It’s officially a little over a year since I left my full-time advertising agency job, to dive into self-employment in social media management and content creation.

August was my official anniversary but I was so busy I didn’t get to fully process it nor celebrate.

With the fall season calming down a little now, it was a perfect chance to really reflect and maybe even share some things I’ve learned along the way.

After all, it’s not everyday we get to leave stability, and somehow still survive a year later.

For as long as I remember, I always aimed to live life as I thought it should be. Most of that means, living it and achieving what a perfect and successful Hmong woman would achieve. Go to school, have a career, get married before 30, be good to my in-laws and have kids. I almost obsessively lined up all the pieces in my life to match this road map, even sabotaging myself to hold onto it.

The first time I truly recall becoming conscious of intergenerational trauma, was listening to my Pog (grandmother) talk about all the things she could never forgive her mother for; for abusing her, for marrying her off at such a young age and taking the whole family and leaving to another village without a word, and for not treating her grandson like her own blood. “How could she do those things as a mom? My mom never knew how to love us. I can never forgive her. I will never be like her.”

Toxicity, something our refugee parents have never had the luxury to reflect on, learn, and teach us. For their generation’s assignment was survival and rehoming.

As I have been diving deep into my own mental health journey of healing in the midst of a global pandemic…I have come to realize just how much more complex and human “toxicity” is than it is credited to be in self-help blogs and Instagram feeds.

And just how easily the word “toxic” is thrown around as a means to stay clear of someone, blame someone, or make sense of pain.

I have always wondered what true love would look like--what it would feel like. Real love, one that survives reality and is not based on fairytales and honeymoon phases.

I have been stumped in a dead-end every time. I could never find the answers or picture it.

It wasn’t until a recent epiphany, that I had realized I had been living in it all my life. Not in an ungrateful sense, and not in a boasting sense, but more-so, realizing that my familial love had been teaching me and exemplifying true love all along.

In the movies, the one after the “bad guy” is supposed to be the happily-ever-after. That’s where the movie ends, and so we assume, that’s how life is too.