The Roots and the River - Episode 3: Between Worlds - Identity, Culture, & The Self You Had to Become

This episode is personal. Li shares what it means to live between cultures, growing up as a first-generation biracial Chinese American with roots in Kowloon, Hong Kong, and a second-generation Portuguese American raised by a first-generation Portuguese mother. Layered onto that…life as a former military spouse and current work within the military community. This isn’t just a conversation about identity. It’s about adaptation, survival, and the quiet cost of constantly shifting to fit environments that don’t always hold all of who you are. In this episode, we explore: •The weight of inherited cultural expectations •What happens when you’re always adjusting but rarely just existing •The emotional reality of living between worlds •And how to begin integrating the self you had to become Grounded in clinical insight and guided by I Ching wisdom, this episode holds space for the complexity of who you are, without asking you to simplify it.