Transcript
Speaker: The book is called Bridge from Saigon. And just to be clear, it wasn't about crossing a bridge from Saigon. I am the bridge. If you are immigrant of a certain age, and as you know one of my rabbis explained to me, in every family in each generation, there's one keeper of stories.
Speaker: And that person always feels cursed. And that's how I felt. I felt cursed even as a child with two things.
Speaker: Welcome to Grief, Gratitude and the Gray in Between podcast. I'm your host, Kendra Rinaldi. This is a space to explore the full spectrum of grief, from the kind that comes with death to the kind that shows up in life's many transitions.
Speaker: Through stories and conversations, we remind each other that we're not alone. Your journey matters, and here we're figuring it out together. Let's dive right in to today's episode.
Speaker: Let's start with quick disclaimer. This podcast includes personal stories and perspectives on topics like grief, health, and mental wellness. The views expressed by guests are their own and may reflect individual experiences that are not meant as medical advice.
Speaker: As the host, I hold space for diverse voices, but that does not mean I endorse every viewpoint shared. Please listen with care and take what resonates with you.
Speaker: Our guest today is Dr. Wang Mai. Mai Pham is how what she goes by. She is a physician, an artist, and an author of the memoir Bridge from Zygon.
Speaker: After fleeing Vietnam at the age of six as a war refugee, Mai built an extraordinary career in the healthcare care policy system. only to confront the delayed psychological weight of displacement and hidden family secrets years later. Her story offers an intimate look at immigrant resilience, unraveling trauma, and finding peace in the gray in between.
Speaker: Mai, thank you so much for being here. Thanks so much for having me. I am glad you are here and sharing your story and you're now an author. Imagine after all the accolades you've had of all the, you know, doctor, all this, and now you can add another one.
Speaker: Author, how does that feel? It feels like the cherry on top. I think surviving is the real accomplishment. And then being able to record that and share it with people is is just extra blessing.
Speaker: Writing a memoir takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of introspection as well as a lot of you know research. When it's a memoir, it's your own perspective. But in that writing of that memoir, like how long did this process take of you being able to find these stories for yourself, like bring them up for yourself? Because you were six years old too when you, so you're little. So how was that process?
Speaker: When it's a memoir, it's your own perspective. But in that writing of that memoir, like how long did this process take of you being able to find these stories for yourself, like bring them up for yourself? Because you were six years old, too, when you so you're little. So how was that process?
Speaker: Yeah. So I think the way that I experienced it was that I probably started collecting these stories as I lived them. And the kind of kid I was, was I would sometimes record things in my body or my brain or my my chest. And even if I didn't understand what was happening at the time, so kind of storing it for future sense-making. So I did a lot of that.
Speaker: The writing didn't start until i was deep into therapy and middle age. And I'm sure you know as a grief coach, when you are really deep in therapy, everything is so much more vivid, the memories, the conversations, the associations and insights that you draw. And so I i just leveraged that kind of like widening of my mental aperture when I was in therapy to actually put it down on paper.
Speaker: But i I think I had collected those internal stories and stories from my parents and aunties and uncles all along the way. Yeah, it's it's amazing how much we probably even have that unless we tap or open that little window to that memory, right, which therapy and the types of therapy you did also probably allowed that window to even open wider for you to be able to access that memory even more. Is that correct?
Speaker: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And I i remember... things and events in therapy that were distinctly different than how I intellectually would retell the story to myself. What was more emotionally true was what came out in therapy.
Speaker: Okay, well, thank you. I wanted to kind of just dive into that part of just the process of writing. And now I want to get to know your story and get our audience to hear a bit of your story and your journey. Because something that I talk about on this podcast, and even though you've experienced the grief of death as well, with family members passing,
Speaker: It's that grief of identity, which is primarily a big one in your in your book, as in your memoir, as well as the migratory grief. When you're changing to a whole other culture, country, language, everything is completely changing. So I would love for us to dive in a little bit and talk about your journey today.
Speaker: And then what kind of drove you to be now? And I'll start asking as we go. So take us to six-year-old Mai and we go from there. Yeah. So i I really appreciate that because i think a big, a central theme of the early parts of this book are that it it's a child's experience of the displacement and the loss of the homeland, right? And children of different ages experience that differently.
Speaker: In my case, my that My parents and and the adults around me didn't do a lot of explaining. now That's in part a cultural thing in Vietnamese families, but also they were managing a lot. So what what we learned in Bridge from Saigon was that my family was lucky to have found a way to get out of the country before Saigon fell. So we actually left Vietnam about 10 days before the end of the war on one of the last cargo flights out of the airport.
Speaker: And so it was a very sudden decision, even though my parents had been looking a long time for a way to get out, the opportunity appeared that day, and we took it that evening. And then it wasn't more than three weeks before we landed at our sponsor's home in Philadelphia.
Speaker: So in between there, We had gone through one, two, three refugee camps. And and so there were all of these migrations and a six-year-old just doesn't know why it started or where and when it's going to end. And I think that that dealing with that kind of sudden stress And seeing how stoic my parents were, i think led me to just suppress all the questions that I had and to also suppress all the things that I had lost, the sense of what I had lost because, you know, we were all about looking forward.
Speaker: And how do you make a life in the new place? So it just it took many, many years of processing and living to realize how much I had lost. I had had a pretty idyllic childhood, if you can have such a childhood during a war.
Speaker: And my parents have been very protective. And so I had no idea what was going on and why we were leaving. If you only find out just the same day that you're about to leave, that you're leaving, what what did you grab?
Speaker: Like, what were was there anything that you took that was valuable to you, six-year-old Mai, that you were able to pack?
Speaker: They didn't give me that opportunity. They did give my older brothers that opportunity. my I just got sad for a little Mike. My parents, so they had been, they had been planning and hoping for many, many months. So they actually had bags of photographs and records and things already stashed and and packed, ready to go. They had all the essentials. They even had dog tags made for us. Each one of the kids with our name and contact information for our sponsor and
Speaker: My older brothers, though, were in middle school at the time. And so they got asked, do you want to take something? And one of my older brothers told me he considered taking his school yearbook and decided against it and has regretted it ever since.
Speaker: Yeah. I think if I had had the opportunity, I would have grabbed maybe a favorite doll or a favorite toy. Something that anchored you, something that connected you, something that brought you comfort. Because so many times when we move, even just within...
Speaker: the continental you have like I moved we moved here from Georgia or I live in Texas and when we were moving our son was four and daughter was no sorry our son was five our daughter was four like they were just or in that that kind of cusp around there or six and when we said we were going to move like our son was like no my playstation ah and I'm like Oh, no, the PlayStation can come with us. Oh, OK. Like for him, that was his yeah priority, right? His PlayStation. And so it's always interesting to see for for a child, what are the things that are valuable for that child? And in those moments, again, like you said, your parents had been planning and and maybe had made the decisions for you because you were young.
Speaker: and you really didn't know the big scope the really large scope of understanding that you were leaving your home for forever you know because that concept of that doesn't even register in our heads especially at that age Right. And it was a it was it happened in one day.
Speaker: you know It wasn't like there was a conversation and then we did some planning and then there was another conversation. Like it literally happened in one day that my entire world changed. And and I think because of the like serial nature of like going through that migration process, you also learn to let go prematurely because you're just not sure what you're going to able keep at the next stage.
Speaker: you know And so you you sort of you sort of divorced yourself ah a bit from the things that you thought you cared about. The material thing is that you probably, I don't know how long but did it take you even probably to hang something on your walls later on in life yeah when you move so much or not knowing, is this something that I'm even going to. Yeah. In Bridge from Second, when I described this migration journey, I also described how we started out with all of my aunts and uncles and cousins on my mother's side of the family. And by the time we reached Philadelphia, it was just the six of us.
Speaker: I didn't know where my grandmother went or my aunts and uncles went or my cousins went. So it was it it was material things and...
Speaker: and And the people that yeah that you started. Did you reckon reckon reconnect? again I have not had the opportunity to. Okay, good. So take us into your teenage years and formative years and then deciding to go into medicine. And when you started realizing that there were these hidden traumas,
Speaker: and grief really within you that had not been tapped in? What were some of these signs that started to show up? Yeah. So to the outside world, I think I just seemed incredibly competent. Even as a seven-year-old, I learned English without an accent. And when summer I got straight A's, I had friends.
Speaker: In my head though, I think I knew that I was different somehow, not just because I was the only the first Asian kid in that public school ever, but also because when I was about age eight, I started being aware of an invisible friend, a boy named Michael, who is a little bit older than me.
Speaker: and And Michael ended up growing up with me and being my safe place throughout all that time. I had, you know, my parents were really committed, very devoted parents, but it wasn't a household of like really deep emotional support, right? They were busy keeping four kids fed and alive and they had hard full-time jobs. And and that just wasn't their so their nature until later in life when they could relax a bit. And so we were, in many ways, the four of us were self-parented.
Speaker: and And so, you know, that was... that was what led me to just start looking at the world around me and the other people around me to catch like all those signals that immigrants don't get naturally. Otherwise, or what should I be doing now? And and what does that mean? And and sort of,
Speaker: In some ways, it felt like I was a thief, like I was snatching little bits from my friends' parents or from my teachers, people who would mentor me to try to like craft a sense of myself and what my life should be. So it's very much improvised. mean, all young people feel that way. It's just, I think, young people who don't have to migrate, don't lose so much. they have some anchors. you know they have they They just have a greater sense of what's possible and what's too hard. And I didn't i didn't have that. So how I ended up in healthcare care was I kind of got the signal, though my parents never said this explicitly, your choices are doctor, lawyer, or teacher.
Speaker: and And I knew that I wanted to be of service somehow, and you can do that in any of those professions, but I like science. And so I was just this very reluctant pre-man and didn't figure out what my passion was in healthcare care until I insisted on taking an adult gap year between college and medical school, which was so not in trend back then, and worked for this public health lawyer who's still a dear friend and mentor and became kind of my mother surrogate. And she was the one who
Speaker: I think unbeknownst to her she didn't realize how much it meant to me at the time. Like she opened my eyes to all these other worlds of policy stuff and HIV and, you know, vaccine policy and things that that weren't accessible to me who i I wasn't as literate as I could have been. And and that is what kind of launched my career.
Speaker: Thank you for sharing that that journey. And that we just had the little abbreviated version of it. And so now let's go even deeper. You talk about Michael. Yeah. And your imaginary friend, Michael.
Speaker: What was Michael like? And what did Michael add to your life at that age? You said eight when you started talking to Michael? Okay. And seeing Michael and then take us into the journey of the other comforts and other first people that you had within your yeah being my.
Speaker: I knew that Michael, that other people couldn't see Michael. I knew that to them, he was not real. I wasn't confused about reality, but to me, he felt emotionally very real. Michael was a half-breed.
Speaker: He had ah a Jewish American mother and a father from Eastern Europe with a little bit of Asia in his eyes somewhere. And he was an only child. And when he was young, they decided to move back to Europe.
Speaker: And after they landed there after a couple of years when Michael was about nine, his parents died suddenly under mysterious circumstances. And he was taken in by an uncle.
Speaker: And that's where things got kind of murky as as I was sensing Michael's story, which I, you know, would kind of work on emotionally, iteratively over the years. I would say i kind of landed on his final story, maybe in my mid-20s. But this uncle and Michael having to go live with him became kind of a blind spot.
Speaker: Something bad happened in that house. I could never figure out what. But then the next thing that happened was that I, it felt like I sent someone to rescue Michael.
Speaker: His parents had had an American friend named Rich, and Rich somehow got permission to adopt Michael and bring him back to America. And so Michael came back with Rich when he was 10 or 11.
Speaker: And Michael and and Rich raised him. And part of that re-entry for Michael into his you know his his birthplace was that Rich had him spend time with a therapist. Now, I want to explain that I did not know what a therapist was until I was 29.
Speaker: nine So I cannot tell you how a child intuited that, oh, you know this this kind of kind analytic person comes and sits with this kid And it's in a quiet, private place. And they talk about bad things. And then over time, gradually, Michael gets better. That's what happened.
Speaker: Like, i I have the memory of that happening as I was growing up. I have no idea how I intuited that that's what a child would need. And part of what Rich came to understand about Michael was that his uncle had raped him.
Speaker: So what Michael did for me, though, was he had so many roles in my life. He, in many ways, i stored the best parts of myself in Michael.
Speaker: He was always so centered and generous and sunny and children loved him and everyone trusted him and He was smart, but not show-offy. And he was really good looking. He was like six feet tall and just as shy of GQ. So I stored a lot of precious things with him. But he also took care of me.
Speaker: you know, if I had a hard day, whether that was with my mother or navigating social stuff in middle school, or just having like really deep doubts. I, I struggled with depression throughout my adolescence and and into my twenties and thirties. He, he would be my, my comfort, my soulless place. So I would go off and spend time with him, sometimes in the middle of the day, sometimes at night in bed. He also like could hold me. I would actually feel physically held by him. And, and he would, the other really important role he played, Kendra, was that he, he gave me glimpses of a future.
Speaker: He gave me a vision of regaining my princess childhood from Saigon and somehow overcoming it all. He was just so sure of that, that I had to be sure of it because I trusted him.
Speaker: He was many other things, but so, so, Michael was the only, I would call him character that I was aware of until I started therapy in middle age, because I explained in Bridge from Saigon that in middle age, and in my first real adult healthcare job,
Speaker: I had a sudden rush of success and this completely did me in. I was not psychologically prepared for success. I started having panic attacks and severe anxiety and so ended up in therapy and it was in therapy, not that long, like less than a year into therapy that i had the realization that Michael was me, that He was a part of me and I drove him. and once that happened, other inner characters started to manifest. The first one was, I call her seven because she was the seven-year-old version of myself. And and then came four-year-old and a baby and a teenager. And ultimately, the most troubled one of them all was the eight-year-old whom I called Eight.
Speaker: The other little girls, every every character had their own personality that was so easy for me to recognize. The eight-year-old though was the real mystery. and And that's where I think the book takes a scarier turn about about her because you know I didn't invite any of these characters to manifest.
Speaker: They sort of intruded into my consciousness in therapy. My therapist didn't lead me there at all. And Eight in particular was very intrusive because I, in my mind's eye, I found her on the railroad bridge that I used to cross every day going to and from school.
Speaker: And she was burned to crisp. She was like a piece of bacon. lying by herself there. and And I was so resentful of having to deal with that and of having to take care of her.
Speaker: It took me some time to realize that I was all she had. And so once I realized that, i I called an ambulance and they came and they took her and they put her in and in an ICU. And and then you know the memoir it talks about her journey back and what I learned from her and and the trauma that that triggered you know her becoming who she was and Michael becoming who he was.
Speaker: I've always been so intrigued by everything like this of the different person. so I now have to fully read your book to be able to dive in now into all of that journey and how you lived with all of these different layers of yourself, right, within that as well other layers that were there to protect you from the trauma and everything that you had experienced.
Speaker: in that unraveling per se in your therapy and that you're seeing all the different characters that had lived within you, how did you either integrate them into your life, as you said, you kind of or say goodbye to some and that grief component of some of them no longer being needed in your journey now because that must also be really hard especially when they've been your companions through so many hard times is if you have to say goodbye
Speaker: You are so intuitive. You're the first person to have caught that without having to explain it is that I wanted to heal.
Speaker: wanted understand how these i wanted to understand how these pieces of myself fit together. I wanted that so badly, like my dream was to be normal.
Speaker: But one of the first things to happen in that therapeutic process was that Michael started to dissipate. He's he still exists, but I can't i can't I can no longer access him the intimate way that I used to. Like our relationship used to be such that I could be in front of his eyes one minute and then behind his eyes the next minute and know what he was thinking.
Speaker: i can't do that anymore. And I i so grieved for him. i cried. would yell at my therapist because of course it was the therapist's fault. And the therapist was like, I've got nothing to do with it.
Speaker: it took It took some
Speaker: really hard reflection on my part to accept that the reason I was losing him was because I was absorbing him and becoming as confident as he was, as all the things that he was, all the safe things.
Speaker: I was now feeling... safe enough to embody them myself. And so Michael said, well, what do you need me for But it was very much like having your lover lift ripped away from you.
Speaker: And I didn't experience the other characters in the same way. One, because I didn't know them until i was an adult. And second, they were people I took care of instead of people who took care of me And and it was easier...
Speaker: The eight-year-old was very challenging. That one took a long time to resolve. But Michael helped take care of all the others. And so I felt like I wasn't alone.
Speaker: And eventually i even accepted the eight-year-old. So now, you know, it's funny because... One of the ways that they stay with me is that I am so conscious of who I am. So when I am snarky in a certain way, I know that is the four-year-old, right? When I am feeling super curious and scientific and just like will not let go of that bone that I've got, that is the seven-year-old. And when I am angry, when I am full of rage, that is 100% eight,
Speaker: And so it's just, there's something comforting about knowing that I can still tap into them, just never in quite the same way that I had related to Michael.
Speaker: It really moved me to think of that, of that you had to say goodbye. And thank you for mentioning of the that the question resonated with you. i I tend to just ask whatever comes up based on the conversation. So I appreciate that. It's kind of a confirmation of what I do. So I appreciate you saying that. So thank you.
Speaker: I want to talk about your family and you now with your husband, who I got to meet as we were setting up the the mic and and the recording, and you going back to Vietnam.
Speaker: So, you know, the book is called Bridge from Saigon. And just to be clear, it wasn't about crossing a bridge from Saigon. I am the bridge.
Speaker: If you are immigrant of a certain age. And as you know, one of my rabbis explained to me, in every family in each generation, there's one keeper of stories.
Speaker: And that person always feels cursed. And that's how I felt. I felt cursed even as a child with two things. One feeling like I was somehow responsible for healing my ancestors sadnesses.
Speaker: And the second was I felt compelled to chase down family history and family stories, which was not easy because war refugee parents don't actually want to talk about what they left behind. If you think about Holocaust survivors, same thing. They really, they're they're so traumatized. And so we grew up in an atmosphere where my brothers weren't interested and my parents were actively trying to keep me away. from it. So in adulthood, when i lost a very dear friend in a plane crash, that to me was like the break. To me, that was the end of childhood. And I realized I no longer could afford to or wanted to wait for someone to give me my history.
Speaker: ive i wanted it, I had to go get it. And so I decided that I wanted to go back to Vietnam. And my husband, David was willing to come with me. So we got you know We got projects and funding and and and had to overcome a lot of initial resistance from my parents.
Speaker: They were just like paranoid and afraid of what might happen if I would go. But once they realized I wasn't going to change my mind, they were all in. you know, they made all kinds of introductions to family back in Vietnam. I apparently was related to half the country. And they sent all kinds of gifts I had to fit into our luggage and sent letters of introduction and things and my grandmother, this, so this is how I learned in preparing for this first scouting trip, before our full year there, that I said to my grandmother, well, David, he has a Fulbright, but he wants to go and study economic development in the environment. He just needs a
Speaker: a sponsor in country. And she took out her little wallet and she started leafing through the business cards. And she said, could you Zoom help? Uncle Zoom. And his card read Deputy Minister for Science, Technology and the Environment.
Speaker: I was like, need more but yeah what? talk about like I'm and you're telling me this now? And I was like, he's in the Communist Party. He's high up. i don't understand what's happening here.
Speaker: And that was just so representative of all the interactions that I had thereafter, after we landed in the North and in the South, you know, things were sad because one side of the family was, the the the family was on both sides of the war. And so, you know, people had advantages and some people were really disadvantaged and there was just so much trauma and so much sadness and so much just sort of like natural allegiance and love because
Speaker: you know, relatives in the North had never met me. i was born in the South, but they clearly felt responsible for taking care of me. And my Southern relatives remembered me as a little six-year-old. And so they were just, they were just so protective. And, and it was, it was like Insta family. Like you remember those toys, those foam toys you pop in the bathtubs, like Insta army, it was like Insta family. And, and it was, so it was just so mind blowing that whole, that whole year, how much We learned and how stressful it was. The other aspect of it that I think made it so stressful and rewarding was that my father in his family was the only son of the first wife of the village chief.
Speaker: That meant that he was the village chief. in absentia. And I had grown up watching him and helping him send care packages back to Hanoi, of you know medicines and clothes and stuff.
Speaker: So here I was representing the village chief And I had like fourth grade level Vietnamese to speak with at the start of the year. It was so stressful, but it it gave me just this this really layered, nuanced sense of my parents' histories and relationships and the country and my own place in it that I never, ever would have had, even if they had told me all the stories in the world.
Speaker: to like to actually stand on that piece of earth and smell the rice plants and you know hear the motorbikes. And it was just it was a gift.
Speaker: And then I was ready to come home because one of the things that I learned was, oh, I'm apparently an American. i you know I have these Vietnamese parts of me, but by the end of the year,
Speaker: I really missed being in America. I, it didn't feel natural to me to spend the rest of my life there.
Speaker: As you're saying this, of this integrat integration of your two cultures and of you realizing when you're there that you're actually more from here and probably when you were here, you're feeling like, wait, I don't fit in here. And then there is something that a lot of people that are immigrants sometimes struggle. Like I've lived, I'm from Colombia. I've lived in the U.S. for, more I moved here when I was almost 19. I've lived here for over 30 years So, but I am, like in terms of my upbringing, I am bicultural because of my dad, but still sometimes I feel like when I say, no, I'm from Colombia, when I'm like, wait, I've lived here longer than I, like, I'm like, but to know that you can integrate these different aspects of ourselves in that journey and in our culture is something that I even talk within with the within the journey of even grieving that a lot of times, When we're leaving, when we're in a and no in in the crossroad of our lives and that something's majorly changed and we don't you know recognize the new us in this new journey, how do we integrate this grief within our lives so that we could still live purposeful, meaningful, joyful lives? And in the same way, it's integration. We talked about integrating things all these part characters of your life within you as well, right? And now you kind of just live within them. And in that same way, you integrated your Vietnamese side with your American side as you're living in this country. It's just and you integrated them and you realize that as you took this journey to Vietnam, it's so beautiful.
Speaker: Tell me about your... you have your children and about the, and that part and and, and for them to uncover, because now they're even more multirly cult multicultural themselves. So how is this understanding of your own culture and heritage now incorporated into their lives?
Speaker: Yeah. So first of all, I really appreciate the when whenever you say integration, the visual in my head is the body of the bridge.
Speaker: Like, let's say it was a covered bridge, know, being in the middle of that bridge. Because my therapist once pointed out to me, you know, it's interesting, bridges don't get to travel.
Speaker: They don't get to go inland that direction or inland that direction. They have a job to do. And it's to help people cross and meet. I don't think everyone experiences integration or immigration that way, but it's how I experienced it. I should also explain that I also write in Bridge from Saigon about my immigration into Judaism, which was all my decision.
Speaker: My atheist Jewish husband was kind of shocked and not entirely pleased at the time, but here we are. And after I did that, I started bringing the kids along to Hebrew school.
Speaker: You know, you ask about our kids and I think I think for them, it just feels so seamless, which I, you know, i think we were not perfect parents, but maybe we did that part well, that it feels totally natural for them to go from my husband's family to my family, which are so different culturally and in all kinds of ways. i mean, if you've got hippy-dippy folk dancer people over here and you've got, you know, computer engineers and physicians and lawyers over here and entrepreneurs and they, I think they list their identities differently as they age, but they list all of them.
Speaker: You know, they they recognize that they're Eastern European and that they're Vietnamese. And it's not it's not a thing for them. I think it's not just our parenting. it's also like this generation.
Speaker: They're just so more exposed to differentness and multi-everything. it I think the opposite is what would feel odd to them. So, you know, they grew up with friends with all kinds of mixed parentage and and lifestyles. And and it just it i i think it wouldn't occur to them that there's any single norm.
Speaker: that they're supposed to compare themselves to. i do wish that they would absorb more family. I think they've absorbed a lot of family history, but you know they're still in their 20s. And at that age in our lives, we're still a little bit narcissistic and kind of focused on ourselves. I know I didn't really think about my parents until much later in life, but it is one reason i wrote the book is that it will always be there for them.
Speaker: and they have gone back to Vietnam and you know and and one of them has even gone back by himself multiple times they'll always feel American I think but it's a it's a generous open-hearted kind of American-ness
Speaker: What you were saying of just the the multicultural generations in which we live now. I still sometimes when I'm marking the little X of what are you, I'm like, yeah, I'm Hispanic by upbringing, but that's not just what I, it's like, I'm like, I almost always put other because was like, I'm just, I'm a world citizen people. Like, we like like I'm just multicultural. And ah so anyway, I think that they're going to probably have to start
Speaker: you know, taking that portion of the form away at some point, because it's going to be too many little X's that people are going to have to fill out for their cultures, because we're so intertwined nowadays. Yeah. And when when I hear a statistic, like the country is X percentage non-white, I'm like, what does that mean? Like X percentage of our collective genome is non-white? Yeah. What does that really mean? okay what It's like, yeah we're just people, people, we're human beings. So I love that you, that you share that you went and dove into finding out about the Jewish faith yourself, even though your husband was not. And then that became part of your culture. How did your family deal with that part? Yeah. silently so you know obviously my parents knew that david is jewish and it gave my father some pause he loved david um but he he said to me on the morning of my wedding well at least i had you baptized so i know you're not going to hell um they so i never told my parents about my conversion my brothers all know and you know they're fine with it they um
Speaker: None of them are particular. They don't they themselves don't aren't like heavily practicing Catholics. So so it's not like there's any cultural conflict or anything. OK, that's good. Good to know, because sometimes people are like you said, sometimes people don't say because they don't want to also.
Speaker: Yeah. Rock the boat a little too much. Now let's talk about what you do and how is that my now, as you as the doctor, dive into all these things and how who you are informs the way you carry yourself and what you do.
Speaker: You are a really good interviewer because...
Speaker: It flows more naturally than I would have predicted when I started writing the book. Because what writing the book made me realize was that the same resentment I had about being a cultural bridge, I also felt toward being a professional bridge.
Speaker: I was a physician. I saw patients in free clinics, so poor patients in poor communities in free clinics. And then I became a researcher, and I was the only physician on a hallway of social scientists, and I was the only clinician.
Speaker: So I had to somehow bring in those views and like help people help my colleagues understand you know, why I was reacting in different ways to the data or the stories or the policy prescriptions. And then I went from there into government, where into an agency at Medicare and Medicaid, where the evaluation team knew me from my research work.
Speaker: But my bosses were the policy folks, the political leaders who just wanted these new programs up and going. And they wanted... data on them, but they didn't understand research and evaluation. And so, you know, the evaluation colleagues would tug on my shoulder and say, can you please explain to them? And so I actually had to do this slide presentation of what we talk about when we talk about evaluation to try to bridge these two sides. And my head was splitting apart. And then I went from public service into the country's second largest insurance company,
Speaker: And, and so that was like a whole other bridging journey. And then I went from there to what I do now, which is that six years ago, i decided that I wanted to to found a nonprofit. It's called Institute for Exceptional Care. And this was inspired by my second child, Alex, who's autistic, and us watching them survive their first mental health crisis in high school.
Speaker: And it just raising so much curiosity for me. he' like, oh, this is how families with these types of developmental disabilities live. How did I not know this? oh, I didn't know this, and I was Medicare's Chief Innovation Officer. Wait, that makes me actually pretty typical of general healthcare leaders. So I just learned as much as I could about it. I got a lot of advice from the community, and we started this project where, wouldn't you know it, I'm back to bridging.
Speaker: Because what we do as we're trying to make health care better for this community is we bring together really important health care decision makers like hospital executives and Medicare you know leaders and such. And we put them in the same room as just ordinary people with disabilities and family members. And then we have to like teach them, here are some group norms.
Speaker: We're not going to use our work titles. We're going to slow down our speech. We're going to use plain language. We might even do some illustrations. And we're going to prioritize what the community members say.
Speaker: But we also want to understand the stresses that the health care teams are under. And then let's build some solutions. And so in every project, whether that's, you know, we're building... We're creating a new training course for clinicians, or we build an app to help people explain to clinicians about themselves. Like, here's the best way to talk to me. Here are the things that make me anxious. We don't do any of that work without this multi-stakeholder, multicultural, multi-whatever, you know, group of people contributing.
Speaker: And there have been conflicts. And then we lived through them. They used to stress me out. And now I just realized this is part of the work. And, you know, sorry, kid, like you're the bridge.
Speaker: That's what you do. And I feel like my entire life has fed into this love project, because I'm not sure that anyone else could have sent it down this direction.
Speaker: And I hope other people can take it and carry it after I'm done. But but i I think this this to me feels like this is the ultimate legacy, right? And this is your next book that we had. First book, Bridge from Saigon. Now it's Bridge from Medicare, Medicare system, Medicare health system. Like this is the second one, the sequel.
Speaker: Yeah, the sequel. Yeah. but see How did she turn out? Yes. It's so interesting because you're right. All these things that we do and who we are do end up fitting into our life. It's that all of these little pieces of your life did build you to be the person that you are now and have the capacity to be able to be that bridge in what you're doing.
Speaker: That's why I was asking how that, because it is, we don't realize it until we live it, that everything has added up to who we are now. So thank you for explaining that so beautifully.
Speaker: Maya, as we start wrapping up, I want to make sure people know how to get your book first. Let's start there. How do they get their book, the book, and you mentioned, you said and and any other resources that you have. And then I have a final question afterwards.
Speaker: Sure. So the book is called Bridge from Saigon, a memoir of family and mind. It's published by McFarland and you can order it from your local bookstore or Amazon, Barnes and Noble, any of those places. There is a digital version too for people who prefer that. And my website is just my name, huangmaifam.me. So come visit and see what events are coming up and reach out if you want to connect about it.
Speaker: Love it. And all those links will be in the show notes. Yeah. What was there? Oh, the question. Yes. The question that I have for you is, is there something else I have not asked that you want to make sure that the listeners oh gather from? Yeah.
Speaker: You know, grief is just one half of of a whole, right? Yeah. when you lose something, you're usually gaining something too. So I want people to to remember that. But I also want them to, especially in this country, remember that here, all of us are products of immigration.
Speaker: And I really hope that people can tap into their own families' immigration stories and history. And not just the facts, like the dates and names are are easy.
Speaker: It's the stories about how people experienced it and what what traces are left in your families now of that, you know, in the relationships and the traditions and and the sad things.
Speaker: And i hope that that that people can find it in themselves if they can tap into that inner memory to project empathy for immigrants who are so under stress right now, especially the children.
Speaker: we cannot imagine yet the long tail of how current events will ripple through their lives and through the lives of people that they touch. And I think we, you know, I feel in part responsible for doing what I can to protect them Another bridge.
Speaker: Another bridge. Another bridge. Thank you again. was Dr. Mai Pham. Thank you again. Thank you, Kendra.
Speaker: thank you again so much for choosing to listen today. I hope that you can take away a few nuggets from today's episode that can bring you comfort in your times of grief.
Speaker: If so, it would mean so much to me if you would rate and comment on this episode. And if you feel inspired in some way to share it with someone who may need to hear this, please do so.
Speaker: Also, if you or someone you know has a story of grief and gratitude that should be shared so that others can be inspired as well, please reach out to me.
Speaker: And thanks once again for tuning in to Grief, Gratitude, and the Gray In Between podcast. Have a beautiful day.
