Lasamee

Bridging Two Worlds: Connecting Dots from Remnants of War and Trauma

As published on the Legacies of War post, December 8, 2022.

As I thumb through the official documents from the refugee camp that accompanied my family’s tickets to the United States, devastating grief overwhelms me. Grief for my family and for every family that has had to leave their lives and homes behind under such circumstances. My parents, Nai and Khamsy Kettavong, and my siblings were part of the thousands of Southeast Asians who fled the region in the second half of the 20th century due to war. I am the only person in my immediate family to have been born in the United States, but I still exist between two worlds: one here and one across oceans and the Mekong River.

“Refugees learned trade skills while in the camps in efforts to help them find work upon being placed. My dad learned to sew but I never actually saw him stitch or sew anything growing up. It was my mother who would make pillows and other things for work. You can see in the stamp that they were in Phanat Nikhom Thailand, which is partially why my brother is named Vinat. He was born there.”

*“Pa and fellow Lao folks in the refugee camp. He is the third from the left in the front row.”*

Reviewing the paperwork that shows my father was recognized as part of the United States Special Guerrilla Unit during the Vietnam War from 1960-1975, I can’t help but feel my heart breaking. He was a sergeant. He was a prisoner of war. And he was my father. The recognition is but a small nod toward healing and repairing the immense, still immeasurable damage caused by the U.S. Secret War in Laos that left millions of tons of ordnance (two million tons during 580,000 bombing sorties, equal to a planeload of bombs every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day, for 9 years) embedded in the land. These hidden dangers and remnants of violence threaten people even decades after the war has ended.

After fleeing with the clothes on their backs and only the essentials that they could carry, my family spent a couple years in refugee camps in Thailand, and they arrived in Texas on Halloween Day in 1989 by the grace of a generous sponsor.

*“Pa, Mae, my eldest sister Khone, and the middle child, Samout. Photos were taken in the refugee camp as part of their “processing” before leaving for the United States.”*

*“Little Lasamee waving an American flag. I miss those zebra shorts. This photo means so much to me presently.”*

Growing up, I was deeply interested in my family’s history and my motherland. Learning what little I could about Laos made me feel connected to a place where I thought I might belong. I knew that my background was different from those of the children I went to school with in Dallas, Texas, in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood. I felt like the “other” for so many reasons. For the first decade and a half of my life, interactions with people at school were my window into what was outside of my very sheltered upbringing, but the window didn’t equal connection, just a view.

“My brother Vinat, Pa, sister Samout, Mae, me in her arms, a missionary visiting our home whose name I don’t know, and my eldest brother, Sing. My family’s history with religion here in the states is interesting. A story for another day.”

I imagine that my father wanted to keep his family safe (limiting contact and experiences), preserve Lao traditions and values (controlling our every move and avoiding assimilation as much as possible), and didn’t know how to (or perhaps, really want to) navigate the new place in which he’d landed, so he refused to become part of the community or allow his family to do so. Sometimes I think that he expected a hero’s welcome, or at least, a little more than what was provided when he made it to the states. My mother told me that on the day that they left, he tried to wear part of his uniform until a neighbor advised him against it. These are stories that I cannot confirm, as he passed away in February 2021. We would never get to reach a place of knowing and understanding one another. I would often wonder aloud in therapy sessions how to tell people about my father. My therapist helped me find the words: “My father has horrific PTSD and cannot be around people.”

*“Pa and friend during a rare outing. This is my favorite photo of him. He seems genuinely happy here.”*

Because of this, school was my safe space. As a child, I would check out from the library the one picture book about Laos that was on the shelves. Just the one. I would memorize facts about the Plain of Jars and close my eyes, pretending I was there. Imagining what the earth smelled like. What it felt like to stand near the river’s edge. What it would sound like to hear Lao people conversing off in the distance. I wouldn’t learn about The Secret War and the unexploded ordnance until late high school or early college. I can’t remember what news article I had come across, but I can recall feeling gutted. Angry. Frustrated that this was something I hadn’t learned about in history classes. People, my people–and children at that were still dying from a war that had already devastated the land and its people. The legacy of this war was such that lives are still lost to it and the land continues to be marred by explosives. The frustrating part is that more could have been and could be done to prevent this from happening.

In college, I wrote about the Mekong River for my philosophy of water class and briefly mentioned the UXO in relation to hydropower projects and lack of requiring environmental impact assessments. In graduate school, I pulled together a term paper about “ecocide” and how that word was coined in relation to deforestation efforts during the Vietnam War. Research and writing filled a part of my soul that desired knowledge about Laos and my heritage, but I was still disconnected from the dots that I was collecting. Not until I began to meet and work with Lao folks of my generation did I begin to move the dots where they belonged and draw lines between them.

*“Lunch December 2021 with Sera, friends, and H.E. Lao Ambassador Khamphan Anlavan. at Khao Noodle Shop in Dallas”*

It was during the height of the pandemic that I watched a screening of This Little Land of Mines with Legacies of War and virtually met Sera Koulabdara, CEO and “KOUL-mander in Chief” of the organization, and Erin McGoff, director of the documentary. It was an emotional viewing, and it seemed that the experience bonded viewers and the LoW team alike. Emotional is an understatement: I think we all cried through watching the documentary. I have a habit of seeing my family in every book or documentary that has any mention of Laos in it, so this particular documentary moved me into my intergenerational trauma head space.

Bonded by tears, Sera and I became friends on Instagram and months later, I invited her to my wedding since she’d be in town that weekend. (Every Lao person I meet becomes like family very quickly.) Now, when she’s in Texas, we make it a point to try to see one another. Our little lights shine together through the darkness.

Despite the trauma and the darkness that surrounds my family history and those of families who went through similar situations, I have always felt hope for better, brighter, warmer days ahead, even if just the slightest glimmer of it comes through. Perhaps the ability for that sliver of hope to survive within me comes from the name given to me by my parents, Lasamee, which means something along the lines of “celestial light.” I am eternally grateful that Legacies of War exists to aid us in our grieving, healing, rebuilding, and empowerment.

taking back my name & stepping into my power

I wasn’t always Laci, and for a while, I wasn’t Lasamee. Read more about that journey.

A few years ago, I spoke on an Asian American Pacific Islanders (AAPI) professionals panel. There were dozens of university students in attendance. It was Asian American Pacific Islander month, which made me feel as if I had a duty to the the Lao community, South East Asians, and anyone else who had had to deal with slurs or offensive questions like “Where are you from, from?” The invitation to participate in this AAPI panel had indicated that panelists were supposed to talk about our career paths and how we had found our way into that field. Easy enough, I thought. Sure, I can commit to this. I thought I’d cover my bases and read a little bit about Lao history just in case that was part of the series of questions that I expected.

In a tidy row with fellow panelists. Photo credit UNT ASA.

There I was: wearing a blazer despite the Texas heat to cover my tattoos, hair straightened and styled in what I considered an edgy asymmetrical cut, sitting next to a Vietnamese news anchor who worked in the DFW metroplex and an actor dreamboat kind of person who was a Power Ranger on the most recent version of the show. (Childhood dreams, am I right?) There was a younger Korean American student on the panel as well, representing his fellow students, who probably felt a similar pressure that I did. We had a UNT professor on the panel to round it out.

It was an hour-long session with myself and four colleagues. We were all seated in a row at the front of an auditorium-style classroom. All eyes on us. Deemed the ones who had “made it.” Worthy of speaking to the next generation. The folks who had succeeded, in theory. Students from the university curiously scrutinized each of us, or so I thought. I fashioned my usual grimace into what I thought was a pleasant expression. I sat upright. My left foot jiggling at a rate of 45 miles per hour to release the anxiety from my body.

The expected questions rolled in, and those were easy. “What did you choose to study and why?” “How hard was it to find a job after you graduated?” “How do you feel as an Asian American in the work force?” We talked about things like “how we chose our career paths” (can’t say that it was 100% chosen but more like 60% “I know how to do this” and 40% this business needs me for these certain things). And what it was like to be an AAPI American navigating the world of higher education, many of us having been first-generation students whose parents were refugees or immigrants who had not experienced the world that we were in.

UNT Asian Student Association members, panelists, and me, as Laci. Look at that good old American flag behind us. Photo credit to UNT ASA.

Two questions stand out in my memory (read: I’ve been obsessing over my responses to these questions for four years):

How do we bring together SEA students and help them identify proudly as themselves?
How do you/we reclaim our names?

The answer to the first question was easy for me. “Food.” I answered, in a serious tone but grinning. People laughed and some nodded appreciatively. Who doesn’t love food??

I elaborated and went on to say that food brings people together, that it’s how we share time and community, and that, if anything, college students were usually up for a meal.

When I lived in a college dorm, I desperately missed my mother’s Lao cooking. She always seemed to know when I’d had a hard day at school and work, and there would be a pot of soup waiting for me on the stove when I got home. If it was khao poon, all of my worries and stresses melted away at the first chew of the somen noodles and sip of hot, spicy, coconut-creamy broth.

I was thinking of those moments where I craved a steaming bowl of noodle soup or something that reminded me of the comforts of my mother’s love. I wanted a warm embrace; a feeling that one could really only achieve from eating a bowl of noodles and broth made from love and ancestral care.

And now, I own and run my own food and culture business, Good and Golden, with my partner. But that is truly a story for a different day.

To the second question, I hesitated.

I felt like I was bullshitting as a panelist on the AAPI career panel and that I was failing this poor young person. Warmth rose everywhere in my body; I was sure they could see sweat droplets falling off of my nose from 30 feet away. My response was that I gave the person asking options. I wrote my actual email on my resume that included my full name, but then typed “Laci” instead of “Lasamee” at the top to maybe try to beat an algorithm or get past the first round of eyes. Because I felt foreign and unwelcome.

But why wouldn’t my given name be front and center? The name that was thoughtfully gifted to me by my parents upon reaching earth-side from my mother’s womb. It was a name that might not have rolled off the tongue as easily for everyone as the rest of the names of the resident population based on where I was born. Read: Lao refugee immigrant child born in Texas, in the U.S. of A. named something that translated to “celestial light” and was three syllables strung together in a way that no other word in the English language was. A foreign name. An unfamiliar name. Difficult. Complex. A problem for others who didn’t have a couple of minutes to practice the pronunciation.

I knew that that answer was unsatisfactory to me and probably unsatisfactory to the students sitting the in the audience for that panel. But it was the experience that I had at the time.

How do I accommodate the world that I live in? The place that I occupy as a Lao American woman?

What ways can I weasel my way in to this professional world and try to just touch the glass ceiling (not even imagining I could break it)?

What part of my identity am I willing to dim to be able to get a foot in the door?

Why would I fight for my name when it’s so much easier to say Laci than it is to say Lasamee in this situation?

The reporter questions: who, what, when, where, why? What does it matter? To whom? I’m here now, am I not? In the states, with my family. Why would I complicate something “as simple as an introduction?”

I didn’t have a good answer for them because I hadn’t experienced what it was like to truly take back my name.

Until spring of 2021.

It was just a couple months after my father had passed. And I was particularly enraged after the shootings of Asian Americans in Atlanta, an intersection of racism and sexism manifesting in murder. I am still working on trying to figure out how I move through this world as an Asian American woman. I am still angry.

I also make up scenarios in my head in which I have to defend or protect myself or my mother. It fills me with a motivating warmth to become fitter, stronger, ready to throw someone if needed. It’s funny but it’s not. Throughout my life, there have been moments where I’ve remained silent and haven’t done anything at all when someone’s made fun of my name or sing-song chanted made-up words that are their generalized idea of what my mother tongue sounds like. At a restaurant where I was a hostess, I was once called “that oriental girl” and was too shocked to say anything (thankfully, the manager on duty told off the offender); the man who used that adjective was actually trying (and failing) to compliment me, but I’m not a rug my dude.

I could go on about my rage, but I want to take some time to thank the people who readily learned how to pronounce my name and now say it with gusto, with love, with enthusiasm.

In the spring of 2021, I posted a vague “call me by my name” social media post while sitting outside enjoying the fire in my chiminea on the porch but also wallowing in a bit of sadness. The next day, I showed up to work (hi, Heather!) and was asked how I could be supported in the reclaiming of my name, and now I realize, returning to myself. I couldn’t tell you when I lost her though. I tear up thinking about it to this day. My soon-to-be in-laws (this was only a couple months before the wedding in 2021) practiced my name over and over again, in my presence and I will assume, with one another when I wasn’t there. It’s truly music to my ears. Sometimes, I still get goosebumps when I hear my name being spoken aloud, instead of people saying “Laci” which was an adoption of convenience when I knew no better.

It wasn’t too difficult for me to take back my name in the end, and it was pretty painless, to return to being Lasamee. You can do it, kids. I want to hear from you how it goes when you return to yourself, too.

with love,

Lasamee

In hindsight, for that panel, most attendees were probably more interested in the charming Power Ranger actor guy, who, in the end, I also found charming and sweet. Later we would bond over our shared love of sambal olek, or chili garlic sauce, that we both kept stocked in our pantries. (Hey, Peter!)

year in [grief] review & forgiveness

February 11th marks one year of my father’s passing, and a little under one year since I’ve published a blog post. I would love to say that this was intentional, but it wasn’t. I was just dealing with a lot of shit and spending too much time away from what feeds my soul (more on that in another post that’s been fermenting).

I love the momentum of a “new year” whether it’s literally a new year or a turn around the sun (birthdays) which is why I mark significant dates as anniversaries during which we are “starting anew.”

When you lose someone as significant to your life as a parent, you’re transformed. This is something I found myself declaring in the early days to my therapist and anyone who would listen post-father loss. I felt a seismic shift within myself but didn’t know what that would look like. But there are some earth shattering experiences that you can’t go through without unlocking a part of yourself that needed to be let loose at some point so you can become your whole self.

So here’s my year-in-grief-review, picking moments that stood out to me and felt connected to my father-loss.

I told a friend that I felt like I could “kick doors down” and that I “wasn’t afraid of anything!” and I think it was the adrenaline from the shock of my dad’s death speaking at the time. But little things started taking shape and manifesting.
In the wake of anti-Asian sentiment and hate crimes, I took my very Asian name back o f f i c i a l l y, the one given to me by my parents: Lasamee Kettavong.
I embodied the “kick doors down” power and somehow no longer gave a fuck whether someone liked me or not. I began to let all of my colors show, wherever I went and with whomever I spoke. Life is short and the unexpected will happen (which you CAN expect, ha. ha.).
I’ve thought about what my epitaph would be and what my tombstone would look like since the time I learned what an epitaph was (probably in high school english class). My tombstone sure as hell will NOT read “Laci” because that’s not who I am. My name means something synonymous with “celestial light” and I can’t live with myself avoiding embodying that brilliance that my mother gave me, so here I am, nice and shiny (read: oily, lol) for ya.
Throwing myself into learning more about the motherland and connecting with other Lao folx has helped me feel like part of a community and that I belong and am accepted. That’s mind-blowingly heartwarming for me. For some reason, my dad didn’t really help the family become a part of the Lao community when we were younger, and that’s a shame; my mom is a social creature and extrovert.
Blake and I finally got married this past year, which we were planning on doing anyway, but … now I actually had an easy reason to tell people why my dad wasn’t present. Before, it was “My father has complex PTSD and can’t be around people” with a big, fat, loaded silence following it. “He’s dead,” is a much easier to digest and say reason, plus, no one wants to upset the bride the day of the wedding and bring up dead dad, right? (Sorry, this is my sense of humor and how I talk … dark and maybe a little blasphemous?) My sweet mama walked me down the aisle.

Me, trying not to let fat tears roll down my face during a moment of silence for the people who couldn’t be with us on our wedding day

As the day of the dead/Dia de los Muertos rolled around, I’d planned to read a letter to my dad at an open mic but ultimately that didn’t happen. It’s okay though – I wrote one to him anyway, and now it exists in the world and has helped me do some healing. My therapist was excited for me to take this major step (publicly announcing my father), but that will have to wait.
What else did I accomplish? Finishing a podcast, The Untitled Dad Project, which for me is monumental. I’ve only finished listening to one audio book in my lifetime because I can’t stay focused on longer audio pieces.
And last but not least, my partner and I started our small business, Good and Golden, which aims to share Lao food and culture (lookin’ for partners here!) with people who don’t know what or where Laos is!

And, I learned a little more about what forgiveness looks like for me.

I hope that he didn’t suffer

January 20, 2019 was the last day that I saw my father in-person at his care facility. My brother and sister went with me. We’d had brunch and mimosas. We pulled in, parked, and my brother and I shared a cigarette, while my sister climbed a nearby crepe myrtle. She gets her anxious energy out in weird ways; my brother and I have our own coping methods.

Samout, climbing a tree and being silly before seeing our dad for the first time in years

I noted the automatic sliding door, the decorated entryway, the fake plants, the office-like feel to the environment, and the front desk person greeted us, asking what we needed and who we were there to see. I was in family historian mode. “Nai Kettavong,” we said, as she searched up where he might be and on what floor. We got on an elevator.

“Oh no one ever visits Nai,” the staff person on the second floor responded. I cringed. The place didn’t feel real. It felt like a dream where you know that you’re asleep and intuitively, you know where you are and feel like you’ve been there before. This was the first time I’d ever stepped foot in this facility.

We were lead to my father’s room, and it was empty. I panicked a little inside.

“He might be watching TV in the common room,” our guide said, and we followed him, completely silent.

There he was. My dad. The man who I had feared for most of my life and felt some dutiful love towards as his daughter. He was alone. There were chairs here and there in the room and a lonely couch, a couple of small cafe-sized tables along the wall. At least there was a window, wall to wall, behind him. We pulled up a couple chairs to the round table that he was seated at, a walker nearby.

Playing on the television was some mundane show about wildlife or something that I didn’t particularly care about but was glad there was something for all of us to look at when we needed to look away from one another.

He looked so much grayer, pale, and older than I remembered. He had the same smile though, somewhat sheepish and shy. Perhaps he felt as if he were dreaming too. His children were actually there to see him. Chasms of guilt rippled through me.

“Do you remember me?” my sister asked.

“Yes,” he replied calmly.

I’d suspected that the language barrier between my father and staff contributed to my father’s diagnosis of early dementia. I would observe a little more closely, I thought to myself.

“How are you?” my brother asked. “I’m fine here. I get a little cold,” he responded.

Later, my brother would take the scarf that he was wearing and give it my dad because of the comment about being cold, which I’d notice in all of his photos in the years following. Our oldest sister would become his caretaker in Texas City, where he would be moved to in just a few months following this visit.

The conversation was slow. The three of us assessed the situation, asking questions here and there. Speaking Lao out loud to our estranged father was quite the task. And we were electrified by being in his presence again, I think.

I asked him if I could ask him some questions for a project that I was working on, and he said, “Go ahead, ask, and I’ll tell you everything.” That was the last time we spoke. I didn’t get to ask him any questions again.

Gray is how I feel when I think about this. Like hand torn paper pieces that have been mixed with water to become pulp and and then pressed, to live a different life. Lumps. Speckles. Wet. Shapeless until the next step. Amorphous and gray. Lacking any brightness, any warmth.

Recently, I realized that a confident sign that you have forgiven someone who abused and terrorized you and your family (even if it was their own family) is that you pray that they did not suffer during their last days. That hot, boiling rage that you used to feel when you cursed them into oblivion turns into just your body temperature as you sigh and think about them.

The ‘rona finally got me after two years of the pandemic, and it was days of body aches, fever dreams, sinus pressure, sneezing, coughing, and mucus. The first night, I rolled over and said to Blake, “I hope my dad didn’t suffer,” and tried to get a good cry out. It didn’t work. I finally cried typing “He was alone,” in the above paragraph.

It took another couple of days for me to think to myself, “Ah. Yes. I did the work. I have forgiven.”

My father died of COVID complications last year, and we still have not been able to take his ashes to his final resting place. For Lao folks, this is usually the temple in the community. I know that this is the case for too many at this point in the pandemic. I am so sorry.

It’s been nearly an entire year since I’ve published anything on this blog, and it somewhat symbolizes where I’ve been with my grief: in the in-between. Which, I suppose, is where we could say my father’s physical being is too.

If you are in the in-between, I will meet you where you are. If you need help, please let yourself shoot that text, make a call, send an email, or call an anonymous hotline. It’s worth it; you’re worth it.

cross that river.

thud-thud-thud-scrape

I’ve made this spicy, funky, sour, mortar-ed and pestle-ed shredded, green papaya salad (thum makhoong) dozens of times. Sometimes if the Thai chilies and garlic that I’m crushing pops out of the mortar and gets into my eyes, I’ll cry.

This time, I’m crying because I’m remembering how my dad used to make thum makhoong for family meals: very sour, not too sweet, little bit of funk from the padaek (fermented fish sauce) and extremely spicy. Lao people eat thum something (papaya, cucumber, carrots, so on) with nearly every meal.

“Am I going to do this every time?” I ask my partner, as he gives my arm a squeeze, and I scrub at my face. It was day nine post-my father’s passing, and we were managing to stay warm and survive during the worst winter storm of my life, exacerbated by Texas’ energy grid failings (but that’s another story), and I have been moving through the days in a blur. I had consistently been able to cry while listening to “Live Forever” by Billy Joe Shaver to avoid emotional constipation. For whatever reason, the lyrics “I’m going to live forever, I’m going to cross that river” magically floated to the front of my mind on the day of his death. But other moments lately, I’m quite unsure what will bring tears to my eyes.

Mostly memories make my eyes sting but the pain is moving more toward thinking about what could have been and never was. What can now only be dreamed.

On hot summer days, when pa would water the herb and plant garden in the backyard, fragrant with spearmint and Thai basil, vibrant with giant green gourds and adorably wrinkly looking bitter melon, I’d play in the shower of the garden hose water, always hoping the sun would gift us a rainbow.

When pa smoked a cigarette after dinner, I’d bat at the plumes of smoke that he exhaled. Summer nights outside feeding june bugs to the chickens and feeling the sticky heat of the day slowly leaving.

I am comforted by the scents of mint and tobacco to this day.

I used to run into my father’s arms after pre-k and kindergarten classes. How I hated to be away from home in a foreign place those days, away from my caretaker and the family pets, and the creature comforts that a 5 year-old has, no matter how sparse they were.

Pa had a temper, but he also had tenderness for growing, living beings.

I questioned him here and there, perhaps foolishly, but when you’re young, you’re naive.

“Why do you get to watch your Lao comedy shows, but you don’t let mom watch her Thai soap operas?”

Crickets.

“Why won’t you let me participate in academic clubs and sports?”

“Why can’t we visit our friends’ houses?”

The concerns of a little girl, of course.

I never got to ask him certain questions that I was sure would help us repair our relationship, someday.

“Why won’t you tell your sons and daughters that you’re proud of them?”

“Do you love us?”

“What happened in the war?”

“Where were you born?”

“What was your relationship with your parents like?”

“Do you feel any remorse for what you did to your own flesh and blood? The woman you married?”

“What happened during the interrogation by the Thai police?”

“Would you ever want to visit Laos?”

“What do you miss about Laos?”

“What’s your favorite meal?”

The Saturday before my dad’s death, my siblings and I had a Zoom call for the first time, ever. We don’t talk much but do try to stay in touch and check in every now and then. We have a group chat but somehow managed to avoid Zoom even during the pandemic that burns slowly on.

The last time we had a call with all five of us was when my mother had a minor stroke in November 2016. Our parents somehow always bring us together even if one of them (my father) tried to drive us apart.

We arranged this Zoom call because our father had COVID. He was in a care facility in Texas City where my oldest sister lives.

He’s “okay but not great” is what the woman on the phone told me when I called to check on him. She hesitated. I felt the silence.

I asked if we could arrange a time to FaceTime.

She told me that would be “hit or miss.”

That it’s her and one other person taking care of the COVID unit. Her and Laura.

I asked for her name. Nicole.

Said “Thank you. Take care.”

Hung up.

Hours later, my sister told the family “Dad just passed away!” Time slowed down and sped up. Chaos ensued. Calls missed, FaceTimes urgently popping up, having to tell mom. Having to figure out how to breathe. Having to persevere. Having to hurt. Grieve.

Everything feels fragmented and disjointed when I try to think about the reality of what is happening right now. Like I don’t know how to use words and form sentences properly. Like I have brain fog, but I’m not the one infected.

Have I done all that I could? Probably not.

Would it be enough for me even if I did? Never.

Many things have come of this upheaval of life.

For one, I trust my cards, and I trust my intuition. The two times that I have felt a deep calling from the universe the way that I have regarding my mother’s health and my father’s death will remain distinct, incomparable, and telling.

This sense of urgency and inexplicable connection to them, to the universe, to some web of our collective unconscious, that struck me as “something profound is happening” comforts me, even if historically it has been a harbinger of bad news. In the future, should this sense overtake me again, I will know that I need to act.

I have to believe in the power of this sense and its source. Or else I can’t believe that my father knows that I forgive him, can hear me tell him that I love him, and I’m sorry. And that he loves me still, too.

My siblings and I have talked more than we ever have in the past few weeks, the five of us, as far as I can remember. We’ve shared emotions and tears that we never did when our father was alive. This has to mean something too. Thanks dad.

sometimes you get rejected

Below is a personal history statement that I submitted for something that I really wanted, but I know that I’ll look back one day with perspective and not feel so disappointed. It’s important to talk about rejection (and accept it) just as much as it’s important to shoot your shot.

—

Going to college seemed impossible and out of reach for me from a young age, especially after watching one of my older sisters denied the opportunity despite being valedictorian of her class. My father prohibited her leaving home for school, set in his old world and oppressive ways.

We are a Lao family, and I am a Lao-American woman, meaning that in a traditional Lao household, I would have very little choice, no voice, and expectations to be married off. Because I was the youngest of five children, having been born a few years after my family’s arrival in the United States from a refugee camp in Thailand, I was fed, clothed, and had a place to sleep. But nurtured I was not. We survived, and it would be well into my adult years away from home before I could consider myself healthy and have the potential to thrive.

My mother worked achingly hard to support our family of seven, and my father stayed home to take care of my siblings and me. He did not adjust well to life in America. I would say that the PTSD and other untreated mental illnesses also hindered him. “My father has horrific PTSD and cannot be around people,” is something my therapist suggested that I say when I do not want to elaborate upon the horrors that he inflicted upon my family in various settings. He has been out of my life in any meaningful way since I was 15.

My father fought in The Secret War in Laos, which continues to affect the country (and my family) to this day. This topic leads me to the challenges that I have worked to overcome with years in therapy, personal research, joining the Lao community later in life, and trying to shed light on subjects like The Secret War, intergenerational trauma, mental health, low literacy rates for Lao-Americans, and more. In recent years, I began volunteering with DFW Lao Heritage, a non-profit group that aims to preserve and highlight Lao culture in North Texas. More recently, I’ve participated in the supportive, community offerings of the Laotian American National Alliance (LANA).

Being between worlds is a strange existence. Not one or the other, but both Lao and American. I have struggled with what this means and hope that I can move closer to the answers in a program of academic study. I was noticed as an intelligent, bright child despite feeling invisible and in some ways unwanted and unwelcome. My secondary education and onward was in magnet schools for the academically gifted in Dallas, Texas. Through the generosity and care of my teachers, I began to believe that I could move myself and perhaps my family upward from our places in life.

Education seemed to be key; I would study, work hard, find a career path, and live out our Lao American dream, in theory. The road is still rough, but we are farther on our journey and closer to security than we were when I was a child.

However, none of my older siblings had been able to “go off” to college (at least until my father was out of the picture). Attending college seemed financially impossible which nearly stopped me from even considering applying. In high school, I was fortunate enough to receive guidance from a school friend’s aunts: they took us both on a college tour in California and afterward sent me a $300 check so that I could pay for application fees. It was encouragement that I’m sure my own mother would have offered me if she had the experience, resources, and capacity to do so.

I received the Emerald Eagle Scholarship, which benefits those in financial need, from the University of North Texas as part of my offer letter and acceptance package and that paid for much of my undergraduate studies. I graduated in three years, having earned credit for my core classes through Advanced Placement exams in high school. I discovered that I could indulge in learning about my heritage and family’s history while also writing academically in my last undergraduate semester with the help of a philosophy instructor whom I’d admired. I wrote about the Mekong River, partially to learn about what my parents and siblings had had to face to get to safety and also because the term paper requirements were that I write about a topic from the course, philosophy of water.

I had made a connection between my personal and academic life that would continue in my graduate studies: bridging my two worlds through study in disciplines directly related to my family’s history and that of other Lao people and refugees. I studied philosophy with a focus on environmental ethics and professional and technical communication. I earned an MA from each program.

The entire six years that I was a college student, both undergraduate and graduate, I felt guilt and a deep sadness for what I had and what my immediate family and ancestors did not. Impostor syndrome plagued me, but there was comfort in looking ahead and thinking that the next generation might not experience this as much as I did.

One year after graduating with my M.A. in Professional and Technical Communication, I spoke on a panel during Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) month alongside other AAPI professionals in film, journalism, and education. Looking out at the audience and seeing AAPI students with expressions of hope, eagerness, and intrigue, likely in a situation similar to my own, made me understand that giving back to my community and being of service would lessen the guilt, sadness, and impostor syndrome that I had associated with my own education.

When I worked with students at the first DFW Lao Heritage camp in 2018, it was hard not to feel pain for what I never had growing up juxtaposed with immense joy for the Lao students who had the opportunity to connect with their heritage. For this summer camp, I developed a storytelling workshop in order to help the students better understand where they came from and what their parents and grandparents had endured, as Lao families often share multigenerational homes. Their preliminary activity was to interview the elders in their households prior to the workshop. Then, they created an eight-frame storyboard depicting what they’d gathered with collage materials or illustrations in a comic book style during the workshop itself.

At DFW Lao Heritage, we’re working on developing grant funds and a program to similarly help Lao youth know that they can achieve academically and apply for and attend college. I am honored to have been part of DFW Lao Heritage since its beginnings in 2018.

More recently, I’ve become involved with LANA, and they have helped me better understand what Lao Americans currently face. In the U.S., approximately 27% of Lao Americans live with educational and financial disadvantages. Of the 265,000 Lao Americans here, only 14% have earned a bachelor’s degree. Many Lao Americans arrived in the U.S. as refugees from the Vietnam War and the Secret War, and parents and siblings survived but higher education was lower on the list of priorities. Personally, I would serve as the first person and woman in my family to earn a PhD. For my community, I would be an example and a resource to those who also might consider higher education as out of reach. I hope that in the near future more people will know about Laos as it stands alone, not only in relation to other Southeast Asian countries. I want to see efforts to have Laos cleared of the 80 million cluster munitions remaining from the wars increase and grow strength, though organizations like Legacies of War and Mines Advisory Group are working as hard as they can to do so.

With my work and writing, I intend to help heal through story.

It wasn’t until 2015 that I serendipitously came across a memoir by a Hmong author, Kao Kalia Yang, titled The Latehomecomer. Her family had been through the same refugee and processing camps as mine in Thailand, just a couple of years apart in the late ‘80s. Finding and reading that memoir profoundly and irrevocably changed my life.

It is significant that I use the word “serendipitously.” One can find memoirs from authors from other ethnicities on the shelves; it is rare that you will find a memoir from a Lao author if you’re not in the Southeast Asian studies section (and even if you are). I plan to change that.

Mom, fourth from the left in the back row, in a refugee camp in Thailand. She is pregnant with my brother, Vinat, in this photo.

when it matters : the dream wears off

WordPress records tell me that I first drafted a version of this blog on October 22, 2018. It has taken me two years and 8 days to finally release this into the world in its “final” form.

One of my partner’s pet peeves is hearing people talk about their dreams. Not their ambition-type dreams, but the dreams that you wake up out of. The kind where you’ve just cracked open your crusty, itchy eyes and you’re still trying to shake off the residual feelings that you were just mentally steeped in and just HAVE to tell someone about it.

I recently had one of those bizarre, captivating dreams. In this dream, my childhood best friend (hey, Mirna) and I were in her little sister’s apartment (a place I’ve never actually been and am not sure it exists) and one of our best friends from teenager-dom was there. He was hanging out in the spare bedroom and I noticed him from the corner of my eye.It wasn’t strange that he was there; when we were young and all hangin’ out, we were always taking over our friends’ homes (sorry parents and relatives). It was strange because he’s been dead for ten years. Mirna tells me that maybe I shouldn’t go into the room to talk to dead friend, and of course I ignore her.I approach, all dream-state-like and question said dead friend, “Hey, uhhhm, I thought you were dead? Where have you been the past ten years? What’s going on?” But I don’t wait for him to answer.Instead, I tell him, “Okay, wait, I have to pee, hold on,” (even in dreams, I have a tiny bladder) and his response is “Wait, we only have so much time before the dream wears off!” And then, I guess I’m snapped out of that dream and into another one.

But that’s it. That’s all that fucking happened. Thanks, dream-dead-friend. Was there a message you needed to relay to me from the other side that you just didn’t get to?Yeah, maybe I’m mad at him still, for his sudden departure from this plane of existence. I don’t know. Ask my therapist.

Shortly after said friend’s sudden death, I’d wake up with my dreams and reality swiftly blending. Just upon waking up, it was as if nothing had changed, until I remembered. One of my closest friends had died in a bizarre accident, days before, and his departure was saturating every waking and sleeping moment of my life. He had been part of many firsts in my life, and I loved him deeply, as any 16 year old would love a person who they spent most days out of the week with. Funny, how you can be suspended in feelings like that, right upon regaining consciousness and reality hits.

My mother had been watching over me during those long days and long nights, when friends had left for home, and even when they were asleep on the floor rolled in blankets and sleeping bags or next to me. This particular morning, I was alone with her. I wiped at my eyes and sat up to look at my mother. Her hands were crossed on the arm of the armchair beside my bed, and she began to tell me a story of her life that she’d never spoken aloud to me before.“When I was young and about to be married, my fiancé died.” She said quietly, simply, frankly. I sat up quickly to lean in and listen, resting my pillows against the window

“…What?”

I wanted to ask more questions, but that was all I could get out. In the nearly two decades of my fragile little life (teenagers, so dramatic and bursting with emotion, am I right? That was me), I had no idea about this part of her life and that she had gone through something like this. Her warm brown eyes, graying around the edges of her irises, responded first. With empathy, with wisdom, and with love, remembering. Oh boy. Gear up. Grab the tissues.

“He was hit by a car. He didn’t make it. The neighbors were gathered at my mother’s house as I was walking home from the market.” I imagined a dusty, rural road and a young Lao man with messy hair crossing it, wearing leather sandals and whistling, without a worry. I couldn’t come up with a face. I could only see my mom, right then.“I’m sorry mom.” I began crying again. There was no doubt I was skipping whatever the fuck was supposed to happen that day.

“Don’t be sorry.It’s been a long time since.It was his time to go.I’m fine now.”

She let these words come out slowly and certainly. I looked more closely at my mother and measured the lines of worry across her forehead, and wondered when they had first begun to appear and to settle in.We were both quiet for a long while, morning sunlight streaming in through the battered windows of our aging family home.“Why didn’t you ever tell us this mom?” I asked, after the tightness in my throat had lessened enough to speak.Her response:“It didn’t matter that I told you. Until now.”

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how trauma and depression can have you floating through life as if you were asleep. How many dreams do you fully remember? How many days do you fully remember?I’m sure many of us have experienced the familiar inability to scream, to run, to punch, to fight, in a dream. (Have you ever had all of your teeth fall out in a dream? Yea, it’s awful. Do not recommend.) Your motor skills don’t work. You can’t function like you intend to. Things are fuzzy. Things are dark. Things are bizarre.Either you feel pain when you’re struck or shot or stabbed in a dream, immensely, or you feel nothing at all, and you wonder “WTF?”

I want to feel. I don’t want to feel. This is what my wrestling match with depression is like.When I feel nothing at all, despite every reason to be happy, to be sad, to be excited, to be joyous, I know that a depressive episode is at my doorstep.When I can acknowledge and really feel my senses and clarify my feelings and put reason behind why I want to explode or break down and feel alive (in all the ugly and beautiful ways)… the depression has worn off. I’ve done whatever it is that I needed to do to take care of myself, or enough time has passed or … I’m not certain what it takes but pretty sure that it matters when the dream wears off and what it takes to get there.

Mom and me in Hawaii, summer 2010, just a couple months before the conversation mentioned in this blog. …we all had our phases, didn’t we?…

Drake, Preston, Mirna, me. RIP Preston Ray. Yeeeaaa we all wrote music together; we were teenagers. That’s another story.

portkeys

Some moments in life when they’re happening you think to yourself “I will remember this forever.” Some moments happen and you’re unaware that they’ll remain with you for the rest of your life, even if you resist and even if they’re buried deep within you. Occasionally, they will float back up to the forefront of your mind. Sometimes you won’t be prepared for it and you will find yourself crying at work. Or in the supermarket. Or just on a walk in your neighborhood.

Those moments with floaty bits that come to the front of your mind can be sparked by seeing and experiencing a piece of mail in a backpack (before she left, my sister asked me to save her mail for her…so my secret place as an 8 year old was my backpack), crayon boxes (dad thought new crayon boxes were completely frivolous if last year’s were fine, which is NOT what a first grader thinks AT ALL), white bread and vanilla ice cream (IYKYK, my Southeast Asian fam) in a way that is connected only to you and your life’s history.

Thunderstorms. Pepper packets. Puffy, blue winter coats. Go Fish. Phone books (remember those?). Sometimes they’re not objects but scenes. You might witness a sweet-nothing moment and feel something tugging at your heartstrings. Or the smell of a sterile place makes you feel sick.

These moments are like Portkeys that snap you to a time and scene rather than a place. You’re transported. You feel like you did on that day, in that moment, in the monster’s presence. Your heart races. Your throat tightens. You are a naive adolescent again.

If you’re not familiar with the Harry Potter world in which I love to get lost in annually, usually near my birthday, a Portkey is a magical object that serves as a transportation tool. When you touch this seemingly inane object, you are magically transported somewhere. (Link to a very HP nerdy site)

How did I get here? Let’s start with an on-again, off-again relationship.

Which is what my relationship with my counselor was for a while (yea wow millenials all cringe at the sight of those words in relation to something between another person). The spring that my fiance proposed to me, I “graduated” (my words, I think, not my counselor’s). I had been relatively healthy, mentally, and we put a pause on my previously bi-monthly sessions in therapy.

It was a wonderful summer. Picture perfect, in my memory. Freshly engaged, loving my work, life on the upswing, looking forward to a trip to Hawaii to visit family I hadn’t seen in years. Occasionally the depression and anxiety would knock at my door and I’d slam the door shut in it’s fuckin’ face, dust off my hands, and pour myself a celebratory drink.

And then one day, a sweet little child in a baseball uniform popped into my workplace, walking next to his dad. I watched them talk and laugh, head towards his dad’s desk, and the little boy plopped himself in an office chair and spun around. Joy. His father worked and he read (or was he playing a video game? Probs.) and I sat at my desk. Wanting to sob. I felt a few powerful emotions all at once. “This is so sweet!” “I wish I’d had a dad like that.” (See previous blogs if you don’t know why I’m saying that.) “Why am I about to fuckin’ cry?” So I called up my counselor later that day and told him I’d just had some childhood trauma pay me a visit. “When can I see you next?” [Insert millenial joke about dating here.]

My general questions before deciding to either do things or not do things include “Is my life inhibited by this?” and “What will the repercussions/consequences of my actions be?” and “If x is preventing me from living my life to the fullest, being present, and enjoying x, then I need to do something differently/do something about x.” Seeing children happy in the company of their dads should not make me want to cry.

So therapy was on again. Hello darkness, my old friend. Let me fight with you again.

Then, last fall, I met Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist, Difficult Women, Hunger, and many others. Sitting in the audience with two of my best gal pals, I hungrily swallowed up her words and tried to memorize her voice and listened to the brave and fortunate souls who were able to pose questions to her at the end of her readings.

If you have read anything by Roxane Gay, you will know how profoundly her writing can affect you.

You will think, “Yes, demons, come forth and let me slay you!” She calls them nemeses.

And so it was, for me. I was profoundly touched. I prepare for battle. I am mother of cats. I am a Lao princess warrior, and I have an army of elephants, and I will smash. my. trauma. into the. ever-lovin’ ground. (That actually is written in Lao history, elephants in battle – and then! A general was crushed by his falling elephant and that was that. More on that later, it’s from a A History of Laos by Stuart Fox.)

But the thing with trauma is that you do not know when you will be challenged to a duel. You do not know what object, scent, or sound will call out to you, “Heeeey girl hey, I am about to mess. you. up.” And so, how do you prepare for battle when that sneaky bastard, childhood trauma, doesn’t play fairly?

Yeah, I don’t actually have a complete answer to that question either BUT I will say that understanding how and why this happens has been empowering.

The thing with Portkeys is that you’re not transported anywhere unless you touch them. Now I know how to handle Portkeys; some of them, at least.

Rethinking Freewriting in the Age of COVID — BREVITY’s Nonfiction Blog

By Christina Larocco For years I’ve adhered to the Julia Cameron/Natalie Goldberg school of freewriting: at least thirty minutes, longhand, anything that comes into my mind, as soon as I wake up. This method has been tremendously fruitful for me in the past, especially when I’ve been blocked or don’t know how to fix an […]
Rethinking Freewriting in the Age of COVID — BREVITY’s Nonfiction Blog

I really enjoyed reading this blog, as I’ve been grappling with my own writer’s block + impostor syndrome + uncertainty this past month.

spoken self & sisterhood

Lao word of the day: euy (sound out each letter and then say it, real fast) and you’ve got it. It means “sister.”

“Describe your sister. In Lao.”

I’m sitting cross-legged on the couch in my counselor’s office and not as present as I should be, confused as to why I’m irritable and miffed about my relationship with my eldest sister. It’s a late fall day, and I’ve been hating how short the days have been getting as we approach winter. I don’t feel like cooperating.

But I’m in therapy for a reason, so I take a deep breath and start.

“She was loving. Kind. Thoughtful. She used to let me pick out my outfits when I was getting ready to go to school in kindergarten.”

I stop. My vocabulary in Lao isn’t what it used to be. I don’t know the verbs and the adjectives to describe my memories in Lao like I used to. It’s hard to think of what words to say. But it’s not the words that get me.

“Go on,” he urges gently.

“She raised me. She was my best friend growing up. We did everything together. I followed her like a shadow.”

…silence… weight. the familiar feeling of heat in my throat. I can’t swallow. Clear as day, in my mind’s eye I see me and my siblings piled into an old tub pretending it was a pool in the backyard on a summer day, an activity engineered by my eldest sister for her kid siblings.

“I miss her.” I choke this out in Lao and then I say it in English. (I mean, this dude has been listening to me speak in Lao for a few minutes after all, so throw him some familiar words right?)

And now I’m fucking sobbing. I keep on sobbing. I suck in air. I breathe. Now I guess I’m just crying, normally. OOP nope, sobbing again. It’s a painful however-many minutes for me. It’s the kind of cry that aches from deep within that spans time and space and what I know and don’t know.

My counselor is quiet, supporting me from across the room. Listening. Waiting. Patient. It’s not the words that get me; it’s the language I’m speaking.

When I was young, my sister inspired me to (eventually) write song lyrics by once encouraging me to “make up the words” to songs that I didn’t know that played on the radio when she was driving us somewhere. It was a lightbulb moment for little me. It delighted me and stayed with me forever. I wrote then, and I write now.

She would make something out of nothing – in a good way. Cutting and pasting pictures from junk mail to make collages with me. She even made an entire card deck so that we could play Go Fish (money was tight) and to me, she was an incredible artist. In so many of our family photos, she’s holding one of us in her arms. The best big sister we could have.

She was always there for me. Until she wasn’t.

When I say “my sister ran away” many people ask, “Well, how old was she?” and I stop and think … she was at least 18. Leaving home is common for 18 year olds in American culture. But not for my family, and definitely not under my father’s controlling watch. To leave was to break a family, household rule.

There were circumstances that I didn’t understand that lead her to go. I realize now that I forgive her. Was there anything to forgive in the first place?

Suddenly, I was alone. I didn’t have that kind of bond with my other siblings (not yet at least). I felt abandoned by someone who was the world to me. Left behind. And I held on to that feeling for decades.

I missed her. But who could I tell? So I held it in. Until that seemingly normal, “I’m grouchy” day in therapy.

Language has the power to unlock memories and emotions.

“Discovering your Self in language is always an epiphany, even if finding the words to describe your inner reality can be an agonizing process.” – The Body Keeps The Score, Bessel Van Der Kolk

I’d been hitting a wall with describing how I felt about my eldest sister. Why was I so annoyed with her? What couldn’t I understand? She experienced so much pain and trauma; she did what she had to do. How could I continue to be upset with her for something that I felt like I understood now, as an adult? How had I forgotten this initial upset that was followed up with so many other things I could. not. understand?

Until my counselor asked me what language I spoke growing up.

Lao and English, interchangeably, was my response. My parents mostly spoke Lao, and my siblings were the ones who taught me English until I entered grade pre-school.

How much I had loved and adored my big sister when I was a little girl, and the pain that I felt when one morning, the family rises, and she is gone … returned to me only when I described her in Lao.

She and I have lead very separate lives for a very long time it seems. But we’re okay. We’re re-building our relationship. And I miss her. I finally told her so.

Love you, fam.

-Lasamee

Our most recent hangout, post cry-fest in therapy: my sisters (the one closest to me in age & the eldest), me, and ma.

what a shame

it me

I’ve deliberated about a project that I’ve thought about for most of my lifetime: telling the story that my family carried with them away from the mountains of Laos across the Mekong River through the skies and to Texas. But I’ve mostly been still, immobile, glued to my spot, and unable to move. And I’ve been silent, afraid, pensive, anxious, sad, playing memories over and over, thinking about how best to paint these pictures as genuinely and honestly as possible and to honor the people within them.

“Why does it feel so wrong to be me? Why am I afraid for people to know who I am and where I come from?”

“The long-term consequences of trauma?” offers my counselor*, a couple of years after we’ve started digging in and doing the work that might enable me to speak. In 2018, he recommended a few books to me that I’m still working through. How on earth did I get through grad school?

True, but maybe not entirely the reason. I realize that a lot of it is shame, for things out of my control.

When I was a child, I was ashamed of being different from everyone else. Different in the sense that I was isolated and couldn’t visit with friends after school or attend the countless birthday parties and hangouts. Different because no one had ever heard of Laos. Different because I didn’t know certain American cultural references. I didn’t meet another Lao child out in the world serendipitously until college. And even then, we were legally adults. Magically thrown together as roommates at the university. I have a feeling we might have been the only 2 Lao girls in that freshman class that year.

Growing up, I was ashamed of being poor. My refugee parents tried their hardest, and we always had food on the table and our basic needs met. But that didn’t mean that I didn’t have to pick through bags of donated clothing to find “new” shirts and pants that would fit me. (And with my tiny, southeast Asian frame, hand-me-downs, especially from strangers, never fit me correctly.) That didn’t mean that I could afford to participate in any extracurriculars that might cost anything to the family, including time for my little hands to work and help at home.

I was ashamed that people would know that my father was traumatized by the war, traumatized by so much else he couldn’t and wouldn’t talk about, and belittled in a country in which he thought he would be welcomed as a hero. And because of these things, he traumatized his entire family, the ones from whom I wish he could have sought solace. Shame for being my father’s daughter; I am sorry.

I was ashamed of my name even. Moving from grade level to grade level, class to class, apologizing that it was “hard to say” (it’s only 3 syllables), raising my hand to pronounce it correctly and feeling a burning sensation in my throat. Until I finally adopted “Laci” which doesn’t even honor the way you say my real name; it just has similar phonetics. La-suh-me. Lasamee Kettavong. Now, my heart swells when people learn my name and work to say it correctly. To me that is an act of love.

Me and my sweet mother, who gave me my name.

Shame prevents you from doing a lot. Fear eats the soul and paralyzes you. But we only have so much time to really get to know ourselves in this realm of living, so I’m shedding the shame and swallowing the fear.

I’m not certain but pretty sure that I have taken on this project because I am the last child in my family and the one born in America a few years after my family’s arrival on Halloween Day, 1989. No one’s asking for this story, but it’s one that threatens to have me implode if I let it simmer and leave it alone. There’s no pressure from any of my siblings or my mother; just support, happily scanning papers that arrived with my family in their International Refugee Committee bag of official documents when I ask for them. I feel that our family’s story is not so different from immigrant families stories today, and that we have a lot of work to do. Together, with, and for others.

I can’t imagine the agony that my mother and father would have felt having arrived as refugees and asylum seekers only to have their children ripped away from them and kept in detention centers. It is horrendous that this has happened to so many.

I’m not certain but pretty sure that there’s no better time than right now to do something about the horrendous things, shed the shame, and swallow the fear that maybe has kept you from moving.

—-

*Important to note: I started going to therapy after a shitty breakup in 2013 and on the advice of a dear friend who’d also recently started therapy and it improved their life immensely. I’ve gone from counselor to counselor, for various reasons, and finally really dug in to working on childhood trauma with this particular counselor. Don’t give up if you feel like therapy will help you/your mental health but you’re not clicking with someone. Search around. It can change your life.