Goddess of Compassion

their features indistinguishable. I became anxious over my inability to recognize people as they approached, but I learned to use the idiosyncrasies of their gait and the particular way their bodies occupied space to identify them. And when that failed, I learned to look down at my feet while I walked to avoid accidental eye contact with anyone I couldn't recognize. Eventually, as my sight worsened and my squinting powers failed me,

I developed a new technique. I would push the bottom lid of my eye inward and upward to narrow my field of vision until my eyes were almost closed, but not quite. This technique was more effective than the regular squint, and for a time it worked. It was almost like a super squint. Walking alongside my mother and father. One day in a right aid pharmacy, I decided to try out my new technique in order to read the signs hanging above the aisles. My father had walked ahead of us.

I held on to my mother with my left hand and pushed in the bottom lids of my eyes with my right, using my thumb and index finger. Suddenly, my mother's face was close to mine, her eyes wide as she bent down towards me. Gale, what are you doing, she whispered, harshly, Oh this, I said, nothing, just trying to read the signs. Don't let your father see you, she said. She pulled my hand down and forced it against my side. Stop pretending you can't see, or you

really will be blind. You know how your father feels about that. She glanced nervously towards my father. I'm not pretending, mom, I really can't. What is it? My father had started to walk back toward us. Nothing, my mother said, quickly, straining up. There was something in her eye and we were trying to get it out. It's out now, though she squeezed my hand, almost crushing it. That's Lee Tran,

reading from her debut memoir House of Sticks. Le's is a story of loyalty, family, tenacity, and a secret she kept for a long time, so long it very nearly destroyed her. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets, the secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves. What was the landscape of your childhood before you were three years old? And then after I was born in

a small town in southern Vietnam. In nine my family and I were able to immigrate to the United States through a program known as the Humanitarian Operation, which helped resettle former prisoners of war here in the States. And my father was a former pow. He's spent almost ten years in the re education camps of Vietnam. And you know, that was our lucky ticket out. And so we we came to Ridgewood, Queens in the middle of a blizzard, no less, so it was neat, let's just say, very

cold for us of Vietnmee people. And you know it was it was really difficult to navigate this foreign country. None of us spoke the language. I know. I was only three and I had three older brothers at the time, the oldest of which was just nine years old, and so finding a way to make ends meet it was really difficult. But a family friend introduced us to this sort of home sweatshop labor and so that's what we did.

And it required us to borrow a sewing machine from the company and then we would sort of work to pay it off over the years. There will be a weekly quota and you know, maybe one thousand ties or two thousand commer buns, and we had to deliver it every week. So that was my first job as a toddler, which was to to help my family make these ties

and commer buns. And I separated the materials, gave them to my father who would then sow the ties, and then my brothers and I would take it out from underneath the sewing machine and turn it inside out and it was just this little family assembly line. Yeah. We we did that all the way up until I was twelve. Describe your mother for me, Well, my mother, she's a very fiercely independent woman, um, and she was sort of the main reason that we were able to keep it

together as a family. My father was incredible as well. You know, he tried really hard to just get us through the system. We would spend a lot of days at the International Rescue Committee, and he would take down notes, you know, exactly where he needed to take us to get vaccinations, for instance, to get to go to the food stamp office, and to get my brothers enrolled in school. Whereas my mother, you know, she was more responsible for just calculating how much money we would need to put

food on the table while also keeping us warm. And she was also part of the reason my father wasn't so abusive all the time. You know, she would find ways to calm him down whenever she saw his temper get out of hand because of the PTSD that he suffered from. So during that time, she would always ask us to learn Vietnamese. She would sit us down, tell us, okay, notebooks out, we're gonna learn Vietnamese, gonna speak only Vietnamese in the house. Because I don't want you to forget

your roots. I don't want you to forget where you came from. So I was really diligent. I love language, and I think she's the reason I love language. Whereas you know, acentimes my brothers would get to go out and play in the park and say, oh yeah, we'll learn later. Mom, and she would say, okay, Lee, you stay, and I would ask, well, why why did they get to go off and play? But now I don't regret that I stayed because I can speak, read, and write in Vietnamese. And it was during that time that I

heard a lot of stories from her. She told me all of these stories about herself in Vietnam, about the time that she ran away from a matchmaker because she did not want to get married um, and about how she took on her family's business in Vietnam and was a merchant and she would ride her motorcycle to all these different shops and deliver goods and everyone loved her. And it was just a really great time for me

to spend with my mother. But at the same time, she was also really strict in terms of teaching me how to be a good at housewife, which was so sort of antithetical to who she is on the inside.

But I think after marrying my father and seeing how difficult it was to be a wife, and especially in my father's household where yes five of older sisters who were very abusive towards my mother because they felt like she wasn't a good enough housewife, she didn't know how to cook when she first married into the family, and

so they would keep her up at night. They would throw hot water on her just to sort of show her, Okay, you are now our servant, basically, and she didn't want that sort of fate for me, so she said, Okay, you need to learn how to cook, you need to learn how to sweep, how to full clothing properly, and you know, you need to learn all of these things so that you can have a better future and not like the future that I had. Buddhism is central to

the Tran household. One of the first things Lee's father does when they settle into their new home and queens is to build an altar high up on their living room wall, one which will eventually cover the entire wall from end to end, to honor the Buddha and the bodhisattvas. There's a framed picture of the Great Shaki Yamuni Buddha, the awakened One, as well as a picture of kwan Ambo Tat, the Goddess of Compassion. Call out her name three times when you need help, Lee's father tells her

she has a thousand arms. Her arms will reach you, So I was struck with the significance of the altar in your family's home, and the deities and the saints and the role that they play in daily life, and in the idea of protection and the idea of fulfillment of hopes and desires, and how deeply that was internalized in you as a child. Sure, yeah, I think it's different for my father versus it's meaning for my mother.

But I know for my father when he was in the re education camps or even just before that, serving as a soldier in the war, and not knowing, you know, if he was going to live one day or die the next, having a faith to hold on too, and just believing that there is someone, some Buddhisatta or Buddha

out there watching over him, which was so powerful. And at some point in the re education camp he sees that one of his fellow prisoners had had caught a turtle in his trap, and coming from a Buddhist background, he felt sorry for the turtle and couldn't bear to

see his his fellow prisoner kill it. And he said he asked if he could trade scallions for the turtle, and the prisoner said, short, you know, I don't know what to do with this thing anyway, And my father put a splint on the turtle's broken leg and set it free. And this was a story that he would tell us when we were younger. Say, when I released this turtle, it took a few steps and turned around to look at me, and then it nodded at me three times, and three days later I was released from prison.

And just this story is something that has stuck with me throughout my entire life. And it's such a a symbol of the faith that my father had in Buddhism and these spirits that protected him because he thought this turtle was some sort of incarnation of the Goddess of compassion and the turtle was sent to save him. You know, in those conditions, I wouldn't blame a person to hold

on to something like that. And for my mother, you know, when we were in Vietnam, actually all of us, at one point or another, we would get severely ill, especially coming from such a rural place in Vietnam where there were shamans and witch doctors and not really medicine that was too modern at the time, and so she would often pray. But the power of prayer also gave her the strength to take her children from place to place and and just pray that, you know, some miracle would arrive.

And oftentimes a miracle did somehow arrive, and we all endured through our illnesses and survived. Lee's father was one of almost two and a half million South Vietnamese soldiers who were captured and then forced into backbreaking and often dangerous labor sweeping mine fields, digging wells and trains, cutting down trees. He served a ten year sentence. He rarely spoke of his time in the camps, with the exception

of the story of the turtle. Could you talk a little bit more about your father's both his temper and his strictness. It was difficult for me. I remember one time I was going home from somewhere and I was walking with my father, and he went into the store and bought me a possible which was such a surprise for me because at the time we were so poor that asking for treats, asking for snacks, which most of the time just out of the question, and the fact that he just went to the store and bought me

a popsicle, I was so so happy and excited. No skipping um and I looked up at my father. I remember a moment of such deep love for this man who gave me this popsicle, and he remember him looking at me and considering me, and then just out of nowhere, smacking me. He says, don't look at me like that. And I was so shocked. I didn't I didn't know what had happened. My possicle fell out of my hand. And that moment was not a rare one. And it wasn't just me, you know, my my three older brothers,

we also sort of suffered through these tempests of my father's. Yeah, it was really it was tough. It was tough to to navigate such a difficult relationship while at the same time loving him and fear him. You know that it

was difficult to reconcile those two emotions. And there it seems like there was also an understanding that he had really been through something and that the ten years that he spent as a pow were at the root cause of his rage and his tyrannical behavior, That there was a reason for this that was embedded into the family culture as well. Yeah, I think this is something that would be uncovered as time went on, you know, because when I was a child, I didn't. I sort of

just accepted it. I accepted his outbursts. But as I grew older, I began to question it. And I remember an episode in which he was yelling at my mother, and I thought, why, why is he doing that? At the time, I was split between my loyalty towards my father, my life. He towards my mother, and that's when I started to think, that's not okay. You know, he can't

treat my mother that way. And out of that questioning, I started to think about his past, which he he doesn't really talk about much, you know, I would only see it through snippets of conversation, or once in a while, when he was in the mood, he would just offer up like a glimpse of what his past was like. Or other times, whenever he would beat us, my mother would say, you know, stop that crying, don't be mad.

One day, you'll understand. Sometimes she would explain a little bit, but nothing too in depth, perhaps because she didn't think that we would be able to understand at such young ages.

But definitely when I got older, I wasn't quite able to forgive him yet, but understanding where he was coming from that he was this prisoner of war and that re education camps really dealt a blow to his is psyche and just traumatized him in such a horrendous way that you know, he's still to this day has nightmares

about it. And those nightmares were a part of your childhood hearing him, you know, having nightmares, right, yes, absolutely, I would, you know, wake up in the middle of the night, you know, this man is this screaming and my mother is struggling to hold him down and to wake him up. Sometimes you would walk in his sleep and run from one corner of the house to the other, telling her we have to go. You have to grab the children there after us, and she's saying, what hoo

are you talking about? Calmed down? You know, and so yeah, she she really had to be strong for us as well in terms of getting him to calm down while trying to shield us from what he was going through. And that was that was hard. You know, as children, we didn't we didn't let on that we knew what was going on, probably because we were really just afraid to see our father like this. But we knew that come morning time everything would be okay again. We'll be

right back when we starts school. She has very little grasp of the English language, unlike her brothers, who went straight into the school system when they emigrated. She's been home with her mother for a couple of years, speaking Vietnamese and listening to her mother's stories. So Lee is placed at first in English as a second language. She's socially awkward, kind of doesn't know how to be. She hasn't learned any social cues, so she's a bit of

a loner and academically challenged. But it isn't until the third grade that a teacher notices that Lee is having trouble seeing blackboard, and she sends Lee home with a note to her parents letting them know that Lee needs eyeglasses. Yeah, in the third grade, you know, they had like kids line up to take the Snell and I chart, which you know everyone knows is the one with the big E on it. And I got a letter then to him that said, hey, your daughter has a stigmatism and

she might need glasses. And my father just completely freaked out. I had no idea what was happening. He took the note, ripped it up, and told me never to speak of it again. And he was cursing at me, and I didn't want to do the wrong thing. To me. It was a homework assignment that I had to do, you know. So I was like, oh, my goodness, but I need to sign. I don't know what to do. So I tried again to ask him, and he smacked me, and

I was just so furious. He told me that the government was after me and how could I be so stupid as to give in to the government wanting to take away my eye sight? Because he thought that eyeglasses were a government conspiracy and if I ever wore glasses, my sight would worsen, and it was just deployed by the government to get me to be dependent on eyeglasses. Um, so the more my eyes I would worsen, I would

have to buy more glasses. And he explained the whole thing and so and that was the end of the discussion, and I thought, Okay, I guess he has a point. You know. I mean, I was eight, So you proceed through elementary school and middle school and you need glasses and you don't have them, And what's that like, Like, what was your experience actually of the world around you that you could see or that you couldn't see. What was it actually like sort of being you during those years.

It's so funny because I don't even remember the moment in which I realized that I needed glasses. It was such a gradual process. Even during the snow and chart I thought, Oh, I can't see those letters, but they're so far away. Why would I need to see those letters? You know? I just remember, Yeah, around the fifth grade is when I'm walking in the street and I realized

I can't even see the street signs anymore. And it felt like just my perception of the world was just getting narrower and narrower, and it felt like I was looking at the world to this foggy window. But no matter how much I tried to rub this window, it just wouldn't unfuged. And so it was hard. But I think my father was very successful in sort of convincing me that, no, this is how everybody's eyes work, and

you know, you're it'll be fine. You also had an older brother who had eyesight that wasn't excellent, and it had managed to excel academically even with his poor eyesight, and even with no glasses, so you should be able to do the same thing, right exactly. Yeah, my brother Long I think he also had the same note sent home in the third grade. I don't know if he went through the same exact experience in terms of my father ripping up his note, but I don't even know

if he even gave the note to my father. But he was able to do well in school because his prescription just wasn't as high as mine, and so even if he sat at the back of the class whom he was still able to see the board, whereas my vision just deteriorated as the years went on, and the more that I wasn't able to see, the more headaches I got and the more stressed I became. And so for my father it was so clear it was just, well, you're a girl. That's why you're not doing well in school.

That it was as easy as that. For him, it was just a simple matter of gender differences in terms of intelligence. He felt like, well, boys are just smarter than girls, and then that's why my brother was able to do well. And he said, you know, it's okay, you don't have to do well if you you don't get it. I mean, he just chalked it up to a lack of intelligence as opposed to just seeing that

his daughter needed glasses dearly. When Lee's in the eighth grade, she takes the standardized test that will determine where she'll go to high school. The best public high school in New York City is the Bronx High School of Science. This is one of those tests where you fill in little bubbles, but Lee runs out of time. Her inability to see has greatly affected her ability to master advanced math, so she quickly and randomly fills in the remaining bubbles

just to be clear. This is a test that many more privileged students spend years preparing for with hired tutors and special courses, but perhaps the Goddess of Compassion is looking out for her. Lee is admitted to Bronx Science. At this point, her parents sweatshop labor has come to an end, and Lee's mother takes a course to learn how to be a manicurist. She teaches Lee as well, the two of them practicing on orange peels and fake nails.

Her mom works at a series of nail salons until she ends up in Brownsville, Brooklyn, at a salon she eventually buys. Lee's parents dream of being business owners in America comes true. So now Lee's in ninth grade, attending Bronx Science and working part time in her parents salon, where she often witnesses clients being rude berating her mother for her limited English. Lee swallows her anger and keeps her head down. At school, she keeps her head down

for a different reason. She doesn't want anyone to notice

how much she's struggling. It's a lot to endure. So now you're at Bronx High School Science, and you know, one of the things that strikes me in your story, Lee, is the the appearance from time to time, at really important times of angels, you know, of of just people who I mean, it's the thing I found most moving really about your story is that there were these people, these adults who responded to you, who saw something in you, who went above and beyond, and there was this kind

of ongoing compassionate intervention even as there was so much else that was so incredibly difficult. And one of the first of those was this very kind professor when you're in ninth grade who offers to get you a pair of glasses. Yeah. Yeah, this is in the ninth grade, and I hadn't had the courage to really tell anybody yet that I was really suffering and couldn't see. I just kept asking to choose if I could sit in

the front of the classroom. I did tell him that I couldn't see, but that I was waiting for medicaid. You know, I was waiting to get a pair of glasses. And obviously that was alive because I knew that I could have gotten glasses at any point except that my parents would disown me. And you know, I told one student who had attended the middle school with me, and he also got into Brock Science. And when he heard, he was just so shocked and he said, this stuck's ridiculously.

You need to tell somebody. And I said, no, no no, no, please, don't tell anybody. I'm going to get in trouble. Thank goodness. He did not listen to me, and he told an eighth grade teacher. And this eighth grade teacher was actually not even a teacher of mine. He just headed the chess club, which I was a part of in the eighth grade. And so, you know, one day I get a message and email from Mr de Chanct. He's a teacher,

and he says highly. I heard from Michael that you're you're not doing so well, and I would really love to help you out. And so we meet in my neighborhood in Ridgewood and he says, you know, I need you to be able to see. You really need to be able to see to do well in school, to have a good and bright future. And he says, this will be our little secret. Don't tell anybody, don't tell your parents, and and just keep these glasses in your

locker at school. What's the worst that can happen? Nothing, You know, as long as you don't tell anybody, you'll be able to see, and you'll be able to get better grades. And it was just such an incredibly compassionate and kind gesture. And also, you know, putting on glasses for the first time and being able to see and realizing, oh, my goodness, this is how I'm supposed to see the world.

Is this how everybody sees the world? You know? I looked at a tree right outside of the glasses place and saw the veins on the leaves and it was so shocking. But at the same time, as much as I wanted to be able to see as a guilt was so overwhelming too, because I thought, oh my god, I betrayed my parents. They're gonna just only they're going to find out somehow. Even if they don't find out, I'm doing something wrong, I'm doing something that they don't want me to do. So I took off the glasses

right away. You know, I tried to use the glasses as little as possible during school, and before I knew it, I started not to be able to see again. You know that the board started becoming blurry, and I just didn't understand what was going on. I thought, oh, oh my god, wait, why is my vision plummeting again? And then I sort of recalled my father's words, saying that the government was after me and that glasses are designed to keep you dependent on them, and second you put

them on, your eyesight was going to deteriorate. And that's that's exactly what was happening to me. And so I confide it in a friend and she said, oh, yeah, that's normal, that's just that's just your body growing and everybody's eyes change, especially those with my opia. She said, one year, I had to get my glasses changed three times. So yeah, that's all you need. You just need to get a different pair of glasses with a higher prescription. S right exactly, yeah, you know. To her it was

a very simple matter. But to me, I thought, oh God, um, should I reach out to mister chunk It. And then again that sense of guilt, that sense of having let somebody down. Not only did I let my parents down, but I let mister chunk It down, because all you wanted was for me to do well in school. And now my vision was slummitting again, and my grades were also slummitting, and there it just seemed to be an endless cycle, and I thought, oh God, maybe I'm cursed,

which is interesting. It sort of goes back to this theme of mismaking or meaning making. You know, every time something good happens, I think, oh it's an angel. Every time something that happens, I think, oh, I'm just cursed. Or Buddhism, there's this idea of reincarnation and if you had done something bad in a past life, then you would be reincarnated in this life with a lot of trouble, or you would have to suffer more in this life. And so I thought, oh God, I must have been

a horrible, horrible person in the past life. I never reached out to missitor Chunket again. I was so ashamed of myself and little, my, little, my grades just I went from being an A student to just barely a see student. Any number of stories we've told on this podcast have had to do with the failure of adults to intervene when a child is at risk, whether parents or teachers or heads of institutions. But then there are angels, adults who see what needs doing and by becoming involved,

can change the trajectory of a life. Mrs Walsh, Lee's high school guidance counselor, is one of those grown ups. At one point, she even calls child Services to intervene a situation Lee and immediately diffuses by downplaying the severity of her situation. She doesn't want anyone going after her parents. But throughout Mrs Walsh is an unwavering source of support and make sure these teachers know why she's having a

hard time in the classroom. So during this time, it's my senior year and I have to apply for colleges, and Mrs Walsh, she just went above and beyond. She spoke to all of my teachers and told them what I had been going through in. My teachers were really kind and understanding, and so they didn't give me such terrible grades. Are really generous with their grading, and she wrote a really extensive letter of recommendation. She asked other

teachers to write letters of recommendation. And I think my grades from my freshman year, when I sort of had the glasses and when I was trying really really hard and I wasn't sort of bogged down with depression. I was able to get by freshman year, was able to balance out my grades towards the end of my four years, and that's how I was able to get into the mcaulay Honors College at Hunter. We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets. Things finally seem to be

going rightfully. She's been accepted in this big deal, prestigious honors college. She's regularly seeing a therapist, a silver lining from the incident with child services, and her brother offers her a life changing present. Before you begin the McCauley Honors program at Hunter, You're oldest brother, who had just finished college himself, gives you a gift. Yes, it was

a graduation gift. And I had asked my parents to go to my graduation and they said, oh, we can't miss work, which I understood at the time, and so my oldest brother and my youngest older brother, Tin and Long they both agreed to go. And afterwards, my oldest brother said, hey, I want to take you somewhere. It's

a surprise. And when he takes me to contact or lends the shop that sells contacts and he buys me a box of contact so that my parents would never be able to find out, it was a life changer. You know, this is a way for me to see always and without my parents knowing that being helped in some way, or without my father thinking that the government was after me. So I start the Macaulay Honors College fully armed. You know, I was finally able to see and it's a fresh start. I can leave the path behind.

I'm seeing the psychiatrist and I just feel like the tides are finally turning. Maybe I'm not cursed after all. You know, this is I'm going to make it work. You're living away from your parents for the first time. You have a full scholarship, you have a stipend, you have a dorm room, you have a laptop. You're all set. Macaulay is one of these. This such an amazing program in that if you're accepted then it's a full ride

and you get all of these perks. It really was a chance for me to start over and to see the world too. At that point, I had never even been to a dinner. I'd never really been to restaurants because my my family was too poor, and even going over to other people's houses was such a rare occurrence for me that now that I was living in a dorm room and with other students and seeing like, oh, this is what life is supposed to be, like, this is how other people live, and it was really such

a great experience for me. It's such an eye opener and so speak no pun intended, you know. I was very ambitious. I took six courses my first semester, and more than anything else, I wanted to prove to myself and to my parents that I did belong in such a prestigious program. My brother Long was also accepted two years before, and he was doing very well, so I also wanted to prove to him, like, hey, your little sister can can make it here too. And so for the first semester I had an a average I had

a four point oh, which was incredible. I felt like, okay, I did it finally, but that all sort of backfired on me somehow, And you know, the mind works in such such funny ways. And after receiving that a, that four point, now I thought, okay, I set this bar. I cannot go below this are at any cost. So for my second semester, again, six courses and all really difficult somewhere, even senior level courses that I had applied to. At that point, I just thought I was really hard

on myself. I was really ambitious, and I joined several different clubs, I had two different jobs. I just wanted to prove it, proved to everyone that I could do it, and I just shut down at some point, I think the first difficult assignment I had, or the first even a minus I received, I couldn't handle it, and so I stopped going to classes. I started getting nightmares about, you know, betraying my parents or like my my eyesight

worsening or being blind. Even Lee starts buckling under the pressure to do all the things she feels she has to be perfect, otherwise she's a complete failure. Faced with the impossibility of perfection, she finds herself falling apart. I would stop eating, I stopped waking up on time. I just stopped showing up to classes. During that time, you know,

friends started to get concerned. I told Dr Hayes, my psychiatrist at the time, I said, I think I'm not doing well, and he said, well, you know, it's okay, You're you're going to get through this. You've got a four point of from the first semester. We can just get you a medical withdrawal. It seems like you're really depressed,

and you've been depressed all this time. It's it's okay, you've got high functioning depressions, but you're going to get through this, and there are ways to get around the grade situation. When he spoke to me, I assumed that he would just write me a medical note to get me excuse my classes, because that's sort of what he told me. But that's not what happens. What happens next is something that Lee or anyone who newly could never

have seemed coming. A few days later, I received a knock on my door in the dorms, and you know, to security guards with the direct or of the dorms behind them, and they said, are you Lee Tran And I said yes, and they said, we have reason to believe that you're a danger to yourself, so grab all your things. Don't take too much because it will be confiscated anyway, but just grab essentials and we're going to

escort you to the Mount Sinai psyche Ward. And I was so shocked, totally taken off guard, but I just followed them. And I was in that psyche ward for about I think a week or two weeks and just feeling so incredibly alone. The doctors and the nurses and therapists and they all kept asking me, are you suicidal?

How are you feeling? And I don't know. I didn't understand why they were asking me that, because the thought never really crossed my mind up until at point, up until they sort of kept asking me, weren't they also telling you that they were trying to reach Dr Hazen, that they couldn't reach him. Yeah, that's exactly what happened. Even on the first day that I was there, they said, hey,

we don't quite know why you're here, you know. I told him I was very depressed and that I wasn't doing well in my classes, and they said, yeah, that's not okay, that's I guess that's a good reason. But we were going to have to talk to your psychiatrists. But there's a problem. We can't really reach him. So unless we're able to reach him, that's when we can provide a proper diagnosis and proper treatment plan and then

send you on your way. And so day after day they would come into my room and say, we can't reach him. We can't we don't know where he is. So you're just going to have to be patient. And I think at that point I felt really abandoned. I didn't understand what was going on, and I didn't feel like there was anybody I could really reach out to. My friends all saw me getting escorted out of the dorms, and that was such a humiliating experience. I couldn't tell

my parents. My parents didn't know where I was. I could tell my brothers, and at that point I had such little contact with my family that even if I had disappeared for two weeks, they didn't matter. They never found out. I can't underscore enough what a profound failure this was on the part of the psychiatrist Dr Hayes. It turns out that doctor Hayes wasn't reachable because doctor Hayes had gone on vacation. He was very green as

a psychiatrist. Lee was his first patient and he thought that a good place to deposit her while he enjoyed his time off would be involuntary committal to a psych word. I mean, that's really extraordinary betrayal. Yes, we had discussed it in his office that he would find a way to get me this medical withdrawal, But I had no idea that I would result in a two weeks stay at the psych board and to to not even have contact with him to figure out, Okay, what do I

do while I'm here? What do I tell the psychiatrists in charge? I just felt so alone. I felt like he really did betray me. And then even after I was released, I made one more appointment to see him, and you know, he acknowledged that maybe he shouldn't have gone on vacation. He said I was allowed to be mad at him. Um, yeah, I thought mad. I mean, is that even enough? Is that word even enough to

describe what I'm feeling right now? And I think maybe that's when you know, the wall that I had built up over the years to separate myself from my emotions, like the negative emotions mostly, but even the positive emotions. I think that's when that wall began to crumble, because I felt so incredibly upset and I just never went back to see him, and he never inquired after me after that either. You know, it's interesting what you're saying

to about feeling some of those more difficult feelings. And it strikes me that you grew up never being allowed to be angry, Like there was no room for being mad. There's no room for being angry. That was all your father's territory. And as a girl, there was no room, you know. I remember every time I would get angry, my mother would say, look at yourself. Look at that face. Is that is that your face? Is this angry face?

And you know, I couldn't even see my face at the time, but I didn't want to look in such a way that wasn't me, and so I just would would fix my face very quickly. And yeah, anger is just something that I very seriously allowed myself to feel. And if I did feel it, I didn't have a

word for it. And during my sessions at Dr Hayes, it was very clear that I was unable to put a name to what I was feeling oftentimes, and so you know, we had a lot of sessions in which there was complete silence because he would say, tell me about your feelings after I had told him everything which I thought were my feelings, but it was just facts. I would just tell him facts about my life and he said, well, how do you feel about it? And

I just my mind grew a blank. And I think now the word angry is certainly one of the words that I would have attributed to what I was feeling during those sessions. And was it during that time that you went back home and ended up having an argument with your parents and actually did crossover into anger exasperation and you take out your contacts and show them and

there's a shift. Yeah. Well, at this point, you know, it's my second year at the Honors College, and I'm just so depressed after this this episode in the psych word, I really just descend into a spiral of darkness that I was impossible for me to get out of. So, you know, my medical draw from the previous semester wasn't enough for me to to do well in my second year that hunter, and so part of the Honors program is that you had to maintain a three point five

g p A in order to stay. And I was not able to maintain a g p A, and so I was dismissed from the Honors College and matriculated to Hunter College. And I lost all of my privileges, all all those parks, the dorm room, the laptop, the tuition, I lost it all, and so I had to move out of the dring. And this is when I realized that no matter how hard I try, I'm just I'm not going to going to be able to escape my fate, which to me at the time was a fate of

working in the nail salon with my mother. So I take all of my belongings home, and my parents are there and they see my bags, and there's sort of this the sense of we told you so, you're a girl. The fact that you made it this far as already so shocking to us. My mother says, you know, when your father first arrived to America, his greatest wish for you all was to to get past high school. And that's it. And now you know your brothers are they're going to be done with college, all of them soon.

And the fact that you at least had one or two years of college, that's great, you know, but if you didn't do well, then that was to be expected because you're a girl. And I was livid just at that point. I thought, you know, I've lost everything. I've lost any kind of sense of dignity. I've I've lost all hope for a better future. And I thought, you

know what, I'm just gonna tell them. I'm just going to tell them I've been wearing contact all this time because I thought, you know what, I think part of it, I wanted to hurt them. Um, that's part of why I took out my contact. I wanted to show them like, look, I betrayed you, and I've been doing it all this time, and it's because you failed me. I really needed to see and you refused to understand that. And so here, look at this. What do you make of this now?

And I think doing that was a breakthrough in my understanding of my father, especially because I expected for him to punish me, and maybe in a way I wanted him to punish me because I wanted to punish myself for being such a failure. But and he did. He smacked me once, but he kind of just looked afraid. He looked like he was going to cry. I remember thinking about that expression and thinking, what is that. Why

did he look like that. I could have sworn he would beat me or just own me or something, but he just sort of looked like a frail person who was scared and paranoid. And the more that I really examined that expression, the more I realized, Oh, he really did love me. And seeing the fact that I was relying on these contacts, even against his wishes, is when he realized that he had failed me as a father. And what was this failure Lie saw reflected in her

father's eyes. It was a terror of imperfection, of vulnerability in an unforgiving existence that allowed no room for it. If Lee has something wrong with her, if her eyes don't work, then perhaps she'll be left behind. This is when the potent cocktail of love and fear can turn into desperation and secret keeping. When he realized, oh, my goodness, my child actually really does need glasses. She really can't see like other people. That's when he realized, oh, my goodness,

I failed to keep my child healthy. I don't know even to this day, if he realizes sort of the damage that he like the extent to which she had damaged me by not allowing me to to wear glasses. But then Lee's dad does something so surprising, so extraordinary, that no one could have seen it coming. Perhaps it's because time has gone by, Perhaps it's because she's on the road to academic and therefore future success. Perhaps this is one of those nods of the turtle. He asks

Lee if she would like to have Lasik surgery. When he saw an ad for la si surgery and he started to really develop a relationship with me. He starts to ask me about my contacts, and this is obviously after I'm doing a little bit better in my life. But he says, do these contacts hurt you in any way? And I say, no, you know, I've been wearing them all these years, if it's fine, And he's like, well, have you ever considered lap sick surgery? And I think I was just so taken aback, like fly on Earth?

Would you even ask about Lasik surgery? Do you know how expensive that is? He just was so excited about it, to the point where, you know, he he offered to pay for it. He said, your mother and I have some money saves that we can pay for this, and I think he just wanted to make things right. I think he wanted to be my father, to to fulfill that role as my father. Again, you're back in school, right, You're at Columbia at that point, and you're still an undergraduate.

I'm still an undergraduate because after I had matriculated to Hunter College, there was a time when I just was so depressed that I dropped out of college altogether. And yeah, I spent two years just wandering the streets because I didn't want to tell my parents that I had dropped out of college altogether. I feared their viewpoints that was expected for a girl to not do well. And then another angel, another mentor, goes above and beyond. Lee runs into a woman she knew in high school, a legal

advocate who she hasn't seen in years. This woman pushes and probes, and Lee reluctantly ends up telling her everything that has happened. And she told me to apply to all of these different colleges, one of which happened to be the School of General Studies at Columbia University. And I laughed and said, there's no way that I can make it there, but sure, I'll apply, I'll humor you,

and yes, somehow I was accepted to Columbia. And when I was accepted, the admissions officer who interviewed me told me that it was on the strength of my essay, my personal statement, that I was accepted. And that's when I thought, oh, my gosh, my my story. I guess

was worth telling. Prayer, supplication, blessing, bargaining. As a child, while Lee knelt before an ever expanding altar and recited Buddhist scripture she knew by heart, the air thick with incense, another practice began taking root, a practice all her own. She constructed a crystal dome of protection in her mind's eye, one that would keep her and everyone she loved safe

from harm. You know, it occurs to me that you write about your crystal dome of protection, that as a child you would have trouble falling asleep or be afraid of the dark, and create very meticulously this crystal dome of protection over yourself, and then over every single you know, one of you and your family, and then even then over the monsters that you were afraid we're lurking in corners because you felt sorry for them because they needed

protection too. I was just really struck by that and that being you know, almost like a child's form of a kind of prayer or looking for protection or causality. Yeah, and it's funny because I do that choose this day. So it's something that hasn't left me, you know. And when someone in my family or a good friend of mine goes away in a trip, I was just quickly create a dome around them so that they can arrive

through the destination safely. I think it it comes from my wish for us to be protected and all the stories that my parents told me, and a feeling of powerlessness. And for me it was it was one way in which I could feel like I was in control of my situation, which at the time, you know as a child, there are all these events happening around you, your destitute.

You know your parents are struggling, and even though you can't quite grasp what those struggles are because you don't yet have the language or just wherewithal to understand, you feel it on a deep level. And I think for me that came out during these sleepless nights. I felt that helplessness, and so I would just create these crystal domes in the hopes that we could all be protected, including the monsters. Family Secret is a production of I

Heart Media. Dylan Fagin and Bethan Macaluso are the executive producers. Andrew Howard is our audio editor. If you have a secret you'd like to share, leave us a voicemail and your story could appear on an upcoming bonus episode. Our number is one eight Secret zero. That's secret and then the number zero. You can also find us on Instagram at Danny Writer, Facebook at facebook dot com, slash Family

Secrets Pod, and Twitter at fami Secret Spot. And if you want to know about my family's secret that inspired this podcast, check out my New York Times best selling memoir Inheritance. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.