The Journey Through Identity with Dr. Nellie Tran

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Description

In this episode of "Happily Never After," host Heather McG welcomes Dr. Nellie Tran, a professor at San Diego State University and daughter of Vietnamese refugees. Together, they explore the profound impact of generational trauma, the experience of migration, and the resilience found in connecting to your roots. Nellie shares her family's harrowing escape from Vietnam, the challenges they had to overcome, and the reclaiming of her ancestral roots. This conversation delves into the power of storytelling in healing and understanding our past. Tune in for an inspiring dialogue on history, identity, and the enduring spirit of family.

About Dr. Nellie Tran

Dr. Nellie Tran (she/they) grew up as the daughter of Vietnamese refugee "boat people" and is now a professor at San Diego State University. Her work and passion focus on making sense of the traumas we inherit, reclaiming identity, and creating spaces where our stories matter. Her most recent project centers on reclaiming the family traumas and stories that war and migration once made unspeakable.

• Follow Dr. Nellie on TikTok at @drnellie

• Follow Dr. Nellie on Instagram at @drnellietran

• Learn more about Dr. Nellie on her website at nellietran.com

About Heather McG

Heather is an Emmy and Cannes Lion Grand Prix-winning producer, author, and founder of McG Media. She is the creator of the happily never after, a 360-degree project that explores how life’s endings can lead to a new beginning. A twin mom, endurance athlete, and devoted Trekkie, sitting still has never been her forté.

Transcript

Heather McG (00:21)

Welcome to the Happily Never After, a podcast where we explore how life's endings can lead to a new beginning. If you enjoy the show, don't forget to rate, review and follow us wherever you are listening or watching today.

My guest today is a friend of mine and I am so happy to have her here, Dr. Nellie Tran, who grew up as the daughter of Vietnamese refugees and is now a professor at San Diego State University. Her work and passion focus on making sense of the traumas we inherit, reclaiming identity and creating spaces where our stories matter.

Her most recent project centers on reclaiming the family traumas and stories that war and migration once made unspeakable. Nellie, I am so happy as a friend to have you here because it's fun to be with you and talk to you about these things. But I'm also honored by your expertise to have you from that perspective on the show as well. So it's really a treat to have you here.

Nellie Tran (01:14)

Yes, thank you so much for having me. I am so excited that our worlds get to cross this way.

Heather McG (01:20)

Yes, it's really great. Now you have a big story to tell. There has been a lot going on in your life. You have a story that began many years and multiple generations ago actually related to the Vietnam War. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam-United States War, which is a moment that you say your family lineage was forever changed. Can you talk about that story with us?

Nellie Tran (01:45)

Yeah, as I know it, my family were born, raised, lived through the Vietnam War. My dad attempted to leave the country ⁓ three times before he was successful, was arrested his second time, spent a year in re-education camps before he was able to escape. Luckily, I suppose that happened because he met my mom a year after that and

got married, and when my mom got pregnant with me is when they decided to make their third and final attempt. And so they took a small fishing boat with eight people out to the open ocean in the middle of the night and got far enough out where they, luckily on the day that they ran out of fuel, they ran into an oil ⁓

rigging ship. And luckily, the UN at that point had designated that ships that picked up refugees that country did not have to take the refugees in. And so they were allowed to drop them off at a refugee camp. And that's what this ship did, is they dropped them off at a refugee camp ⁓ in Pulau Bidang, ⁓ Malaysia. And that's, my parents spent a couple months there.

and were able to come to the US under the Family Reunification Act and resettled in San Diego. And I was born two months later. So that's generally the story. And there's all kinds of dramatic movie-like details throughout their journey to the US.

Heather McG (03:13)

You had quite the journey before you were even born, it sounds like.

Nellie Tran (03:17)

Yeah,

it's hard for me to remember that sometimes because, you know, I call myself a second generation Vietnamese American, but it feels unfair to not get to claim some of that heritage as a refugee person because, you know, I know now, we all know now, the science tells us that women's maternal health, especially during pregnancy, affects the child. So I must have inherited.

⁓ Many of those traumas. I my mom went for days without food at times and she certainly got very little If any medical care while she was pregnant with me, so She didn't get consistent care until she arrived in the US I guess I should be grateful that you know that I'm here, right and I am

Heather McG (04:02)

Yeah,

that could have gone a lot differently a Conversation that Nellie and I had before we got started was talking about The phenomenon of the Vietnamese boat people now that is an actual term referring to some things that happened During that time. Can you kind of explain to everyone who has not heard that before what that means?

Nellie Tran (04:22)

Yeah, so the US pulled out of the Vietnam US war in 1975. And so those are some of the iconic photos that we see of Vietnamese people trying to get on those last helicopters and airplanes out of the country. And so at that time, my parents were in their late high school years. so they, my mom actually wasn't in school anymore, but my dad was in school at that time. And so they were fairly young.

And so that first wave of Vietnamese folks came with the Americans. Most of those folks were workers. They were working with the US, spies for the US, working with the US military. They tended to be highly educated and ⁓ more privileged, but refugees nonetheless. So my parents actually came in the second wave. The second wave are boat people, to be folks who were not working with the US, that didn't have the same kind of connections or...

⁓ financial resources to be able to get out of the country. My dad's family were fishermen, so they had boats. So my dad had access to fishing boats, and he also ⁓ went to school for civil engineering. And so he knew how to work a compass, and that was all you needed. So you have to remember, this is like the late 70s, early 80s, right? So he knew how to build an engine for a boat. He knew how to drive a boat.

a fishing boat and he had a compass and so he knew he had to get away from land and that was all he knew. So boat people are folks who left the country by boat. And so you remember as refugees, in order to apply for asylum or to become a refugee for the US, you have to leave the country that you are trying to seek refuge from. So this often gets mixed up now in today's world because

to get from Mexico to another country to seek asylum, you end up in the US where you want asylum, right? So in this case, we had to, my parents had to leave Vietnam, go some other country before they could seek asylum in a third country. And so that's how they got to Malaysia and they had one letter from my dad's brother who was already in the US. And so they had this letter that had a money order for $75.

And so that was what they used to file paperwork to say that they have family in the US. And they were able to come under the Family Unification Act. And the timing is impeccable. Like my dad had no idea what he was doing, but all of these policies were coming into place at that exact time. So he got very lucky. And the story of my family is really truly about luck. We believe that ancestors were watching. We really believe that the grandmas

who had passed during the war were making sure that this boat got to the right place because there were my aunt, so there were two couples on this boat plus there were ⁓ grandchildren on the boat. So two grandchildren plus the two women were pregnant. So four grandchildren and two sets of siblings were on the boat. So we think grandmas were watching over us and...

making sure that we ended up because there's just too much luck to account for, you know?

Heather McG (07:35)

Yeah.

Well, and for many of these people that were making this journey, were they, and it sounds like your parents were doing this, would they get out into the water or to the ocean and then they wouldn't actually land where they're going. They're basically getting out into the water and hoping someone picks them up. Is that right?

Nellie Tran (07:52)

Yeah,

that's right. ⁓ So most people had two plans. One was if you go out and down, then you can get to Thailand. And so if you go east, you're going to go to Thailand. And then the other shot was to go west and then south to try to get to Malaysia. And so because my uncle had left first and he had a larger boat, and so he had a larger 150-person boat that he was ⁓ captain of.

Heather McG (08:01)

Okay.

Nellie Tran (08:21)

they had gone to Thailand and were rejected by Thailand. So they were sent out back to sea by Thailand. And so they had heard about this happening and there were more pirates in that direction. So they're like, we have to go straight out to open seas to reduce the chance that we would hit pirates because the pirates were notorious for stealing everything on the boats and then raping all the women.

they got far enough out that they could avoid some of that. Yeah, and their boat was tiny. So I don't know... When my dad finally showed me the size of the boat, I literally yelled at him and cursed at him. Like, how dare you? How dare you take your pregnant wife and nieces and nephews onto this tiny boat into the open ocean? Like, it's ridiculous.

Heather McG (08:58)

Yeah.

Yeah, it sounds terrifying. Now, can you also say a little bit, because I just am assuming, because I think the US, most of our listeners are in the US, and I think the US has a lot of work that needs to be done in terms of learning world history. Can you also say a little bit about what they were fleeing? Why were they trying to leave?

Nellie Tran (09:29)

So the North and South Vietnam were in a political civil war. And so there was ⁓ division between the North and the South. And the Northern Vietnamese folks, the Communist Party, had moved south into the southern region. And that's where the US was. So the US had come years ago for many different reasons. But they were really promoting the army in the south.

When they saw that they could not win the war, they left. So the Vietnam War has been notorious for being a war that the US didn't know how to fight because, ⁓ you know, it's the tropics, it's very, very hot. It was guerrilla warfare. had developed, the napalm bombs were ⁓ developed during that time to try to bomb the villages because they just literally didn't know how to fight in that region. So they weren't capable of winning.

And so they fled. And when they fled, because they had lost ⁓ the capital of the southern region. So at the time it was called Saigon, it's now called Ho Chi Minh City. there was no winning. They were going to lose the city, word was out, and so they had to remove their people before they were stuck. And so they left very suddenly. And the wild thing is that when you go to Vietnam today,

Those airplanes, those tankers, they couldn't bring any of that home. It was very sudden departure. And so they left and the South, ⁓ was taken by the North. so we think of it now as the end of the Vietnam-US war and the day that Vietnam was lost. In the US, that's how it's taught in the US textbooks. But in Vietnam,

it's known as Reunification Day. It was the day that the Vietnamese people got their country back. Because even before the Americans were there, Vietnam was always colonized by other countries. So the French had been there, the Portuguese had been there, the Chinese, the Japanese. So each country that came after, each country promised ⁓ Vietnam that it would ⁓ free

free them from its previous colonizers and each of them lied. So each of them lied and took over. Yeah, and so each of them, it's funny because it's not funny, but when you travel the country, you see remnants of the colonizers that have been there because they leave their mark, they leave their buildings, they leave their food, they leave their people, right? So yeah, so the end of this war,

Heather McG (11:39)

Yeah, and then they would colonize.

Yeah.

Nellie Tran (12:02)

meant the end of wars in Vietnam in this large global scale. And it's one of the few countries in the world that can say it fought off its colonizers and reunified its people. Yeah.

Heather McG (12:18)

Now, moving a little bit to the left, for you, can you talk a little bit about how trauma has passed down through generations and how that's impacted you?

Nellie Tran (12:28)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I think, you know, to tell that story, I feel like it's, I have to tell you about how fixated I have been on my migration story and how I thought that that was what changed my life. I thought it was so pivotal to who I am and my story that I...

wrapped my entire career around my migration story. I literally introduced myself by calling attention to the fact that my family are refugee boat people. It has been the iconic story of my life.

When people talked about generational trauma or intergenerational trauma, I would talk about war. I would talk about how my parents passed down the survival that they had to do during wartime. They're coming to the US and having to start over, and how hard they had to work, how much they felt like they had to assimilate to what it meant to be American.

the way that they wanted it so desperately, they gave me this random name of the only white person that they knew. So my name is Nellie, that's my legal name. People ask me all the time what my Vietnamese name is and I was like, they just say it with a Vietnamese tone. And I was like, but no, Nellie, it is. But Nellie is my whole name, Nellie Tran, no middle name. My parents were like,

Heather McG (13:54)

That's a good joke.

Nellie Tran (14:05)

She's going to have a simple, easy to read, easy to say, easy to write name. And that was it. It was, I feel like that was my story. And then, you know, this past year I went back to Vietnam to document my family's migration because it was this iconic thing that I've wrapped my whole life around. And I've had this life goal that I would be the one that documented my family's.

migration story because I was so afraid that it would get lost and that if I didn't do this, my children and all of the other nieces and nephews in the family would never have this iconic movie-worthy story. then I went to Vietnam to do this and I've interviewed all of my aunts and uncles and cousins who made the trip to the U.S. And I discovered that migration is just the most recent trauma.

It wasn't even the original trauma. wasn't. And I don't know why I didn't ever think about this. You know, I'm so deeply trained in oppression and decolonial work, and I've read all the things, but I have never thought of myself as an indigenous person, a person that has land, who has... I participate in ancestor worship, but I never thought about...

the land that my ancestors literally live and sit on. And when I went to Vietnam, and I've gone there many times, we always go first to pay our respects to our ancestors on the, kind of where their burial sites are, kind of the family cemeteries. And this past time, it was my son.

Heather McG (15:43)

Yeah.

Nellie Tran (15:50)

My son was standing on a plot of land and my aunt chewed him off. It was like, you're standing on an ancestor and you need to move. And I was just like, ⁓ right, ancestors are on this land. I was so fixated on, here's my grandmother and my grandfather and then my great grandparents. I was like, look, they're my great grandparents. I've never thought about them. ⁓ But then my eyes kind of opened up to these other plots that were in the back of the property.

Heather McG (15:56)

Both!

Hmm?

Nellie Tran (16:19)

And it was just like this black kind of little mound, many of them. And they had these little tombstones that stuck out of the ground in what I thought at the time was Chinese lettering. So I was like, who's that? And my aunts and uncle had to educate me that that was, they don't know who it is. And it was in the ancient language. prior, yeah. So we're talking hundreds and hundreds of years ago that...

Heather McG (16:39)

wow.

Nellie Tran (16:44)

Prior to the Vietnamese language uses the Roman alphabet because the Portuguese brought it and the French kind of developed that. But prior to that, we had something that looked like Chinese letters. And so I thought, you know, I was like, those are the letters I see as Chinese. Well, it turns out that we had an ancient language too. Of course we did, right? When you say it, but I didn't think of myself as someone who had history that deep and long.

Heather McG (17:03)

Yes.

Nellie Tran (17:11)

I, to me, I feel like that is the deep-seated trauma that I never saw, right? That I have legacy, you know, and that like, that I have roots, that I have literal, like hundreds and hundreds, thousands of years. You know, I asked the silly question of my...

my aunts and uncles, was just like, well, how far back can we go? And they just look at me like I'm the silliest little girl. They're just like, forever. Like forever. And it has not registered to me that like, I didn't lose, right? I didn't lose by coming here. Coming to the US wasn't the pivotal moment. This is history repeating itself, right? We keep losing touch.

with our land, with our legacy. like that to me was the important part, that I've been fixated on this little piece of my history, and then all of a sudden, I just gained an entire lineage that I conceptually understood was there, but I have not had the, I don't know, the privilege or, I just, didn't, I hadn't reached back that far. And all of a sudden,

Heather McG (18:07)

Yeah.

Nellie Tran (18:24)

You know, my 20 years of fixation on studying racism and anti-racism all felt so boring. And I felt like, no, this is why I knew that there was something about colonization work, decolonial work, anti-war work that was really more important to me. And I couldn't put my finger on why. And realizing that I have

legacy that I have, that I can touch the land that my ancestors stepped foot on and lay on, that colonization took this from me. And that to me, to me that's the trauma that repeats itself over and over again, is that it's loss. It's this abandonment. And it repeats itself in all of these...

know, psychological ways. We can call them all of these different things throughout history because now we have psychology and we have the DSM. But back then, it was just war. It was just people stealing from each other and, you know, and loss of legacy, loss of heritage pauses in the development and evolution of our family's lineage that should have been happening. So I feel like it all just kind of comes back to that.

Heather McG (19:44)

Did your parents go back with you as well? I know you brought your family, your children, your husband went with you. Did your parents go with you as well on this particular trip?

Nellie Tran (19:47)

Yeah.

They did.

I wanted to make them re-walk the journey. So I wanted them to take me to the place that they left Vietnam. And I wanted to see the place. I wanted them to point out the possible boats. We went searching for some of the people that could have helped, that were living in some of the places. So we went and I wanted them to retrace it. Because there's so much language and cultural barriers. And there are so many hidden secrets.

So I didn't know that I could trust the emotions and the stories that they told, because all my life, the stories have been non-linear and have made no sense. So I was like, you know what? To get the linear story, you're going to walk me through it linearly. ⁓ Yes. And my parents are like, OK, but that's kind of weird, but sure. And it was interesting because...

Heather McG (20:29)

half sure yeah

If this happened, then this happened.

Nellie Tran (20:44)

there was a place that the boat sat. And all the stories that went into like why this spot and we had to leave in the dark of night. It had to be the night after a storm so that the kind of Coast Guard folks weren't out patrolling and we had to have fake paperwork. And my mom had gone back to the countryside to tell her best friends that she was leaving. And ⁓ when she came back, so they were all kind of coming at different points because

You didn't want to get caught, right? And she got caught, but then she got caught. So she was with several. There were five of them. And there was a checkpoint that they didn't know about. So this was the checkpoint that entered the port that my dad was waiting at, because my dad was an official fisherman. And so they had paperwork, and they had bought fruit and food to sell at Marketplace. And they had done that for several weeks to

to show that they are real tradesmen and fishermen. And so then my mom gets caught and they search her and she's got the address of my uncle, my aunt uncle in the US on her. And they had all agreed, the five people that were together, that we do not make eye contact, we don't know each other. And so for whatever reason, there was a change of guards at that time and she got away. So they let her go.

Heather McG (22:02)

wow.

Nellie Tran (22:03)

⁓ And she thinks it might have been because she also happened to have an ID card, work ID, because she was like a secretary in one of the government offices. And so she was trying to make up some reasons for why she was on this trip to visit people. And so she got away and she was able to take one person with her. And so they left and the others got caught because they said they didn't know each other because that was the plan. But on their...

on their trade permits, their salesman permits, they had the same address. And so their lie was broken. And so they ended up staying back in Vietnam and my mom left. My mom was almost an entire 24 hours late to the meeting spot. the rule was, because there's no cell phones, there's no way to communicate with each other. The rule was the ship, the boat was going. The boat was going no matter what because

Heather McG (22:49)

Right. Right.

Nellie Tran (22:58)

They were already too far not to go. And my dad had his older brother and his entire family on the boat that included children. So the boat was leaving because at that point, if they did not leave, they were going to jail. Like they were going to reeducation camp. The children would have to be going, know, like it would be a complete disaster. And so somehow my dad waited and waited and he literally had

Heather McG (23:19)

disaster.

Nellie Tran (23:28)

They were going to allow him about two more hours. They're like, we have to go, we have to go, we have to go. And my dad waited and he saw my mom running up and he grabbed her and they left. when we got to this port and my parents are surveying, it's a functioning port today. My mom and dad do not get along. They should have gotten a divorce long ago and they never did. But my mom said,

It's because he waited for me that day that I feel like I can never leave him. And I feel like, my gosh, that makes so much sense to me. You know, for her to have, she lost her parents at a young age and has always kind of suffered from this sense of abandonment. And the one person who literally risked life to wait for her, she cannot find a way to leave him, even though she despises him today.

Heather McG (24:00)

Your mama sounds funny.

Yeah.

you'd be

like 45 years ago I waited for you.

Nellie Tran (24:28)

He would never think twice about it, But yeah, he waited for her and they were able to get out.

Heather McG (24:35)

So your mom and you have two children, the process of connecting to your identity, your history, your lineage has been something that you have been working through, and your kids sitting in even one step removed beyond that point, how do you connect the dots for them? How do you approach that?

with the experience they have had.

Nellie Tran (24:54)

Yeah, I have really struggled with that because I pride myself on being pretty progressive and open with my children. I am a psychologist and so I try to be evidence-based in my training of them with my oldest and they have a seven-year gap. So I feel like I've learned a lot for the second one.

But for my oldest, who's 12 now, when he was young, I always promised myself I wouldn't lie to him. And so, you know, at that young age when they start wanting to play with guns, we were hard no on guns because, and I always said because we don't play with things that can kill people, and we don't play with toy versions of things that can kill people. And he would say, why? And I believe that I should give him a real answer.

And so then I told him, I was like, because we've lost family members to guns and bombs and war. And it's not that far removed from his history. And it's true, right? For us, war is still very present. There is still, you know, when we talk about aunts and uncles who have passed, we're talking about people who died from bombings in war.

Heather McG (25:47)

Yeah.

Nellie Tran (26:12)

⁓ Even though it doesn't look as though we are affected by war, there's still a lot of, today there's still a lot of being triggered by imagery of war and discussions of war around the world. My parents have very strong feelings about it and are very triggered by all of the discussions and all of the sights of dead people. To them, it's not just an image on the TV or on the cell phone.

that it triggers them to think about and remember all the dead bodies that they have seen in their lifetime in real life. And dead bodies that are their family members, you know? And all of the unresolved traumas that they have had to experience and repress in order to continue to make life for themselves and for their family. So I tell my son this, and I remember in the first grade,

Heather McG (26:44)

Yeah.

Nellie Tran (27:05)

He was, we went to like art night at school and there was the fourth grade project. They read a book about, they read the Anne Frank book about the Holocaust and they made artwork that was like the curtains that they had to pull at the end of the night to make sure that no light could be seen from the streets. it was, my kid was the one who ⁓ came home from that and wanted to pull all the blinds.

He was afraid that people would see that there was light in the house and that we were there. And I was just like, no, that was a story. It was long ago. And he was like, yeah, but, you know, but why my grandfather, he's lost his siblings to war. so he couldn't make sense of the timeline. And it had not dawned on me that for him, history is right now. He couldn't...

he wasn't yet capable of thinking about things that happened before his life. And so everything that I had told him, everything that he was putting together is about right now. And so even as a 12 year old now, I I watched the news a lot and I have had to be really careful about that over the years because he'll ask me, are we safe constantly? And while I want him to know about what's happening in the world, I think it's really unfair for him to live in this safe,

bubble we have and not feel safe because I've given him the stories that are a reality, are a part of his history. And it dawns on me that it's in his blood, you know, it's in his blood to be triggered by war, to be triggered by imagery that connotes war and loss and death, you know, and it's really...

It's really sad for me to see that happening for him because I know it happens for me and he's so young, you know? But I mean, if not now,

So.

Heather McG (29:01)

Well, and

two, kind of as I'm listening to you talk, I think you kind of clarified some things for me, you know, on an even bigger picture around generational trauma, you know, coming from migration stories, but then also abuse, other kinds of things that happen in people's lives. And, you know, and I don't have the words for it I just thought it just connected for me about when things happen to our ancestors, whether our

parents, our grandparents, you going even further back. It's kind of interesting because it's important that we know about these things. It's important that we know about our history, that we know where we came from, that we know what the story of our family is. It does pull the trauma all the way through. And I'm kind of like thinking about like, how do we process that? How do we connect to that? How do we understand it? And it's kind of the thing of

Life is not all good or all bad or all happy or all terrible most of the time. Sometimes it is all terrible. And it's just like, it's just really making me think about how families work through the generations. You know, like I think about, I don't think I've ever really talked about this on, in here on my maternal side, my grandmother went through horrible domestic violence.

Nellie Tran (29:58)

Yeah.

Heather McG (30:15)

I live with that still. know, like those things, like they don't stop with where it happened. Like it keeps going through the generations and it's, I don't know, it's just fascinating to me in a sad way. Like this idea that we can just like fresh start with every generation is not at all realistic. ⁓

Nellie Tran (30:27)

Mm-hmm.

No.

⁓ yeah, I've been thinking a lot about that because the way that most people talk about migration and about coming to the US in particular, it's interesting. People don't talk like this when they talk about migrating to other countries. It's really about the US and this notion of an American dream that in order to have the American dream, you have to start over. So when you come to the US,

⁓ you are starting over. You have to be re-educated. have to... Any degree that you come with doesn't count, right? And that's especially true if you come as a refugee. You have to leave everything in your old country, and then you come here and you start fresh, right? There's all this language around that. And what I've discovered in this process that I've been on is that...

For everyone that I've interviewed, for every family member I've talked to, there is no starting over. They did not, they might have used that language, but they knew they weren't starting over. It was a pause. When they left the country, they knew that they had to somehow hit the pause button so that their lineage could continue. They wanted the song to keep going, but it couldn't keep playing.

They needed a place to be held. And that's what I'm discovering is that their coming to the US was their holding onto what they had. Like my dad was in school. He was one of the intellectuals of Vietnam. He just knew that the political climate would not allow him to be an intellectual in Vietnam. And I'm an intellectual now, you know? So I feel like...

Heather McG (32:20)

Yes, that's interesting.

Nellie Tran (32:23)

Yeah, and it's not that I lived out his legacy. It's that he hit the pause button so that I could continue what our family was meant to do. I could not have done this had he not hit the pause button. It didn't need to be the US. It could have been Australia. It could have been France. It could have been Canada. Those are other places that we have family members that they sought refuge in other countries.

But what we are passed down with through the generations, whether it be trauma or whether it be skills and resiliency, if we choose not to do anything with it, it's not because we rejected it. It's on hold. It's on hold until we can. And I think that that's what happened. I did not have the capacity. I could not acknowledge what my family lineage had been through. I wasn't ready. I needed to see.

oppression in the US, I had to understand myself as situated in the US before I could move beyond that. Before I could understand the worldliness, the global destruction that had happened, I needed to understand it on a smaller scale. And so to have inundated myself with work around oppression on a smaller scale, which is anti-racism work, that is small peanuts. When you start thinking about

anti-racism work, and then you start talking about colonization, right? Like, they go hand in hand for sure. But globalization and us thinking about the world, we all have indigeneity somewhere that has been taken from us somehow. There's a lot of trauma around migration that we all have experienced in our legacies. And I constantly push my students to think about

How do you return to that? It's on pause. If you want it, you don't need to hang on to mine. People love my family's migration story. People love ⁓ mindfulness from Titna Han, which is also a concept that he developed because of colonization to try to save his people. You don't need to hang on to our concepts from our country. Your legacies have a pause of their own that needs to be picked up.

Heather McG (34:13)

Hahaha!

Nellie Tran (34:35)

and uncovered.

Heather McG (34:37)

Now in the process of uncovering, think, well, maybe on the slow path, I'm not sure, but I know for me it has taken decades for me to both have even a basic understanding of where I came from. we have different histories. For me, understanding history of abuse, history of patriarchy and all of those things, they're just showing up in my life. And it's taken me a very long time to recover from fundamentalism and all of those things.

For you and your story, when you think back to maybe when you were in your 20s, the journey you've been on since then, is there anything that you wish you would have understood at a younger age or how has your understanding of yourself changed over time?

Nellie Tran (35:18)

You know, I thought some of the things that I really struggled with when I was young, I still struggle with, who am I kidding? I had this language that I carried with me into my 20s as I was starting my career around needing to make it to make sure that my parents' sacrifice and struggles were worth it. And so I needed to be enough.

so that their sacrifices were worth it. And it wasn't just my parents' sacrifice. They left my older half-brother in Vietnam because bringing children on a trip where you weren't sure you were going to live is irresponsible, right? So my older brother is now in the US with us, and I feel as though I have to make it up for him, too. I took his mom away from him.

so that I could have a future. I really lived under this feeling of indebtedness. I owe my parents, I owe my brother something. And all I have to give to show my worthiness is success. And the uncomfortable part of that reality for me now as a 43-year-old is that I define success so narrowly, that I define success

in the American US way, but I was also indebted and understanding sacrifice in a Vietnamese way. So meshed together, this all created a mess for me. And I wish I knew that me being alive and happy is part of what they wanted for me. They wanted freedom.

Freedom of choice, they might not have been able to articulate that in English so that I could understand it, but they were running away from a country where they had no freedom of choice. They had no access to resources and paths. The path would have been laid out in front of me. I could not have chosen a future for myself. I could not have chosen a future that included a husband from a different country or, you know...

a children and a family where we had an egalitarian household, like these were not choices that were possible. And I know now that whatever I choose, I choose with freedom. know, when I come back to Vietnam and I've been thinking a lot about whether home is here or home is Vietnam, I deserve access to both. You know, I am a U.S. citizen.

but my heritage to Vietnam was taken from me. And so I am worthy because I am. And I should know that now. I still work on it every day to really feel it. But I know now that what my family wanted for me was freedom. Freedom of mind, freedom of choice, and my feeling of worthlessness. That was...

from generations and generations of colonization telling me that my people are not good enough. That's not my family. They say it, but I know that they got it from generations before them. They want us to make it because they have a narrow definition of what success might look like because of having come to the US. So I know that now.

Heather McG (38:30)

Now, I think this is something that is really timely at this moment, taking the bigger bird's eye view at a societal level. You know, there's a lot going on, especially now in the conversation and actions around immigration and migration. What are some of, especially in today's environment, do you have any thoughts on what people can do?

to be more supportive of their community. What are things that we can actually do to make a positive impact on our neighbors and the community around us knowing everything that's going on right now?

Nellie Tran (39:04)

Can I tell you a story to answer that? So one of the things that I discovered ⁓ in Vietnam when I went back is that no one was, people hid this story from me because they thought that coming to the US that I would get in trouble, my family would get in trouble if people knew that I had family members who fought with the North, the communists. So it turns out I have family members all in the same kind of family unit.

siblings who fought for the North and for the South simultaneously. And on the weekends, they came home and partied together. And I was shocked. I was just like, what are you talking about? Like, politically, does that work? And it really reminded me of today. It reminded me of our families that argue on the weekends about our politics, except they didn't argue about their politics.

They did what they had to do during the weekend. They came home and they partied with each other as family because they said, that's what we just had to do is, you we had to do this thing that, you know, fight this war, but we're family and they would come home and they would care for each other. You know, I'm sure that they had some bickering over beers, but, but generally I feel like that's what we have forgotten to do, right? That what they told me that I really carry with me now and I

really thought about this is that war is fought on behalf of powerful men. People die for the goals that powerful men lay out for them. They are not the goals of the farmers and of the people who are often made to fight the wars. That's what happened in my family. The soldiers had to fight. It was a rule. You had to go and fight by a certain age. But they were farmers.

They didn't care, they just wanted their children to survive and they wanted to drink their beers on the weekend together. We have to take care of each other because the men who are out there preaching all of the politics and who say they have these goals, they're not the ones putting their bodies on their line. No matter what side you are in a war, there's only one reality in war. People are going to die.

There is no other truth in war. That is the one certainty of it. And the people who are fighting it just want to live. And I think that that's what we have forgotten, that there is this political war that's happening. We still have to care about each other. Whatever those big goals are, we still have our goals to maintain our communities, to raise our children, to drink our beers together on the weekend, you know, to be able to laugh at stuff.

And I know that the pause that my family had to take, we can't pause again to fight like this. Those are not our goals. The goal for the family was freedom, right? And to stay together. So that's my encouragement. There is no trash in this world. We have to all see each other as worthy of life.

I don't always feel that we see each other as fellow humans, that we treat each other with the dignity we all deserve, and that we trust and believe in each other's pain. There's a lot of people who are hurt right now, who don't feel seen, who don't feel supported. And I really believe that our world would be better if we just could make eye contact with each other and could show up for each other. If we could see each other's pain.

we would love each other better.

Heather McG (42:38)

I more people understood about immigration and migration.

Nellie Tran (42:41)

I wish people would understand that no one wants to leave home unless they have to. No one wants to leave their family. No one wants to leave their literal ancestral lands. That when the time comes, you have to leave for the sake of your family, for the sake of your livelihood. And you're in search of livelihood and freedom.

I just wish people understood how dire things have to be. If you really think about it now, I think a lot of my close circles now have been talking about what is your signal to leave? I think that's the reality of some of the folks that I am in community with is, when do you know to leave this country?

And if you say, when the first bomb falls, those of us who are closer to war know you've waited too long, it's over. And that type of conversation, when you start having to have that conversation, that's what immigrants, it's years of that conversation, it's years of desperation. It's many, many attempts to try to find a path to freedom.

Heather McG (43:45)

Right.

Nellie Tran (43:51)

to something that feels safe. It's not so simple.

Heather McG (43:53)

In life, with all of these experiences you've had and getting to know your family history, connecting to your lineage, and thinking about all of it in life, what do you know for sure?

Nellie Tran (44:05)

I know I don't know anything. What do I know for sure? I saw this question and I was like, I don't know anything.

What do know for sure?

I know.

I know that we are all linked together through our pain and suffering. That that's where, that's what makes us human. And that that's how we find joy and connection.

And it is the thing that will connect us if we can open ourselves up to feeling and being with each other in our pain and suffering.

I think I know that.

Heather McG (44:37)

had this conversation with a few people lately and it's really left a big impact on me that healing happens in community. It's less likely to happen by yourself. It happens in community and when you're brave enough to talk about pain and suffering, that actually does create connections and you know, in a safe environment. That's really where how you get to the joyful side. That's how you get over there. That's how you heal.

Nellie Tran (44:45)

Mm.

Heather McG (45:07)

because just putting it to the side and trying to ignore it, we know that doesn't work. And so that has been something I think that for me, and I've had some conversations with other people about this as well, that that journey to healing is communal. And it's about talking about the real things that have happened and to tell the truth, even if it's hard to say out loud, that that's how you get there for a lot of people.

Nellie Tran (45:31)

You know,

I have to have the second conversation with my mom about her family traumas. And I've been talking for weeks now with my therapist about how to have this conversation. And I keep thinking that it's her pain and her story. And what I've come to understand or have been taught and trying to understand is that it's my story too.

Right? That's my grandma. It's in my legacy. It's mine as well. And that the reason why I won't have the conversation, because I certainly can, right, is because it will bring up so much pain for both of us. And we will be more connected in that suffering and in that pain. And I can't handle, I can't handle the thought of being

that connected to my mom who I have a difficult relationship with. And that, to me, that's where I know that our truths, when we can accept the truths in our suffering and our pain, and it allows us to open up and to connect in ways that we have not been able to, but it's also the scariest thing because to connect with people that we have hurt feelings with, that's a whole...

a whole other thing. And can you imagine what that would do for our country if we were able to see each other's pain and connect through that despite simultaneously having done awful things or said awful things about each other? I think we're afraid of it. I think it requires a certain amount of sturdiness that so many of us have not had the opportunity to build or just don't have.

Heather McG (46:47)

Yeah.

Yeah, like so we don't know how to do it in a lot of cases. think, I think too, and I'm still walking through this as well. I think too, it just, sometimes it takes a lot of time. Like I know for me, I've been doing a lot of writing lately about things that have happened in my life. And I actually had to put it away for a bit because I realized I'm not ready to do that. I thought I was, but I'm not. And I think sometimes that's the experience a lot of people have.

You know, and it's a series of steps. Like it's not an easy, you know, do this and voila, everything's fixed. Like it takes a lot of time and it takes multiple steps and you have to be patient with yourself. And it is actually really hard work that I think most of us are not equipped to handle well.

Nellie Tran (47:56)

No, and I don't know if you've experienced this, as I've started to attempt to talk about it, write about it, there's a lot of tears that feel like they need to be shed. And I sometimes feel like those tears are mine, and then on other days I feel like this is someone else's tears. But it feels like there are generations of tears that have not been shed. And...

And every time I allow those tears to be shed, then the next time I talk about it or write about it, it feels a little lighter. But then I'm at work and I don't have time, I don't have space to shed so many tears. I don't have... Yeah, and I keep telling people I feel bad about doing an autoethnography as part of my professional work. And now I'm realizing, no, this is so much harder than...

Heather McG (48:32)

Yeah. All right, I gotta keep it together at this moment.

Nellie Tran (48:48)

than any of the other papers I've ever written for any prestigious whatever. This is the personal work is, this is what people have been avoiding. It's not that it lacks scientific rigor, it's that it's harder. You have to have so much more clarity and you have to process so much more to be able to bring light to a truth that quite frankly, you don't know that you know is true. But I think that's the point is.

Heather McG (49:13)

Right.

Nellie Tran (49:16)

Can you be certain enough about something that lacks so much clarity? Because we're certainly, as scientists, writing as though we are so certain about things that lack so much certainty, because it's not personal.

Heather McG (49:28)

Yeah, I

actually just last night I'm in a writing group where we are all working on some memoir based work. And I just told the group, I was like, I'm in hell right now. I'm in writer's hell because I don't know where to go. I know there's a lot in here, but I cannot like put a shape to it. I'm really struggling with it. And the person who like is guiding the group, she was like, you know, it's not hell. This is actually what it is. She was like, if you're actually doing actual work.

Nellie Tran (49:36)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Heather McG (49:57)

If it's

easy, you're not really doing it. And she said it is actually supposed to be horrifyingly difficult for a while. I thought that was helpful. And I think that applies to healing too. It's supposed to be hard.

Nellie Tran (50:09)

If it's not messy, you're not getting your money's worth. I say all this stuff to my students all the time, and it's hard to listen to your own advice, you know? it's not supposed to be easy. It's not supposed to be pretty. It's a privilege to be messy. I don't know. I say all these things to myself. I still don't want to do it. Like, this is part of the process. You have to walk through this. And the other thing I keep telling myself is,

Heather McG (50:12)

Yeah.

Yeah, we gotta say it to ourselves.

Nellie Tran (50:34)

You know, if the journey is this long and you've gone, you know, it's not linear, right? So you're going to go back and forth. But the problem for me is that if you go a little bit and you reject the process and run back, then you have to repeat all of that again before you can move forward. And I keep telling, right, no one wants to do that. You don't want to start the marathon over and then repeat the first five miles. So put, like I keep telling myself, just push 30 more minutes. You have to push a little bit longer because then you'll get stronger.

Heather McG (50:49)

Nobody wants to do that.

Nellie Tran (51:03)

And emotional stamina is so hard to build.

Heather McG (51:08)

I like that phrase. I'm gonna start thinking about that. That's a really good phrase, emotional stamina.

Nellie Tran (51:12)

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. When we train counselors, we train them to be able to deal with high emotions or sit with high emotion for eight, nine hours at a time and still stay focused and engaged and still ask good questions. And it's hard. It's really hard to do that. So remember, you are building a muscle.

Heather McG (51:37)

Yes, okay. Well, thank you so much for being here today, Nellie. It has been a treat. Thank you for sharing your story. I know these things can be challenging to talk about, like we just mentioned. Where can people find you if they wanna work with you or hear more from you?

Nellie Tran (51:52)

my website, Nellytran.com. I'm also on social media. So I create content for the work that I publish and the mentoring work that I do with students. So you can find me on TikTok is my main platform at Dr. Nellie. And I'm also on Instagram ⁓ at Dr. Nellytran.

Heather McG (52:11)

Wow, that's amazing that you got Dr. Nellie on TikTok.

Nellie Tran (52:15)

Early adapters.

Heather McG (52:16)

Good job.