How immigrant parents say 'I love you'

and December 2024 Resources and Recommendations

Important announcements + a peek into my new endeavor for paid subscribers at the end!

• The giveaway for 48 goodies closes this week! Don’t forget to buy the book, or leave a review, and upload it to enter this massive giveaway. Learn more here!

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• Mark your calendars for the upcoming paid subscriber community conversations over Zoom: January 7th, January 21st, Feb 4th, Feb 18th — all at 6pm ET (we are trying a new time slot for the first couple of months).

How immigrant parents say ‘I love you’

I know how hard it can be to be around family this time of year. There’s higher levels of stress and chaos. There’s repeated patterns and grievances. I also know that for some of you it can feel unfulfilling and like you’re not getting what you need. I don’t want to invalidate any of that AND I want to hep you hold on to those little moments.

In my work as a therapist who specializes in working with adult children of immigrants sometimes we have to translate what our immigrant parents mean because they are too scared, incapable, or have never practiced saying the literal words. Here are some sweet (and yes, sometimes annoying) ways your immigrant parents are trying to tell you they love you:

• Cutting fruit

• Doing laundry/taking care of you while you are home

• Cutting out news clippings or talking about books, shows, or media that they think you’d like or reference something you have discussed with them

• Asking if you need anything (repeatedly)

• Waving at the end of the driveway until you are out of sight when you drive off

• Using pet names

• Making your favorite meals and having your favorite snacks stocked when you visit

• Giving you money

• Unsolicited and repeated advice

• Buying you ‘practical’ things (even if you don’t need or want it)

Speaking of this time of year, the no. 1 way for you to protect your wellness around family is to find ways to maintain your sense of autonomy.

Autonomy is the sense of freedom you have to make your own decisions. Now, there’s a sense of privilege in being able to have autonomy at home with family and it varies based on age, financial and logistical dependency, geographical location, etc. But as a therapist who works with adult children of immigrants, often many of us are more passive in how we engage at home — just chalking it up to what’s expected of us. I wanted to share some things I explore with clients when it comes to retaining autonomy when home with family. Read the caption of this post for the list.

If you want a FREE reflections workbook for this time of year, you can go here and reuse the one I shared a couple years ago!

What I’ve read and watched

• Ronny Chieng’s Love to Hate It comedy special on Netflix.

• Shrinking on Apple TV. Of course, other than the boundary violations, this show is really amazing!

• I’ve been rewatching Modern Family and watched a lot of bad holiday movies on Netflix that were so feel-good and bad and great :)

• Tomorrow, I am finally going to see Wicked and cannot wait!

Instead of watching or reading, I also did some fun activities this month like going bowling with the family and I took a friend to Happy Medium which is an art cafe to paint pottery and be creative for a few hours. It was such a fun friend date! I’ve also been playing a lot of board games and doing puzzles while listening to an audiobook.

As for books, though, I read some great books this December including:

• We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer was one of the creepiest and also unsatisfyingly satisfying thrillers I’ve ever read!

• The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali is such a beautiful book about friendship and freedom and identity and immigration. Please read it. I binged it in three days.

• Rental House by Weike Wang is a little strange but it’s short and the nuance about being in an interracial, intercultural relationship is so good and spot on. She captures such specificity in her writing that I would dream to be able to do.

• The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year by Ally Carter was an impulsive book of the month box purchase and I am so happy that it was. It’s part mystery, part romance but it keeps you on the edge of the seat with short chapters that leave you hanging until the very end. I read it on Christmas Day and couldn’t stop!

• A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas. I finally started this series and I can’t stop reading this book. I’ll finish it today and I am happily diving nose first into this magical universe.

Other things I found fascinating:

I crowdsourced the community’s responses to unwarranted comments at family or community gatherings and here’s whwat you all had to say Why you turn into a moody teenager around your family. I thought this post on how seasonal depression can be a manifestation of colonial violence was interesting. This is a good guide on finding lost objects (we’ve all been there).

A surprise peek for paid, loyal subscribers on my upcoming new project (and how you can contribute)!