Growing up in a Hmong culture, I witnessed first hand the misunderstanding and stigma of autism and developmental delay in children within the Hmong culture. My brother is two years younger than me and is on the autistic spectrum. I remember when we were young children, he would steal my barbie shoes and line them all up. He did the same with his hot wheel cars and spaced them out with almost perfect equal distance between them all. I remember going to drop him off with a psychologist and asking my parents why I didn’t get to go with him and play with all those toys. I remember my mother saying that although my brother was five years old, his brain was only functioning at a three and half year old. I also remember hearing my aunts, uncles, great aunts, great uncles, grandma and grandpa talking about how odd my brother’s behavior was and that my parents needed to consult a Shaman to “fix” my brother. It is this first hand experience of seeing my mother, a Hmong woman, endure and excel with my brother’s mental development and condition that has made me wish to pursue a career in therapy and advocacy for Hmong women in receiving and understanding mental health. Mothers with autistic children have to continuously be their children’s advocate in school and in life. Hmong mothers especially have a difficult time handling this role within the Hmong culture. Children who are autistic are ostracized by the community. Within the community, autism is not well understood in the culture. Many think that it is contagious and their children can catch it. Others think that is it karma from a past life and the child deserves to be that way. Hmong mothers feel great external pressure from their family and peers which addon to the pressures they already face to be good mothers and wives. Being Hmong, my understanding of the culture and my personal experience has led me to aspire to become a psychologist and incorporate culture into treatment. It is impossible cannot take a person out of their culture. I want to focus on Hmong women and how they view their culture and how it has impacted and shaped who they are today and the trauma and depression they’ve suffered. I want to make a difference in all of these experiences I have encountered in my life. I want to work with children and be their introduction to mental health. I want to create a safe space for them to explore and learn the importance of mental health and how to best take care of their mental health, something they'll do all their life. I want to work with autistic children and their parents to advocate for their children and provide them with the support and services they need. I want to work with my Hmong community and advocate for culturally competent and integrated treatment not just for the Hmong community but for other minorities as well. We live in such a vast world that often the smallest things are forgotten about. But it is in these small things that the most difference can be made. I want to make a difference in the places I deserved better, in the places my family, my friends, my community deserved better. With the higher education I am pursuing right now, I know that I can make that difference in the future. The work I do will make all the difference.

Growing up in a Hmong culture, I witnessed first hand the misunderstanding and stigma of autism and developmental delay in children within the Hmong culture. My brother is two years younger than me and is on the autistic spectrum. I remember when we were young children, he would steal my barbie shoes and line them all up. He did the same with his hot wheel cars and spaced them out with almost perfect equal distance between them all. I remember going to drop him off with a psychologist and asking my parents why I didn’t get to go with him and play with all those toys. I remember my mother saying that although my brother was five years old, his brain was only functioning at a three and half year old. I also remember hearing my aunts, uncles, great aunts, great uncles, grandma and grandpa talking about how odd my brother’s behavior was and that my parents needed to consult a Shaman to “fix” my brother. It is this first hand experience of seeing my mother, a Hmong woman, endure and excel with my brother’s mental development and condition that has made me wish to pursue a career in therapy and advocacy for Hmong women in receiving and understanding mental health. Mothers with autistic children have to continuously be their children’s advocate in school and in life. Hmong mothers especially have a difficult time handling this role within the Hmong culture. Children who are autistic are ostracized by the community. Within the community, autism is not well understood in the culture. Many think that it is contagious and their children can catch it. Others think that is it karma from a past life and the child deserves to be that way. Hmong mothers feel great external pressure from their family and peers which addon to the pressures they already face to be good mothers and wives. Being Hmong, my understanding of the culture and my personal experience has led me to aspire to become a psychologist and incorporate culture into treatment. It is impossible cannot take a person out of their culture. I want to focus on Hmong women and how they view their culture and how it has impacted and shaped who they are today and the trauma and depression they’ve suffered. I want to make a difference in all of these experiences I have encountered in my life. I want to work with children and be their introduction to mental health. I want to create a safe space for them to explore and learn the importance of mental health and how to best take care of their mental health, something they'll do all their life. I want to work with autistic children and their parents to advocate for their children and provide them with the support and services they need. I want to work with my Hmong community and advocate for culturally competent and integrated treatment not just for the Hmong community but for other minorities as well. We live in such a vast world that often the smallest things are forgotten about. But it is in these small things that the most difference can be made. I want to make a difference in the places I deserved better, in the places my family, my friends, my community deserved better. With the higher education I am pursuing right now, I know that I can make that difference in the future. The work I do will make all the difference.

Growing up in a Hmong culture, I witnessed first hand the misunderstanding and stigma of autism and developmental delay in children within the Hmong culture. My brother is two years younger than me and is on the autistic spectrum. I remember when we were young children, he would steal my barbie shoes and line them all up. He did the same with his hot wheel cars and spaced them out with almost perfect equal distance between them all. I remember going to drop him off with a psychologist and asking my parents why I didn’t get to go with him and play with all those toys. I remember my mother saying that although my brother was five years old, his brain was only functioning at a three and half year old. I also remember hearing my aunts, uncles, great aunts, great uncles, grandma and grandpa talking about how odd my brother’s behavior was and that my parents needed to consult a Shaman to “fix” my brother. It is this first hand experience of seeing my mother, a Hmong woman, endure and excel with my brother’s mental development and condition that has made me wish to pursue a career in therapy and advocacy for Hmong women in receiving and understanding mental health. Mothers with autistic children have to continuously be their children’s advocate in school and in life. Hmong mothers especially have a difficult time handling this role within the Hmong culture. Children who are autistic are ostracized by the community. Within the community, autism is not well understood in the culture. Many think that it is contagious and their children can catch it. Others think that is it karma from a past life and the child deserves to be that way. Hmong mothers feel great external pressure from their family and peers which addon to the pressures they already face to be good mothers and wives. Being Hmong, my understanding of the culture and my personal experience has led me to aspire to become a psychologist and incorporate culture into treatment. It is impossible cannot take a person out of their culture. I want to focus on Hmong women and how they view their culture and how it has impacted and shaped who they are today and the trauma and depression they’ve suffered. I want to make a difference in all of these experiences I have encountered in my life. I want to work with children and be their introduction to mental health. I want to create a safe space for them to explore and learn the importance of mental health and how to best take care of their mental health, something they'll do all their life. I want to work with autistic children and their parents to advocate for their children and provide them with the support and services they need. I want to work with my Hmong community and advocate for culturally competent and integrated treatment not just for the Hmong community but for other minorities as well. We live in such a vast world that often the smallest things are forgotten about. But it is in these small things that the most difference can be made. I want to make a difference in the places I deserved better, in the places my family, my friends, my community deserved better. With the higher education I am pursuing right now, I know that I can make that difference in the future. The work I do will make all the difference.

Growing up in a Hmong culture, I witnessed first hand the misunderstanding and stigma of autism and developmental delay in children within the Hmong culture. My brother is two years younger than me and is on the autistic spectrum. I remember when we were young children, he would steal my barbie shoes and line them all up. He did the same with his hot wheel cars and spaced them out with almost perfect equal distance between them all. I remember going to drop him off with a psychologist and asking my parents why I didn’t get to go with him and play with all those toys. I remember my mother saying that although my brother was five years old, his brain was only functioning at a three and half year old. I didn’t not understand what she meant back then but taking the Developmental Psychopathology has shone light to a personal experience. I also remember hearing my aunts, uncles, great aunts, great uncles, grandma and grandpa talking about how odd my brother’s behavior was and that my parents needed to consult a Shaman to “fix” my brother. It is this first hand experience of seeing my mother, a Hmong woman, endure and excel with my brother’s mental development and condition that has made me wish to pursue a career in therapy and advocacy for Hmong women in receiving and understanding mental health. Mothers with autistic children have to continuously be their children’s advocate in school and in life. Hmong mothers especially have a difficult time handling this role within the Hmong culture. Children who are autistic are ostracized by the community. Within the community, autism is not well understood in the culture. Many think that it is contagious and their children can catch it. Others think that is it karma from a past life and the child deserves to be that way. Hmong mothers feel great external pressure from their family and peers which addon to the pressures they already face to be good mothers and wives. Being Hmong, my understanding of the culture and my personal experience has led me to aspire to become a psychologist and incorporate culture into treatment. It's impossible cannot take a person out of their culture. I want to focus on Hmong women and how they view their culture and how it has impacted and shaped who they are today and the trauma and depression they’ve suffered. I want to make a difference in all of these experiences I have encountered in my life. I want to work with children and be their introduction to mental health. I want to create a safe space for them to explore and learn the importance of mental health and how to best take care of their mental health, something they'll do all their life. I want to work with autistic children and their parents to advocate for their children and provide them with the support and services they need. I want to work with my Hmong community and advocate for culturally competent and integrated treatment not just for the Hmong community but for other minorities as well. We live in such a vast world that often the smallest things are forgotten about. But it's in these small things that the most difference can be made. I want to make a difference in the places I deserved better, in the places my family, my friends, my community deserved better. With the higher education I am pursuing right now, I know that I can make that difference in the future. The work I do will make all the difference.

I am Hmong. To most people that may not mean much but it is important to me as it defines a lot of who I am as a person. Being Hmong means believing in ancestral worship, spirits and souls. It means being filial, respectful of elders and strong family bonds. It also means having perseverance, courage, integrity and hope. These are among many characteristics that I believe is necessary in treating mental illness, to provide healing therapy with realistic compassion. Specifically, I want focus on the trauma suffered by Hmong women that lead to severe mental health illnesses and their resilience in remaining a great Hmong woman despite their mental illnesses. Many are depressed for many different reasons. One reason is the generational trauma that has been passed down. Many of the elder generation have fled from country to country, arriving with only the things they can carry. Being in a new environment and having to learn a new culture each time can cause some sort of trauma that the older generation does not know how to process. They simply continued on, trying to adapt and assimilate with their very lives on the line. Carrying around that kind of intense trauma in a way where it place stress and pressure on your body and your mind is not healthy. I want to offer another path to help alleviate that trauma that integrate culture into the treatment. Apart of that is understanding the history of the culture. Despite all the research I’ve done on the Hmong people on the internet, none of it compares to what I learn from speaking with my elders. They left behind dead family members without a proper burial. They’ve had babies die all while fleeing from a country that persecuted them. I want to focus specifically on the trauma of Hmong women in a heavy patriarchy. In the Hmong culture, Hmong women suffer a lot of stressors and trauma. All important events in their lives are decided by the men in their family. Hmong women are told directly and indirectly that their worth lies in being a good daughter, a good wife, and a good mother. They must know how to cook and sew to be able to manage their own household once they are married. They must stay chaste so that their husband will pay a good amount of money once they are married. They must obey their mother and, more importantly, their fathers and husbands. I want to be a woman these women can rely on to understand them and guide them through their healing journey. I am pursuing my doctorate in Clinical Psychology to become a resource to my community and a refuge to the women who have been belittled and berated so that they may blossom and bloom instead.

One experience that I vividly recall that began my interest in mental health occurred in the 7th grade. When I was in 7th grade, I was put into a group of kids who were meant to learn two years of math in one year. My classmates and I were all bussed over to another elementary school to take the class. However, one day we didn’t get on the bus. My school counselor and principal brought us to the library instead and informed us that a boy at the other school had died. They asked us to share about him. But none of us knew him. He wasn’t even in our math class. I barely recalled that he was a friend with our other classmates at that elementary school. In fact, I didn’t even know he died until they had informed me. My peers and I had no idea what depression was or mental health in general. I want mental health to become normalized in a way that children understand the need for it and they can ask for help. Additionally, when they receive it, they aren’t confused by it. After all that I learned, I realized there was nothing wrong with me. I did not have a strong connection with the boy so I wasn’t sad. There was nothing inherently dysfunctional in me that prevented me from mourning a boy I barely knew. I was confused back then. I didn’t know adults did this type of ‘thing.’ I didn’t understand why I would be sad about a boy I hardly knew dying. I certainly didn’t understand that they were trying to conduct some form of grief counseling and seeing how the news affected my peers and I, and if we needed further services. At the time, I didn’t have the knowledge to correctly label what the school counselor did by bringing us there and having us talk about the boy and create cards. Now that I’m older and I have consumed so much knowledge, I am confused why I didn’t know. I was 13 and had no idea what my school counselor really did as her job. I had no concept of mental health nor was I sad for the boy. I felt sadness that he died simply because he was young and a life lost, but not the personal grief that one comes to know when a loved one dies. I left that day wondering if there was something wrong with me. Was I supposed to be sad? Was I supposed to be crying for him? From that moment forward, I began to take more interest in what made people act and behave the way they did and feel the way they felt. Why wasn’t I sad for the boy? What about me or in me determined how I felt and why I felt? Thus began my journey towards psychology. First, I found zodiac signs. For a long period of time, I was obsessed with zodiac signs. Prior to this incident in 6th grade, I wrote a 12-page paper on the Chinese Zodiac. I felt extremely connected with my Chinese Zodiac, the Horse. It described me almost to the T. For the longest time, it was how I described myself in my head. After the incident, I stumbled upon an Instagram account about Western Zodiacs. I spent my free time consuming all the content and information about it that I could find. I first devoured my personal sign, then the Water signs, then each and every single one of the other 11 signs. I even delved into the sun, moon and rising signs and the houses. I was ravenous for any and all information. I wanted an understanding as to why people acted the way they did. Though there lacked any empirical data that zodiac signs were accurate and true, I was so intrigued. It was new, exciting, and offered an explanation to my question. And just like I found the Western Zodiac signs, I stumbled upon an Instagram account with psychology facts. Thus began my new obsession. After weeks of reading accounts related to psychology and watching the Youtube videos by Psych2Go, I realized I loved it. I remember going to my optometrist and telling her confidently that I was going to study psychology in between reading letters. And study psychology I did. I never waived in high school. I graduated in 2020 with a high school diploma and three Associate degrees in Communications, Inter-Displicany Studies, Sociology and Psychology. Then two years later in June 2022, I completed my Bachelor’s in Psychological Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. Among the many classes I had to take to receive my degree, two courses really stuck out to me. The first was called Developmental Psychopathology in which the class explored how psychopathology developed and presented in children. The one key thing I took from that class was “prevention is the best policy” as my professor said. This class made me realize how often children’s mental health is overlooked and continues throughout adolescence and only becomes serious to others in adulthood. Growing up in a Hmong culture, I witnessed first hand the misunderstanding and stigma of autism and developmental delay in children within the Hmong culture. My brother is two years younger than me and is on the autistic spectrum. I remember when we were young children, he would steal my barbie shoes and line them all up. He did the same with his hot wheel cars and spaced them out with almost perfect equal distance between them all. I remember going to drop him off with a psychologist and asking my parents why I didn’t get to go with him and play with all those toys. I remember my mother saying that although my brother was five years old, his brain was only functioning at a three and half year old. I didn’t not understand what she meant back then but taking the Developmental Psychopathology has shone light to a personal experience. I also remember hearing my aunts, uncles, great aunts, great uncles, grandma and grandpa talking about how odd my brother’s behavior was and that my parents needed to consult a Shaman to “fix” my brother. It is this first hand experience of seeing my mother, a Hmong woman, endure and excel with my brother’s mental development and condition that has made me wish to pursue a career in therapy and advocacy for Hmong women in receiving and understanding mental health. Mothers with autistic children have to continuously be their children’s advocate in school and in life. Hmong mothers especially have a difficult time handling this role within the Hmong culture. Children who are autistic are ostracized by the community. Within the community, autism is not well understood in the culture. Many think that it is contagious and their children can catch it. Others think that is it karma from a past life and the child deserves to be that way. Hmong mothers feel great external pressure from their family and peers which addon to the pressures they already face to be good mothers and wives. The second class was Cultural Psychology. In this class, I learned that mental illnesses in one culture are not the same in another culture. It helped me realize how much a culture impacted not just societal norms but also illness and particularly mental health. It shapes what we find normal and what we find strange and alarming. Learning about cultural psychology made me look differently at the relationship my own culture has with mental health. While this was simply an introductory class, I realized that I want to take this perspective even further in treatment. Being Hmong, my understanding of the culture and my personal experience has led me to aspire to become a psychologist and incorporate culture into treatment. It is impossible cannot take a person out of their culture. I want to focus on Hmong women and how they view their culture and how it has impacted and shaped who they are today and the trauma and depression they’ve suffered. I want to make a difference in all of these experiences I have encountered in my life. I want to work with children and be their introduction to mental health. I want to create a safe space for them to explore and learn the importance of mental health and how to best take care of their mental health, something they'll do all their life. I want to work with autistic children and their parents to advocate for their children and provide them with the support and services they need. I want to work with my Hmong community and advocate for culturally competent and integrated treatment not just for the Hmong community but for other minorities as well. We live in such a vast world that often the smallest things are forgotten about. But it is in these small things that the most difference can be made. I want to make a difference in the places I deserved better, in the places my family, my friends, my community deserved better. With the higher education I am pursuing right now, I know that I can make that difference in the future. The work I do will make all the difference.