Lessons of hope from the jungle and mountains

*This is a repost/resend due to a technical glitch

Origin story

Earlier this week, I led a group coaching session on Asking for Help. I wanted to focus on this topic because I believe that asking for help is a life skill. As we discussed in our session, asking for help requires self-awareness, vulnerability and the belief that people are willing to come to our aid. The more I thought about this topic, the more I was reminded of a recent conversation with my younger sister about our Hmong heritage. I believe the Hmong people have a natural bias towards community and asking for help because this was vital to how our ancestors survived while hiding and migrating in the mountains and jungles of China and Southeast Asia.

Without going down a deep history lesson, I will summarize Hmong history by saying that we are a stateless nation. We are stateless, meaning we don’t have a country or a piece of land we can claim as ours. That said, we are still a nation of people, which means we have cultural customs and a shared language that is uniquely ours. To avoid the threat of ethnic genocide, we migrated from the land we originated on (located in present-day China). As a result of this forced migration, our people had to survive and hide in the jungles and mountains of China and Southeast Asia for centuries. While in the jungles, we found a new threat: the countries we’d fled to did not consider us documented citizens. Eventually, our “ticket to freedom” included living in UN-backed refugee camps and working with governments willing to grant us asylum and immigrant status.

Four lessons on hope, survival and help

The intergenerational trauma of our people is well documented. As a pivot, I want to talk about the intergenerational hope of our people and the lessons of survival that we have also taken with us from generation to generation.

1. Survival is a team sport. Ask any Hmong kid about survival, and they will have a story about how their parents and grandparents migrated in silence and at night in forests while crossing rivers or dangerous political zones. Some traveled alone, but most traveled in small groups, sharing food, caring for one another’s children and watching after one another on the road to freedom. When my father and my uncles crossed the Mekong River to seek refuge in Thai refugee camps, they had to depend on one another for the mental and physical stamina to keep going. Like many Hmong people, it took their “team” more than one attempt before they could make it over the river. If someone felt too weak midway through the river, the team had to swim back and try again later.
2. Hope is also a team sport. This is an opinion, not fact, but I believe that the Hmong people survived generations of political warfare and persecution because we had hope against all odds. We had access to few resources, but we were never short of hope. On a more factual note, Harvard research has shown that “those with more hope throughout their lives had better physical health, better health behaviors, better social support and a longer life.” Additionally, hope is more than fluff. According to Arizona State University, “In psychology, hope is a cognitive practice that involves the intentional act of setting goals and working toward them with purpose.”
3. Asking for help is a necessary life skill—and a reflection of a healthy community. Western society indoctrinates us into favoring independence, but my Hmong upbringing has shown me there is power in mutual aid. One or two generations back, asking for help may have looked like taking an overnight hunting trip and being on the lookout while the rest of your pack slept in the trees to avoid any threats. Now, my Hmong brothers and sisters are more likely to help each other in modern settings. Still, we internalize our parents’ and older generations’ lessons, being each other’s lookouts and lighthouses. -- Reciprocity and generosity are our ingrained values, reinforced by the idea that help is symbiotic. In other words, everybody wins when someone asks for help; the requester receives the support they need, and the supporter gets to show up as an active community member. The sooner you learn and honor this, the sooner you cultivate this skill as a tool for survival—both on an individual and a communal level.
4. Innovation is a community practice. You don’t care about patents when you are in survival mode. You care about what works and share it to ensure everyone benefits. This way of life shows how the first three lessons come together: when you are facing adversity—lacking resources and hitting a wall of constraints—you are forced to innovate to survive. You have to have hope that you can find an innovative solution. Then, you share your newfound knowledge with others so that they can also thrive.

Closing thought on social constructs and roleplaying

Yesterday, I closed my group coaching session on Asking for Help with an observation: Perhaps, we are always roleplaying in society. We play our parts with outdated rules and codes of conduct until someone decides to break out of character. Some of those obsolete rules look like this when it comes to asking for help:

• Don’t ask for help because it will make you look weak
• Don’t help someone because it will make YOU look weak
• Don’t help people because they deserve to suffer on their own
• Don’t ask for help because the people before you had to learn the hard way too

What if we all break character and break through the fourth wall and admit that help is healthy and necessary? What if we consciously embrace the idea that help is human nature? After all, we are social creatures who have evolved and survived due to our social nature.

If this piques your interest, keep these lessons of hope and survival in your back pocket. Think about them the next time you need to muster the courage to ask for help or when you spot someone having trouble asking for assistance. Show them a new script with words such as:

• Hey, would you mind if you helped?
• Hey, it looks like you need a hand. Is there anything I can do to help?

On your way out…

I want to acknowledge that I am not speaking for all Hmong Americans and generalizing their unique experiences. This blog is written from my intersectional lens as a cis-gender, female-identifying 1.75-generation Hmong American immigrant and refugee.

+ Friendly reminder that you can always book or gift 1:1 and group coaching sessions with me. You can also book or gift holistic healing seasons as well. Booking information can be found through my calendar portal.