3 - Commitment to Relationship (Dear Mom)

Relationships can be complicated. Different communication styles, misaligned expectations, battles with pride and vulnerability. Stubbornness. Deflecting help. This episode honors my mom, and the badass that she is. She's not one to ask for help, and for the longest time she told herself that she'd always be independent, even from me. Survival mentality is fueled by fear, deficit, and stability. It also makes the person emotionally guarded, because there's no room for expressing "weakness". This is what the refugee survival narrative forged in her. It took a lot of work to create the strong relationship I have with her today. This episode is about how I reframed the resentment towards how I was raised, empathized with my mom's life story, and helped her learn to express feelings through modeling it myself. Living over surviving.