My Asian identity has shaped every corner of my mental health. As I get older, my awareness of my prejudices against my own flesh has turned what I thought was tough skin to a tenderness that has unraveled me. Being raised a certain way by parents with a certain trauma has created for me a certain glorification of survival and always wanting to NOT be “other.” After the shootings in Atlanta, I experienced a grief that felt so personal, overwhelming and unexplainable. It was not like I knew these people, but it felt as if I could have lost my family just as easily.
I decided soon after the tragedy that I had to seek help from an Asian female therapist. I had been seeing someone who was a male and white (he helped in other ways for a time!), but I felt instantly that my mental health became freer and stronger BECAUSE I am learning to love my whole self in ways I never had even though I had only been seeing her for a tiny amount of time. They understood when I did not understand what I was feeling.
So being an Asian woman, I have context, tools, and a community that give me clarity and peace (not all the time) around the anxiety, fears and longings that circle my heart and which I have never suspected or am tired of always carrying. But I am filled with pride more than ever. It seems as if my identity—my heart, home, the soul—is well. My mental health is well.
My mother immigrated to the US from Vietnam almost 40 years ago. When she got married, she opted to keep her last name; when my brother and I were born, we were given my father’s last name. But shortly after I turned 2 years old, my parents got divorced and my mom raised me from that point onwards by herself. Looking back, I admire my mother for her strength and resilience during my childhood years. She was a single mother of two, an immigrant, and had dropped out of college to raise us — but she still managed to show us love, celebrated our achievements, and encouraged us to chase our dreams. So the year before I graduated from my university, I legally changed my name from “Nguyen” to “Quach” so that my diploma would reflect her name! As a first generation graduate, I hoped that this would also let my mom feel like my accomplishment was also hers. She knew the day I went into court to change my name and cried super hard when I showed her the court-approved documents. While I didn’t actually get to walk the stage for graduation due to the pandemic, I still was able to get some great grad photos with her to commemorate the moment! (We’re wearing ao dais, which are traditional Vietnamese outfits. I’m wearing white for graduation, but they can come in many different colors and patterns, as you can see with my Mom in her gold variation.) So here we are 🙂 Mother and daughter, always Quach and finally Quach.
The major event that has influenced my mental health journey was my father’s passing from lung cancer in 2019. His 15 years of fighting it have truly solidified my identity as Filipino-American and affected my coping skills and how I viewed grief/bereavement. It has also influenced my career path as an art therapist and counselor.
My dad’s fight with cancer for so long proves his resiliency, especially since it’s a value in my culture. I struggled a lot with my identity. Seeing up close the Filipino values of resiliency and being with my family has helped me ground myself and my values – if anything, it has solidified something I’ve always questioned or was unsure about. I’ve learned to be more patient and to never really make set plans as life can throw things a lot at you. It’s better not to have expectations but to be adaptable to the ebbs and flows of life. This has dramatically helped with my anxiety and needs for control to protect my feelings.
While my dad was going through chemo, dance was my main outlet to distract myself. I hadn’t danced in 10 years and just went back to it in 2017. With some excellent teachers and choreographers, I went into dance classes learning how to be much more expressive with my movement. It greatly influenced how I approached my art therapy practices – the freeness of expression without judgment. Moving around helped me with my stress, and my dad was always an advocate of dance for me, so him seeing me go to classes made him happy.
His journey also influenced how I connected with the community, specifically the running community. In 2017, I ran twelve 5k charity races, one race each month. I ran my first one with Lungevity – a lung cancer organization – and raised money and awareness for them in honor of my dad, who was still alive at the time. The race was very emotional for me, I even had my ankle injury, but I always pushed through thinking about how my dad continued to fight and didn’t give up. In 2018, I ran two half marathons, and then in 2019, I decided to run the Chicago Marathon in honor of my dad. I kept raising money for Lungevity, and he was so excited to know I was running it. Unfortunately, he passed before the actual race, but I continued training and had a lot of support in raising funds from my boxing gym, art groups, classmates, and so forth. The marathon experience is probably something I won’t ever forget, and I’m continuing onto the NYC marathon and raising more awareness and research funds for lung cancer.
Outside of these physical coping skills, I challenged myself to talk openly about my dad’s experiences deteriorating and grieving his death. The summer after he passed away, I committed to seeing a therapist. She helped me in developing my path and understanding of grieving and acceptance. Now more than ever, I feel a strong tie to mental health, and this experience has helped me in my path as a counseling/art therapists working with cancer patients and their caregivers.
I now work with oncology and stroke/rehabilitation patients in my clinical practicum. Because of this experience, I’ve become interested in researching how grief/bereavement is viewed in different cultures to be a multiculturally competent therapist working with families from all different backgrounds.
GROWING UP, I WAS TERRIBLE AT EXPRESSING MYSELF. Especially the uncomfortable things like my emotions. I followed the Model Minority myth, got the good grades, kept my head down, respected authority, but avoided conflict at all costs. As you can tell, that didn’t help me gain trust as a leader in the workplace, and it wasn’t attractive in dating when I couldn’t stand behind my beliefs and opinions. Admittedly, I’ve hurt quite a few women because I wasn’t able to communicate myself properly and take ownership of my emotions. And it ESPECIALLY wasn’t fulfilling for me to leave behind my child-like joy for writing, singing, and creating videos. I had so many voices in my head from my immigrant parents, and the rest of society, that I wasn’t good enough, man enough, creative enough, smart enough. On top it all, I didn’t have any close relationships or role models of Asian men around me. I love my dad and am grateful for so much he’s provided for me, but I rarely ever felt comfortable expressing my honest self around him without getting judgment or bias towards what he thought I should do. Being raised to then avoid conflict in the name of harmony and humility, I took the safe route and went into technology. And enjoyed my role, but started burning out when I was no longer feeling connected to the meaning and impact behind my work. I was drinking almost every other day. I ate terribly. I woke up late all the time. I didn’t care to reach out to friends. I was irritable and apathetic about my passions. I used to smoke weed to get present and connected, but during my quarter-life crisis, I was using to numb and it made me even more paranoid and anxious. I was also single for over 3 years at that point and felt many bouts of loneliness. I never made a plan, but I did think about how much easier it would be to just end my life. Then I found myself joining a local men’s group, after hearing a popular podcast where the guest talked about men’s emotional work. Everything they said in the interview resonated with my core. It gave me the language to feel what I had been feeling, which then gave me a new perspective on everything. With that new perspective, the way I was looking at the world and at myself changed. I realized that my life was a miracle in itself, coming from a father and mother who both risked their lives coming to America. And I have the unique opportunity to do something meaningful with the privilege that I have. After chasing comfort for most of my life, not only in the tangible world, but within the emotions I felt, I understood that I had to take more physical and emotional risks in my life if I wanted to get out of this debilitating state of apathy.
AFTER MONTHS OF OVERTHINKING. I finally quit my comfy job in 2018 and started writing and producing a podcast. Since then, I’ve been published in the Good Men Project, ThriveGlobal, as well as many Medium publications and have received so many inspiring comments from how my words have created new insights for people in their own journey. My podcast has accumulated thousands of downloads since its launch in 2019 now and I even spoke to 1000+ people on stage to share how I’m (currently) navigating my quarter-life crisis by improving my own emotional intelligence. Many, many, many thanks to the beautiful humans in JRNI to help me through it all. Doing both the inner work and entrepreneurial work made me realize that many of my Asian brothers are missing the space that allows us to feel SAFE talking about feelings without feeling less of a man. Especially those with immigrant parents, who use a lot of shame and authority to tell us what to do, rather than providing the space to explore for ourselves.
BUT THIS ISN’T EVEN ABOUT ME. It’s about the commonalities I’ve found within my community and brothers around these struggles. But the huge gap of safe spaces for Asian men to exercise our emotions, both the positive and negative. I’ve been attending a couple men’s groups over the past couple years, but in both of them, I was the only Asian dude. I’ve developed such meaningful relationships with these men, but none I could connect over my cultural identity. So I decided to start my own. And I’ve called it, the Emotion Dojo. This is the official Asian men’s group and coaching program under the 1200+ Facebook group that I co-run, the Badass Asian Dudes (BAD). Together, the BAD and Emotion Dojo is a support group that aims to empower self-identifying Asian men with emotional intelligence. Many of us are high-achievers, but lack the soft skills to create deeper relationships and take risks within ourselves. I know because I was one of them. And this community, to me, was the big brother I never had. We run a podcast under the same name and bring on other badass Asian dudes to share their wisdom in how they got to where they are.
MY FRIENDS HAVE ALREADY COMPLIMENTED ON MY GROWTH I’ve received a lot of unsolicited feedback from my friends in the past couple years about the change they’ve seen in me. From being that shy, unassertive kid to someone who owns up to his sense of joy, power, and vulnerabilities. I feel honored and grateful (and of course, so much humility to the point of rejection) that my friends even pay attention to me so deeply. And it validates for me that whatever I’m doing, I’m doing it right. And I’m so excited to keep it going.
My name is Jade; I am a 30 year old actress and model. I grew up financially “poor.” I put that in quotations because I never felt poor. However, with working immigrant parents, my diet was largely made up of not the healthiest options – things like frozen TV dinners, Lunchables, and fast food. This led to excess weight, and over the years, I’ve had to go through my own health/fitness journey. I experienced a lot of bullying for my body, as I am more of a slim thiccc Asian gal, which wasn’t “in” back in the day. It deeply affected me and led to eating disorders, body dysmorphia, and abusive relationships for many years. I eventually left my childhood dream of becoming a violinist to pursue acting in college, as I found it to be an escape from my life to have someone else’s momentarily. After graduating with a theater degree, I began to go into TV/Film. Modeling fell into my lap by accident.
A lot of people told me I couldn’t get far – not pretty enough, not skinny enough, not tall enough, not enough representation in Hollywood anyway, etc. I pushed myself to grow as a creative. As a petite lady (5’3”), I’ve walked the runway. I’ve had the pleasure of working closely with the director as a stand-in for Olympian gold medalist Chloe Kim in a Nike x Finish Line commercial. I’ve been published in 7 magazines with full spreads. I’ve had the honor of working closely with the lead designer for a Marvel movie. I’ve been a lead model for Besame Cosmetics. This year, I was asked by Savage X Fenty to do a collab and be an ambassador. All these opportunities helped me grow confidence in myself and my skills as a creative storyteller.
Using my past, I am always pushing for self love, self care, and positivity on my social media platforms. When I valued myself enough to stop self abuse (thinking negatively, judging my body, etc) and to leave abusive relationships, the universe responded with gifts. It’s been 10 years of being in the entertainment industry. My process has been slow but I’ve been so blessed to have the opportunities that I’ve had while staying true to who I am.