Goodpain Podcast S03E06: Making Beauty(ful) with Jess Lin of Cultureful Podcast | Candid Conversations. Underdog Wisdom.

The immigrant experience that I heard you summarize was this nature of stepping into some degree of the unknown, moving from a position of origin where you've been given what you've been given.

You've inherited what you have inherited.

You didn't have a choice necessarily on where you started, but now you're making the choice to step into some version of the unknown, and to figure it out much more as you go along.

And you don't have the luxury of falling back on the same safety net.

That's across an ocean.

Now you have to figure it out, and you have to build that and rebuild whatever that net is for yourself.

You've routinely stepped into this unknown based on the gut calling you and just knowing, I...

This is where I need to go.

That sounds to me like continuing to enhance on that immigrant experience, and finding a, a, a sense of place wherever it is that you go based on whether it resonates with your inherent mission, your gut for what you feel you need to bring to life in this world.

So I, I think your, your summation of the immigrant experience, I think, you know, you hit the nail on the head in some ways.

Like, what you're describing is a common immigrant experience.

What I'm also realizing now as I'm doing interviews with a lot of immigrants is it so depends on if you're first generation, if you're second generation, if you are first generation but you have a community of cousins and relatives that have already gone before you, you know? And so the immigrant experience, it's, it's so varied.

And so I feel like there's actually a lot of folks that come, and they're not reinventing the wheel, because they have, you know, aunties and uncles and cousins that, you know, have been there for decades and kind of tell them, "Hey, do this, do that," whatever.

My family didn't have that, um, you know? And so, so I think I would push back to say, like, I think the immigrant experience is, is not necessarily always reinventing the wheel.

Or, um, but at the same time, it is common also to have the first generation kind of reinventing some kind of wheel for themselves, and then the second generation having to reinvent a different wheel for themselves because, you know, there's different challenges, and then there's a lot of, like, inter- intergenerational challenges.

Um, I think for my parents and for me, I think...

And, and also, like, the, the, uh, I think I would push back on the assumption that people usually want to come and that it's a choice.

Um, 'cause often, you know, people come for different reasons.

Sometimes it's not a choice, or sometimes it's the choice they least want [laughs], you know? So, um, and you know, what's, what's interesting about my family is my, my parents, like, both did not really want to come to the US.

Um, my, so my grandfather, um, my mom's father had a lot of political trauma from growing up in Taiwan having been imprisoned during the Japanese occupation.

And so he had a lot of political anxiety about at some point China's gonna take over Taiwan, and we don't know what's gonna happen, so we need, um, people, we need relatives in the US or in Japan or in other countries that will help us seek asylum, um, at which point, you know, if we become political refugees.

So that, so my mother and my father, because he wanted to marry my mom [laughs] um, actually they were sent basically to the US by my grandfather, and he told them, "Go and learn English and make friends and assimilate, and don't ever come back.

Come back to visit, but don't ever come back." Um, which, you know, was challenging for them [laughs] right? It was j- it was very challenging for them, especially because Taiwan saw a big economic boom around that time, and, you know, a lot of, like, my aunts and cousins and, you know, they, like, you know, were not necessarily living a more comfortable life here than they are over there in terms of, um, you know, quality of life and a lot of other factors with community and all that stuff.

So okay, so anyway, so, so, so premise-wise, I think, like, you know, for my family, yes, um, it wasn't always a choice, but then they came because my mom, she's, you know...

Her dad tells her to do something, she'll do it, right? [laughs] No matter how hard it is.