home, a spoken word

This piece was originally written and recorded when I was deployed to Ukraine and asked to write a piece about what "home" means to me. It is meant to be a spoken piece, not written out to read. But this piece is deeply important to me as I continue to redefine what "home" means. 

as Odin says "Asgard is not a place, it is a people." My home is not a place, it is my people and my community. disclaimer: my views are a personal reflection and are not the views of the military as a whole. 

***

i am thousands of miles away from home 

and the way that i feel the word "home" in my body is like the war my parents crawled through to get here. 

home should be something worth defending. 

this physical home that i defend is not worth my sacrifice. 

people like me, and the home that we defend are used to politicize and weaponize against other countries. 

we are used as pawns, objects of war against subjects who "look" like terror

as if terror is not acts of war against others

as if terror is not acts of war against people who seek refuge

as if terror is not war against our own people

as if terror is not invading indigenous, enslaving africans, degrading this sacred land for gain

people will ask me what i am defending and i say 

myself

from you

from people who make decisions that kill people who are different. 

from people who make decisions that kill people who threaten them with their existence as a reminder of their wrongdoings

people will ask me what i am defending and i say myself.

from people who make decisions that kill people like me. 

- 

i can say "home" 

but feeling it is different. 

home to my people means displacement

it means a yearning for a country that does not exist

reminds me that kuv tsev neeg tsis muaj tebchaws to return to. 

means when people tell me to go back to my country

or ask me where i'm really from

it means the only home i know is the ground i was born on 

the ground i was born on treat me like a foreigner more than a citizen

doesn't know the difference between "immigrant" and "refugee" 

and how could they

when the displacement of both immigrants and refugees have always been the cost of the united states' imperialism? 

- 

i call this place home more than it calls me its inhabitant

more than it holds and embraces me in its arms

just enough to squeeze productivity from my veins

-

i call it home despite its efforts to 

erase me

evict me

murder me

and i call it home despite the way it tries to force me to hate others homes too 

despite the way it tries to force me to believe that it is 

superior

more deserving

that it is more, and every other home is less 

- 

but when i see home

it is not a place. 

it is memories, frozen in time. 

it is his arms around me 

it is my brothers and their smiles

it is the way my mom never says 'i love you' but the way she puts food in front of me and says 'eat' 

it is the way hmoob women hold the entirety of the hmoob community on their shoulders even when they're told they are traitors to their own people for pointing out its patriarchy and disrespect for our lives

it is memories of mov ntses dej as a meal 

it is thaum kuv nthaws kuv niam lub suab luag

thaum kuv pom cov neeg kuv hlub

thaum kuv pom kuv cov viv ncaus sib pab thiab txhawb nqa

it is the way i look at youth as reflections of me

as the leaders we need

and it is the way i must learn to look at myself

if my body is a home 

-

my dad says that my ntsuj plig is slightly detached from my body. 

it is detached in ways i wish my mind could leave on bad days

it is detached in ways that make me susceptible to sickness

my body should be a home for my soul

rid of traumas

but if my body is my home, 

it is haunted - and i refuse to vacate its ghosts 

these ghosts have become a part of me

-

and as i dust off the rooms that i no longer visit

as i unlock the doors i've pretended not to notice

as i get rid of the objects, 

the memories that no longer serve me

or bring me joy

as i hold these traumas close to me

thank them for the lessons

and let them go

if these ghosts disappear

and if i choose to vacate them

i wonder

if i will still be left whole

when they leave 

-

return home

My dad used to tell me I get spooked easily because my spirit is a wanderer, detached from my body. I’ve always felt like parts of my spirit search for the parts of my parents that were left when they fled war, the parts of them that were stripped away when they became refugees. In healing, I’ve searched for and continue to heal the parts of my body to coax my spirit back home. It required construction and reconstruction of how to become a home for myself after years of making it a site of harm and a home for everyone else. What does it mean to return to myself, my spirit, and my body? And what does it mean to vacate the harm done to me when it has become such an integral part of who I am?  

In this essay, I will focus on my identities as a queer HMoob woman and a daughter of refugees as I navigate my community and the military in these identities. This essay also details the very things I did to survive these institutions that made me forget gentleness with myself.  I was taught that my body is not my own; that it belongs to other people, communities, and entities. This essay is a love letter to my spiritual body. It is a love letter and a testament to the non-linear healing that occurs when we want to leave the bodies we live in but must reclaim that it is ours and ours alone to hold. Content warning: this essay will cover sensitive topics such as self-harm, suicide, and sexual assault. I ask that individuals who are close to these topics check in with themselves and plan for additional support after reading this piece; this piece is my story, but it could also mirror yours. Return to yourself. 

*erm, disclaimer bc y'all don't need to come at me: this was a way to explain my journey through this world. i know this isn't how hmoob spirits work in its entirety.* 

***

the beginning

I’m sure my dad said this in a joking way when I was a kid, but I took it literally. It’s not culturally correct yet it was the proper description for what I felt—for who I was.

My dad used to tell me I was easily scared or spooked because my spirit was slightly detached from my body. I imagined a string tied around the ankle of my spirit as it traveled. I understood it because my spirit was not there to protect me when I was meant to be strong in instances of…jump scares? As I grew older, I held my dad’s description of my spirit and my body as something that would define my relationship with myself. Disconnected. Wandering.

For traditional HMoob folks, this concept is frightening—our spirits are meant to be in our bodies and any threat that comes to our spirit makes us susceptible to sickness and death without it. But I’ve always been sick; I’ve always been susceptible to death. There are traditions that have made me sick—physically, mentally, emotionally. There are traditions that enable death. Many of them involve the devaluation of the womxn in our community, the destruction of ideas and curiosity, the indoctrination of patriarchy. It only made sense that my body—even as a child—would feel that passed down through to me.

If anything, I knew that my spirit wandered and it began with the beginning of time for our people.  

the wandering

The HMoob (also spelled “Hmong”) people are an ethnic minority that originated in China and we are now spread across the world, mainly Southeast Asia in Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. I don’t think there has been a time in our oral history where we have not been fleeing persecution in genocide. First, it was fleeing China, then the Vietnam War happened and the HMoob people aided the Americans, then when the war was lost, we were left fleeing again. This time to Laos, Thailand, France, French Guyana, and the United States.

And I suppose that’s what my spirit is doing. Searching for home when it has never been safe in its body. When the ground my body  walks on has the potential to crumble; when my spirit holds onto the survival that sustained my grandparents, to my parents, and now passed onto me. There are songs that HMoob people have written about the people they have lost through separation or death during the war. Songs that I listened to as a kid. There are images of Ban Vinai, a refugee camp, and I remember one that was hung up in our living room, where my parents could identify where they had grown up, lived, and where others had as well.

But it had never been their home. Neither was the United States where their accents were too thick, skin a little bit too different. Food too smelly. Language too scary (or exotic). Practices too barbaric.

Even as someone who was born and raised in the United States, I knew that this was not my home. My spirit knew it better than I did.

the lost

The first time my dad told me about my spirit wandering was after we had watched a scary movie and I refused to sleep without a light or a flashlight on. I asked about every movement or sound—fearing that something would come get me. That was probably the first time I had heard it put into words what I was feeling, what was happening to my body. After that, there were other instances where I felt my spirit wander further, where I felt more distance with my body.

I am my parents’ first child, a girl (who looked good in a bowl cut, may I add), and I would be the only daughter my parents had because after me, they would only have boys. Boys in HMoob culture are coveted. They are the bearer of the family name and fortune. They are the ones whose placentas used to be buried inside of the house (as a foundation) whereas the girls’ placentas were buried outside (guests) after birth. When parents pass away, boys are the ones who will guide their spirits back to the homeland.

We have a phrase in HMoob, “ntxhais qhua.” The guest daughter. It is used to express the predetermined reality and future of what a woman/daughter is when she is born and her role as a guest in the house. When I was old enough to grasp the concept of women being guests and never the foundation of families and homes, I asked myself if my parents preserved themselves of their heartache by withholding love from me because I would leave. I grew up understanding my parents loved me by condition and the care I provided for my siblings. Their love was always on the condition that I would leave them, as is expected of ntxhais qhua. I don’t know if I can ever prove if my parents loved me by condition. Or if they chose not to love me fully and completely to protect themselves. But this thought would eat at me and made me fear ever marrying; I knew I would leave and be told to “not come back” because I was no longer “theirs.” I also knew that no one could love my parents better than their daughter.

In these moments, I remember the anguish I felt. The deep cut of what it meant to be labeled as a guest in the place I called home. If the label did not come from my parents, I don’t think that the label from my community would make it hurt any less. I wanted to leave the body I was in. Wanted to be the son that my family deserved, but knew that this was the body I had been given to live in. More than anything, I became obsessed with being worth not only my parents’ sacrifices, but to be the daughter that could measure up to a son.

I made my body an active site of harm when I dedicated it to proving my worth, to becoming more than. I joined the military for the money, the prestige. I joined it knowing that it would attempt to stifle and tame my voice which had become my most powerful tool of expression and dissent. I learned to minimize the person that I was to be the leader they wanted me to be (and who I was not). I lived and operated in so many worlds as a military servicemember by day and activist by night.

There were parts of me that were experiencing friction. I lived so close to home that my parents still wanted me there to parent their children, to care for them, to be at their beck and call. And at the same time, they excluded me from difficult and life-altering conversations—these would catch up to me at our extended family gatherings where my aunts and uncles cornered me to ask: “Why didn’t you know they were on the verge of divorce?” “Where were you?” “Why didn’t you help?” These moments would define the way I interacted with the life at home and the life I lived at school. I was on constant alert for every crack in the foundation at home so I could fix it before the house came tumbling. I had to hold it together, paint it, make it look nice enough for others to stomach. All while tending to the home I was creating within me.

There were parts of me that were blossoming. The voice I would use to spit spoken word. The way the tears fell as I wrote my pieces, but the fire that it bred on my lips. These were the moments I remember feeling closest to the core of myself; where my spirit returned itself to feel my warmth. I was tapping into my HMoob identity, truly developing relationships with my community that I had suppressed when I had tried to distance myself from them to appear more “successful.” The way these relationships ignited both sorrow, shame, anger, and love all at once.

And then, I was sexually assaulted by an acquaintance.

Up until then, I had focused so much on proving who I was with my body. The labor I put into holding people together, gathering them in spaces, engaging with my community—it was my body and heart and soul’s work. After I was assaulted, all I wanted to do was run away from my body. I wanted to run away from the words of my partner at the time, who had told me once that if I was ever raped, he would “never look at me the same.” Because in the moments that followed my assault, those were the words that stuck with me.

More than anything, I couldn’t look at myself the same after that. I drowned myself to see if I could leave my body to reach my spirit, wherever it was—further than it had ever been. I remember drinking until I didn’t feel, drinking throughout the day to just get through. Maintaining my grades just fine, and burying myself in things that did not require me to feel, or if it did, only allowed me to feel rage. It was easy to feel rage in 2016. I drowned myself in its fire.

My body had never belonged to me. Maybe my spirit was just smart enough to figure that out before I did. It belonged to the men in my community to label as worthy or unworthy of being a wife. It belonged to my family, that dictated my worth based on conditions of service, it belonged to the military when I signed on the dotted line. And then it belonged to someone when they took my body from me.

My assault was not the culminating moment that forced my spirit to run, but it surely didn’t help. I was battling burnout from activism. I was cradling my months-old brother to sleep some nights. I was battling with my body as it cycled through various forms of birth control. I was too depressed to get out of bed some days, but too anxious to not be doing anything, so I’d lay in bed and do homework. I harmed my body by drinking excessively to drown out all forms of feeling, only to cut myself to feel again. It was so destructive some days, I wonder how the people who witnessed me through these times are still alongside me today. And in those days, my body was not my own. I harmed my body to try and prove in some sick way that while violence had been done to it by someone else—whether cultural expectations of HMoob women, my parents, the military, activism, or a rapist—that they couldn’t harm myself as well as I could.

The series of events that had to occur for me to pull myself away from destroying my body started with the person that was doing the most harm to me. And that was myself. I can’t honestly say what events led me out of the dark, but by the time I graduated from my undergrad, I was “completely healed.” I had pulled myself away from destroying my physical body and had channeled that energy into school. I don’t remember feeling a sense of ease. I don’t remember feeling anything at all. I channeled my energy to create a cloud around me to shield myself.

I had changed the home that was supposed to house my spirit; that it came back and was even more lost because I was not me anymore. I was a new version of myself, and my spirit did not know if it was safe to come inside yet.

The person I became to survive, remained with me. I became a master of compartmentalization; kept so busy that I didn’t have a spare thought. It was then when I would come to my reckoning.

the returning

The years that followed my graduation was both the darkest and the brightest moments of my healing. I had moved to a new city for more schooling, but I was completely unprepared for the amount of love that would pour into me. For so long, I emulated my spirit—wandering and running—and this was a time where I could not run, even when I wanted to. It was impossible not to heal, not to want to be better.

It was my community. We should never underestimate the power of community. We are constantly told  to “work on ourselves” in isolation. What I desperately needed in my healing was community and connection. There is no other inspiration for change and self-care than the love and accountability that comes with community. I felt an obligation to do better to be a safer, healthier version of myself for my community. The way they fiercely held up a mirror to the person that they saw and nudged me to accept the person I was, to let go of the person I was no longer obligated to be.

The turning point was when a colleague spoke to me about an observation she had of our interactions. She said, “You do this thing when you’re about to cry” and continued to explain that it looked like I was trying to run, to escape my feelings, to embody strength but never quite allowing myself to give up control of my emotions. To her, this was just another moment of holding space for truth, as we had done before. But this one was different. She was saying “You don’t have to run from yourself here.” I wanted to come home, and my community reminded me that home was wherever we were together. That home required all of us to be alive to be there. It required us to feel—yes, anger, hurt, disappointment, and frustration, but also—love, joy, mediocrity, audacity, and hope.

It was me. I healed myself when no one else could. I became the version of me that I needed. The version of me that I was the proudest of. The version of me that my younger self never could’ve imagined.

No one ever tells you the grief that comes with healing. The grief of letting go of the person I was when that person was so epitomal to my survival. Letting go never means forgetting, it simply means to make peace. The honor and love I feel for the people I had to become is undying. My fear in letting go was that I would not be left whole when past versions, habits, and thoughts could no longer hold me hostage. But letting go meant I had space to accept the person I was growing into. There are still days I feel my body isn’t my own, but it never discounts the loving I have done to get to this point. Healing is messy and nonlinear; I am still doing it to this day. 

I asked my whole self to come home—I had never asked myself to come home before, but when I asked, my spirit listened. I wondered if it had been waiting this entire time to be invited home. I set realistic expectations; I reminded myself that it was never going to be completely safe, that the intricacies of life did not give me the ability to promise that. But that I would protect, nurture, and embrace myself with compassion and forgiveness while honoring my anger. My spirit returned with apprehension, set the expectation with me that it was still a wanderer, but home was where she was rooted. She ignited parts of me and remained my mirror on the days I could not look at myself. We are better now; we are the result of what happens when community pours love into us—when we pour that love into ourselves.

the next part

There was a point recently where I realized who I had become.

The sun was loving as it cast rainbows against the wall in my apartment; it was beautiful, but I was uncomfortable in my futon. I had a lingering headache from the brightness, lying down to escape its rays. I had my phone in my hand and it hit me. I wrote, “I want to be alive for this next part.” Writing it out made it real. It meant I was onto the net part of my journey; it meant that I could lay to rest the parts of me that wanted to die. “I’m so ready to live for myself. It’s looking pretty good. Not easy, but good. Like I want to be here for the next parts, and not just because it’s for other people. I really want to see what’s next. I want to enjoy this next part of my life.”

Never will it discredit the person(s) I was to get myself here. Nor the people I lost along the way (even if it was myself). It simply means, I am onto the next part. The part where I rest. The part where I love fiercely. The part where I am still. The part where I hold my spirit close to me as I nurture it—as it nurtures me. The part where I recuperate on an individual level to ensure my strength for when I reconvene and come for the cultural, institutional harm done to myself, to others.

In a world that thrives on our burnout, I will do everything in my power to normalize rest for myself, and the ones I love. I want to be alive for this next part. This is my return home.

"I promise you this next part is worth living for," reflections & reminders for me and for you

Two years ago, I embarked on a journey. A journey not unlike most Soldiers go through in their time in the military. I left the place where I was born, the place and the people I called home, and I left them, and I journeyed alone, with people I didn’t know. To a place I didn’t know. To a future that was terrifying, unknown, and most of all, away from my support system, away from the foundation to my existence.

If you want to hear more about what that experience was like, you can feel free to read a blogpost I wrote earlier this year reflecting on the return from my deployment. It is the rawest form of writing I’ve done on my experience, and encompasses everything I went through there.

But this post is different. This post is not only a follow-up to that blog post, but it is a redemption of the person I had to be while I was deployed. I am still in the process of redeeming myself, finding myself, loving myself despite all the things I did to survive, and the things I continue to do to survive even though I’m no longer in that space. My traumas follow me, my traumas continue to haunt me.

Two years ago, I embarked on a journey. That journey was not only traumatic for me, but traumatic for all of those who were on that deployment, and the people that we left behind.

For me, my brothers took the brunt of the heaviness. This year has not been forgiving for anyone, with training exercises back to back, every single month. My brother asks me “I see you in two weeks?” and “you not go airplane right?” Because the last memory he has of me boarding a plane, I was gone for 11 months. He says “I cried” and “you were gone long time.”

My year has been as difficult as anyone else’s and I’m not interested nor wish to compare the pain we continue to hold as we grapple with an uncertain present and future of pandemics, politics, rights, and reckoning with violent pasts (our own, and systems’).

But this year, I’ve been given so much to smile and laugh about. I felt so empty and broken when returning (and there are many days I still feel that) and I had colleagues, friends, and family pour into me when I was able and willing to accept their love. There were many instances where I shut people out, where I protected the core of who I was above anything and anyone else. I still do this.

I also learned what it meant to let go of people in my life that I had gotten used to but could not love completely or fully. I was able to be fully myself as I navigated my healing journey with my loved ones, with my brothers, and with myself. I learned about what it meant to be a better listener, advocate/activist, sibling, forgiver, and lover, grounded in love, compassion, radical love/hope/forgiveness.

I received my official certification to be a Sexual Assault Victim Advocate in the military, paving the way for me to engage in the work I do now, working alongside series of heroes who save people everyday, on their worst days.

I graduated from my Student Affairs Administration program. I left with such a sour taste of higher ed in my mouth, but I will always love the potential that it could’ve been. I hope that higher education becomes everything that they wish they could be, but are not right now.

Most importantly, I learned from everyone around me, what it meant to give up things that no longer serve us. I saw co-wokers and colleagues burn themselves up to keep institutions of oppression warm and then cut themselves off completely from systems that took more than they gave. I saw true heroes, paving the way for me to think about where I wanted to be, who I wanted with me, and who deserved my energy. These people, by showing me that leaving is not quitting, that loving yourself enough to walk away is necessary to preserve the core of our being, they taught me what radical love and hope can do. I am forever indebted to 1) my Campus Climate family: Amanda, AJ, Matt, Myxee, Laura, Garrett  and 2) my Introverts Unite family – I especially cannot thank enough the students who were there for me and with me along my journey. You have all touched me, loved me, held my brokenness and wholeness and sometimes a-lot-ness with love, care, and grace. You are and will always be my community. I will always show up for you in every capacity I can, in the way you have saved me on the days I could not get up.

These people listed above (and more), helped me gain my confidence, my self-love, my energy, and my passion again. For so long, I was on auto-pilot. I felt trapped inside my own body on days, and they coaxed the old me and the new me out with love and care, and never cast judgment. I’m sure I was not the best coworker or friend or neighbor on many occasions, and yet I know these people opened up their hearts to me in ways I can never repay you. This may be a love note to myself, but it is will always be a love note to the pieces of me that you helped me plant, water, and cultivate. It has always been a collective effort; I am a beautiful collage of all the potential you saw in me and invested in.

 

It’s because of the support and love that I received, that I was able to survive this long. That I was able to venture outside of my field to something I am so truly invested in (and that I might be good at ?? idk yet, imposter syndrome says nah).

But most importantly, I’ve been able to hear my voice again and love it, fucking clap to it, say it with conviction and heart and passion and love and the echoing of all my loved ones’ spirits behind me. I feel less alone when I speak my truth, because it was taken so violently from me during the course of my deployment, and even when I returned.

For the first time ever, I read out loud a portion of a fiction story I’ve been writing. I would’ve never done that without truly believing in the power of my words and the beauty it captures.

And for the first time since I can remember, I’ve pushed back at the military. It’s such a jarring experience to be treated like shit for 11 months straight and to come back with a spark for a tongue that speaks oceans into existence.

I have always been afraid to be my true, authentic self in the military. (LOL I WONDER WHYYY???!!!) And instead of folding into myself, I made myself bigger, less easy to consume. Not because I wasn’t doing it before, but because I wasn’t sure of the backlash if I did. Realizing that no matter what I do, it will never be good enough for the military, I decided to make it worth my while. To make it less draining on me, to make it more authentic of an experience for myself and everyone around me. And it has been a life affirming change. It has allowed me to engage in the real lives of my soldiers, the realities of the military industrial complex, break generational curses that the military deems as tradition, and love myself enough to draw boundaries that I would have never dared to do before.

I brought “Critical Race Theory” to my training because I knew someone in my section called it “extremist.”

I leave when I’m done with work, I no longer wait for people to tell me when I can leave. (sometimes lololol)

I talk to my soldiers like humans, not subordinate beings to “do my bidding”

I am less anxious saying “I’ve never done that before” and then asking people to show me how to do things. I am so much less ashamed of saying this. I am so much more empowered to say I don’t know something, rather than saying nothing and suffering.

I am a FUCKING HARD CHARGING, LOUD AS FUCK advocate for my soldiers to not be treated like shit. To have their boundaries and wishes honored in the best way possible, to do the extra work to make sure their voice is heard when it seems to conveniently get stopped at a certain level. I fucking skip chain of command and that bureaucracy, I talk to people of other ranks because deep, meaningful conversations don’t end when we look at rank.

And I’ve enjoyed my time so much more in the military now that I’ve done these things. I have Soldiers who trust me, those who have stated they want to be a leader like me, stated that they look up to me. I have only ever wanted to leave a positive imprint on this world, and this is my way of doing it,. I am doing it for myself and the secondary effects are just as fulfilling too.

When I am met with resistance, the survival part of me wants to say “ok” and be passive, to let people walk over me, to let people use me, in the same way I let others who “know more” or “have been in longer” linger over my actions. I am no longer interested in continuing traditions that place “the mission first” and “people always” when we all know THAT’S A DAMN CONTRADICTION.

I’ve gotten so much better at overcoming the intertia for me to say “I’m going to do it this way, and if I fail *shrugs*” or “oh well” or “I guess we’ll find out” or “that’s really fucked up” or “yikes” or “I’m not interested in debating critical race theory because there’s nothing to debate” or “I’m leaving” or “I’m gonna take ten minutes to nap”

Never would I ever imagine myself saying these things in a military environment. Never would I imagine myself standing up to people directly, or indirectly going behind their backs to make sure people are taken care of, and loudly proclaiming my dissent for decisions. I became the person I always needed for my younger self in the military.

And this is when I started crying when I initially wrote this piece (lolol still crying as I edit it even….)

If I could go back to myself two years ago, if I could just meet her in passing before she got on that airplane, I would tell her that she would be proud of the person I was today. That everything she has ever wanted to be, everything she thought was too far out of reach, is everything that she is now. I would tell her:

“I am so proud of you. I can’t wait for you to see what I’ve seen, for you to accomplish what I’ve seen you accomplish. You do not have to be strong on this next part of your journey, you just have to survive. You just have to make it to this next part. I promise you this next part is worth living for, that the next part is right at the cusp of the horizon you will cry at in Ukraine. Remember those moments, because they will get you through these moments to where I am now.

I promise you that you will love this part, and that you will struggle through it, and you will also find joy, happiness, and love in the next part. You will meet so many people who will push you towards being the person you have always wanted to be, to challenge you into becoming who you are meant to be. But you have to be alive to enjoy it. I’ll see you soon again, further down the line, and with more love for you than you can handle. And guess what? The person who will hold you in their arms will do the same, show you love like you've never witnessed. You'll think you don't deserve it, but one day, you'll realize you do, and I promise you it won't be too late. 

Please take care of yourself until then, I love you so much more than I ever have before; I have enough love for the both of us to sustain you on this journey. And you are the best thing to ever happen to me.”

“Thov kom tu neeg koj mus yog tom ntej no zoo tshaj tus neeg koj ib txwm yog.” - Maa Vue, Tsab Ntawv

“If you stick around, you’ll find yourself in the embrace of someone who waited their entire lives to embrace you, whose path you will beautifully alter with your presence.” - John Pavlovitz, If you stick around (a letter to those wanting to leave)

 

In the aftermath of a deployment

TW: Self harm, suicide, alcoholism, sexual harassment 

The person that I am is not the person I was a year ago. 

 The person that I was a year ago had her growth, her confidence, and her passions stripped from her throughout the course of my deployment. 

I look at the person that I was with agonizing longing and a type of anger that makes me wonder who I can blame for creating the conditions of that loss. For the longest time upon returning, I believed that person to be completely gone. I spent days gathering the pieces of who I was, who I wanted people to remember, and shoving them into the mask I presented to others. 

The military can do many things to a person, and many of those things include stripping away people’s personalities, values, morals, and replacing them with a false sense of camaraderie through trauma bonding. I joined the military for the money, and that’s that. The ways that the military abuses the most vulnerable folks with the promise of adventure, money, and honor—to die for a country that would not ask the same of those who already have these resources—it’s a tool of exploitation. 

The truth is that the military takes more than it gives. The most significant thing the military has taken from me is time. I haven’t had a full summer with my family and loved ones since 2014. I’ve missed weddings, birthdays, births, and funerals due to the military. As a primary caretaker for my family, being gone for months at a time means that my brothers shouldered most of the burden of translating, explaining bills, calling SSI, working through transitional periods, and during this past year, COVID response. 

My deployment took time away from me and my loved ones. It took time away from my graduate degree, time away from learning, time away from myself in the prime of my years of activism and passion. It is time I will not get back. 

When I deployed, the world and time seemed to stop for me. For my family, friends, and loved ones, their world continued. It’s such a hallowing feeling to know that everyone’s life goes on without you while your world has completely halted. I still feel like I’m living in 2019 sometimes, and the changes in people’s lives without me still feel so drastic. 

The Deployment

The details of my deployment are fuzzy at best. 

All of the things that happened to me feels like a list in my brain. Some are bolded, italicized, circled, but each thing that happened to me (and others) got bumped down every time something new popped up. There are things my mind has intentionally blocked out. I will attempt to recall my experiences as a means for you to understand the mess of my mind. 

I deployed to a non-combat zone. While there were definite risks where I went, I was not actively being shot at. I make this clear because the type of PTSD that veterans go through can be from multiple types of experiences, and one is not more or less than the other. PTSD is a serious mental condition that the military still misunderstands (i.e., seen as a weakness). I am here to say that it is not, and anyone who is in the military who undermines Soldiers and their strength for not being “resilient enough” to “get tough” with shit going on in their head is not here to support anyone but themselves. 

There are two types of Soldiers: commissioned officers (Officers) and non-commissioned officers (NCOs). In a perfect world, Officers are the “planners” and “decision-makers” while NCOs are the “executors” and also the subject matter expert in their specific areas—they come with a wealth of knowledge to ultimately drop knowledge bombs on officers so they make the right decisions. Both officers and NCOs are entrusted with caring for the Soldiers below them.

I am a commissioned officer. I was not only new to my role, but new to being a commissioned officer. I was fresh out of my basic officer course—which teaches you the basics of your job in the military but not quite the intricacies. The military typically trains its Soldiers with “on the job” training. 

For the deployment, I was assigned as the Human Resources Officer in Command (OIC). I said earlier that Officers and NCOs work in tangent with one another, so an OIC has an NCOIC assigned to it as well (Noncommissioned officer in charge). Typically, you pair a new officer with a more seasoned NCO. My NCOIC and I were completely new to our roles, which meant collectively, the HR expertise was not there—this was at no fault of our own; the people who created the manning document should have put someone who would be able to advise me through this HUGE role. This is where the problems would begin, and never end. 

Because of the lack of expertise that we both had, our credibility was not strong to begin with. It only plummeted from there. Ultimately, I was the face of our HR section (6 Soldiers total, including us). 

Because of my youth, and because I didn’t know any better, I was easily manipulated to get what people wanted, to get the answers that people wanted to hear. 

Because of my youth, my superior officers did not take my recommendations into consideration. It was always “this is how we do things” with the guise of “I just didn’t understand yet.” 

Tasks were given to me without context, without purpose, without direction. This meant I put countless hours of work into products, only to have them dismissed because they weren’t what people “wanted.” 

Being an OIC is a position of high responsibility, even when I am not a high ranking officer. Equating my rank and responsibility meant that my words did not mean anything when I provided answers or recommendations. People would always find a way to tell me I was wrong, that I didn’t know what I was talking about, or simply berate me because they had more experience in the military than I did. 

I did my research. I consulted with the experts of the organization for their advice, their input. I did everything in my power—gathered all the information I had at the time to make an informed decision. It was never enough, there was always something wrong, and the way it was delivered to me was never in a way to empower me, only to exert power over me. 

At the beginning, I was resilient. I took it one win at a time. I reminded myself that HR was a thankless job, that there would be more difficult problems to solve than easy ones—that I was being paid to think and problem solve. But there was so much more going on that pushed me over the edge. 

There are days I would skip lunch to cry in my room, because I knew my roommate wouldn’t be there at the time. 

There was a week straight where a high ranking officer came into my office everyday to interrogate me about decisions that were made at a level higher than me. I was just the messenger. That week, I cried every single fucking night. That weekend, I skipped every meal except dinner so I could sleep through the day. 

Not a week went by where I was able to keep a consistent schedule or task list. There were always things being piled on, emergency fires to be put out, one being prioritized over the other. Deadlines from 9am being due at 12pm. Emergency meetings added onto my plate. Soldiers coming to me to fix things “at that instant.” 

My inability to draw boundaries and need to find a purpose meant that people manipulated me. I was approached and asked questions/for favors at every venue. The gym, the track, walking back to my room, the coat room before getting into chow, on the way to the bathroom, getting out of the bathroom, when there was food in my mouth, at the beer tent. Everywhere.

There would be nights I would have nightmares about waking up late, missing meetings, misspeaking at meetings, missing Red Cross Messages, forgetting to address someone as Sir/ma’am in emails. Forget to send up a report at 10am on the dot and get a phone call from our higher HQ.

There were rumors spread about all the women and who they were supposedly sleeping with. At the beginning of the deployment, I took it personally, and as a marker on my character, as if people weren’t questioning it enough. Even after multiple tries by the command team to address the issue (i.e., a separate meeting with the women to address it…as if the only problem was the women), eventually, I became numb to it.

The military has a fraternization policy on NCOs and officers not having unprofessional relationships beyond work. But when the gossiping came about, I was told to “watch my perception” and to hang out with the women of my section instead of hang out of people who were my own rank (who were mainly men). I was being given a different set of rules in order to navigate the system and my “perception” because it was too difficult to create the conditions for people to stop spreading rumors. With every rumor that was spread about the women of the deployment, I became more and more suspicious of everyone’s interactions with me and “what people would say” if I laughed too loud, if I smiled, if I didn’t smile, if I rolled my eyes, if I did yoga, if I was walking the same way as someone.

Testimonies, quotes, “proof”

These are comments that were made about me: 

 - “Take pictures when you have sex with her.” – A Soldier had messaged me asking about HR questions, and a buddy of theirs had looked over their shoulder and said this to them. 

 - “She’s just learning English.” – A group of officers and I were playing scrabble and I had failed epically because I’d never played before. 

 - “I want to put my nose in your butthole.” – An officer said this to me while wasted on New Years night. I left immediately afterwards. When I told someone about it, they made “nose” and “butthole” jokes for the rest of the deployment when I was around. 

 - “I treat you like a daughter” / “I’m old enough to be your father.” – Literally all the fucking men on the deployment. I’m not your daughter. I don’t want you to protect me like a father. I am a commissioned fucking officer in the fucking Army, and I deserve to be treated as a fucking professional. I deserve to be respected as a person, as a woman of color and the unique experiences that it affords me, but not as your daughter. It is infantilizing and condescending. 

 - “I’d like to talk to you about polygamy.” – This person found out that I was bisexual and immediately equated it to polygamy (this happens a fucking lot…please fucking stop. I’m monogamous), and asked me about my “experiences” 

 - “We don’t serve people who don’t open their eyes” – A man of color, to me. 

 - “I don’t want COVID from you.” – After the COVID bs and the racism against Chinese/Asian presenting folks, someone said this to me when I offered them my drink because I was leaving. I said something back on the lines of “Wow, it must suck to be such a racist piece of shit.” 

I don’t remember when I hit my breaking point—it was definitely 2-3 months in. It was amidst the feeling of hopelessness, having my recommendations dismissed, the gossip, COVID. I dreaded waking up and having to sleep just to wake up. There were days I wanted to go to sleep and not wake up. I wanted to die so I would not have to face people, but I remember telling myself I had to live because there was so much work to do that it would just create more of a burden for those around me.

I did everything in my power to prove that I was trying, that I was making decisions as indicated by my job. I tried to prove myself to people who were dead set on misunderstanding me.

I drank almost every single night. If I wasn’t at the beer tent, people would ask for me (and that’s a bad fucking sign y’all). I started cutting myself (again). It’s the first time I’ve cut myself in years. While the feeling of relapse was terrible, I drowned it out with alcohol.

I mentioned earlier that the military is good at masking trauma bonding as camaraderie and group cohesion. I had a strong bond with people through the traumas that we were going through, which isn’t the best way to form friendships with people, but they saved me during this time. I’d like to think we all saved each other. I had a group of women who ate together, drank together, went to the lake together, or worked out together. While they were not regular in my life (because I was always busy working, or asleep), they allowed me some comfort.

I also had strong bonds with a few men during the deployment. Of note is that the bar is low, but I was craving such intellectual conversations beyond work, that leading up to the George Floyd protests, there were a few men that had a racial reckoning and were able to process with me. The emotional labor that went into developing these men took a toll on me, but it was one of the very first times that I was able to have candid and critical conversations in months. I craved it and it fed my soul. These people helped recenter me, remind me where my passions lie. These men were also the ones who supported me as I completed my training to become a Unit Victim Advocate on top of my regular duties.

Again, the bar is low while the trauma-bonding was strong with the folks I surrounded myself with. But some of these folks saved me during this time. I hold these connections as necessary during hardship and I hope that they grow—and even if they don’t, I’ll know that during my deployment, we had one another.

I’ve said this many times before in my career in the military: code switching from Ka to Military Ka is exhausting. When I was in college, code switching was only on during my ROTC courses, and I could turn it off when I went home for the night. But for 9 months straight, I wore a mask. You wear a mask for so long and you start to forget who you were underneath it (it’s a v for vendetta quote lol). The type of emotional and mental exhaustion is unimaginable. I’m still tired from it. I don’t even know what recovering looks like. There are still missing pieces of me that I am still discovering everyday.

The aftermath

My therapist and I have worked through my emotions since coming back. It took me a few months to even push myself to get a therapist. I recognize how privileged it is to even afford one (my therapist is free; I receive an hour of free counseling per week through a military program called Give an Hour). Going back to therapy was a good decision, and I don’t believe you have to be “fucked up” in order to go. Sometimes you need someone who has enough distance from you to process through events in your life or your childhood and call you out on your bullshit.

She and I have worked through (and continue to work through) key things from the deployment: 

 1) My confidence was not lost, it was taken from me. Overworking to fill the gaps of my knowledge, only to be told my work would not be taken into consideration for 9 months straight takes a toll on the voice and confidence I had. ESPECIALLY because on the civilian side, I work in an office that values my voice and all that I have to offer. Coming back and attempting to engage with less confidence is demoralizing and dissonance-inducing for my body that has only knew defensiveness for 9+ months straight. 

 2) My inability to draw boundaries is directly tied to the worth that I placed in my work, and when I was told that I was unworthy, I intentionally put myself out there for people to do labor and find a purpose through that labor. 

 3) The way that we cope when we are stressed is not inherently wrong/right. Regaining control by cutting/drinking are not healthy coping mechanisms, but they were all I had to have control. 

 4) There is no saying that I can’t go back to the person that I was prior to the deployment, but the person who existed before the deployment does not have the experience and resilience that I do now; not acknowledging that does a disservice to my survival. I wish surviving this wasn’t a marker of strength.

I was not prepared for the drastic change of a person that I was when I returned, and as I recount the person that I was when I returned, I think about how much pain I inflicted on those closest to me. I’ve left scars on people in ways that I can never forgive myself for.

When I returned from my deployment, my friend committed suicide a few weeks after. In the same way I am still learning to grieve the beautiful person that she was, her absence, and the anger of the conditions of her suicide—I am doing the same to grieve the person that I was before this deployment.

I still don’t know what it means to “allow myself” to feel all the emotions from this loss. Responding to the feelings the deployment created for me has been messy. I have not been the best person to be around. My worst traits have revealed themselves through unhealed trauma: pushing people away, being silent when I’ve wanted to say something, being easily irritable, being a control freak, being selfish, stifling my own creativity because ‘I don’t deserve it.’ I’ve ruined relationships and hurt loved ones through this. I’ve become someone I do not love, I do not admire. Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and wonder if this is the best person that I can be for myself, for the world.

My entire life, I’ve held words of affirmation as one of my top love languages to affirm my existence, because I can’t seem to do it for myself. I’ve heard so many times, “You don’t realize how amazing you are” “I wish you could see you the way I see you” “You underestimate your impact.” Because the truth is, I don’t know how to accept myself or love myself for who I truly am. I live in moments and bubbles where there are times I can acknowledge it. But it is not a truth I can accept of myself yet.

I’ve never fully believed the phrase “if you don’t love yourself, no one will.” I believe that if I don’t love myself, I won’t be able to accept others’ love. It’s one of the hardest fucking lessons I’ve learned in life, and I hope that one day, I can see myself worthy enough for the love that everyone gives me.

I’ve spent my entire life caring for others, pleasing others, and serving others in ways that is so detrimental to myself. I am a first generation Hmoob daughter of refugees, the eldest daughter in a swarm of sons, whose life is supposed to be dedicated to leading my people to liberation. But I know that it’s time for me to invest in myself. It’s time for me to care, please, and serve myself.

I still don’t know what it looks like. But I know that my decision to choose myself is the best decision for the version of myself waiting on the other end. I hope she is proud of me. I hope she can look at me with more love than I can give myself at this moment. And most of all, I hope she can fully and truly say that she made the right decisions for her healing.

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I am, and always will be, enough

*This work was submitted as a chapter in the 2019 anthology "A New Journey: Hmong College Student Experiences" and can be purchased at Her Publisher* 

Foreword: 

I often see myself as inadequate to fit the expectations my community and my family puts on me. I must be worth their sacrifices, and I must do everything in my power to continuously give, contribute, and lay the groundwork for my people. I think for many Hmoob youth, we see education as a means to attain success and a means to gain credibility within society (both U.S. and Hmoob) and to go far in life. The thing they don’t tell you about success is that it was never built for and never meant for people like us. People with experiences, trauma, and history like us. Systems are blessed to have us but treat us like burdens. And when we return home, we speak less of the language of our ancestors and more of the language of colonizers, for the sake of success. We feel inadequate in both U.S. and Hmoob society despite how much we believe we have gotten it “right.” There is no right way--there are only journeys and experiences that highlight the injustices of a system not built for us. And yet, we are still here. 

***

Whether I choose so or not, I will always be first and foremost, the eldest and only Hmoob daughter to my parents in a sea of sons. As a daughter of refugees, I am someone whose successes are a testament to the sacrifices my ancestors have made to get me where I am today. I have always been and will be a relentless caretaker, activist, and protector, and that is a trait that carries me to my future endeavors. 

My story is as complicated as my life is right now. I write this as a 24 year old bisexual Hmoob woman, with a Bachelor’s degree in Organizational Communication from a University of Wisconsin school, one of two years completed of my Master’s degree in Student Affairs Administration, and I deploy in less than two weeks to a country that has the potential to be a warzone. On top of this, I have five brothers whose lives are changing rapidly, too fast for me to catch up with and give them the support they need. 

Things are changing for me fast, and they have always been changing and challenging me. I balance my life and my passions in ways that I’ve been told is both freakishly productive and unhealthy. These habits definitely formed while I was searching for my identity and my place in the world as I navigated through my college years to create the personality of the person I am today. I am so proud of who I am right now and I honestly can’t wait to see the person I become in the future. I have so much growth and further potential that I am excited to tap into. I can’t wait to be the role model that my younger self needed. 

My journey to discovering my voice, my passions, and myself requires background on me. I am the oldest and only daughter in my family. My parents had 5 sons after me and these sons are mistakenly called my sons all the time by both strangers and my parents. I raised my brothers because that is what I was born to do, and it is a responsibility that I didn’t know I could refuse. The youngest right now is three years-old and the oldest is 21 years-old. 

My motivation for attending college was pretty straightforward. It seemed like the next logical thing for me. I didn’t know then, but I know now that I’m in love with learning. I’m in love with how many different ways I learn and most of all, I’m in love with the possibility of a future where I will always be learning from the people around me, from myself, and from the youth. 

For my parents, the decision to go to college was a possibility that was up in the air for them. They didn’t quite understand what it meant. They were indifferent because of their conflicting understandings of the role of a Hmoob daughter versus what the American Dream was to them. I remember when my mom said to me “ Mus kawm ntawv, txhob mus ua tus ruam li kuv” (Go to school, don’t be stupid/dumb like me). My mom is hard of hearing and she has been told her entire life she’s not able to do things she wants to by both Hmoob people and society in general. Her identity as a Hmoob disabled person is complicated and she motivates me to create a better life and dismantle systems that tell her what she can and cannot do. 

The process for applying for college was mind-bogglingly difficult. I remember being stressed, having anxiety, crying, and just being frustrated. As the very first in my family and extended family to go to college, I had so many questions with no one to turn to for answers. What was FAFSA? What was financial aid? There’s a difference between grants and work study and scholarships? What classes did I need to take? What does an advisor do? How did parking work? My parents helped me as much as they knew how to, but again, navigating the systems and institutions of the United States is intentionally difficult for refugees, immigrants, and anyone with a marginalized identity. It both frustrated and saddened me to hear about how people completed their multiple college applications and FAFSA with ease, while I continued to struggle seemingly alone. It was a time where I wished I had a mentor to help me through this difficult and alien-like process. 

Going through this process alone was painful, but it made me a stronger person. I’ve now become a valuable resource for my brothers, but it was also a painful and lonely process that I believe no one should go through by themselves. Being this resource for my brothers means everything to me because of how lost and helpless I felt in those moments. 

My family was important to me when deciding what university to attend for my Bachelor’s degree. I toured and applied to only one school, and it was the school in the hometown I grew up in. I was not ready to leave the responsibilities that I had at home and my obligation to my brothers. I decided though, to live in the residence hall to give myself the mental distance from family and distractors in order to focus on my studies.

While I think I have a lot of unique personal growth that shaped my experiences, I believe that my experience may mirror the ones that Hmoob women go through as they navigate their space and place in higher education as well as in Hmoob society. I grappled with imposter syndrome, being a caretaker, being a “good daughter,” performing emotional labor for our families, our relationships, and the Hmoob men who demand it. Being close to home meant I went home a lot. I made it an effort to balance between my social life and family life, but I know deep down that I still feel a sense of inadequacy of how well I actually did. 

As an undergrad student, I was looking for and learning about my worth, my passion, and my sense of direction for the future. I don’t think this is an extraordinary experience that is unique to just me. 

Initially when I entered college, I was internalized. By this, I mean I had really adopted and adhered to the ideology that if I worked hard, everything would fall into place. That if I wanted to be successful, I had to take away as much Hmong-ness in me, and replace it with whiteness. Internalized racism has many names, most commonly used as “whitewashed.” I want to tell the people who continue on their journey to discovery that it is a process and it is a long and painful one. Some people may never go through this process and have always had a strong sense of how important being Hmoob is. But for those who have gone through this process of self-hatred, of shame, of embarrassment, please know that you are not alone in this. I thought I was the only one. I was not. 

Once you learn how much your mind has been corrupted to think you are only worthy when you are less of your culture and more like white people, you will feel a sense of anger and obligation. I joined an organization that held weekly meetings that talked about all the racist shit that happened and continued to happen on campus. We talked about what it meant to exist on campus as visible people of color. We talked about how flawed the education system had to be in our town that housed a large population of Hmoob people for them to ask “What’s Hmong?” As if our siblings, parents, grandparents, ancestors crawled through bombs and blood for nothing at all. As if their sacrifices and their thirst for liberation added up to simply “What’s a Hmong?” and to be told “Go back to where you came from” and to bite your tongue instead of saying “My people wouldn’t be here in the first place if your fucking country didn’t go around sticking their nose up everyone’s business.” This group became a place where I could process my daily interactions with (mostly white) people who said things out of ignorance and unknowing, but would change none of their behaviors, no matter how many times I would call them on it.

And as more and more women spoke up in the group, we also analyzed how Hmoob men, despite their marginalization, also used tools of oppression to silence and abuse (literally and figuratively) the women in their lives. This opened up conversations about Hmoobness and queerness. My world opened up. I spoke, and people listened. People listened and they related. I had never been able to relate to people like this before; on a level deeper than just interests and likes. It was a deep, resilient, and trauma-related connection. And my connection to these people, to hear their pain that was like and unlike my own lit a fire under me to pursue the people who were the cause of it. I wanted to know why almost every single year I would experience the same shit from different people. I wanted to know why, when we reported or were victims of racist, sexist, and xenophobic things were said or done by other students, professors, or staff, why they were not reprimanded for it. I wondered if they were waiting for one of us to die before they did anything. If they would do anything at all. 

I became an activist. I wanted to (and I did, and continue to) fight against systems and the people who enabled people to silence, burn out, and eradicate beauty in cultures like and unlike ours. I wanted to fight against systems and people who enabled the spread of hate without stopping it at its roots. 

When I was thinking about my future (the summer before I graduated in December of 2017), I had been searching for graduate programs that fit my career path. I had come to the realization early on that I had gone through my undergrad by myself, with little institutional support from faculty and staff. The support I did receive was from other marginalized faculty and staff that were already bombarded with trying to take care of themselves as well. I realized and I saw a lack of administrators who cared about their students of marginalized identities. I looked at the executive administration of my university and saw that I’d been doing their jobs for them while they averted responsibility with words like “diversity” and “inclusion.” I recognized my worth and my relentlessness. I saw a deficiency of a sense of urgency required of an administrator when interacting with, making decisions about, and advocating alongside marginalized voices on campus. And basically, I set out to replace them. 

I applied to a master’s program that did not require a GRE. My philosophy is that if a program does not require a GRE, they therefore have an understanding of how standardized testing disproportionately disadvantages poor, disabled, people of color and other marginalized communities. I was accepted into a Student Affairs Administration program in the Midwest, two hours away from my family and started in the fall of 2018 on my journey to be a Student Affairs professional. I was going to embark on my journey to replace the administration that had refused to provide resources to support my journey. I was going to become the woman that I needed when I was a lonely, scared, and frustrated teen applying for college for the first time. I was going to be the visible role model that I needed for support when I was going through my undergraduate experience. I was setting my sights on and pledging my life to serve students and their needs. 

My first year in the program was the hardest, most challenging, yet most rewarding experience I have ever had. For me, I felt like I had reached a peak in my life. My program was a cohort that was filled with a majority of people of color. The program had never been that diverse before, and it showed in the way they prepped the faculty and staff that would interact with us. We were relentless in our search for deeper conversations, critiques of the bureaucracy of our field, and what was required of us in order to change it. 

At one point, a white woman in class had the caucasity to say that when she walked into the classroom, she felt uncomfortable and that she didn’t belong. As a person of color who had done this all my life, I laughed. I had been code-switching, keeping silent, and making my words nice enough and palatable for white people to listen to me and see me as non-threatening and worthy of listening to. Grad school was the first time in my life that I felt genuinely cared for and heard of in a classroom. I felt that my experiences were valuable and that they would launch me into the field and make it better, more accountable, and student-driven. People commented on how powerful my voice was and what it meant for them to hear someone speak the absolute truth--uncensored. 

I don’t think people realized how much that statement would have an impact on me. As an activist, I had always been told (and continue to be told) that I am too much. I have been told I’m too angry, too loud, too hopeful, and wanting too much too fast, and that everyone isn’t ready for it. This gave me a sense of inadequacy. People told me I was intimidating and I felt as if my existence of being “too much” was scaring off potential relationships and connections I could have with people. I learned to swallow my words and make them more palatable, nicer, censored for the sake of other peoples’ comfort. I felt disingenuine, fake, and not like myself. It was as if someone had gutted the truest parts of me and kept only the things that made me outwardly desirable. For a long time, I became a shell of myself and tiptoed my voice around people in fear of losing relationships. This has contributed greatly to how much I guard my emotions around people and how people see me as cold. But the most important thing I realized when I became this shell of myself, and silenced my own voice for the sake of others was that I was never too much. I realize now that I am not too much and I have never been “too much.” I am only too much for people who cannot handle me. I will always be enough for myself, for my cause, and for my people. Grad school solidified this. 

The people I surrounded myself with were a circle of support, love, validation, challenge, and we were all we had to survive. The institution is not built for marginalized people to succeed, so we had to lean on one another to do it. The lack of institutional accountability for the emotional labor that students have to perform for one another is uncanny and unacceptable.

In my time during my graduate degree, I worked for an office that intentionally created space, time, and resources for students to feel welcome and validated in their experiences. They are the biggest reason why I decided to attend that specific school and specific program. I saw the way that they impacted students like myself, and I wanted to be a part of that. No matter how shitty the people of the institution were outside of those doors, I always had people in that office to support and validate me. I can only hope to replicate that feeling in the future.

On top of that, I had four other Hmoob students with me. My heart has never been so full of validation before. I never had to explain myself and my experiences to the Hmoob members of my cohort. It seemed to click immediately and it was a bond that I will always cherish between us. In a sense, my Hmoob cohort saved me. My graduate school was so far away from home that I missed everything about being near my family and Hmoob people. We would get together and cook Hmoob food and play board games. For a year, they were my family and the people I leaned on. 

I also leaned on the community within the town to ease my loneliness. I remember how full my heart was when we did a dinner with all Hmoob faculty and staff at my university and how much collective wisdom there was to go around. I attended a weekly outing called “Paj Ntaub Circle” that also saved my life in my darkest times. All we did was eat, do paj ntaub, tell ghost stories and/or gossip. It helped me with speaking Hmoob and it eased my homesickness. It took my mind off of things that stressed me out and brought me back to my roots. 

I finished my first year on a high. I learned so much about myself and I couldn’t wait to learn more with my cohort. But alas, I like to consider my life a series of trials and challenges and that my resiliency is what makes me so strong. After completing my first year of graduate school, I was called on to deploy. 

For the longest time after being told I was deploying, I told no one. I sobbed in my car on the way home and that took all the strength I had. One day, I told my therapist while in a session and she asked about it a few weeks after, questioning if I’d told anyone yet. I hadn’t. I was doing it out of selfishness. I was afraid that people would see me differently. That my relationships would be a series of “lasts” and that they would lack the spontaneity of living in the moment. I remember the question she asked me that forced me to think. She asked me: “Don’t you think they deserve to know, so they can take time to grieve as well?” 

I don’t speak much about the military. It’s something that I don’t speak about often because the military is just a part of my life; I don’t consider it something that I’d like to be a part of me, especially when I leave it. I love the skills I have learned and continue to learn. It has enhanced my confidence, my voice, and my ability to be concise and precise. I don’t see being in the military as a part of my life that I enjoy disclosing because many of my beliefs do not align with the bureaucratic structure that the military operates under. But when I joined in my first year of my undergraduate degree, I did it out of curiosity and the appeal of money. I am thankful for how the military has contributed to my financial stability, but it always comes at a cost. I am gone frequently, away from loved ones. I am burnt out when I come back from drill weekends. And I consistently have to code switch between the real me, and the person the military wants me to be. But I have met so many amazing people through the military. I’ve heard stories of loss, pain, strength, resiliency, and a means to change the world. These stories are with my heart and they inspire me to be better alongside my soldiers. My biggest fear is that I will change unknowingly and unwillingly while I am deployed. This is always a fear of mine. How deep can I infiltrate and how much survival can I do until the values I oppose become a part of who I am? 

As I continue on my journey, I’ve come to the realization that I cannot always take people with me. People grow apart, grow into different people that do not align with our goals, or just simply lose touch. I pray and hope though, that those who matter will stay. I use the analogy of the door for my relationships. Doors may close, but I do not lock them. All it takes is a knock and we can grace one another with our presence again.

***

As I continue into my future of uncertainty, I am still learning to love the parts of me that I do not speak of. I find solace in spoken word, written word, but mostly, I find the most validation when there are words to describe my experiences, my feelings, and my pain and joys. That is why I do the work that I do; to have others/my own experiences validated by words that show that what I’m feeling is not normal and what we feel as a collective is what creates who we are. Hmoob people are a collectivist culture, not an individualistic one. We must come together to fight for injustices not just for ourselves and our people, but for others as well. If I can feel the pain of others as my own, that empathy will pave the path for us to want change not just for people who look, think, and identify as us, but to all marginalized peoples. Black, Indigenous, Latinx, trans and nonbinary, queer, disabled, poor, immigrants/refugees..the list goes on and the list will always go on. It is our collective duty to disrupt systems for the sake of all, not just ourselves. 

What we feel deeply amongst ourselves is extraordinarily groundbreaking for the children we were and the changemakers that we are and will become. When the youth ask us what we were doing in times of hate, turmoil, and concentration camps, we must give them an answer that will bring us peace. We are the people we have been waiting for. We must be the heroes of the stories--yes, even if it is our own. 

No matter what, your journey whether linear or non-linear, always remember these things: 

• Be kind to yourself. 

• Healing is messy. Do it at your own pace, and don’t force it until you are ready. 

• Your ancestors see, hear, and believe in you.  

• Sib pab thiab txhawb nqa. 

• Some people are not ready for you, and that is not your fault. 

• You belong here. 

• Laugh. 

• Thank the womxn in your life. 

• Do not apologize for voicing the way you deserve to be loved. 

• If you set yourself on fire to keep others warm, I hope that when you meet the sun, you will both fall in love. 

• And lastly, angry bitches get shit done. 

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