Years after her father's murder, and following another tragic loss, Melissa recognized she needed help. She went to therapy, but also realized she was being cast out by her Chinese-Jamaican family as a result. And, Amy Lew, a therapist specializing in trauma and mixed-raced identity, speaks with Juleyka about finding our own ways to grieve with or without our loved ones.
Featured Expert:
Amy Lew is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who has over 8 years of experience working with a variety of clientele. She has worked for multiple programs within YMCA's Youth and Family Services Programs including Kinship Program, an adolescent crisis house, as well as the Transitional Housing Program, Turning Point, and was a therapist at the San Diego Rescue Mission. Amy received her undergraduate degree in psychology and participated in a cross-cultural research team studying racial identity development and interracial prejudice. She completed her Masters of Arts in Marriage and Family Therapy at Alliant International University in 2012, and is a recipient of the Alliant MFT Educational Stipend. She received specialized training in Motivational Interviewing, Emotionally Focused Therapy, Brief Strategic Family Therapy, Trauma-Informed care approaches, and SPARCS-ST groups, an evidence-based psycho-educational group for survivors of trauma. Her clinical experience includes providing assessment, individual, couple and family counseling, group therapy services, as well as clinical consultation and case management. She has led groups in the following areas: anger management, harm reduction, healthy relationships, emotional regulation, parenting, open-process, and SPARCS-ST. Learn more about her work here.
If you loved this episode, be sure to listen to Telling Mamí She Needs Mental Help and She Had to Choose Her Career Over Her Parents.
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Juleyka Lantigua:
Hi everybody today, I'm speaking with Melissa. Melissa grew up in the US in a Chinese Jamaican family. When she was a teenager, her father's murder changed her life. Years later, another devastating tragedy led her to therapy to get help, but it also led to her being ridiculed and excluded by her relatives. Let's get into it.
Melissa: Hi, my name is Melissa Lee. I am Chinese-Jamaican-American. I grew up in Miami, Florida, and back and forth to Jamaica summers' holidays. And growing up, I called my parents mommy and daddy.
My dad was murdered in Jamaica. We had a supermarket that we owned and he commuted back and forth, and there was a robbery and he was murdered. It completely changed my life. Obviously, as a 17 year old, my brother was 10, we kind of just had to navigate through that the best that we could. I didn't really know how to process it, I didn't really understand what was going on and death is death. Death is painful, but murder was a different type of grief for me.
I did actually try to get my mom and brother to speak about it and they just didn't really want to talk about it. And every time that I cried, it was very painful for my mom so I just stopped showing any emotion. I shut down. I cried every day that year, maybe the following year, but I did it on my own. I did it in my car, I did it in my bedroom, in the shower so no one saw emotion and I think my brother caught on to that and I never really saw any emotion from him either until I would force and provoke it from him.
My family tried maybe in their own way to comfort, but in the Caribbean culture, therapy and emotion is not common. And I didn't really go to a lot of family events because I didn't want the questions. I kind of isolated myself and because of that, my aunts, uncles, cousins, they were saying that I was crazy. They're like, "Oh, she went crazy. She went mad. Her head is just gone." I used to hear that, which all that's going to do is make me stay away even more.
So I decided to go to therapy when another tragedy happened. My boyfriend at the time, he lived in Jamaica, he was actually murdered as well in December, 2018. It's like lightning struck twice, in one place and it makes you question life, it makes you question a lot of things. Why did this happen to me? It resurrected a lot of feelings that I probably didn't process with my dad as a child. I would say that that's when I realized that this is beyond me, I have to get professional help. I mean, I'm walking around life like I'm okay and I see someone that maybe looks like my ex that passed away and I break down. And therapy again in my culture is not really seen as commendable or brave. It's seen as weak and something's wrong with you.
Melissa: I don't even share that I go to therapy with my entire family even to this day. I keep that to myself. My mom knows, I've actually tried to bring my mom to a couple therapy sessions and she came maybe once or twice, but it's just, it's not something that she believes in. So it's something that I have to do on my own.
When my boyfriend was murdered, I would say that my family, it gave them more of a reason to say that I was going to be even crazier. I think that people just don't know how to help. There's not a lot of people in this world that go through murder. They go through death, but I think that they were just afraid. So, I wouldn't say that I got a lot of support from my family.
Me not wanting to share that I continue to go to therapy and I continue to work on myself with my family, it definitely has created distance. I'm not very close to my cousins, my aunts, my uncles. And I continue to hear with the few cousins that I do speak to, I continue to hear them saying that, "Oh, she's just disappeared. I don't see her on social media anymore." Things like that. I mean, that's just confirmation to me that they still believe what they believe. No one has tried to reach out to me. I don't know. It's just, instead of wanting to help, you're talking negatively about the therapy that I'm doing at the work that I'm doing and that to me is just a product of our environment. That's a product of our culture and they get closer by doing that. So, why would they reach out?
I think that if I had the ability to have a conversation with my mom and to just let her know how much therapy has helped me, I think I would just tell her I'm not upset anymore because at the end of the day, this is a woman who suddenly lost her husband with two children. And all the anger and frustration and resentment that I had towards her as an adult, I now know, you were just trying to navigate as well. So I think that I would just tell her it has really helped me cope and it would be amazing for her to let go of that too. Let go of some of it.
Lantigua : I felt incredibly sad for Melissa. A traumatic loss is already incredibly painful, but it's made even more so when you feel like you have to go through it alone. What do we do when we have to choose between taking care of ourselves or staying in close relationship with our families? To help us figure it out, I called in an expert.
Amy Lew : My name is Amy Lew, I am a licensed marriage and family therapist out here in South San Diego in California and I worked for a number of years in nonprofits and a lot of my time was spent working with young adults and then as I transitioned to private practice I focused now on mixed race identity and trauma and anxiety.
Lantigua : You heard Melissa's story. What did you hear as you listened?
Lew : So many different dynamics. One of the first things that made me particularly sad, was the competition between generational cultures. I heard a couple of different layers of it, right? On the one hand, there was this layer of a very Western American culture of healing and grieving versus a very Caribbean communal version of grieving. And rather than finding a harmony between the two ways of grieving, it really seemed like it became this competition in shaming.
Lantigua : Is this a familiar dynamic to you as you work with your clients?
Lew : Absolutely. It tends to happen a lot in bi-cultural or tri-cultural families where when you break it all down, it's really not about how someone grieves. It's really looking underneath and trying to figure out what is the value behind why. Let's say my aunt really wants me to attend this party after the funeral and why I have to be around everyone for the next week while we're all talking, why can't I take my own space? To me, it's really not necessarily about, well, you got to show face and you got to be there, it's more looking underneath and finding the value of, well, actually the way that this culture and community has survived for so many years and thrived, is to lean on one another in times of trial.
And so the pain is held within the community. And I think when you're living in a bi-cultural divide, oftentimes the two cultures, two ethnicities, even two racial groups are socially not taught as two harmonious things that can be brought together. They're often taught in a really dichotomous way where you are either A or you're either B and there's no blending of the two otherwise, it's weird and not accepted by A or by B. So rather than being fluidity and freedom, there ends up being this really rigid, strict choice that someone has to make which often ends up with this denial of part of who they are.
Lantigua : I cannot even imagine what happens when you layer on that the trauma of a sudden death and then a violent sudden death, which was the case with Melissa. Can you walk me through what happens when you layer those things?
Lew : I wish I could make it really simple and clean. Trauma is never a clean version of anything. And so, I think what it does is that it really, really complicates and convolutes how an individual can even access the healing available to them. So, for example, let's say if there was a nonviolent death and this was something everyone was expecting and people were preparing themselves for, right? I think there was a lot more opportunity there to plan as a community, to plan together so that it's not this upheaval and kind of chaotic place. Trauma in itself heightens everyone and puts everyone in a state of kind of chaos within themselves and within the group which makes it very, very difficult to find a common ground.
Lantigua : Melissa told us that she shut down her grieving, her open expression of how much she was suffering once she realized how much it upset her mother. And that dynamic is very familiar to me as a child of immigrants and also, firstborn daughter. Can you talk a little bit about that instinct, to sort of suppress your needs and your feelings to be almost protective of your parents?
Lew : In a sense, it's an individual and communal survival strategy, right? Because if we're trying to maintain stable, consistent, loving, healthy relationships with our core people in life, and the threat happens to be how I feel and how I express my feelings, the best way for me to protect my family and myself is to get rid of that threat. Which happened to be her feelings in this instance. So, to me it's not necessarily that she did anything in the terms of black and white wrong, right? She did the best that she could to preserve her life source and her people.
Lantigua : I really want to understand what happens to a developing young person, which is who she was when this happened to her dad. And then it takes six or seven or eight years for her to really, as an adult begin to willingly process what she went through. What happens in that interval to how she's developing, to how she's seeing herself, to how she's compartmentalizing the emotions and the complexities of just being herself?
Lew : Well, the first thing that comes to mind is neuro-biological development. So, if we're considering the part of our brain that develops last, and so it's our prefrontal cortex, that part of our brain doesn't finish developing until we're in our mid twenties. Some research says it might even go a little bit past that. And so, part of that purpose of that part of our brain is to help navigate these complicated emotions and these complicated decisions and these moments where we have to think very, very critically about what is next. And so, it's really not a huge surprise to me that it wasn't until her mid twenties that some of her own mind started to feel safe enough to even touch some of these painful emotions. But the other piece to that, I think is also potentially the process of individuating a little bit from the family, right? Because she had also mentioned that some of the isolation and the distancing had already happened prior to her deciding to start therapy. So I think that could have also provided some extra space to give herself the freedom of choosing her best way of healing.
Lantigua : Yeah. So going to therapy was definitely a huge turning point for her and she's very clear about kind of the before and after of that decision. But one of the things that didn't seem to work out, was her trying to convince her brother and her mom to go to therapy. So how much should we push for that? How much should we advocate for that? And at what points do we just kind of go, "Okay, it's a choice that they're making."
Lew : I think it's a both, and kind of a scenario. If the conversation ends up being, 'You need to go to therapy, it's going to be so good for you. And I just want you to feel better and it's going to be great." Oftentimes, that's going to be perceived as, "Well, they're just telling me what to do." Right? And so, those conversations don't often get received really, really well from someone who's already a little bit hesitant to think about therapy as an option. So I think she should feel free when she is led and prompted internally to share her experience because it's one thing to say, "You should do this." And it's another thing to say, "Hey, I love you and really care about you and I'm having such a freeing experience in therapy and I would love for you to feel like you have space to say and do whatever you want." And I think that's different, right? Because then that's wishing freedom and validation and appreciation and being seen for them versus the first one where it feels more prescriptive, like something's wrong and you need to go get fixed.
Lantigua : There was something that Melissa said that was a gut punch for me. She alluded to the idea that in her relatives joining and agreeing that she was crazy, they became closer. That just stuck out to me as again, a survival strategy, the us versus her, the us versus them. What do you make of that?
Lew : I think the hardest part for me is that it really rubs up against this other societal message. I mean, I think we're in a place in society where we're starting to embrace it. Communalism is great, individualism can be great, people can of choose and design their own way of living which has a nice, fun freedom to it. But that same development, it then has turned into this like, "No, no, no. I chose and I'm right and now therefore you are wrong." It's really scapegoating to say like, "Well, we're a communal culture." Yes, communalism can be beautiful and life-giving, but there are extremes to everything. While it's great that the family can rally together, it's very toxic and really painful and ostracizing for them to rally against their own. And I don't know how safe that is to share with an individual families, right? Because you're already kind of putting yourself out as a martyr, but I feel like it's important to call that out here.
Lantigua : We talk a lot about how first gens often feel burdened by the responsibility of educating and enlightening and showing alternatives and this is definitely one of those instances where that divide is very clear. But, I think that there is something to be said for us being able to demonstrate our grief and to ask for support. And so, what are some strategies that you would encourage people to deploy?
Lew : I think when it comes to the generational divide, it has to be very, very concrete. Rather than saying, "Hey, I need space and I need time for myself." Right? That can be a very confusing sentence to someone who lives in a really concrete, practical way. And so, the suggestions that I make are things like, "I'm going to take every Saturday on my own. I am going to come to the summer get together but I won't be making it for this one." I think the fear is that, if I set my boundary, then my family's going to ostracize me even more, they're going to judge me even more. And so then, to me I think almost like a verbal balm to some of these boundary settings is recognizing the shared value. So again, it comes back to this value piece, right? Like, "We're both moving forward, we're both learning how to live without, so, and so. You're doing it in this way and that's wonderful and I'm so glad you're finding freedom. I need to do it in this way and I want us to both be free."
Lew : And it's a reminder of, "Oh wait, this person's not doing something crazy or against the family. This person is doing the same thing we are just in a different way." So I hate to necessarily put all of the weight on the individual to change their whole system because I think that's unfair. But I do think it's important sometimes to bridge the gap. I think that's what brings the families back together, is understanding, "Wait, wait. No, we still both share this thing that's core to who we are as a family."
Lantigua : Is there anything else you'd add to this conversation? Any other advice, any other suggestions?
Lew : I would like to end on a practical note. One of the things that stood out to me in the recording and listening to her story, was that she said, "With the few cousins I still am connected to." That to me was an open door opportunity because my suggestion would be, find and keep your allies within your family. And... Right? Then the next step would be, inform your allies on how they can support you. That could look like, "Hey, when they bring her up..." When they're talking about her at the aunt's house, then the ally steps in and be like, "Hey, she's actually doing really, really well and she misses coming to blah, blah, blah, the thing that we do." So then the allies can step in and they help to also bridge that gap so the weight of this whole divide is not solely on her.
Lantigua : Thank you so much. This was wonderful.
Lew : You're so welcome. Really happy to be here.
Lantigua : All right. Let's recap what we learned from Amy.
Stay fluid. The different aspects of your identity don't need to be in competition with one another they can exist in harmony and they can help you choose different strategies for coping, with grief, loss, and trauma.
Use concrete language. Verbalize in very specific terms what you need. Whether it's an afternoon by yourself, a weekend away from the family, or just to be left alone for an hour. Avoid vague and abstract ideas that are hard to visualize and hard to act upon.
And remember, share the burden. Let your allies advocate for you when you're not in the room and let them help you bridge the gap with your family so that the responsibility of showing alternatives and demonstrating other possibilities is not all on you.
Lantigua : Thank you for listening and for sharing us. How to Talk to [Mami & Papi] About Anything, is an original production of LWCC studios. Virginia Lora, is the show's producer. Kojin Tashiro, is our mixer. Manuela Bedoya, is our social media editor. Cedric Wilson, is our lead producer. Jen Chien, is our executive editor. Jimmy Gutierrez, is our managing editor. I'm the creator, Juleyka Lantigua. On Twitter and Instagram we're @talktomamipapi. Please follow us and rate us on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Goodpods, or anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts. Bye everybody. Same place next week.
CITATION:
Lantigua, Juleyka, host. “You're Grieving and in Pain. They Call You ‘Crazy.’”
How to Talk to [Mamí & Papí] About Anything,
Lantigua Williams & Co., August 23, 2021. TalkToMamiPapi.com.