Healing Seven Generations: The Children of Immigrant Dreams
Breaking cycles, healing bloodlines, and remembering that we were always enough.
Author’s Note: This is a love letter to the complicated love of immigrant families: the invisible wounds, the inherited dreams, the grief we didn’t know we carried. It’s about healing not just ourselves, but generations past and future. It’s about remembering that we—and they—were always enough.
A meditation on survival, individuation, forgiveness, and the exquisite, imperfect tenderness of being human.
Love is bloody complicated, you know.
You love your parents—and they love you.
It’s not that there was a lack of love.
And yet, somehow, there was.
There was no emotional warmth.
No expression, no validation, no affection.
And yet all our physical, financial needs were met.
They gave what they knew; they gave what they were given.And we go on with life.
We hit our 20s, trek down the self-discovery path,
Start not only unwiring every goddamn thing they ever sold us—
But rejecting it.
In a frenzy, because we hit a stalemate with life.
We couldn't find the truth of who we were,
What we were meant to be.
Nothing made us happy—
Not love, not the income, not the title.
Only an acute hollowness gnawed at us,
And we had no idea what it was, or how to soothe it.
We’ve not known for generations.
But our generation—
We were given the gift, nay, the responsibility:
To heal,
To break patterns,
To tend to the traumas.
Because now we have the resources to.
They call us privileged.
And yet deep down,
We felt impoverished.
And we couldn’t even name it.
How could we?
When we were raised with luxury cars, cushy homes,
Comforts our families in the motherland never knew.
That anguish—we swallowed it.
We buried it deep.
It drove us to hate ourselves,
To believe we were somehow inherently broken.
But it was never about us.
It was never about you.
For generations, love spoke only in the language of survival.
Until now.
You and I—
We have been given the unbearable, beautiful chance:
Not just to survive, but to thrive.
And yet we felt like we were failing, didn’t we?
Maybe it even drove us into therapy,
Where, for the first time, we gave ourselves permission to rage.
To blame.
To name their shortcomings.
It’s a crucial part of healing—make no mistake.
We must externalize the rage
Before we can transmute it,
Alchemize it,
Integrate it.
Until, one day, we realize:
Beyond the blame,
It was truly never anyone’s fault.
Everyone did the best they could.
Everyone was imperfectly perfect.
So what do you do with all that swallowed rage?
That pain, injustice, alienation, misunderstanding?
Ain’t that the question.
Because when you reach the threshold—
Where grief begins to turn into compassion—
You realize:
You’ve always loved your bloody parents.
They were your heroes.
And now you see: they were human.
Not gods.
Just mortals.
Imperfect mortals, carrying their own buried sorrows.
And still—you love them.
You love them even more urgently now,
As they grow frail,
As their mortality sharpens before your eyes.
And the panic sets in, doesn't it?
For all the years lost to cold distances,
For all the conversations that never were,
For memories blurred by pain or absence.
We scurry now—
Trying to make up for lost time.
Trying to rewrite the story
While there's still time left to write it.
To heal.
To reconnect.
To remember what it means to be the child of an immigrant parent.
To grieve the love we never knew we lacked.
And to honor the love we did receive,
Even if we didn’t understand it at the time.
It was a love filtered through limitations,
Through ancestral baggage.
But it was love.
You were always inherently enough.
They were always inherently enough.
When you heal yourself,
You heal seven generations back—and seven forward.
I know you feel alienated.
Lonely.
As though no one sees the weight you carry—
The sacred, unbearable weight of awareness.
But hear me:
The path of individuation is a lonely road,
And yet—for those of us who feel that betraying the soul is a kind of death—
There is no path but forward.
So I see you.
I sit with you.
In your grief,
Your anger,
Your confusion,
Your exhaustion,
Your hope.
Grief that comes in layers—
And all at once.
You carry a profound depth in your soul, my friend.
You and I—
We are healing not only ourselves, but our lineage.
And that?
That is needed.
It has been a long time coming.
Our ancestors are celebrating from the beyond.
Finally—
Finally—they can exhale.
So give yourself permission:
To be messy.
To be tender.
To be exquisitely human.
You are the human experience, made flesh.
You are exquisite.
Mortal.
Imperfectly perfect.
Even in your grief.
Especially in your grief.
You are human.Your story matters.
If this resonated, I would love to hear a fragment of your journey in the comments.
We're healing, together.
Sakthi Ramesh, AMFT #155011
Associate Marriage and Family Therapist
Supervised by Helene Mickey Wilson, Ph.D., LMFT #49203
Through The Art of Guiding Healers
Currently offering sessions in Newport Beach and Telehealth for those seeking deeper, individualized support.
👉🏽 Contact Me to connect or inquire further.