Growing up in an immigrant household taught me how to be strong. Certainly, after each outspoken comment from my judgmental Aunties about my body, love life, or capabilities at school, one less tear shed from my eyes. Surely, my thick skin comes from handling my extended family’s unintentional bullying. All jokes aside, seeing how hard my parents work has made me stronger. My parents currently work as a seamstress and cook. These are two feats in itself because both of my parents immigrated to New York from Taishan, China without knowing an ounce of English or understanding American culture. Even without knowing English, they found a way to make a living not only for themselves but also my brother and I. With, I’ve personally witnessed them working full twelve-hour shifts as a means of providing for the family, and not once have I heard them excessively complain about the work they have to do. I’ve seen bruises on their bodies. I’ve seen a gradual growth of gray hair on their head. I’ve seen them slap their bones as a way of relieving their body aches. But never once did they heavily complain. This in turn made me resilient. Seeing them work through their problems and continuously persist through their pains as a means of supporting their family made me understand the importance of staying resilient myself.
With this in mind, I have been able to succeed as I have now. My goal is to be able to financially support myself and my parents in the future. Anytime I had to stay up late to finish an assignment or study did not bother me at all because I centered myself back to my goal. I knew that all my hard work would pay off in the end just like my parent’s selfless hard work has helped them achieve their goals in the end. As much as I gained my resilience from watching my parents work, they have also instilled a specific mindset in me. Growing up, they always told me “Never let people see you sweat or cry.” “Show people you are strong, and they will treat you with respect. They won’t walk over you if they know you are strong.” Having heard this all my life, I couldn’t help but make it my mantra. No matter how tired I was, or how stressed I was, I mainly kept it to myself knowing I needed to hide my weakness. I needed to appear strong, so my peers around me treat me with respect. However, this all came crumbling down when an unexpected situation happened.
About a year ago, comments were being made about my appearance, and I found out I wasn’t as strong as I realized. To bring context to this situation, I started experimenting with makeup the summer of sophomore year, coincidentally during the pandemic when most of my days consisted of me being at home. I dabbled with eyeliner and eyebrow pencils initially, but my interest with makeup grew to include blush, contour and foundation. I found a way to express myself through makeup whether it be choosing a certain blush or changing the styling of my eyeliner. However, people began to talk about my appearance saying I wore too much makeup, or I didn’t look like myself. At the time, I took their hurtful words as the truth, and I couldn’t perceive myself without considering how others felt about me.
Because I was taught to never let anyone see my weakness, I ended up hiding the hurt I really felt. In front of my friends, I was angry. In my mind, anger showed more strength than crying because it showed I was confident enough to know what others were saying were not true about me. I went days on end bottling up my feelings until one day I finally broke. I facetimed my friend and began confessing how hurt I was. She was there for me; she listened to my anger, my sadness, and my hesitation. In the moment I felt heard and cared for. She reassured me that their words were invalid and shared my anger. She helped me see the situation in a different light. Not to say that I completely have control over my emotions now, but I have learned to prioritize my views over anyone else’s. At the end of the day, no one has been with me for as long as I have been with myself. Even when I tried to change my appearance to please everyone else, it didn’t change the sentiments behind their comments. If it wasn’t “she wears too much makeup,” it became “what’s wrong with her? She should put makeup on.” Through and through, the sentiments behind both statements were the same; both were expressions of insensitive jokes intended to humor people at my expense. It took a while for me to realize there will always be one person who will judge me for anything and everything I do, but once I did it became easier to drown their opinions out. This moment of vulnerability I shared with my friend brought clarity to a misconception I’ve had my whole life.
In this moment I learned that there’s strength in being vulnerable. In being vulnerable with my friend and confiding in her, I gained another family member. I realized that those who matter, won’t judge me at my lowest. I would even say I am stronger than I was before because I am able to be vulnerable with people and realize the strength in being able to talk about my problems with others. My friend has now become my sister, someone who I unconditionally love and can depend on no matter what situation is going on in my life. I am still as resilient as I was before. I am still focused on my goal of providing financial stability for my family and I. However, this time, I am able to go through all of this knowing I have a friend beside me who is also pushing me through the mental obstacles I have.
4 replies on “Teachable Moments Draft”
I really like the flow and pacing of your story, as well as the lede, which is finding strength in vulnerability. The story is very inspiring and relatable. I really like how you describe your parents to show their hard work, such as slapping their bones or adapting to the American culture.
I think that you should talk more about your personal struggle. Instead of generalizing this scene to just negative comments about your appearance, you should show the reader how hurt you are. What did these people do? Instead of saying your reaction was anger, show that you were angry. How did your friend help you see this situation in a different life? By elaborating on these little details, like what your friend did for you, the reader can understand your bond and feel the impact of your growth.
Also, you end off talking about knowing your friend is always there for you, but I think it would be better to end off talking about you and your strength.
Your writing style is also informal but what I really like about that is that your story is easy to read and understand; it feels almost as if you’re directly saying this to me as I read.
There is a lot of details that maybe don’t have to be included. Instead of saying you started using blush and foundation, maybe talk about how makeup is an expression to you. Why is it important?
I like how your story is relatable to myself and many others, especially in a diverse environment like New York. I agree with Anusha in that the flow of your story is great, introducing your parents hard work to build context showing how that shaped you then moving on to the major part of the story. I think you should slow down the pacing in some areas though in order to give more emphasis such as on the part of your reaction of being hurt in response to how “the comments” made you feel. Maybe also include details about why you were angry in front of your friends, were they the ones to make the comments, were they just going along with it, were they doing this repeatedly building up anger or were they just not defending you? I was a bit unsure on that part. I also think using more descriptive words for times where you want the reader to feel more emotion would engage the reader more into the story and might even make it more relatable to the reader. Also agreeing with Anusha on this; the ending creates a bit of uncertainty as you switch back and forth from the effect of the teachable moment on you and the effect on the relationship with you and your friend.
I can really relate to your story, as I, myself, immigrated with no knowledge of English. I know how it feels to come to a different country and see my parents work, seeing their bruises in their hands. As many teenagers can relate to the fact that they usually hide their emotions, which makes them weaker, this fact really points out most teenagers or people’s general weaknesses as they try to hide their weak points.But hiding these just builds up more stress and insecurities. Also, I like the point you made about how makeup was one thing that built up on you to make you feel safe, or a way to distract yourself. Overall, I really like how you later brought all the details together, but maybe be more clear with your story. I feel like the story is everywhere. Maybe try to stick with one plot
I think you have a very good foundation to work off for a first draft and you have a classic storyline of building up the climax and resolving it. You touch upon the idea of resilience and vulnerability and the duality that is created in your head very well. I would suggest like the others said to use some show not tell to engage the readers even more instead of just explaining the feelings you are going through. I also think you can build on the symbolism of make up and the effect it had on you as a person growing up. You might also want to expand on how opening up to a friend allowed you to be a stronger individual and wrap it back to being resilient in an environment that is hard to navigate through. Overall you have a good theme and message however you might want to make grammatical edits and plot revisions in the beginning and end!