Anyone else feel immigration is often the result of personal dysfunction?
I am a TCK and in my mid-thirties. I've been doing a whole lot of healing lately through yoga, journaling, self-guided therapy books (tried real therapy for years, but this is honestly better for me), and psychedelics. I am infinitely grateful for having had the time and space to do all this healing. However, the more I tackle big stuff, the more "other" stuff comes in.
For example, I was reflecting today that I wish my parents had never emigrated from our country of origin. While there is a dictatorship there, it is very possible to live in an apolitical bubble, to live very well, and we would have since my parents had their own thriving business (which they gave up to be lower middle class).
They moved sight unseen to not one but TWO countries with completely different languages and cultures in different parts of the world. This was extremely destabilizing as a kid... They never, ever made an effort to integrate and never tapped into any sort of ethnic community either, so it's been nearly 30 years of isolation for them.
When we reconnect with family back home, either visiting or them visiting us, their family peers (siblings, cousins, etc.) are much more sophisticated and refined because they have had the benefits of more regulated nervous systems, friendships, family support, and pursuit of hobbies, literature, fun, etc., which my parents really haven't had. They've just been living lives of struggle, and it's almost as if their development stopped when they immigrated...
As a tween and teen, and even in my early twenties, I was very fortunate to be protected from their choices because I was able to make friends easily and to always have a social circle of support even when I felt like a total misfit. But slowly as friends settled down into their own lives in mid- to later-20s, I began to feel this need to tap into a network of family and community, and I simply have none...
Not religious, not ethnic, not anything.
I know hypothetically I can build one, but when I think about how we already had all of this and more back home, it's hard to understand anything other than genuine dysfunction and personality issues motivating my parents to move with so little planning, so little knowledge of the cultures they were joining, etc.. In fact, it's sort of gross that they moved to these countries and then realized they held scorn for the host cultures and didn't want to integrate. And it's like, who forced you to come? And now that you're here, why not try? Of course, it's too late now.
Unfortunately, they also divorced because they had extremely poor communication skills and they both have very poor "old age readiness" (mom's house is falling apart, doesn't have any retirement savings, and dad is more than half a million in debt on his house despite having serious chronic health issues--so he cannot really retire). So this is a pressure I feel when I think about my finances. Thinking of not wanting to see my parents work themselves into the grave, and the shame I feel for not being financially stable enough to help them retire.
They've been horrible with money and made horrible financial decisions and were chronically verbally and emotionally abusive growing up. I can admit this while also realizing that they tried their best and that I truly love them and want to honor them the best I can (thank you, magic mushrooms for allowing me to see these things can both be true!), so this is not about complaining at all... It is just the reality.
I think my parents emigrated from their country because in the 90s it was all the rage for people to move abroad or to move to the West, it was glorified as the ticket to a golden life. I wonder if they did it for appearances and to look like they were getting ahead somewhow, but they had no real plan. And lording the fact that they moved abroad over their relatively poorer family back home was good enough I guess?
Meanwhile, they created lives of even greater dysfunction than they had at home.
I think about how I don't have any family here despite both my parents coming from big families and siblings with kids (none live here). I think about how all of their decisions have been almost laughably stupid... I think about how there is zero buffer between me and their stupidity, and how much easier it gets when once every three years one of their signficantly healthier siblings visits and can act as a buffer of reason.
I am still healing, and I know a lot of what creates these feelings is fear. But I see a lot of narcissistic people who grab their kids and pull them out of a natural environment full of family, community, cultural, and even ethnic supports (literally the joy of growing up around people who LOOK like you), because they claim they're giving something better to their kids, but it's really them trying to heal what is by comparison some insignificant trauma by putting the kid through something a million times worse.
For example, I know a lady who moved out of her SE Asian country to a southern European one because she says her country is too colourist and she is a dark-skinned Asian, so she doesn't want her kids to grow up experiencing her trauma. And that kind of thing just breaks my heart because what she's taking from them is infinitely worse... It's something she can't even imagine because when she was developing as a person, she had it.