How My Asian Mother’s Mental Health Affects My Own

(as featured in the Cosmos newsletter you can read here as well)

(Content warning: Complex PTSD) Dear beloved sisters,
The other day I had a hard call with my Mom.

Me: “Mom, I’m telling you again: I can’t continue to have a close relationship with you until you actually get help.”

My Mom: “Oh God, why are you so sensitive? Fine, if I upset you so much, I guess I just won’t call you. I’m sorry for being a bad mom.”

Yet again, my mother was being defensive.

As the youngest of three sisters, I was often guilted by my mom into taking her side. It got to the point where I felt emotionally responsible for her feelings. For so long, I was trying to save her while putting my own needs second. And I realized how much of my mom’s suffering and agreements with herself became my own.

Growing up in China and Hong Kong during the 1950s, my mother didn’t have much of a childhood, let alone a sisterhood. She was the eldest of 8 children and forced to raise her younger siblings alone as her parents worked long hours to provide rice to eat. “No” was rarely an option if she wanted to avoid a beating from her father. While I don’t know much about my grandfather, I understand he coped with alcohol and took his stress out on his wife and children.

And while my mother was able to break free by beginning a new life in the United States in her twenties, she never fully escaped the patterns of harm that were then passed down to me and my siblings.

It took my body breaking down from a toxic work environment to finally seek the support I needed and to be diagnosed with complex PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder. It took therapy as well as reconnecting to my ancestors’ traditional medicine like energy healing and martial arts, to have the resolve to tell my mother:

“I love you and NO unless you get help, I can’t have a close relationship with you. You have to want to help yourself before I can help you. I’m willing to love you from a distance.”

We’re often taught to believe that we don’t love our family or we’re selfish if we say “no” or assert our needs and desires for our relationships and our lives.

Do you ever feel guilty for placing boundaries with your loved ones?