Episode Transcript
[00:00:07] Speaker A: It's a Sunday morning, and every Sunday morning, Rome Lim wakes up to the sound of his mom cooking sinangag as she fries the rice and garlic. The smell of the Filipino breakfast dish wafts through their house and into his bedroom in Hamilton, Ontario. It's a staple in their household, something that reminds him of his childhood. And this Sunday morning, before they leave for church, he's thinking about the eight year old he was when he first moved into this bedroom. How over time, he's learned to navigate life not just for himself, but for his newcomer parents, too.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: Being a child of immigrants is really a unique situation to be in because you have to put on so many roles for your parents at a very young age, when it's expected, or you would expect that they would have been the ones taking care of that already.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: Rome's parents immigrated to Canada from the Philippines together two decades ago in search of a better life. But by the time he was nine, they were divorced. Rome didn't know any other filipino kids with divorced parents or any other filipino kids with a single mom.
[00:01:16] Speaker B: Filipinos don't believe in divorce, like divorce is highly taboo.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: But while the experience was isolating for him, he knew it was his job to step up and support his mom as she processed her major life transition. Taking care of his two younger siblings was the easy part, but his main job, the one he still does to this day, was to emotionally support his mom so she knew she had someone to lean on. After all, he is the eldest child of immigrant parents.
First generation Canadians, second generation immigrants in Canada, almost three in ten children fall into this category, with that number expected to grow quickly over the next decade. The experience of being born in Canada to parents who gave up everything to immigrate here is complex and unique. It changes the way you see and navigate life here in Canada. It's an experience that everyone might not understand, and as a child of immigrants myself, that's one of the reasons why I wanted to make this series.
I'm Karina Zapata, and you're listening to the second gen, a series focused on the stories of children of immigrants in Canada. This project is powered by Shaw and made possible with a community podcast initiative on the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy and the people of the treaty seven region in southern Alberta.
In this episode, we will be focusing on the stories of the eldest children, the ones who often had to bear the weight of extra work and extra responsibilities to help their families succeed. I connected virtually with Rome to learn more about his relationship with his mom. After her divorce and how being the eldest child played into the many roles he felt like he needed to take on to support her.
[00:03:09] Speaker C: So you didn't have the luxury of preserving the certain image of your mom that I think a lot of people have where she's the strong, powerful, indestructible human. Tell me more about what that realization was like for you.
[00:03:25] Speaker B: So there's this very core memory I have of my mom, and the first time I saw her as a human being and not as, like you said, someone who is indestructible. I think it was particularly cloudy that day. I remember because my kitchen has a lot of windows, so a lot of the light comes in and stuff like that. So I was, like, standing at the top of the stairs, and I was about to go down into the kitchen, like, get a snack or whatever, and I see her sitting at the edge of the kitchen table, just looking out the window, like, looking at nothing.
And it was one of those looks that you can just see that, how drained she was of all the things that were happening in her life and all the things that she was keeping in her mind and keeping in her heart. And she had no outlet for it, but her body was just.
I feel like it was just crumbling under the pressure of all those things inside of her. And seeing her like that really taught me something when I was younger. You know what I mean? People are not who they seem on the outside. Like, there is always something deeper going on. And I think as a kid, I was very aware of other people's emotions and things like that. And I think seeing my mom in this very defeated state and that kind of shattering this image of her in my mind, that it taught me that there is always something deeper within other people.
[00:05:09] Speaker D: Right?
[00:05:10] Speaker B: And it's always good to extend a helping hand because you don't know if you're the only person in their lives that has ever done that for them.
[00:05:23] Speaker C: Tell me more about your relationship with your mom.
[00:05:28] Speaker B: So I know that I'm talking about all these things that my mom has, I guess, put me through throughout my childhood. And people might think I might hate my mom, but that couldn't be the case. That really is not the case.
I love my mom to death. She is really my best friend, one of my best friends. And I really am so blessed to see her in that way because I know a lot of kids, especially immigrant children, don't see their parents that way because of the hardships that we have had to endured from them, but also from the world and that big miscommunication between the two. But in my own personal relationship with my mom, because we were always in communication with one another, especially on an emotional level, we grew, like, this very deep bond where I am her and she is me. And even now in adulthood, I recognize some of my behaviors are things that my mom did when I was younger, and now I can see why she reacted in certain ways or why she would think a situation was one way, but it actually wasn't. It was actually another. You know, I've kind of grown to understand her behavior now as an adult, and when looking back at, like, I can kind of make it make sense to the younger version of me.
[00:07:01] Speaker A: I knew, though, that Rome wasn't alone in this and that there are so many other aspects of being an eldest child that needed to be talked about. So we also connected with Cassandra Ngo, a child of vietnamese immigrants who lived in Markham, Ontario, on the traditional territories of the Huron, Wendat, Hodonosaunee, and Anishinabek. And Rome joined the conversation from Hamilton on the traditional territories of the Erie, neutral Huron, Wendat, Hodonishoni, and Mississaugas.
[00:07:27] Speaker C: So let's start with the reason that you're both here in Canada. Your parents, they moved here before you were born. So Rome, let's start with you. Why did your parents move to Canada?
[00:07:39] Speaker B: Well, my mom always told me that the reason why she was interested in going abroad in general was because of the people that she was working with at the time.
She worked at a lab in the Philippines in Makati, and so, yeah, a lot of her colleagues were going abroad, talking about going to Australia, London, Dubai, things like this.
And she really wanted to do that with my dad. And so my mom coordinated with one of her friends to sponsor her, and then my dad just followed along with my mom, as filipino dads do.
So it was really my mom that was the catapult to going to Canada.
She only knew one person here, and that person helped us kind of get settled.
[00:08:44] Speaker C: Amazing, Cassandra. So if you want to go over that as well.
Yeah.
[00:08:49] Speaker D: So I guess my parents came here. It wasn't really their choice, like their parents. So my grandparents actually made the choice to move them over here, but it was primarily because they were all escaping the Vietnam war. So my dad was a bit luckier. He got sponsored here from, I think, friends of his family or family of family. So he actually got to fly here. But my mom and her family, they actually had to take a boat from Vietnam to escape the war. So I think my grandparents obviously wanted to keep them safe and secondary would be to kind of have an opportunity and a better life, but my parents didn't really have a choice, but other than safety.
[00:09:37] Speaker C: Cassandra, let's continue with you about that. You mentioned that your parents wanted a better life, and that's why they moved here. So what are some of the responsibilities that you had to take on in your early childhood to give them that better life that they wanted?
[00:09:51] Speaker D: I guess as a child, you just take on a lot of pressure and responsibility to do really well in school because they ingrain it in your head. They say, we didn't have these opportunities growing up to have public school and have access to high school universities. So growing up, you just take on a lot of responsibility and pressure to make it out on your own, like figure out your homework on your own, learn how to study on your own and to get good grades so you make sure that you graduate and you can get into a good university. And other responsibilities would just be helping my parents translate, navigate their day to day life if needed, going to doctors appointments with them to help them navigate the system and translate more.
So just little things like that that feel so inherent to me may not be a common practice to other people, but those are a couple of things that I feel like I had to do as a child to help with my parents transition here to have a better life.
[00:10:58] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. And honestly, I see a lot of my family in both of your stories. I'm also a child of immigrants. My parents moved here when they were in their early 20s, but I am the youngest child. I'm not the eldest. So I see a lot of my older sister in your stories. She was the one who basically raised me. She's the one who had to deal with all of those responsibilities and really felt that pressure that you're talking about there that I personally didn't feel because I wasn't the eldest. So, Rome, kind of moving on to you. What are some of the responsibilities that you had to take over, especially as the eldest child with a couple of younger siblings?
[00:11:36] Speaker B: So I feel like because my mom was pretty good at speaking English and she was the one that was the one who dealt with government stuff and talked to people on the phone and things like that. A lot of what I had to do growing up was like emotional labor for my younger siblings. I felt like I was kind of like the median or the mediator between what my siblings were trying to tell my mom and what my mom was interpreting. I don't know why I took on that role I think it just fell onto me that way because I could see that my younger sibling at the time, because I only had my brother at the time, and then my sister came much later, but my brother had a lot of trouble expressing himself, and that kind of frustrated my mom more, and I basically would just want my mom to stop pestering my brother about. What are you trying to say? Come on. Blah, blah, blah, blah. All this and that. So, yeah, I took on a lot of emotional labor growing up, and that was kind of my main role as an older sibling.
[00:12:54] Speaker C: And you're talking about that emotional labor. But it doesn't only stop with your siblings. A big part of the experiences that you had as an eldest child has to do with your parents divorce. Your mom was relying heavily on you by the time you were nine years old, still a child. So what was that like for you?
[00:13:11] Speaker B: It was very isolating.
I feel like my mom relied on me heavily to help her through her feelings. I feel like I was the next person in line who could kind of talk her through what she was going through, because I was the one seeing it firsthand because I am the eldest and I watch basically what's happening with my parents, and I can talk to it, talk about it with my younger siblings and things like that. So, yeah, it was a lot of me talking to my mom about her feelings and her talking to me about my dad and that he would do these certain things to her and I would ask her, how does that make you feel? But in reality, I didn't know what she really wanted from me. I just felt like I took on that role because that was, again, like a role I was used to, and it was very hard. Very hard for me.
[00:14:16] Speaker C: Yeah. And kind of going off of that.
How do you think that shapes your relationship with your mom now?
[00:14:25] Speaker B: Well, my relationship with my mom, I think, is very unique when I compare it to the relationships my friends have with their own parents.
Me and my mom are very bonded. We're very close. I can confidently say that my mom is one of my best friends, but it's hard because where do you draw the line between your best friend and your mom? You know what I mean? Do you let your best friend walk over you and you forgive them, or do you kind of tell your mom, like, hey, you need to back off a little. I'm kind of dealing with my own stuff. Right. So I definitely have problems drawing the line in the sand with her sometimes because of how close we are.
[00:15:13] Speaker C: What I'm hearing here is that you weren't only a parent to your siblings, you also became a friend, a therapist, and a whole bunch more to your mom, and you had to grow up really fast. And I think a common theme I see here between the both of you is that you had to be independent really early. And I can imagine that that didn't just stop as you got older, but that it continued on into adulthood. So, Cassandra, now that you are an adult, how do you continue to act as a bridge between cultures for your parents?
[00:15:44] Speaker D: My mom has definitely grown into an individual that can sustain herself a bit better than my dad because her english is a lot better than my dad's. But I think over the years, as I've grown older, my parents have been a bit more accepting of the western culture and what I have chosen to do.
I was a little bit of a rebellious high schooler. I wanted to go out and have fun with my friends, and in the beginning, they would just hammer me down. Super tiger parents. Like, tell me when you're going to come home. You have to come home. And then I think my rebellious side came from. Honestly, I think it came from being sick and tired of the pressure that I was feeling as an older sibling, as a child of immigrant parents. It was like a subconscious thing. But over the years of me rebelling and having a poor relationship with my parents, we kind of eventually are now in a place where we understand each other's sides. Like, I know where they came from and what their story is in a way, and they understand that I live in a different generation and in a different country than they grew up. So just over the years, we have kind of learned how to see eye to eye a bit more, and they are definitely more accepting of what I want to do. And I guess my aspirations and things like mental health, they have definitely come around a very long way. So I'm very blessed and lucky to have them see things the way that they do now.
[00:17:20] Speaker C: And going to you, Rome, as well, just kind of going over that as well. How do you continue to act as a bridge between cultures for your mom?
[00:17:30] Speaker B: I think I expose my mom to a lot of western, I guess, concepts. I think one of the main ones is, like, LGBTQ plus.
As a trans person myself, my mom has said that because she came from a really small town, a really small village in the jungle. Basically, she said that she never had seen a trans person, never seen a gay person before, and things like that. And so I am kind of the one to talk her through these ideas. I think another topic I have helped my mom to understand in her own way is racism. Of course, my mom being a person of color herself, she has experienced racism in the workplace in some sort of form. But I think because of where she grew up, she just grew up seeing the same people. So racism was definitely not a thing that was occurring there. But when she comes here, she just thinks that people are being rude to her and that that's it.
There's no racial motivations towards that. And I kind of help her to see that this is not okay. It's more than just someone being rude to you.
There are people like this in the world, and it's never going to stop happening to you. So you kind of just have to learn how to navigate it, as I have done it at a young age, and I'm trying to give her the tools to do that.
[00:19:13] Speaker C: Yeah, and I heard a little bit of a theme here of kind of feeling the need to prove yourself to your parents and live up to the sacrifices that they made leaving their home countries, moving to a place where they didn't know anybody, which is something that I'm sure all people experience. But I don't think people realize how strong that desire is for eldest children of immigrants especially.
So, cassandra, just continuing on with you, how did this type of upbringing play a role in who you became or even who you are now as an adult?
[00:19:50] Speaker D: I think the way that it impacted me the most, like when I first heard your question, is, I'm a perfectionist. And I think my perfectionist attitude actually played a big role into why I have the type of anxiety that I do, because I'm always pushing for more, I'm striving for more. I always want to be the best. And it's not even because in my upbringing, they vocally told me, you need to achieve this level. It was just, you can see how hard they work to make ends meet for you and you have a glimpse into what they've been through. Like my mom telling me she was on a boat for three months and she was stuck in a whirlpool for like a week. I'm thinking to myself, I will never have that type of experience. And holding that so close to my heart, I couldn't help but grow up in a way where it was in the back of my mind. And I'm like, I need to make it for them. And even when people ask me, what motivates you to do so well in school, or what's your drive? I used to always just say, it's my parents because I need them. To see that I made it for you, even for my university degree, when I graduated, it felt like it was more of a thing for them than it was for me. I mean, I was proud of myself, but I wanted to see that they were proud of me.
And it still does affect me because I want to be able to show them that they've raised a really good child that is independent, self sufficient, and they don't have to worry about things anymore. They can just rest easy after such a long and troublesome life that they've know, coming here and such.
[00:21:51] Speaker C: And looking back for you. Rome, what are some of the things that you felt like you lost growing up? As the eldest child of immigrants.
[00:22:01] Speaker D: I.
[00:22:02] Speaker B: Definitely lost a sense of, I think, childhood innocence because I was so hyper aware of everyone's emotions now, because that's what I was doing at home, that I just had to care about so many things that I'm sure none of my classmates were caring about. And I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but I would see things like, oh, so and so was crying, I should go help them, even though I was not close with them in any sort of way. It's just like I would exhaust myself to protect others and then not do the same for me because no one was protecting me, but that's fine because I could help someone else. And so a lot of my classmates, they just seemed to be very free, willing, like, oh, yesterday me and my dad, we went to the park and had ice cream, blah, blah. It's like, well, that's really nice, because I had to go help my crying mom process her divorce, you know what I mean? And it's just like, why was I doing that at nine? I don't know, but I just felt like, kind of like what Cassandra was saying, where you kind of take on, even though your parents don't expect you to succeed in any sort of like, you kind of put that pressure on yourself because you can see how much they sacrifice for you and you want to take that on and pay them back for all their efforts and things like that, right? So for me, paying it back to my parents was being this perfect person who was always happy, who was always caring, who was always polite, nice, blah, blah, blah, blah. But deep down inside I was experiencing so much turmoil because I felt like I could not express my sadness, because if I did, then everything in front of me would collapse and I would be the bad person, and that was my fault, when really it was just like normal childhood feelings, normal human being feelings, things like that, right?
[00:24:16] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:24:16] Speaker B: I lost a lot of my childhood innocence, and I think now, as I am stepping into my young adulthood, I am trying to get that back. But I think it's harder because when you're a young adult, you have so many expectations. It's kind of like a double edged sword. Like, I can help others, but I also have to now teach myself to take care of myself.
[00:24:41] Speaker C: Cassandra, what about you? Do you feel like there are some things that you feel like you've lost?
[00:24:47] Speaker D: I was pretty blessed to have a somewhat air quote, normal childhood. I think my parents did strive to accomplish that as much as possible because I think they could tell that my sister and I were very caught up with, I want the westernized culture. I want to fit in because you grow up and you're like, I don't really fit in. Right. Especially in the area that I moved into, we were the minority.
It was predominantly a white population when we first moved here, so we knew that we were the minority even though we were so young. So I think my parents did try to conform to the western culture as much as possible. But I feel like I did miss out on spending quality time with my parents because they were so busy working.
Either one or both of them had two jobs, mostly when I was growing up. And my grandma raised my sister and I, for the most part, she would be at home cooking as breakfast, lunch, dinner, which I'm super grateful for. But I think now that I look back, I did miss that nurturing that was needed as a kid that can only really come from your parents. And I think not having that nurturing aspect in my childhood kind of set me up to be certain ways or have certain aspects of my mental health being a bit different. So if anything, I definitely missed out on having that one on one bonding time with both or either one of my.
[00:26:35] Speaker C: And one last question for you both, and we'll start with you, Cassandra. What would you say to listeners who might be feeling the same things that you feel as the eldest child and are looking for guidance or support?
[00:26:49] Speaker D: What I'd say to them is you're strong, you're resilient, and you're living in a role that not everyone gets to live in. And it's a once in a lifetime opportunity to say that you are the eldest child of immigrant parents and you're not alone in how you feel. And how you feel isn't made up. It's completely valid. And I think Rome and I are perfect examples to show that what you feel is probably in the majority of what eldest children feel.
But if they're looking for guidance, what has personally helped me has been going to therapy and to sit with my emotions and my thoughts a bit more. And my therapist has been able to, I guess, shed light on the fact that, hey, the way you grew up actually impacts the way you are. And that's okay. We can work through it. Right. So the reason why I'm so aware of intergenerational trauma and the need for nurturing from my parents, all of that came from introspective thinking and introspective awareness and with the help of my therapist. So I think that's definitely one thing I would say.
And secondly, what has also helped me has been opening up to my parents and having them kind of open up to me as well about our mutual struggles, because to them, I think sometimes they see us as very privileged and lucky, and we absolutely are.
But I think having them understand that we deal with a whole nother set of problems that's different from their generation, and us understanding that their generational problems is completely different from ours and kind of meeting in the middle has definitely helped with my relationship with my parents and helped me cope with some of the things that has been passed down to me.
[00:28:53] Speaker C: Rome, let's finish with you. Is there anything that you'd like to say to people who are in the same position?
[00:28:59] Speaker B: Yeah, I would kind of agree with Cassandra. I think seeking therapy for your mental health is very important.
And then another thing I would add is seeking community, seeking people who have the same ethnicity as you. I think, for me, personally, has really helped me. I recently joined Pinoys on Parliament, which is the largest and first youth conference focused on Filipino Canadians across Canada. And I don't want to say, like, it saved my life, because I think that's a little dramatic, but it definitely brought me so much joy, so much joy to see so many faces like mine and so many people who understand what it's like to grow up Filipino in Canada and to also just see so many Filipinos who have single moms, because I feel like I didn't see that as much growing up. And to see that now in this sea of people, this plethora of people that I didn't know existed has really healed a piece of my heart that I thought would never get healed. So I'm thankful for them, and I'm just thankful for filipino people in general because I love them and they love me.
[00:30:34] Speaker C: It seems.
[00:30:45] Speaker A: That was Rome. Lim and Cassandra go, sharing their experiences as the eldest children of immigrant prints. This project is made possible with the Community podcast initiative and powered by Shaw. Special thanks to associate producer Gabrielle Piska. You can learn more about the Community podcast initiative at thepodcastudio, CA.
