Permission to Come Home Quotes

“Despite my pride for my culture and heritage, it is not my home. It is a place I long for and grieve over in my heart, but it is not a home that knows me with intimacy... What has become apparent to me is that home is a space that we must cultivate ourselves, deliberately and intentionally. It is a space we must co-create with those we love and bring into existence wherever we are.”
― Jenny Wang, Permission to Come Home: Reclaiming Mental Health as Asian Americans

“When someone becomes angry with you, it is not your job to make them feel better; it is their job to learn skills to hold space for that anger and make themselves feel better. It is also their responsibility to understand their anger and, if necessary, communicate with you about how you might have contributed to that emotion within them. The problem is that so many of us have been on the receiving end of trouble from people who are totally clueless about how to take ownership over their own emotions. And what happens when people don't know how to own and manage their emotions? They project their negative emotions on us and make us believe that we caused the negative emotion. They make us believe that their negative emotions are our fault and problem to fix.”
― Jenny Wang, Permission to Come Home: Reclaiming Mental Health as Asian Americans

“Fear-based motivation is like fossil fuels -- they get the engine running, but they burn dirty.”
― Jenny Wang, Permission to Come Home: Reclaiming Mental Health as Asian Americans

“This rigid mindset, that success is narrowly defined by a certain income, position, or profession, means that anything short of that strict standard is viewed as failure. What an exhausting way to live.”
― Jenny Wang, Permission to Come Home: Reclaiming Mental Health as Asian Americans

“When we lack awareness, we react out of impulse or instinct to triggers and situations, instead of responding with intention. We replay old dynamics and maintain patterns of living that keep us stuck.”
― Jenny Wang, Permission to Come Home: Reclaiming Mental Health as Asian Americans

“Because this work of inner healing, relational reconciliation, and identity integration has the power to transform generations after us. I cannot even begin to imagine what is possible if we all committed to healing and prioritizing our mental health as a community.”
― Jenny Wang, Permission to Come Home: Reclaiming Mental Health as Asian Americans

“In their book, Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation, professors David L. Eng and Shinhee Han explore the topic of racial melancholia, which they describe as a mourning without end for Asian Americans, a mourning for all of the parts of ourselves that cannot name the unknowable losses we experience as children of immigrants, as adoptees, as members of diasporas. The authors explore the cost of assimilation to and mimicry of white culture as a search for belonging, and the mourning that follows when we may realize that despite our best efforts, we are still never fully accepted. The heartbreaking part of this story is that in this mimicry of whiteness, we also sacrifice much of our own identity and histories in the process. What results is a dissociation and disconnection of the self in order to survive racism and xenophobia. In many immigrant households, parents chose not to speak in their native languages at home so as to ensure that their children learned fluent English”
― Jenny Wang, Permission to Come Home: Reclaiming Mental Health as Asian Americans

“We can have safety, belonging, and authenticity, but the experience of being received and held with compassion and care is almost magical.”
― Jenny Wang, Permission to Come Home: Reclaiming Mental Health as Asian Americans

“Although the sting of failure may rattle you and cause you to doubt yourself temporarily, it is the way you brush yourself off and decide to still show up and try that really determines whether you have failed or not.”
― Jenny Wang, Permission to Come Home: Reclaiming Mental Health as Asian Americans

“Mental Health and Asian-Serving Organizations AAPI Women Lead: imreadymovement.org American Psychological Association: apa.org Asian American Health Initiative: aahiinfo.org Asian American Psychological Association: aapaonline.org Asian American Suicide Prevention and Education: aaspe.net Asian Mental Health Collective: asianmhc.org Asian Mental Health Project: asianmentalhealthproject.com Division 45: Society for the Psychological Study of Culture, Ethnicity, and Race: division45.org Filipino Mental Health Initiative—San Mateo County: fmhi-smc.org Mental Health America: mhanational.org The Mental Health Coalition: thementalhealthcoalition.org National Alliance on Mental Illness: nami.org National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance: nqapia.org Red Canary Song: redcanarysong.net South Asian Mental Health Initiative and Network: samhin.org The Trevor Project: thetrevorproject.org Therapist Directories”
― Jenny Wang, Permission to Come Home: Reclaiming Mental Health as Asian Americans

“you deserve to live a life beyond your wildest dreams. All you need to do is to choose to step off the well-marked path.”
― Jenny Wang, Permission to Come Home: Reclaiming Mental Health as Asian Americans

“Home in a self that is more whole and integrated with the freedom to acknowledge all your hurtful experiences, without the fear that you will be destroyed by them. Home in relationships where you remain a part of the equation, able to vocalize your needs, wants, and frustrations without the risk of abandonment or being cut off. Home within your culture for all those parts that you choose to keep and all the parts that you choose to leave behind without the fear of bringing shame or disrespect to your family or community. Home even within the harsh and harmful structures that you may face every day in public, at work, or even within your families without fear that these structures will diminish your value or dignity. Home in yourself, when you witness the injustice in these structures and can, perhaps, combat them and build a world that is more equitable and just for future generations.”
― Jenny Wang, Permission to Come Home: Reclaiming Mental Health as Asian Americans

“When you get in touch with your own pain and hurt, it increases your capacity to see the pain and hurt of others—even in a person who has hurt you.”
― Jenny Wang, Permission to Come Home: Reclaiming Mental Health as Asian Americans

“What if our community invested in the individual transformation that could give way to communal and collective healing?”
― Jenny Wang, Permission to Come Home: Reclaiming Mental Health as Asian Americans