A Meditation

Writing was once my strongest suit, yet I abandoned it in the tenth grade. Around that time, much of myself seemed to fall away, pieces loosening and scattering, shaped by forces I did not yet understand. Between fourteen and sixteen, I moved through life without awareness, as though consciousness itself had dimmed. I was alive, but not fully present. It was not until I was twenty-three, in the winter of this year, that I finally woke; body returning to mind, breath settling again into the present moment. This awakening did not arrive through peace or grace. It came through suffering, and through learning, slowly, not to turn away from it. In Cambodian Theravāda Buddhism, awakening does not come from escape, but from seeing clearly what hurts.

I am the daughter of an extraordinary writer and photographer. My mother is also a doctor, a Cambodian refugee, a survivor of the genocide, and a woman raised in a Theravāda Buddhist culture shaped by temples, ancestors, and survival. Her Buddhism was not learned from books. It lived in gestures, in silence, in the way offerings were prepared and the way grief went unnamed. My father, American-born and Portuguese, baptized me into the Episcopal Church. Sometimes I grieve that decision, wishing my roots had been placed more firmly in Cambodian Buddhism from the beginning. In our household, the man’s values often carried more authority than the woman’s. I think often about how my mother surrendered even her name, taking his American last name as a condition of safety and legitimacy. Buddhism teaches non-attachment to identity, yet I still feel the ache of what was given up. Like my longing to learn Khmer fluently, this is something I have had to pursue on my own, without inheritance.

My mother’s life has been shaped by sacrifice. To protect herself, my sister, and me, she accepted the roles of wife and mother as forms of refuge, continuing forward in America after losses that cannot be fully spoken. In Cambodian families, especially after the Khmer Rouge, silence often replaced ritual. Survival took precedence over mourning. As a child, I resented watching her adapt, soften, and restrain her Cambodian self. I wanted her whole. Now, as an adult living with my own inherited trauma, I understand her choices with greater compassion. In Cambodian Theravāda belief, suffering does not belong to one lifetime alone. It moves through families, through conditions, through what is remembered and what is withheld.

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.” Buddhism does not offer diagnosis, but it recognizes this truth plainly: suffering conditions the mind and body long after the event has passed.

Cambodian Theravāda Buddhism has become my anchor as I navigate trauma. It does not promise healing as an outcome, nor relief as a reward. It begins with acknowledgment. Life contains dukkha. Loss is not an interruption: it is part of the path. For someone with severe anxiety, this truth can feel unbearable. For years, I asked why a God, if real, would allow such suffering for my mother and me. The question was filled with anger and confusion.

But this winter, clarity arose quietly, the way insight often does: suffering is not divine punishment. Harm arises from people, from ignorance, fear, and craving. Cambodian Buddhism does not ask why me? It asks what conditions gave rise to this, and how do I respond now?

There is no single explanation for why people harm others, nor for why they harmed me. For a long time, I clung to the idea that everything happens for a reason, hoping meaning might make the pain bearable. Cambodian Theravāda teaching is more restrained, more honest: things arise due to causes. Trauma is not destiny. It is not karma in the simplistic sense. It happened. And still, it shapes the present.

Being biracial and bicultural, Cambodian and American, I have learned to live within fracture. Cambodian Buddhism has taught me that identity is not fixed. The self is not a solid thing to defend. I exist in the in-between, and that, too, is impermanent.

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 how to give thanks in Khmer, I felt the language settle into my body like something remembered rather than learned. When he asked which God I believed in, I paused, then answered “Jesus Christ,” sensing what would bring him comfort. Later, our friend Sarah admitted she had said, “I believe in every God,” which nearly gave him a heart attack. We laughed, but I thought about how Cambodian elders often hold belief as practice rather than philosophy. What matters is respect, continuity, and care.

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 had been a stubborn patient of hers years ago, which makes me laugh. Cambodian elders carry both resilience and resistance in their bodies, shaped by a lifetime of endurance.

Still, my mind is restless. The moment I wake, thoughts arise like echoes I cannot quiet. Memories intrude, pulling me out of the present, I was in a car accident just an hour after a flashback three months ago. Dissociation has followed me since I was fifteen, a conditioned response, separating awareness from sensation. Even meditation can feel unbearable. In Cambodian Theravāda practice, mindfulness is not forced. It is cultivated gently. When I cannot sit, I write. Writing becomes my offering. My way of staying present without violence toward myself.

Despite my excitement for my art and my growing understanding of rebirth, despair still arises when I think of the future. Trauma conditions the mind to cling to pain because pain is familiar. I often feel untethered, as though my life fractured during adolescence. Cambodian Buddhism reminds me that nothing, neither suffering nor self, remains unchanged.

Tonight, my thoughts are unfinished. But I know this: I feel rootless. I feel adrift. And yet I write. Which means awareness is still here.

In Cambodian Theravāda Buddhism, rebirth does not mean a soul traveling intact from one life to the next. There is no permanent essence that survives unchanged. There is only continuity, conditions giving rise to conditions. Like a flame lighting another flame. Like rice grown from the residue of last season’s field. The form changes, but something continues.

Perhaps I, too, am learning how to arise again; not as who I was meant to be, but as what these conditions now allow.