ve made are bad and shame is I am bad. And so, we have to make that distinction because what we are ultimately saying when we say, “I’m selfish,” is that, “I am bad.” Versus absolutely, again, we can make very selfish decisions that are self-serving, but because I have needs, or because I have wants that are very human, that doesn’t necessarily make me bad.
Those messages that we are telling ourselves and that we are perpetuating generationally of, “You are bad to want things. You are bad to have needs.” No, you have needs because you’re human, and I think that that was something that our ancestors, our grandparents didn’t have access to. You know, they didn’t have access to what we now know the distinctions between these messages that we implicitly share give ourselves, that our parents share with us. We have to recognize it before we can address it. And it’s very coercive.
And if there is this need that I’m trying to meet, or there’s a self-preservation that I’m trying to meet, then it’s not I’m bad, or even what I’m doing is bad. It’s disconnecting that messaging with the behavior and how we’re feeling.
Lantigua-Williams:
I love the way you put that. One of the short ways that people reference self-care, self-protection, is to say, “Put your oxygen mask on first and then help the person next to you.” And I very much feel like first gens like me, we had to learn that, because we were absolutely taught the opposite. And so, how can first gens continue to improve upon our ability to put on our oxygen masks first in other aspects of our lives?
Fortich: Yeah. I think it’s we don’t have to fight the values of familismo. We don’t have to fight it, right? Because that’s the conflict that we have, like it’s either individualism or it’s this, right? But it can be a both, and what are the aspects of that commitment, dedication, loyalty, shared time, that value that we have, what can I keep from that and what can I integrate with my new value of also thinking of myself, and also of self-preservation, and of self-advocacy, right? How can I integrate those two?
And that’s honoring what we have inherited from that, but we also honor the new things and the new values that we have as an individual. Since we’re talking about Leslie, and money, that’s such an important piece. We’ve gotta live with that. I was very much raised by if you’re going back to the mother country, which for me is Colombia, you do not go empty handed. You go and you bear gifts, and you share that with them, and that was something that was very important, very special, and I continue that tradition. But I’m not going to take more than I can afford. I’m not going to give more than I can give.
So, we have to be mindful of the fact that there’s two sides to this, and it’s amazing and great to be helpful and supportive, but the drawback, we have to set boundaries with that. And so, I give as much as I can, but not to my detriment.
Lantigua-Williams:
Catalina, thank you so much. As always, so much wisdom.
Fortich: No, you’re welcome. Thank you so much for the invitation.
Lantigua-Williams:
All right, let’s recap what we learned from Catalina. Heed your emotions. Feelings like resentment, frustration, even anger can signal that something about a situation makes you uncomfortable or unhappy. This is useful information, so pay attention to it. Drop the guilt. Self-preservation is not selfishness. Self-preservation is not selfishness! One more time for the people in the back: Self-preservation is not selfishness. Despite the messaging to the contrary we might have heard all our lives, you are not a bad person because you have needs and express them. You deserve to have your needs met. And remember, integrate your values. It doesn’t have to be either or, this or that. You can be generous and supportive towards others and also self-preserving. You can advocate for yourself, for your wants and your needs, while supporting others.
Thank you for listening and thank you for sharing us. Thank you for writing to us and tweeting at us. We love hearing from you. How to Talk to [Mamí and Papí] About Anything is an original production of Lantigua Williams & Co. Virginia Lora is the show’s producer. Kojin Tashiro is our mixer. Manuela Bedoya is our social media editor. I’m the creator, Juleyka Lantigua-Williams. On Twitter and Instagram, we’re @TalktoMamiPapi. Please subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, or anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts. Bye, everybody. Same place next week.
CITATION:
Lantigua-Williams, Juleyka, host. “When They Send Money Back Home But It Hurts You.” How to Talk to [Mamí & Papí] About Anything, Lantigua Williams & Co., February 1, 2021. TalkToMamiPapi.com.