Intergenerational Healing Through Grief & A Reclamation of Purpose & Prosperity
Words: Lena Franklin Medicine Woman, Transpersonal Psychotherapist & Transformational Speaker
As the daughter of a Vietnamese Buddhist mother who immigrated to the United States in 1975, I’ve always been intrigued by how people make something of themselves in this life, being self-led on their own path of becoming. Born in the year of the Dragon, my mother and first spiritual teacher in this lifetime, Minh Thu Nguyen, was the antithesis of a submissive Asian woman. Her fire could be felt across time and space and her energy would reverberate within you long after meeting her. Passion for helping others fueled her spirit and guided her life. My mom’s spiritual dedication to Buddhism became her space of solace in a world where she often felt out of place living in the United States, across the entire world from her motherland. I observed my mother perpetually caught between two worlds ~ her homeland of Southeast Asia and North America where she started her family in the West. And in her yearning to belong, she believed that achievement would birth the prosperity and recognition needed to be fully safe and accepted in Western society. I took this belief on as one of my early-life, primary operating paradigms.
The theme of bridging two worlds became threaded throughout my own life, especially after I graduated school and began formally helping others through my therapy work, and eventually, becoming an instrument for ancient forms of healing in a modern world. Immersed in Western culture that privileges knowledge and scientific data, bringing forth heart and energy-based practices means being dedicated to straddling a line for the purpose of deeper integration. The choice for my mother to immigrate from East to West was an outer journey that became symbolic of the heroic inner journey of my own life…and Path of Awakening & Liberation. My dharmic (soul’s purpose) work is grounded in bringing together the Yin energy of presence, ritual and spirit of the East with the Yang energy of mind based knowledge of the West. Turning inward to her meditation practice and praying to ancestors perpetually brought my mom home to her soul, to light and to truth.
Witnessing my mom’s devotion to spiritual practice planted a seed within me that became much like a master plant…facilitating growth into expansive and introspective areas of my own inner being…a landing place for the depth of inner alchemy.
One woman’s choice to immigrate from EAST to WEST birthed a portal that would touch thousands of lives through her daughter’s global work. My mom’s soul guided her to weave the web of greater Purpose & Prosperity through her courage to immigrate to the US. In that one monumental choice for the trajectory of her lineage’s impact, she shed fear for the purpose of love…love for herself and her Vietnamese family to live with greater prosperity… something my mom consistently yearned for when she was alive.
Achievement was engrained within me as a young child, stemming from deeply entrenched patterns of survival and self-worth from both my maternal and paternal lines. Growing up, we always had enough in our middle-class family ~ my mother owned a nail salon, and my father had a psychotherapy practice ~ but the freedom of massive prosperity was always something that was meant for other people outside of our family almost like an unreachable dream that we could just witness in movies or with celebrities on tv. I knew my mom desired more which often fueled her tiger mom ways, always saying that my sister and I could achieve whatever we wanted if we worked hard. I took that to heart and have always lived it out in my own life, becoming masterful at human achievement while, in the same breath, doing my best to heal the maladaptive pieces of striving along the way. She dreamed for us to live prosperous lives where we didn’t have to struggle, work our asses off or worry about money like she did.
My mother had big dreams of impacting the world, helping those in poverty and saving animals from harm. Earlier in Minh Thu’s life, she started an orphanage in her hometown in Southern Vietnam, deeply guided by her radiant heart. As a child, I watched her give extra money she made from her nail, hair and skincare business to her Vietnamese family. They all looked up to her as she was the brave, strong Matriarch. My mother would tell me that I was meant to help many people and that our roots in the EAST were a big part of that purpose.
A piece of my soul deeply resonated with this vision but given that her psychic and spiritual gifts were repressed and minimised in our family home, I didn’t understand the gravity of what she was attempting to communicate to me as a child. But now, I see the power in her premonition because I’m living out what she knew would unfold after her sudden death at 57. Passing from a stroke, her soul could no longer live a human life where she felt unsafe physically and emotionally. My mother suffered from Post Traumatic Stress from the Vietnam War and ancestral survival patterns which resulted in high blood pressure on her maternal side. Her human death ignited my first profound dark night of the soul, and thus, my initial Great Awakening, guiding me to be an instrument of Ancient Eastern spiritual, alchemical and healing wisdoms.
I began asking myself existential questions like, “If life can be taken so fleetingly, then why are we here on Earth?” Her death guided me back to the teachings of meditation that she originally taught me. And in those moments of stillness and silence, I felt an existence far beyond the grief…a place where suffering and bliss could co-exist as one.
Teachings of non-duality come to us as humans in some of the most unexpected ways. Death birthing new life is one of the most Universal processes we can lean into to glean this form of alchemy, embodying it into our lives. As we remember that the opposite is always true, we can begin to embrace the knowing that in times of loss, grief, challenge, change, pain and suffering that we’re being strengthened to receive the opposite of that very discomfort. It’s all a blessing.
My mother’s death taught me this because it was grief that broke me open to receiving the divinity of Source Energy. Losing my mother, broke my heart open to an intimate communion with The Great Mother Earth, Pachamama. Just one generation over, the amount of Purpose & Prosperity is limitless when we walk The Path of Liberation. I bow to my beloved mother for walking this path of courage that I’m now honoured to bring forth for countless women. If we can take the Throne of our Authentic Inner Power, we can begin to peel back the layers of unworthiness, guilt, shame and trauma, revealing the Radiant Lotus Heart of Creation ~ our Essence.
