Summer Intern Reflection: Van Pham

Summer Intern Reflections: Van Pham

Near the end of the NAAPIMHA youth program I facilitated this summer, I asked each participant to share an item of importance to them. One by one, the youth held up jewelry passed down from family members, and charms and keepsakes tied back to their culture. Each item carried a story. When it was my turn, I showed Daisy, the teddy bear my late grandmother had given me when I was a baby. To most people, Daisy looks like a stitched-up toy worn down after 23 years of existence. To me, she is so much more. She is a piece of my grandmother’s love, softness, and quiet strength that I still hold closely to me. That simple act of sharing reminded me that culture is not always carried forward loudly or visibly. It is passed down quietly through the objects we keep, the food we eat, the rituals we honor, and the people who shaped us.

As I reflect on my time with NAAPIMHA and my own journey with mental health, I always return to high school. There were endless nights I cried quietly to myself, knowing I needed help, wanting to walk over to my parents’ room just to feel the comfort of a hug, but too afraid to trouble them. In our world, mental health is not a conversation. There is no therapy in our vocabulary. It is not a word we use. As Asian Americans, we are taught to walk silently, cry silently, and to be resilient in silence. We are told to embody strength, to achieve without complaint, to be the “model minority.”

And yet, when I finally broke through my own fear and went to my mom, she did not turn me away. She was open, understanding, and loving. She drove me to therapy every week from that point on. In that moment, I saw in her the same kind of care that had been passed down through generations. Care that may not have been spoken in words, but was alive in every small act of service. It lived in bowls of home-cooked meals placed in front of me every day, even when my mom was exhausted. It was present in the big family celebrations that filled the house with boisterous laughter. It echoed in Đám Giỗ (death anniversary) gatherings where we honored relatives I had never met but who built this family foundation long before me.

My family, like so many Vietnamese and other AANHPI refugees, carried strength in silence. Their sacrifices were enormous, yet their love showed up in quiet and steady ways. When I work with youth today, I often find myself mourning for my own family members as children. I think about their pain, their loss of what used to be home, their uprootedness, and their resilience that they were forced to build. They did not have the luxury of focusing on their mental health because survival always came first. I see the unhealed trauma within the AANHPI community that prevents them from acknowledging mental health, and part of my mission is to make their lived experiences lead to change. To ensure that their sacrifices are remembered not only through survival, but also through healing.

This summer at NAAPIMHA gave me the opportunity to step more fully into that mission. I learned that conversations about mental health are never one-size-fits-all. They are nuanced, shaped by culture, migration, stigma, and also by love. Working alongside a team equally committed to advancing mental health for AANHPI communities allowed me to see how essential it is to approach this work with cultural humility. It is not enough to simply say we value mental health. We have to recognize that each community has its own ways of surviving, coping, and healing, and that culturally relevant approaches are the only way forward.

The youth I worked with taught me this too. Their stories and their willingness to share reminded me that healing can begin in small, brave acts of honesty. For some, it was simply showing an item and naming the family member who once owned it. For others, it was speaking about cultural values that anchored them to their identity. Their authenticity and commitment to engaging in meaningful, difficult conversations inspired me, especially as they chose to do this during their summer break.

As I leave my internship with NAAPIMHA and enter my final semester of graduate school, I find myself asking new questions. What is my motivation? What truly drives me forward? This summer has instilled in me that my body, my mind, and my spirit are not just my own. They belong to my family and my ancestors. The chance I have to exist loudly comes from the silent resilience of my family and of other minoritized communities who fought hard for the rights I now hold as an Asian woman in the United States. I want to carry them with me in every step of my career as a source of strength. Their resilience is my inheritance, and I want to use it to uplift minoritized communities who have been told to bear pain and loss without disruption.

Our stories matter. Our healing matters. When I think of my grandmother’s teddy bear, my parents’ quiet sacrifices, the dedication to one another as family, the NAAPIMHA team, and the openness of the youth I worked with this summer, I am reminded that simply surviving is not the end of our story. We honor those who came before us by insisting on healing, telling our truths, using our privilege to be a voice for those unheard, and carrying forward the love that sustained them. That, for me, will always be reason enough to know that the work done in the field of mental health is worthwhile.