In the
past fifteen months, exploring and engaging with the Nepali-American Diaspora
Community has generated a variety of uncommon if not unprecedented roles and
responsibilities, relationships and audiences.
Concerning the cultivation of a
culturally diverse path, a few learning curve, horizon-shaping experiences
stand out:
a) Wrestling
with Natural Catastrophe – born out of the catastrophic April 2015
Earthquake ashes, friend and colleague, Dr. DK Gurung, D.C. Govt. public health
analyst and program manager, called less than twenty-four hours after the tragic
mega-tremors and traumas. He needed to
both vent and to share his crisis-inspired vision. Eventually, I helped co-found Be Well
Initiative (BWI), an advocacy-training-counseling mental health/mind-body
wellness collective and professional resource for the Nepali community in the
US,
b) Partnering
and Teaming – developing a mutually supportive yet challenging, “power of
two” partnership with DK while collaborating with and learning from a dynamic
and dedicated national team of Nepali- and Asian-American professionals, has
expanded my Cultural Diversity (CD) consciousness. Cultural sensitivity has grown through a
mind-language-spirit convergence with DK:
sharing significantly diverse yet empathically kindred perspectives,
open and honest communication, and a willingness to both trust and disagree. A Yin/Yang image of black/white sperm-like
figures flowing into a whole greater than
the sum of the parts circular unity comes to mind…a representation of our
“best of both worlds” synergy. For
example, just today, DK shared that it is an ability to grasp and articulate my
“inner emotional landscape” that is so helpful to many for whom this is foreign
territory; conversely, many times DK has pulled me back from “boldly” (or
“blindly”) stepping on a Nepali CD landmine,
c) Jumping
in Community Waters – doing focus group facilitation, both locally – the
Greater D.C. area, with community members – and in Cleveland, OH with Asian
community health workers and, later, with Bhutanese-Nepali Refugees. An interpreter was necessary for my
participation in back-and-forth communication.
In fact, during one workshop, frustration with translation slowness and
lack of participant spontaneity challenged me to mostly communicate through
exaggerated physical mime. Amazingly, we
all had a great time. I only hope the
participants took home a fraction of the memories and learning as did their
presenter, and
d) Looking
Back, Bonding in the Present, and Moving Forward – BWI and SAAN (a Nepali
Nursing Assn.) held an EQ-15 Memorial community gathering at a local school;
key agenda items included: 1) individual
sharing, especially the poignant audiotape of a woman who finally surmounted
barriers of family dishonor and personal shame, reached out for psychiatric
help, thereby stepping back from depression’s suicidal edge, 2) post-trauma
reflection and stress resilience group exercises which enabled poignant and
supportive sharing, thereby questioning the sanctity of any cultural taboo on
publicly talking about emotional vulnerability, and 3) future planning to
strengthen community mental health resource availability and
accessibility. My facilitation role and
“Stress Resilience Tips for Managing Trauma, Transition, and Everyday Stress”
led to being a Plenary Speaker at the July 2016, Annual Virginia Refugee Mental
Health Summit. (Email stressdoc@aol.com for the “inspiring” tips
and/or testimonial.)
From the Speaker Sublime to the Role Ridiculous?
Then,
recently, perhaps the biggest role stretch.
A 40-something Nepali lawyer, highly intelligent, educated, and
credentialed in Nepal, but not yet eligible to practice as an attorney in the
US, had been encouraged by DK to call me.
I had briefly met this gentleman, to be named BD, at various community
events. With his precious, ever-smiling,
non-stop English-speaking, five-year old son, we even walked and talked at the
D.C. National Zoo. Still, my role as
consultant, coach, and/or collaborator remained unclear. I didn’t hear from BD for a couple of months and
then the transformative call: could we meet for speech lessons?! Some fundamental questions kept circling this
proposed novel experiment: Why now and…why me?
BD had
recently obtained a part-time Legal Assistant position with a small Baltimore
law firm owned by an attorney from India.
(The Baltimore area has a sizeable Southeast Asian population.) The prospect of a post-Bar Exam character
interview motivated BD to reach out. He
had to improve his English pronunciation.
He admitted even his son corrects him.
The Power of Two: Reality and Illusion
For
me, one question was “why not pursue more traditional learning routes?” And the second, I know about psychotherapy,
even being a “Psychohumorist” ™…but a “speech therapist”??? With a disappointing frown, BD explained that
he had tried an ESL class that met sporadically. (I quickly recalled being thankful for hiring
a “hands on,” out-of-work computer consultant to get me started on my first
desktop.) And taking lessons from his
more fluent in English Nepali-born wife…well they do enjoy practicing together,
however, there’s a predictably thorny patch:
when the couple are talking about substantive content, like a mortgage
payment or their son’s education, and his wife shifts into correcting his pronunciation
or grammar, BD gets frustrated. For him,
the timing is wrong. One can envision
this devolving into, at best, a half full and half empty glass
situation. Supplementing couple practice
with a less emotionally involved “outsider” makes sense.
Remember,
the male ego can be a sensitive creature.
Alas, I’m thinking of a ditty written after another conflict with my ex;
I was likely still licking some wounds:
Losing It…Resting It
You
may think I’m at a loss
Not
having you as a boss.
But
when it’s just me
Not
us or you…
Please,
do not tell me what to do.
Even
when you “know what’s best”
(Though
never quite put to the test)
Let
me flounder; wait...still better
A
request: Geez, Louise…Just let it rest!
Lingering Loyalty Limbo
Enough
of my ditty-ing around…the lingering, the underlying question: why had
BD not seriously worked on his English during his almost seven years in the
States? And shortly into our initial
session, his answer touched a personal chord:
BD was expecting to go home, to
return to Nepal. He rationalized
that strengthening his English was not critical…but then his wife announced she
wanted to stay permanently in the US. (I
imagine educational opportunities for their child also influenced the family’s
decision.)
BD’s
response highlighted the state of immigrant limbo, an approach-avoidance
conflict of the heart and mind that can last more years than expected. Many discover (and not just immigrants), that
when “Pursuing the American Dream,” the path of proverbial gold or, at least,
land of opportunity, may be paved over with problematic stress – including
language barrier, legal status, educational credential, student loan, or
underemployment conglomerates, in addition to rocky loyalty limbo.
Freedom, Family, or Folly: Whose Dream Is It Anyway?
And
when family and friends back “home” still believe in the “paved with gold” US
standard, there’s even more pressure to succeed. Paradoxically, being ten thousand miles away
only intensifies the spotlight. Perhaps
there’s some guilt from feeling like you’re the one who “got away.” Or, even more stressful, is being the
explorer and “gold standard” flag bearer:
both individual and family status may be tied to how high up the social
mountain (or low in the valley) you plant the family flag. Clearly,
having to live up to the expectations of “significant others” no matter the
separation distance may tighten the stress knot.
Of
course, with continuous learning and skill-building, as well as family,
community, and/or government support, over time, it is possible to dig
transitional tunnels in those paved over barriers. (Our country is founded on such history and
tenacity.) Such focused coordination may
generate “possibility portals.” You have
gained skills and savvy for exploration and discovery that: 1) allow one (or a group) to crawl under,
climb through, or circumvent those concrete barriers, 2) build
stress-resilience along with family/community cohesion muscles facilitating intra-
and interpersonal head-heart connections, and 3) achieve new-found place,
pride, and possibility. To venture a
Declaration of Immigrant Independence, most want life, liberty, and community,
that is, the opportunity for oneself and one’s family to realize financial
stability, emotional-spiritual and career-creative expression, healthy
mind-body-social relations, along with viable and meaningful societal
integration.
Jump
In and Dance, Stress Doc…Just
Don’t Jump to Conclusions
As for
my willingness to jump in new professional waters as a speech coach…being self-employed, often not knowing when or where
I’d be working; confident of my Emotional Intelligence/Communication skills,
being currently underemployed myself, along with authoring the quote – Fireproof your life with variety!... Well, “what the hell” has been a trademark
over the course of a long and winding (from
where is the next check coming?) professional road.
And
speaking of growth opportunity, for me, working with BD on his pronunciation
and some grammar, grappling with common idioms, etc., definitely added “variety
as spice” to my life. (Btw, for those needing a reminder, I’m using idiom as “an expression that
cannot be understood from the meanings of its separate words but that has a
separate meaning of its own, as ride herd
on for ‘supervise’”; Merriam-Webster Online.)
And while I have never
been a speech tutor, I actually did take a Remedial Speech class in primary
school to erase a lisping tendency. I’m
somewhat conscious of the dance of tongue, lips, and teeth when we speak. Also,
his wife had a speech book with illustrations; reviewing helped me improve the
proper positioning of those aforementioned “dance step” components. In addition, my listening skills as a
therapist certainly comes into play when assessing diction, accent, pace, and
overall clarity.
Even my love of wordplay
was useful. When trying to say
“special,” BD was pronouncing “cial” more like the second half of “pencil” or “specil.” He was missing the “sh” sound when “cial” (or
“tial,” think “spatial” or “palatial”) was the closing suffix. I suddenly saw a playful pronunciation “pass in the impasse” for words like special, facial, glacial, etc. When he sees “cial” think “CIA…Spies, secrets, keeping quiet…Shh!” BD, an
advocate in the field of international human rights, got it…and laughed
knowingly.
Starting Over: Sensitivity, Levity, and Honesty
Clearly, when a highly
credentialed adult must “start over” …it’s often a daunting psychological
challenge feeling like a raw beginner, a “stranger in a strange land.” Language acquisition and verbal facility
interface with such self-defining issues as identity, competence, social
status, as well as educational-professional legitimacy and opportunity. No surprise that wounded pride may come into
play in such a dependent, vulnerable, and “fine line between humility and
humiliation” learning situation. Which
is why our aforementioned “CIA” moment of levity is so helpful in an arduous
educational process. As I once
penned: People are less defensive and more open to a serious message
gift-wrapped with humor.
Or they’re more willing
to honestly share the same: After
a couple of sessions, BD acknowledged that ego or pride also delayed his asking
for speech help. As he said, a dominant
cultural dictum: Never expose any weakness to the larger (Nepali) social community!
I can
relate. As echoed in several !2-Step
groups, the familiar dysfunctional family mantra: Don’t
talk, don’t trust, don’t feel! Almost
as American as, Don’t air your dirty
laundry.
Closing Summary
This
essay captures the evolution of my work to date with the Nepali-American
Diaspora Community: from helping to develop an informal mental
health/mind-body wellness organization and being part of a planning, advocacy,
and training team to engaging with various Nepali/refugee communities and
cultures. And now the emergence of a new role as speech coach with a
Nepali attorney trying to carve out his own “American Dream” path. My
latest learning-coaching encounter stands on the shoulders of my year + immersion
in cultural diversity. (Actually, about dozen years earlier I had been a
workshop leader at several Asian-American and Pacific Islander Federal Employee
Conferences. A chunk of this earlier experience and encounters, including
initially meeting DK, are embedded – some clearly, some vaguely – in my
consciousness.) Which brings me to the original intent of this two-part
essay: while working with BD, I suddenly saw many similarities between
immigration trials, tribulations, and travels as well as the mentally
meandering, manic and melancholic, mood-and-mind-challenging paths of one
struggling word artist. Having laid down a cultural-conceptual
foundation, Part II will examine the parallel crisis-laden – danger and
opportunity-filled – worlds of “The Word Artist and the Immigrant: From
Creation of a Pathway to Pathway of Creation!”
Mark
Gorkin, MSW, LICSW, "The Stress Doc" ™, a
nationally acclaimed speaker, writer, and "Psychohumorist" ™, is a
founding partner and Stress Resilience and Trauma Debriefing Consultant for the
Nepali Diaspora Behavioral Health & Wellness Initiative. A former
Stress and Violence Prevention Consultant for the US Postal Service, he has led
numerous Pre-Deployment Stress Resilience-Humor-Team Building Retreats for the
US Army. The Doc is the author of Practice Safe Stress, The Four
Faces of Anger, and Preserving Human Touch in a High Tech World.
Mark’s award-winning, USA Today Online "HotSite" – www.stressdoc.com –
was called a "workplace resource" by National Public Radio (NPR).
For more info, email: stressdoc@aol.com.
