The stories we tell ourselves

The stories we tell ourselves about our own lives can calm and mask, or they can go deep and enlighten. Here’s the short and sweet version of mine:

I am a first-generation immigrant. I studied hard, stayed out of trouble, and did well in school. Then, I found my passion as a financial planner and started my own business.

Here’s a different version:

My family immigrated from Vietnam to the U.S., and I was born a year later as the first U.S. citizen in my family. I avoided the direct trauma of a war, but the effects followed my family to the U.S. We were sponsored by my grandfather’s brother. My family received public assistance for food and medical care, and extended family subsidized our housing.

We settled in a predominantly Jewish and Italian-American neighborhood. Due to the healthy local tax base based on generational wealth, based on land theft and racist exclusionary policies, I attended well-funded public schools. I was “quiet” in school, and modifying my behavior based on others’ reactions was a special talent of mine, and perfected at home. Teachers saw me as shy, obedient, and smart — an image was aided by modern stereotypes of Asian-Americans.

I learned from an early age to lie about anything that would signal my family’s lack of financial wealth. I knew as a child that being poor in America was shameful.

I tested well, and didn’t have anything to do after school most days except study. I attended a college in the “Ivy League” with a healthy endowment built on theft of land and theft of labor, and received a full scholarship. I never talked about not being able to afford things, and avoided the subject of money with my peers even though it was constantly on my mind. I received a fellowship for Teachers of Color to attend graduate school, and started my teaching career as a special educator during the fall immediately after I graduated. The institutional, interpersonal, and internalized racism, which affected my students of color regularly, was a punch in the face. I ran up against systemic barriers, both inside and outside of school, to serving my students to the level they deserved. So I left.

When I made a career change to financial planning, I benefited from local networks of financial planners in my city. This was how I got my first job as a financial planner. Years of good health, no family emergencies, and a lifetime of privileges associated with a model minority myth bestowed upon Asians and Asian-Americans that guided me toward educational and professional “success,” allowed me to save up a financial cushion and start my own business.

The stories we tell ourselves shape how we make sense of the world. 

Stories focus us on what we choose to notice. They also inform how we treat others.

As I learn and live, I know that my story will continue to deepen and evolve. 

We must keep pushing ourselves to face the full context our stories — and reclaim the details we leave out when we simplify them.