Rooted & Rising

This book was born from a quiet ache—a whisper inside so many of us who grew up between cultures, asking, Who am I allowed to be? For Gen Xers of East, South, Central Asian, and Pacific Islander descent raised in Western societies, the journey of becoming has often been a conflicted one. While our parents—many from the Silent Generation or early Boomers—emerged from trauma, war, colonialism, poverty, or dictatorship with survival as their north star, we were born into a world they helped build with sacrifice but often without the emotional scaffolding to thrive within it. We were not simply raised—we were conditioned, molded, and often silenced in the name of obedience, family loyalty, and cultural continuity.

Throughout this book, you will encounter reflections, personal narratives, historical insights, and workbook practices designed to help you make sense of your story and claim your voice. We’ll explore the internalized tension between collectivism and individuality, the emotional weight of being “the good child,” the psychological impact of being a perpetual outsider, and the quiet grief of dreams deferred in service of family obligation. But we will also explore joy—how it feels to come home to yourself after years of abandonment, to speak your truth without fear, to create new definitions of success rooted in emotional integrity.

To heal in this moment means more than personal reflection—it means cultural un-silencing. It means interrogating how capitalism, racism, patriarchy, and intergenerational trauma have shaped our sense of self-worth and our role in society. It means recognizing that many of us carry internalized scripts of obedience and smallness not because we lack ambition, but because we inherited beliefs that our full selves would be too much—or not enough. It means understanding that our anxiety and imposter syndrome may be less about individual weakness and more about navigating a system that was never designed for us to fully belong.