Like Mother, Like Daughter

“I’m okay,” she says as she pieces together a soft smile.

I’ve heard my mother say things were okay for years, but I knew it was never true. Staying in motels and shelters, my mother disappearing for days without a word, holding our breath when my (now former) stepfather walked through the door. These weren’t things to be okay with, but to my mother they were. At least, that’s what I thought.

Growing up, I truly did resent my mother. I blamed her for everything: for her and my dad’s separation; for the jealousy I felt towards other children whose parents stuck together; for the nights I cried myself to sleep wishing I was with my dad, my ta (grandpa), a friend — anyone else. 

What hung over me as a child was the fact my parents split up when I was only three years old. I believed everything bad that happened in my life stemmed from that separation. I thought it meant they didn’t love me and that I wasn’t enough to keep them together. Pretty crazy stuff for a child to think about, right? In my head, I was a miserable little girl.

But as the years went by, I collected these stories from my mother’s past. I grew up knowing that her dad wasn’t a part of her life, that she got bullied in school, and her relationship with her siblings wasn’t always sunshine and rainbows (and still isn’t). These were all things that happened in my life, too. So why did we carry them so differently?

As I write this, I weep. I weep because not once did me and my siblings have to experience what she did with her mother. She never laid a hand on me and my brothers. Never kicked us out of the house because she didn’t agree with something we said. Never secretly sent us to another state to live with non-immediate family members. My mother did her best to shield her children from the echoes of pain she grew up with — a cycle she was born into, and one she worked to break. Did she do a perfect job? Not quite, but her actions were a step in the right direction.

My mother and I are from different generations and ultimately two lifetimes. She is part of the 1.5 generation of the Khmer diaspora; she was a two and a half year old child brought into this country after escaping the Khmer Rouge. I was born here. When I was younger, I rarely considered the weight of that difference — I understood her simply as my mother, shaped by America in much the same way I was. It took time to realize that her life began elsewhere, under circumstances that made leaving not a choice, but a necessity.

During the Khmer Rouge takeover, my yeay (grandmother), her sisters, their families, and my great-grandpa fled to a refugee camp in Thailand. Though they had escaped the regime, hardship lingered. My mother’s so-called “father” entered the family as quickly as he exited, leaving shortly after his son’s birth and before he could hear his daughter’s first cry. Nearly three years in the camp passed before hope finally took shape. In 1985, my mother and what remained of her family were sponsored to resettle in Chicago, Illinois, and later found a place they could call “home” in Tacoma, Washington.

Learning to accept how differently my mother grew up, shaped by her place in the 1.5 generation, was not easy. She should have been far too young to remember anything about the Khmer Rouge. But the truth is, she didn’t have to remember any of it because she was being raised by someone who had a close connection to all of that — my yeay, AKA her mother.

It wasn’t until junior high, during an English assignment that required me to interview a family member, that I began to grasp the unimaginable suffering my people had endured under the Khmer Rouge. A civil war had torn through Cambodia, claiming countless lives in a ruthless hunger for power. Those with education or status were executed, leaving children, mothers, the elderly, and the disabled to fend for themselves.

It wasn’t until university, when I launched my podcast and began writing about Southeast Asian communities in the Seattle-Tacoma area, that I started to grasp the enduring effects of this violence: generational trauma and the toll of untreated PTSD on survivors. Through interviews with fellow Southeast Asian peers, my university’s assistant dean for DEI and justice (who happened to be a proud Khmer woman), and a co-executive director of a local Khmer nonprofit, I asked what our communities still lack when it comes to culturally appropriate mental health care, accessible resources, and meaningful connection.

It wasn’t until this past year, when I felt my mother had let me down one too many times, that I truly grasped all she had endured in her 43 years. She had a mother who lived through the war and through the fear and uncertainty which accompanies war. The impact of this trauma would span generations.

I was well aware that my yeay took out her frustrations on her children, beating them down both physically and emotionally, as though they were rag dolls—helpless, and incapable of retaliation. 

“You know when you get caught up in the moment playing and running around trying to get away from the tagger?” My mother asked me. “That’s what happened to Aunty. She got too caught up in the moment and BAM! She runs into a car’s sideview mirror and bruises her face.”

My yeay was obsessed with keeping my aunt looking flawless. In other words, she couldn’t have any scratches, bruises, scars or anything of that nature. That day, my aunt and my mother were playing cops and robbers with some neighborhood kids. Their street was lined with cars and it was one of those cars that my aunt hit.

“She comes up to me crying and says ‘You know I’m gonna get hit, right?’ I looked at her in disbelief,” my mother said with a sigh. “I was like ‘Why did you run into the car?! You know mom’s not only gonna get mad at you. She’s gonna get mad at me because she thinks I’m not watching you!’ In the end, Mom hit her, and we all got in trouble for it.”

Trauma does weird things to people. Does it make sense to not want your daughter to get scratched up? Yes, of course. But when she does, would you beat her for it? No, but that’s what trauma can do. It does not leave room for sense, especially when not addressed immediately.

Fast forward to the year 1999 when my mother became pregnant with me. For years, she and I never really sat down and did the math. We just assumed she had me when she was 18 which meant she got pregnant at 17. But my mother and I were born in different seasons, meaning she was only 16 when she got pregnant. While in some situations, a one-year difference seems miniscule, my mother had barely 16 years of life under her belt before something which would alter her body, her mind, and (ultimately) her entire life, came into play.

You could say my mother and I are opposites in the ways we choose to carry ourselves in this life, but our newfound understanding of one another couldn’t be more alike. I’m 25 now going on 26 and it’s hard to believe it took me this long to be at peace with my mother. I think each of us had our own timelines for things. Until recently, my mother didn’t feel comfortable talking about her inner thoughts and I didn’t feel the need to look past her being my mother.

Now, instead of looking at one another as just mother and daughter, we see each other as two humans holding multiple identities and loads. Our conversations feel lighter and not so one-sided. She expresses herself more freely and I don’t push her into doing anything she doesn’t have the energy for. We’re making it work and I believe our relationship has never been stronger or healthier.

Though we carry generational trauma, the cycle is weakening. My yeay may still be finding herself, but my mother did it at 43, and I did it at 25.

If I’ve learned anything from all of my experiences leading up to now, it’s to live with compassion and set boundaries when needed. But above all, it’s to give grace because like my yeay, my mother, and I we are only human.