Culture Clash: Growing up highly hyphenated

One thing that has persisted in my life was the constant pressure to be "good". A good daughter. A good student. Cultural expectations that only added to the societal expectations of myself. I've always felt the heavy burden to be good at everything.

When my father and his family came to Canada, they came here to have a good life. But no one tells you how hard that is. For a lot of people, including my father, there was no generational wealth (among other things) to fall back on to allow easier access to post-secondary education. He did not get a chance to even complete secondary school. Neither of my parents did.

The pressure fell on me to achieve things that my parents couldn't do. This pressure lead me to be extremely hard on myself. I grew up in a low-income household and my mom had me at a younger age. People assumed that I would have a child before graduating high school just because my mother did as if teen pregnancy was contagious. I remember a family "friend", laughing to my relative about how he was surprised I was in school and not pregnant by now. Statements like these aren't just harmful, they're discouraging. There was a time when I gave in to those assumptions. I believed that because people saw me as someone who wouldn't achieve anything, maybe I really couldn't. Maybe they were right. Maybe I was just a nobody, stuck in the cycle of poverty. Those thoughts crossed my mind often and even though I always tried to ignore those words, they were always at the back of my head, making me second guess myself constantly.

On one end, I had the pressure to be a good student and a good daughter. I couldn't afford to mess up. Failure just wasn't an option. I felt that it would be disgraceful to fail my parents. They wanted the best for me, how could I disappoint them? The shame and the guilt of not meeting their expectations made me even harder on myself. I knew I was privileged to be born here and have opportunities my father didn't have so I didn't want to mess that up. My mental health was deteriorating. I started experiencing anxiety at 13 years old and was diagnosed with anxiety at 14. I was referred to a doctor to begin Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). I never went. In Caribbean culture, mental health isn't something discussed very often and when it is, it isn't discussed in a positive way. I saw first hand how those with mental health issues were treated and spoken about. They were dismissed as crazy. It was passed off and regarded as a "white people thing". There just weren't any healthy discussions about mental health. That is why when I realized I had anxiety, I brushed it off too. I didn't want to be "crazy". I didn't want others to look at me differently or assume that I was like this because of my "white side". I had two conflicting ideologies within myself. A cultural aspect telling me that what I was experiencing was real, and another telling me that it was and that it was okay.

When you have immigrant parents, you strive to do things for them. You want to be good. You want to meet their expectations for yourself. But what do you do when what you want differs from what they expect from you? You feel the need to appease them and make them proud at the expense of your happiness. We don't talk about that often. The guilt for wanting to branch out and be your own person while simultaneously wanting to please our parents. It's not an easy task. It took me a long time to accept myself and my failures. The idea my parents had of me didn't fit who I wanted to be. I was so occupied with pleasing my parents and trying to prove the world wrong that I forgot who mattered the most - myself. It's important to learn to give yourself permission to do things. Give yourself permission to fail. Give yourself permission to figure out who you are without interference from your family. Give yourself permission to make decisions that are good for yourself.

Being the "first" is hard. While it is a privilege to be able to do things our parents couldn't do, it can also feel like a burden. So many eyes are on you to succeed that you feel any mistake, no matter how minor, will disappoint the people you love. In a way, the pressure to be a good daughter and a good student had helped me in certain aspects. It gave me the push I needed when I doubted myself. It allowed me to strive to work harder and make my parents proud. But it was also harmful. I took failure as something to be ashamed of, rather than a learning experience. I learned that striving to be the perfect daughter or student is impossible. It's difficult to navigate life with different cultural expectations intersecting in your mind but we need to allow ourselves to grow, to fail, and to find ourselves.

Self-acceptance and self-love are vital in navigating these emotions. I wish I would have learned to love my self-identity sooner, but I'm grateful I learned how.