Recognizing, understanding, and navigating guilt with immigrant parents
BY ERICKA CONANT ON JULY 08, 2021
Ericka Conant and her mom, 1997. (Courtesy of Ericka Conant)
I was going to begin this piece with a question to my mother: “Are you angry that I haven’t been to Mexico since 2018?” But then I realized it didn’t matter what she said.
You see, the question seeks absolution. It’s a self-serving question to extinguish the guilt I have always felt, especially now considering the long gap. After all, I already know what she would say: “¿Cómo puedes decir eso mija? Estás ocupada con el trabajo, y de todos modos las cosas con tu familia en Sinaloa no están bien.” Or “How can you say that? You are busy with work, and either way things with your family in Sinaloa are not going great.”
It would make me feel better, for a time, by downplaying the significance of the ties between me and her birthplace, stressing that because I’m working she understands why I haven’t come. Every child of an immigrant has a different root of their guilt. For me, it’s the widening and prolonging of physical distance from my mother’s roots.
I used to live right on the border between California and Mexico. Now in Philadelphia, the distance demands to be felt, and at times it’s overwhelming. This is just my experience with guilt, but there are more.
It will persist, because we are all only human. But there are ways to navigate it and move forward.
So Instead I will begin with deeper context into the experience of guilt as the child of an immigrant, because enough about me.
To be the child of an immigrant
Second-generation immigrants have at least one parent who left their homeland. To be raised by an immigrant means that a portion of their shaping and molding of us as a person heavily references their immigration story—their exodus—and the constant comparison of their upbringing from our own.
It makes for a drastic juxtaposition. Where my mother slept on a dirt floor with her siblings after her father died, I slept in my own bed, sharing a room with a single sister. Where my mother was working on her family’s land and completing odd jobs in her neighborhood, I got my first job in my second year of college.
In that contrast, there is a sort of “healthy guilt” that comes with thinking back and comparing our upbringings. It puts things into context, and makes me appreciate the things I have.
Like Sahaj Kaur Kohli, founder of Brown Girl Therapy, said during a recent TED Talk:
“Healthy guilt alerts us to our mortality, to the pain and hurt that we might be cursing to other people, to the social and cultural standards that we may have crossed. And it can help direct our behavior”
Being thankful and appreciating every moment in my life now, as it is, with appreciation to my mother and everyone that enabled me to be here—is healthy.
But then comes the unhealthy guilt.
The kind of guilt that makes us want to change our values—whether they be success, determination, self-actualization and more. Oftentimes this guilt is chronic and long-term and it has the potential to hold us back from reaching these values.
“It kind of encourages us to distrust our own needs and wants, especially if they differ from the people around us and our immigrant parents,” Kaur Kohli continued.
Instead of letting guilt modify our self worth out of fear of disappointing our parents, it should be seen as a warning sign.
But especially for daughters, because the possibility of seeing that unhealthy guilt as a reason to change our values is far greater. Our already present responsibilities, and the fear of taking our parents' struggle for granted and invalidating their journeys are the perfect recipe for developing an unhealthy amount of guilt.
Sometimes parents also actively reinforce the feelings of guilt through disapproval.
In a culture where first-born daughters are especially regarded as functioning like the “second mothers” guilt results from leaving our parents house, leaving for college hundreds of miles away, moving to cities thousands of miles away. It’s left unsaid, but there’s a sense that we’re leaving them vulnerable and without protection.
But decades of internalized guilt is not a life sentence. Once one recognizes this as unhealthy, there are routes to acceptance.
Rewriting the narrative of guilt
I personally found it helpful to place my mother at the center of my struggle, rather than myself. This may sound counterproductive, but hear me out.
It’s not as if parents don’t feel guilt as well.
I imagined the guilt my mother may have felt, after immigrating to the U.S. in the 90’s. Perhaps she has internalized guilt because of her deep ties to her ejido in Northern Sinaloa. Perhaps she has never navigated the guilt herself.
Once you are able to see that, identify your values. Recognize how you have been loved and supported, and making peace with wanting to be loved differently will help you move forward. In my case, yes, there can be distance, but that doesn’t mean I can’t continue to love from afar. Ask yourself: What are my values?
In her Ted Talk, Kaur Kohli calls it re-authoring the narrative we’ve been taught.
“Identify your values and standards that are being crossed when you feel guilt. Identify if they are your values and standards or someone else's that you have internalized, and then try to sit with what's important to you in that moment before you decide what your next step should be,” she said.
Communication with parents should be honest, and not rooted in fear of repercussion or misunderstanding. This made me realize that while I wanted to speak to my mother on the matter, I was afraid of the pain I might cause her, of the pain I had been repressing myself.
Therefore I will reframe my question, which I will ask my mother, in a way that doesn’t seek validation and absolution, in a way that isn’t rooted in the fear of anger.
Instead I will ask: “How do you feel that I haven't been to Mexico since 2018?”
And I will listen.
