The Faith I Was Given and the One I Found

Writing has always been my strongest suit, yet I abandoned it in the tenth grade. So much of myself seemed to be taken from me then, pieces scattered that I am only now rediscovering. Between fourteen and sixteen, I felt as though I had lost consciousness, as if I were sleepwalking through my own life. It wasn’t until I was twenty-three, in the winter of this year, that I finally awoke—reuniting body with mind. This awakening was not just born of my deepening understanding of Buddhism, but from descending into the very pit of my suffering. In truth, the two went hand in hand.

I am the daughter of an extraordinary writer and photographer. My mother is also a doctor, a Cambodian refugee, a genocide survivor, and a woman raised in the Buddhist faith. My father, American-born and Portuguese, baptized me into the Episcopal Church. I sometimes grieve that choice, wishing I had grown up rooted in Buddhism instead. In our home, the man’s values took precedence over the woman’s. I think often about how my mother even surrendered her own name, taking his American last name so she might be granted more respect. But I cannot keep mourning what never was. Like so many other longings—my wish to learn Khmer among them—I have had to seek those paths on my own.

My mother’s life was a series of sacrifices. To protect herself, my sister, and me, she embraced the role of wife and mother, moving forward in America after unspeakable loss. As a child, I could not understand this. I resented watching her become more like my American father when all I wanted was to be closer to her Cambodian self. But now, as an adult who has inherited my own complex trauma, I see her differently. I understand why she shielded me from certain parts of her past, because I, too, have learned to hide pieces of myself from those I love.

The National Child Traumatic Stress Network defines complex PTSD as “children’s exposure to multiple traumatic events—often of an invasive, interpersonal nature—and the wide-ranging, long-term effects of this exposure.” For me, this truth is not abstract; it is lived.

Buddhism has been a lifeline as I navigate my trauma. Its teachings remind me that life is inseparable from suffering, just as it is inseparable from death. For someone with severe anxiety, such truths are almost unbearable. For years, I asked why a God, if real, would chart such a painful path for me and my mother. Was suffering truly His lesson? If so, how cruel.

But today I woke up with a clarity I had never known: it is people who do evil, not God.

There is no perfect answer to why people harm others, nor why they harmed me. For too long I believed my suffering must have been destined, that “everything happens for a reason.” My mind clung to this idea, desperate to make sense of chaos. But now I see my trauma was not fated. It simply was. And still, it has shaped me. Perhaps I am exactly where I am meant to be.

Being biracial and bicultural—Cambodian and American—I have found beauty across many religions. To some this might seem confusing, but for me, no single tradition feels sufficient. My identity lives in the in-between.

I think back to a recent afternoon in the garden with my friend Salina, her daughter Sophia, and her father, Chan. As he taught us to give thanks in Khmer, he asked me which God I believed in. I hesitated, then said “Jesus Christ,” knowing it was the answer he wanted to hear. Later, our friend Sarah told me she had said “I believe in every God,” which nearly gave him a heart attack. We laughed, but I thought about how truth and comfort rarely fit into neat categories.

I adore Mr. Ting—he feels like the grandfather I never had. When I photograph his family, I imagine he is what my own grandfather might have been like had he survived the Khmer Rouge. My mother once told me he was a stubborn patient of hers years ago, which makes me laugh. Why do our elders resist American medicine with such ferocity?

Still, my mind is often restless. The moment I wake, it begins racing. Sometimes I am ambushed by memories that leave me spiraling, even unsafe—I was in a car accident just an hour after a flashback three months ago. Dissociation has been my companion since I was fifteen, a buffer between me and my own thoughts. Even meditation feels unbearable, making me nauseous. And yet, I return to words. Writing connects me to myself again. It comforts my pain body through acknowledgment.

Despite my excitement for my artwork and my deepening understanding of rebirth, I still wrestle with despair when I think of the future. Trauma tempts me to cling to pain, for it is what I have always known. At times I feel untethered, as if I have been floating since I was a teenager, disconnected from my own timeline.

Tonight, though my thoughts are unfinished, I know this much: I feel rootless. I feel adrift. And yet I write, which means I am still reaching toward healing.

One central Buddhist belief is the cycle of rebirth. Unlike reincarnation, which suggests the same soul returning again and again, rebirth is different. A leaf falls from a tree, and in time another grows in its place. The new leaf resembles the old, but it is not the same. Life continues, but never in identical form.

Perhaps I, too, am learning to grow again.