Your family’s story mirrors that of the larger Vietnamese-American diaspora, with family members being resettled in or moving to states like Iowa, Georgia, Maryland, Texas, and California, specifically Orange County. Can you share with us what you know about your family’s history and their different paths to resettling in the United States?

I was a curious child, but I never really asked my family about their experiences during the Vietnam War or as refugees. Especially when I was in middle school or high school, I don’t think I grasped the history or significance of the Vietnam War very well. It wasn’t until I declared Asian American Studies as a minor in college that I actually sat down with my mom and several other family members and had conversations about their experiences.

In 1975, my uncle, my grandmother’s first son, Bác Thưởng was the first one in my immediate family to leave Vietnam to resettle in America (Iowa specifically), through our extended family’s military status. My grandmother actually had the chance to have two of her eldest children leave, but she was worried about my aunt, Bác Đại, and my mom, Nguyệt Ánh, couldn’t bear to part with her sister, so ultimately, my grandmother sent my uncle to the States. When times in Vietnam were not getting any better, my mom and Bác Đại decided to sneak out of the country in hopes of finding better work opportunities in America. Although my mom and Bác Đại escaped around the same time in the late 1980s, storms split up the boats they travelled on so they ended up at different refugee camps. Bác Đại's application was approved within 6 months and she was able to leave, but my mom failed twice in the interviews where she had to prove she was psychologically traumatized and deserving of refugee status. By 1990, the refugee camp my mom resided in reached its cap size and she was forced to repatriate to Vietnam. Fortunately, Bác Đại was able to sponsor her over to the States. Bác Đại eventually arrived in Georgia in 1989 and by 1992, she and Bác Thưởng were able to sponsor over the rest of the family.

My biological grandfather died in the War fighting for the South, and his family is huge — he was 1 of 8 siblings. We settled in Georgia mainly because of this extended family who had immigrated to the U.S. in the late 1970s through military connections. Since they were already well-established and local business owners, we all decided to go over there and be with them. My family stayed in Georgia for a few years but they felt that the climate in Georgia was too cold, so they moved to Orange County. We still have a lot of family members in Georgia, as well as in Maryland and Texas.

I didn’t have a dad growing up so I grew up hearing stories about him. I do know that he came over in 1975 and so I believe both my parents are refugees.

How did your childhood experiences shape your identity as a Vietnamese-American? Were there cultural or generational divides that you had to navigate as a child of refugees, or even now as an adult?

For most of my life, I have identified as Vietnamese-American. I had the privilege of growing up in a very dense Vietnamese-American community in Little Saigon (Orange County), and so I never felt threatened or that I didn’t belong. I am bilingual in Vietnamese, which helps me feel more connected, but I definitely felt out of place because of the pernicious nature of colorism in the community. My dad has more melanin than my mom, whose entire family is much more fair-skinned. His genes were clearly more dominant because since I was about 5 years old, my skin tone became very tan, my melanin coming into its full power. Growing up with this rhetoric of colorism was pretty detrimental to my self-esteem because I was surrounded by those backhanded compliments about the color of my skin. There was this one big family gathering where extended family was coming over, and I distinctly remember my grandmother patting this beige powder all over my legs and arms — I think she was ashamed that I was darker than everyone else in the family. I didn’t actually think much about this memory until my M.S. Counseling program when we had to dissect our childhoods, and now I see this moment through totally different lenses. It took me a long time to love my skin and to be comfortable in it. For my family, by the time they realized the damage colorism did to me, they tried to fix it by saying things like, “Oh, Americans love getting tan!” But it was too late. It didn’t help that I remember being worried that my skin color was so close to my estranged father’s, and that that’s all my mom’s family would associate me with. Also, most of my relatives didn’t speak English when I was growing up so I was expected to speak Vietnamese — I remember just saying “okay” was almost like cursing because it was an English word. At the time, I resented my family for being so strict about speaking Vietnamese, treating my speaking English almost as an attack, but as I grew older, I became more thankful that they forced me to speak Vietnamese and instilling the ability to communicate with folks in my community.

My family is very traditional and conservative, and while they are very family-oriented, it comes with the cost of prioritizing the group over the individual. It is hard to be family-oriented, though, when your needs aren’t being met. They aren’t super extroverted people and prefer to just be among family members, and we try to do everything together, but sometimes that means individuals will have to make huge sacrifices just to satisfy the group. Furthermore, even though I was raised Catholic, I always felt like it was wrong — I support religion as a whole and I like how it is rooted in faith, but to constantly be reminded that you are sinning or going to hell was very dangerous and detrimental for me. I was always feeling guilty and I didn’t like that I always felt like a bad person — we all make bad decisions, but it doesn’t mean that we are bad people. Living in such a conservative household, I’m a little bit surprised that I don’t have a lot of the same beliefs, but it might be because I went to school here and have been exposed to different types of people and ideologies which really expanded my worldview. Being around my family during the 2016 election was especially rough because I was taking sociology classes focused on understanding inequality. Being able to see the big picture of things, I understand why my family wasn’t supportive of the Democrats considering how they feel that democracy failed them during the Vietnam War, but it was so hard to have empathy for them when they don’t really have empathy for other people. And I know that the conservative Vietnamese media doesn’t help. I had a conversation with my mom about how dangerous the Vietnamese media can be and how it was making everyone more fearful and xenophobic, and she was like, “What are you talking about? They help inform us and keep us from getting into danger!”

I didn’t learn much about Vietnam or Vietnamese-American history in school. There was usually one small paragraph about the Vietnam War in our high school history books, but it usually portrayed us as damsels in distress in need of the White Savior. It wasn’t until college when I was taking those Asian American Studies classes that I bought books about the Vietnam War and learned more about the historical context, U.S. imperialism, and the Vietnamese diasporic experience.

Growing up in an intergenerational household, you were able to have a really close relationship with your grandparents, and particularly with your grandfather, who sadly passed away in 2015. Can you talk about the impact he had on your life?

After my biological grandfather passed in the War, my grandmother eventually remarried, and this was the man I grew up calling Grandfather.

I was fortunate that there wasn’t too much of a language barrier between us, but as much as I loved my grandparents, there were definitely things that we just couldn’t talk about, things that would have allowed us to get to a deeper level. Still, I know I am incredibly lucky because some of my friends never met their grandparents or knew them when they were growing up, and I was able to live with my grandparents and have them be a huge part of my life. I remember my grandfather used to bike me to and from school from kindergarten through sixth grade, even though we only lived about 6 minutes away from school. He loved working with bikes and he customized his own bike so that there was a seat in the back for me.

When my grandfather’s cancer came back, it was difficult for me to process because I had all this guilt and shame. I had these thoughts about how his cancer was progressing even faster, because I was away at college and not at home. It was an odd way of thinking, but because of my control issues, blaming myself helped me cope with the guilt.

The last time I spoke to my grandfather, I did not know it was going to be the last. On the same day when I was going home for winter break, he collapsed and they had to get him to the hospital. He went into a coma, but I’m thankful that everyone else was there to surround him and be there for him. I was still on the road so my mom did not want to tell me just yet because she was worried about how I would react, and there was nothing I could have done anyway. We spent two weeks in the hospital where he was in an induced coma state, and he passed away at the end of December. I didn’t get to say goodbye in the way that I wanted. I still wonder: what if I hadn’t left for school that semester? What if I had left campus just a few hours earlier? All these what ifs. But I also know from my mom’s experience with caretaker burnout that it was so heartbreaking to be with someone who should have been in hospice care, watching someone you love die in a place you call home.

It is difficult for me to figure out how my grandfather impacted my life. He was always a jokester, so he constantly pulled pranks on my cousins and me when we were children. His playful personality was a reminder for me to not take life so seriously and to go with where life took me. Near the end of his life, he was more open with his emotional expressions; it was extremely rare to witness his tears. It is frowned upon for males to show their tears, so I feel incredibly honored that he was willing to share this side of himself. When he passed, I was not proactive in seeking resources to cope with my grief. However, upon further reflection, I think I created my own ways to cope with his passing. I did not keep quiet about my grief. When given the opportunity, I presented about grief with research I had done for one of my psychology classes at the community college I attended. It was a difficult topic to present because I was forcing myself to be vulnerable to a group of people who do not know me. But over time, it became easier to talk about my grandfather and share his life with others. Eventually, I sought therapy with a school counselor to work through my grief. I learned that once you experience grief and loss, it doesn't really go away. Grief is like the ocean - it comes in waves, and it is okay to feel sad about the ones you have lost. Feel your feelings and let them go.

You earned your B.A. in Psychology and are currently working on obtaining your M.S. in Counseling, both from Cal State Fullerton. What drew you to the field of mental health, and how has this background shaped your own personal mental health journey?

I got interested in psychology through my AP Psychology class in high school. I was fascinated by how it was the study of the mind, how our childhood so deeply influences us and our socialization processes. My B.A. Psych program was more research-based than community-based, and it also followed the behavioral theory model, which has us look at maladaptive behavior and focus on the thoughts and emotions that are affecting a particular behavior. For my Master’s program, however, it follows a humanistic approach where we look at people through developmental stages. For instance, if a person exhibits maladaptive behavior, we don’t focus on the notion that something might be wrong with their thoughts, but rather explore why a person might be feeling this way, if something happened during their upbringing, like not getting their emotions validated or receiving unconditional love. These two programs looked at the root of behavior differently.

Coming from a background where emotions are not expressed, going through the program was a rude awakening for me because there was so much to unpack. For example, in my family, displaying happiness is enforced because being sad would make everyone else sad; you can only be sad by yourself. So, being in a field where your feelings are validated and you are not shamed for having any type of emotion was something I have not experienced before.. There is space for grounding, where if you are in a tense place you can connect with the present moment, but if you want to do deeper work, you have to examine your whole life and your personal triggers, your emotions. Psychology has helped me better understand myself, and I am learning to apply everything I have learned to my own life.

In terms of my own personal mental health journey, growing up I did have a lot of negative self-talk and ruminations, a lot of which stemmed from my mom’s constant guilt-tripping and passive-aggressiveness. The first time I ever saw a counselor was in middle school, and talking to her was the weirdest feeling for me because I wasn’t used to it and I felt uncomfortable. But I hit my lowest point when I was academically dismissed from UC Merced in my first semester there. I remember wanting that freedom of being on my own but realizing that I have no idea how to rein that in, as well as an added layer of being in a community where I didn’t see people who looked like me as much. I tried to get counseling but the waitlist was 2 months long, which deterred me from trying to seek out mental health support after that. Then in 2015, my grandfather died, and though his passing affected me very deeply, it wasn’t until 2017 that I decided that I really needed to see a therapist. During the first visit, I had the same feeling of discomfort that I felt seeing that counselor in middle school, though not as intense. Still, it was quite some time before I scheduled a second appointment. It did not help that I hadn’t been taught to talk to my family about mental health, and telling my problems to strangers was seen as a way of making my family lose face. For example, I recently told my mother about me seeking therapy because I wanted to understand myself better, and although she did not react as negatively as I expected, her response was not exactly compassionate. She started asking questions about the therapist, whether she was white or Vietnamese and warned me not to get brainwashed by her if it turns out she was a terrorist. She could not wrap her head around me telling a stranger about my life, but eventually, she had to accept it. After going to therapy consistently for several months, I realized the importance of talking about my emotions and grief and accepting my tears.

My Master’s in Counseling program has taught me so much about the importance of focusing on what I need from therapy, like being able to ask therapists what their theoretical lens is, which can have a huge impact on how therapy can work for an individual. If you are considering finding a therapist, look up the different theoretical frameworks and find someone that matches what you want. What you don’t want is a therapist who is applying an eclectic lens, mixing different theories together, because while it might sound fancy, it might not be as efficient as picking one theory or grounding yourself in one theory and mixing in other theories.

Can you tell us a little bit about your experience as a graduate research assistant working on the California Reducing Disparities Project, which is working to address mental health disparities in five historically unserved and underserved populations: African Americans, Asians and Pacific Islanders (API), Latinos, LGBTQ+, and Native Americans. What was it like being a part of the team serving the Vietnamese-American community? 

I am a student of the Counseling program but this job opportunity with the California Reducing Disparities Project was forwarded to me by the Social Work program. It’s a 5-year state-wide project that needed a graduate student who was fluent in Vietnamese to work with data. I told them I wasn’t fluent in Vietnamese but I am bilingual, and I got the job. Originally I was only working with data but we started doing focus groups and individual interviews, and it was terrifying because the limits of my bilingualism were being tested. I had to learn all these mental health terms in Vietnamese, and also adapt some of the questions because direct translations weren’t always helpful or appropriate with the community I was working with, especially since the material could be very academic and the principles unfamiliar, and I had to find examples to help illustrate some of these things. For instance, “This question has a no wrong-door policy.” This means that if you come in for diabetes but we find out you have depression, we will also treat you for depression. But if you translate this sentence into Vietnamese, no one is going to understand what you are talking about. Or “Warm hand-off,” meaning when you come in and can’t find the services you are seeking, we will make sure to refer you out but also accompany you along the process. In terms of mental health, existing terms like bệnh tâm thần (mental illness or “madness”) and điên (crazy) have negative connotations in both American and Vietnamese cultures, but these are often the only terms that Vietnamese people know.

The people who hired me are Korean American and they work with the research process in the Korean Community Services Center while I work with the Vietnamese community in the Vietnamese Center. It was very nice to be in a space where there are Vietnamese psychologists and doctors and staff, and a facet that the clients really appreciated because they felt that everyone was really giving it their all and very attentive to their needs. In one of my first experiences volunteering at mental health clinics, in this case with youth, when I saw Vietnamese-American mental health professionals, I remember thinking, “Oh my gosh, they’re real!” It was so cool and awesome to see, but also bittersweet because it means that Vietnamese-Americans are still underrepresented in the mental health field.

I think that when we look at the state of Vietnamese-Americans and mental health today, I think we still have great strides to make. When I look up articles written on Psychology Today, most are written by White psychologists, and when I browse for psychologists, it feels like 99.9% are White. In my program, I definitely feel like a minority; there are only 2 other Vietnamese people in my cohort out of a group of 57 students. It’s nice to see a sprinkle here and there of Vietnamese folks, but I’m hoping that there will be even more representation in future generations. There are also issues of access — we can have all these Vietnamese-American mental health professionals, but if the stigma around mental health in our community persists, we will continue to have gaps in care. 

As a graduate student and as someone who worked in the Office of Graduate Studies Office at CSUF, what advice do you have for SEA folks considering pursuing a graduate degree?

Even though I grew up in a single-parent household and I remember my mom being laid off in 2014, I had the privilege of growing up in a middle-class family. My aunt, the one who arrived before us, built a life for herself and for the family. I never had to worry about getting a job after school and helping to pay the bills — all they wanted me to do was focus on studying. I am also an only child so I had the privilege of having all the family resources going to me, making sure I thrived. My outgoing nature, which probably comes from being an only child and being comfortable around adults, also helped me get recommendation letters and access to job opportunities and great mentors. For example, I never thought about pursuing a Master’s program until I was volunteering at the mental health clinic for youth, providing translation during psychiatric appointments. I never thought about the big picture of things, the possibilities for me, because I was so focused on just reaching the steps right in front of me, like finishing my Bachelor’s. I had no idea what a Master’s degree was.

After meeting one of my mentors, who is a Vietnamese-American therapist, she told me about the M.S. Counseling program at CSUF, which she graduated from, suggesting that I look into it because it sounded like a good fit for me. I’m so glad I applied. I feel very lucky to be in such a supportive M.S. program where everyone is very sweet and we’ve become a real community, unlike other graduate programs I have heard about where their students are always comparing themselves to each other and only on the lookout for themselves. However, sometimes it can be difficult to do research and write a paper on my life and the Vietnamese community because there just isn’t a lot of research available. But this gap is a huge reason I came back to education: to do research for my community, to make sure there is research done by people from the community.

It’s so amazing to think about where I am now, because back in community college, I remember hearing one of my Communications professors talking about cohort this and cohort that, and I thought I would probably never be in that world - and now her. It is really difficult to advocate for yourself when no one else is supporting you, so I am incredibly lucky to be surrounded by so many people who want to see me succeed.