Obedience vs authenticity
People often ask me if I had always wanted to be doctor. The truth is, I’m not sure I ever really had much of a choice. My parents, having risked their lives to travel by boat across the Pacific Ocean to escape poverty, Communism and the Vietnam War, had high hopes for me. It was too late for them to live out the American Dream once they arrived in the United States, but they would be sure as hell that their American-born children had all the necessary resources to carry it out for them. As their first born, I was expected to become successful, wealthy, and also something fairly obvious that would convey a sense of dignity and pride whenever they talked to their friends about me (it’s tough trying to explain to other immigrant parents what a venture capitalist does). That really only left doctor or Chinese pop-singer on the table for me. And as anyone who has ever heard me sing can tell you, I think the world is a much better place being spared my musical endeavors.
So now that I’ve invested nine years of my postgraduate adult life, over $300,000 in educational loans, and a colossal amount of stress that has probably taken five years off my life expectancy into my medical career, I figured it was time to explore whether this is what I really want to do. What would I have become if I had not been born to Chinese immigrant parents, and was allowed to really explore my passions? Would medicine have inevitably become one of my passions anyway? It’s true that I’m quite happy with my career path. I have a meaningful job that is aligned with my core values of generosity and compassion but also challenges me to continue learning and growing. But it’s also a job that makes my parents’ eyes twinkle when they tell other Chinese people what I do. Did I get to where I am today because I followed my heart or because I was trying to avoid the the wrath of their disappointment and strangely-effective guilt trips? And for that matter, how much of what I think and do is actually a product of the pressures placed on me by other people in society? The drive to be an “obedient daughter” does not just consume us when we are with family. It also rears its ugly head when we find ourselves behaving a certain way in attempts to be well-liked, agreeable, and submissive. It’s what stops you from dancing in front of others even if your jam comes on the radio in the grocery store (what if people think you’re weird?), applying for the job promotion because you were just hired (what if people think you’re a gunner?), and leaving a bad (albeit honest) review for your last AirBnB host because he has a 4.9 star rating and all of the other reviews are raving about him (what if people think you’re snobby and can’t appreciate the comforts that the natural beauty of the mountain range, a broken shower head and rust-damaged floors offers?). Okay so that last example was very specific, but it could still happen to anybody.
I began exploring the origins of my true identity after my second son was born and my mother moved in with us. Moving her in was a tough decision, but after many discussions with my husband, a handful of sleepless nights and even a few bilingual family therapy sessions with my husband and mother, we went for it. P.S. If you’re not impressed that I was able to find a therapist who spoke English and Cantonese (not just Mandarin!) you should be impressed that I was able to convince my Asian mother to go to therapy with me. I knew that living with my mother would place a strain on both my marriage and my mental health for reasons unrelated to my personal identity, but I was optimistic and felt confident that we would make it work and pull through it together as a family. We would come out stronger in the end.
Fast forward 2 years later, we’re sitting down with my mother telling her that we’re moving her out. We struggled and struggled for a long time. There was a lot of blood, sweat and tears (okay maybe not so much blood). The fundamental problem from every argument was that my mother didn’t know how to stop seeing me as her obedient daughter, and start respecting me as a mother, a doctor and also as a person. She held steadfastly to her belief that she knew what was best for me and my children, and anything I did to contradict her was going to end in a catastrophe for all of us. That, coupled with the fact that she was intensely superstitious and anxious (e.g. I was not allowed to stand in front of the refrigerator while I was pregnant with my third child because it’s a bad omen for the baby to born into a cold world) made living with her intolerable. And I didn’t want to hurt her feelings or insult her. I knew her intentions were never malicious – she really did believe she was protecting us. So if I wasn’t crying my eyes out imploring her to try to understand my point of view, I was making accommodations for her that ultimately hurt my marriage and my children’s development. I tried many different things, including going to therapy to figure out how I could become more patient and understanding (i.e. more obedient) so I could continue living with her. That ultimately resulted in my therapist shedding light on how oppressed I’ve been not only in the recent years when my mother and I were living under the same roof, but for my entire life. It was fortunate that my therapist was white and American-born, because my attempts to explain myself using doctrines such as “filial piety” meant nothing to her. She explained that my mother has been preventing me from a undergoing a development phase called “self-actualization,” which is the top of the pyramid for Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Image taken from Simply Psychology
She explained that “self-actualization” is when a person can begin to accept their true selves in a realistic and positive way. This is when they have the confidence to form opinions and make decisions based off their own internal values, and not those off other people in their lives, namely their parents. I dug into the psychology of human needs a bit more and realized that she wasn’t just denying me the ability to self-actualize. She was also taking away from my self-esteem, love of family and even sometimes my own personal safety (she once warned me that I would lose another child if I allowed my husband to clean out the molding in our attic while I was pregnant). Without trying to, she was denying me basic human needs on almost every level. Yet I continued to struggle with how to reconcile meeting my needs without offending my mother. And then I came across this quote from the book “Untamed” by Glennon Doyle (which, as a side note, has become my new bible and should become everyone’s new bible):
“A woman becomes a responsible parent when she stops being an obedient daughter”
Mind = Blown
You can’t be both. I thought about the toll that my marriage and my parenting efforts were taking because of the sacrifices I made to accommodate my mother, and realized how irresponsible I’ve been. So for the sake of my family, I need to provide some physical and emotional distance from my mother. She said a lot of things in response to our request for her to move out, one of the more notable concerns being “What will other people think?” That question stopped me in my tracks, causing my determination to waver. It was her way of saying “Fine, you can relinquish your obedience to me, but what about to the greater society?” Sure, some people may think that it just didn’t work out for her to live with us, but most likely an overwhelming number of people will think that I’m the bitch who kicked her own mother out of her house. Fortunately, that’s when the light bulb turned on for me. First, this was just another attempt-my therapist would call it a “fear tactic”-to force me into obedience. It’s actually more likely that no one will even know about me moving my mother out, let alone have any real strong opinion about it. And secondly, I need to stop caring what other people think about the private affairs of my life, and do what I know needs to be done. In that moment, I felt very much like Daenerys when Olenna Tyrell tells her,
“The lords of Westeros are sheep. Are you a sheep? No. You’re a dragon. Be a dragon.”
And then she proceeded to take back everything that was taken from her with the fierceness of one who is no longer afraid. Let’s just forget the fact that the Game of Thrones writers then decided to poop all over this powerful moment by making her go so crazy in the end she gets stabbed through the heart by the man she loves. #worstendingever. Bad storytelling aside, I decided to move my mother out despite potentially earning the wrath and fury of her and every other Asian parent who finds out what I did. As hard as it was to take this step, it was liberating. The internal struggle I was experiencing ceased and I no longer felt like I was being torn into two. I was finally free to be my own person, because I no longer gave power to what others, not even my own mother, thought about me. And more importantly, I can teach my children to let go of the tendency to live as an obedient servant of this world, choose to be authentic and true to themselves so that they never have to second guess whether the decisions they make are theirs or the ones I wanted them to make, and become badass fire-breathing dragons that eat the sheep who aim to tear them down.
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