Episode 139: How to Break Free from the 'Shoulds' and Build a Life You Truly Own with Amy Yip
In this episode of the F*ck Saving Face podcast, host Judy Tsuei speaks with Amy Yip, a mental fitness coach and author, about her journey from corporate America to coaching, the importance of mental fitness, and the challenges of navigating cultural expectations as an Asian American.
They discuss Amy's book 'Unfinished Business,' which explores her relationship with her immigrant parents and the transformative conversations that led to a deeper understanding of their experiences. The episode emphasizes the significance of vulnerability, authenticity, and the desire to break generational cycles of trauma.
More about Amy Yip:
Amy Yip is the founder of Amy Yip LLC, dedicated to closing leadership skills gaps for underrepresented employees. As a Mental Fitness Executive Coach, TEDx speaker, award-winning author, and self-confidence trainer, Amy has over 16 years of experience leading global teams at companies like Google, Clorox, and Booz Allen.
She holds multiple certifications, including as a Certified Hudson Institute Coach and a pioneer Mental Fitness Coach through Positive Intelligence. Amy earned her MBA from UCLA Anderson and her BS in Computer Science and BA in Communications from the University of Maryland.
Amy lives in Maryland with her husband, Greg, and their two sons, Logan and Julian. She’s passionate about fostering diverse leadership and creating transformative change.
Sound Bites
"Your mindset makes all the difference."
"Mental fitness is about training our brains."
"Our parents are human beings too."
Takeaways
Mental fitness is distinct from mental health; it's about training the mind.
Cultural expectations can create pressure to conform to societal norms.
Pursuing personal dreams often requires overcoming familial 'shoulds.'
Vulnerability is key to building authentic relationships with parents.
Understanding parents as human beings can transform family dynamics.
Conversations with parents can lead to healing and mutual respect.
Empathy is crucial in navigating difficult family conversations.
It's important to recognize the humanity in those we love.
The journey of self-discovery often involves confronting uncomfortable truths.
Authenticity is liberating and essential for personal growth.
Episode Highlights
00:00 Introduction to Amy Yip and Mental Fitness
08:53 The Impact of Mental Fitness on Personal Growth
17:51 Lessons Learned and Passing Them to the Next Generation
Transcript:
Welcome to the F*ck Saving Face podcast where we're empowering mental and emotional health for Asian Americans and voices of color by breaking through taboo topics. Life may not always be pretty, but it is indeed beautiful. Make your story beautiful today.
Judy Tsuei (00:02.668)
Amy Yip is a somatic life transformation and mental fitness coach. She's also a keynote speaker, an award-winning author, and a self-confidence trainer. She's spoken at TEDx twice and works with women of color leaders to strengthen their mental fitness, heal intergenerational wounds, find their voice and the courage to speak up, and then to have the agency to let go of all the shoulds so that they can be the authors of their own life stories.
She wants to empower women of color to be seen, to be heard, and to fucking rock the boat. So she's also an International Coach Federation professional certified coach and certified in a lot of different other modalities. She received her MBA from UCLA Anderson School of Management, her BS in computer science, her BA in communications from the University of Maryland. And she now lives in Maryland with Greg, her best friend and husband and her two sons, Logan and Julian, who she feels are the cutest kids ever. One of her greatest learnings is that your mindset, not your circumstances, make all the difference in your happiness and your success. So I'm excited for you to listen to this episode.
And I would always love to know what you think if there's anything that you felt really resonated with you and to leave a review so that more people can find this podcast and to be able to share these healing stories and healing tools with other people. Now let's dive in.
Judy Tsuei (01:55.808)
I have Amy Yip here with me today. She's a mental fitness executive coach and we'll pull that apart about what it is and what she does. But I'm going to just turn it around, turn it over to you so you can share a bit more about your background and what it is that you do. Thanks for having me on the show. Really excited to be here. So I am a mental fitness executive coach, a keynote speaker and a self-confidence trainer.
And in terms of mental fitness, a lot of people hear the word and they think mental health, but they're very, very different. mental fitness, the analogy that I always use is physical fitness, right? If you're about to run a marathon, what would you have to do? You would have to train ahead of time, get physically fit ahead of time to prepare for the 26.2 miles. At least I would. There's probably people out there who don't have to do that, but I would have to train ahead of time. And so mental fitness is the same idea. We know that life will throw us curve balls all the time.
So how do we train our brains? How do we get mentally fit ahead of time to prepare for whatever is to come our way so that we can handle it without being overly stressed? And yeah, that's essentially the work that I do. It's a lot about the mindset. And so you've led global teams, Google and Clorox and all of these. How did you get into this work? Yeah. So where should we begin with this?
I spent 16 years in corporate America and before leaving my corporate job at Google, I had always dreamed of traveling the world, of giving back, and doing this has just been a dream for decades, right? But when you're in your mid-30s as a woman, a lot of people have opinions. I call those the shoulds. And so there were a lot of shoulds during my time when I was at Google thinking about leaving. One of the shoulds came about my job at Google.
Why would you leave Google? Everyone's trying to get in and you're gonna leave. Like, what are you thinking? And this was especially true from my parents because my dad used to hand out my Google card, my Google business card, and he'd be like, look where my daughter is working. So when he even heard of this idea that I was thinking about leaving, he was like, no, you're not gonna do that. Why would you do that, right? The second thing that came along during my time was I met my husband.
Judy Tsuei (04:12.032)
Husbands change plans, he was doing his entrepreneurial thing, and I felt like I should be the stability and the responsible one, so why would I quit my job and travel and do this thing? That's absurd. And the biggest should of all is as a woman in your mid-30s, everyone has an opinion about your fertility. And so everyone around me was saying you should just have babies, right? Your eggs are rotting, my parents, people have said that to me, and it was not the nicest thing.
And my parents also pushed me and nudged me in there like, you know, you're getting old, you've got to have kids, where are our grandkids? And so while at Google, we had a benefit to do IVF. And so my husband and I had our embryos frozen and we thought that's a great backup plan. And then we'll get to go do the travel thing and see the world before we come back and settle down to start a family.
A year later, we found out the tank where embryos were stored lost temperature control. my gosh. So essentially they said, well, unless you plan to use your embryos now, we can't tell you the viability, right? We just don't know. And that was my rock bottom point of, what, what, what will I do? I'm in my late thirties now. Everybody says it's really hard to get pregnant the older you get. And so I went on this self-help journey of trying to figure out what is it that I truly want for myself.
And as growing up, I was taught to be like a good Chinese girl and good Chinese girls don't air their dirty laundry. You don't tell people about all that stuff. So on the outside, I was smiling. People didn't know what was going on. And on the inside, I'm like, I don't feel happy, but I don't know what to do. So I started reading books, right? Because I couldn't tell anybody else. So I figured I'm smart enough. I can read books and figure out the answer of, do I go pursue my dream or do I settle down and start a family?
I will tell you, I learned a lot from those books, but I never got the answer of do I pursue the dream or have babies. After that, a really good friend told me about ayahuasca. And for people who have never heard of ayahuasca, it's a medicinal plant, it's a psychedelic, there's an entire ceremony with a shaman. And so my friend told me about it and she said, hey, there's this thing called ayahuasca that's supposed to give you clarity. And I was like, that's great, I need clarity.
Judy Tsuei (06:33.87)
So I went on a five day ayahuasca ceremony to Peru. And I will tell you, I got so much clarity out of it. I would not be this vulnerable and sharing all this stuff had it not been for the ceremony, right? Like I learned a lot about life and what matters, but I still didn't get the answer of do I pursue the dream, travel, or do I settle down and start a family? Finally, I returned back to the US and a coworker told me about coaching.
and I had no idea what coaching was. And honestly, I was skeptical when I first heard about it. I'm like, how does somebody who doesn't know me help me figure out what I want when they don't even know me? That doesn't make sense, but I was desperate. So I hired a coach and it was the best decision that I ever did because my coach helped me realize two things. One, she helped me realize I'm not in control of very much, that even if I stay...
I'm not in control of whether I can have kids or not, right? Like look at what happened to my embryos. But I am in control of if I pursue my dreams and if I take that chance. So I made the decision, I'm going to go pursue the dream and I'm going to go travel. And the second thing I decided was I want to be a coach and I want to help other people, especially in the Asian community, especially women, right? Because it sucked feeling stuck. felt horrible not knowing
what I was going to do, but also feeling like I couldn't talk about it and feeling miserable about it. And so I went back and I got my coaching certification and that was the start of my journey. So, know, yeah. And in January of 2020, that was when I left my job at Google, my husband and I, we sold everything in our New York city apartment and we took a one-way flight to Ghana and we volunteered at a breast cancer nonprofit.
And the plan was we would volunteer and then travel before returning back to the US. But as you probably remember what happened in 2020, that little thing called COVID came along and we ended up stuck in Ghana for seven months because borders closed. And so when borders finally reopened, we lived and worked nomadically. But, you know, mental fitness really helped me in pursuing my dreams. It helped me when I needed to pivot when we were stuck in Ghana and it continues to help me each and every day today.
Judy Tsuei (08:53.806)
And I do also want to add that a lot of people get curious. They're like, so whatever happened to those embryos? I don't know because I ended up getting pregnant naturally in my forties. So I have a almost three year old and a three month old. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Wow. Congratulations. Yeah. Thank you. So, so I always think like things happen for a reason and mental fitness.
has helped me and continues to help me each and every day. I love your differentiation between mental health and mental fitness, because I advocate for mental health a lot. similarly, I became a coach because I had done decades of therapy.
And it helped to a certain point. And I think that a lot of different modalities help when you need them, if you find the right person or the right resource. And then at some point, your neurology changes and you want more or you want to. And I love, think similar to you, of helping other women of color discover what it is that they need and want because unique to us, I feel like the cultural baggage is so strong and the level of shame of being able to open up and be vulnerable and express and.
ask for help. The good Chinese girl paradigm is definitely something that I'm also very familiar with. And you know, my book is called How to Disappoint Your Parents in 10 Shameless Steps because of the fact that I didn't ever fulfill that I didn't live up to those expectations. And I think that, you know, today we're talking about step nine, which is that I ended up moving back to the country that my parents fled. So I lived in China, and they had lived in China. And then when they were young, fled to Taiwan. And then I moved to Taiwan with my daughter.
and my then husband and then we moved back and I could only imagine what that must have been like for them.
Judy Tsuei (10:36.45)
for all the sacrifices and everything that their families had gone through for me to up and move because I had a US passport and I could do what I wanted and have that freedom. And so one of the things that you have is an award-winning book, which is called Unfinished Business, Breaking Down the Great Wall Between Adult, Child, and Immigrant Parents. And I would love for you to talk more about that and what that's about and what learnings you came away with as you were writing the book. Yeah.
When I first started on this journey of writing the book, I didn't even have an intent of writing the book. I never knew it would turn into a book. And the starting point was when I first started coaching, I worked with a lot of women, especially from the Asian community. And one of my clients, she was a senior vice president at one of the largest banks in America. And she came to me because she wanted to figure out what do I want to do next in my life, in my career. Through our work, she realized I want to do something creative. I want to start my own business.
And then she said to me, but I'm gonna have to wait till my father passes away. And I said to her, what makes you believe that? And she said, well, when I'm around my father, I go into little girl mode. And I'm so afraid of his disappointment, his disapproval, especially because when I became SVP, he said, great, and the next thing you'll be is president.
Right. And so the pressure is just there and I don't want to have to deal with it. And mind you, this she's in her 50s, her dad's like in his 80s. Right. And she's still in that fear mode. And what I started noticing was a pattern in a lot of my clients where they would do what she did, which is I'm just going to wait on my dream until they're out of the picture or they do what I did, which is lie to their parents. So I actually lied to my parents. At first I told them I got a
do you just hard to get job overseas that, you know, I'm gonna be overseas for a year. It's really hard to get and it'll be great for my career. The only reason they found out was because my sister's told on me. My sister told my parents about it, right? And so what I started seeing was this pattern. People would lie or they would just hold off on their dreams. And it started getting me thinking of why do we do this, right? Why do we think we need to lie or hold back? And I became curious about my parents' life. And when I was stuck in Ghana during COVID,
Judy Tsuei (12:49.336)
There was also honestly a bit of fear of what will I ever get to see them. There was all this rise in hate crimes and things. And so I decided I'm gonna be courageous and I'm gonna see if I can learn about who my parents are as human beings. So I picked up the phone and I called my dad and I said, hey, would you talk to me? Like I wanna learn about your life.
And it was so fascinating because his response was, we don't have anything interesting to tell you. We were just restaurant workers, right? but you should talk to your uncle. He was a lawyer. I'm sure he's got great stories to tell you. And that kind of gives you a context of what he thinks is valuable versus not. Right. And after a lot of persuasion, he finally agreed to share stories with me and to talk to me. But even then it was very, very difficult. So the book,
is about the three year time span. So over three years, I spent 40 plus hours in conversation with my parents, learning about their lived experiences, their traumas, their belief systems. And the first 20 hours or so, it was really, really hard, like lots of anger, resentment, frustrations. I walked out of those conversations wanting to quit, saying like, what am I doing? And it was my husband who kept.
nudging me and he's like, remember your why, why are you doing this? And a big why for me is because I want something different. Like there's still deep down that longing for parental approval, right? And I wanted something different. So now outside of those 40 hours, you know, now beyond that, I can say that it was all worth it. All the tears, all the resentment, because I have a completely different relationship with my parents now. They tell me they love me, which is like,
They me they're proud of me. They are proud of my book. The fact that they let me air their dirty laundry in the book, right? They told they let me tell their whole story. And it's just a very deep understanding in our relationship. It's mutual respect and genuinely a loving relationship. And so the book, every chapter is a myth that I had about my parents. Like the first chapter was something around
Judy Tsuei (14:59.99)
my success will never be good enough for them. The second chapter, think, was around me not marrying a good Chinese boy. I married a white American guy. And so every chapter is a myth, and I share my side of the story. I share my parents' side. And at the end of each chapter is something called a date with your parents so that the reader can go on a date with their own parents. Because I genuinely believe that if we can see our parents as human beings doing the best they can with what they had,
right, that it's not necessarily agreeing with how they raised us, but it just gives you some empathy and understanding of, get it. And as a parent myself now, I know that I'm going to mess up along the way and I hope my kid can see that I'm trying my best. Yeah. And I love that you did that. I know how courageous and brave and bold that is. I did something similar with my parents and, you know, went out to dinner and asked them questions about things that I had been curious about. And as I write this book now,
I want to continue to do that, especially for that airing Dirty Laundry. People have asked me, are your parents still alive? Because they know that this book is going to come out. And someone that I spoke with just yesterday, he was like, that's so fascinating because your own daughter, now that you're a mom, there's going to be that element of it. You're going to see it from both sides. You're going to see it from your parent's side, and you're going to see it from your daughter's side. And I don't know why it hadn't fully articulated like that in my brain before.
But now my daughter, she's nine, she's always all along the way, has been, I think a lot of things that I had wished and hoped that I would get the opportunity to do. And just innately, naturally, those were things that just came to her. And so she's been very inquisitive. She's definitely a different breed of person than I was. But I think that to think about it from both perspectives is so fascinating. And I love that you're offering an opportunity to see it from both.
standpoints from yours, from theirs, and then from the collective, from the hopefully an opportunity to bring the two together and to bridge that. Was there something that you learned that was like kind of surprising to you or one of the big, like most memorable moments of that experience? I have two big experiences. So the first was probably the turning point. So I mentioned like the first 20 hours or so were really, really hard.
Judy Tsuei (17:21.879)
So, you I started this when I was in Ghana and over that time span, I was not a parent yet. I didn't have kids. I had been recording the conversations and then I got pregnant while overseas and I had to move back. So we kind of paused those conversations for me to come back, for my husband and I to settle down, have the kid, get into parenthood. And then I restarted the conversations. But before restarting, I went back and I listened to some of the recordings and I was shocked. The words I used were okay, but my tone...
I, Kima, I had this tone of, you don't know anything and, right. There is defensiveness, dismissiveness. And I usually think I'm pretty self-aware, but clearly I wasn't. And there is this moment that just, hit me because now I'm a mom and I have this infant who's a pooping, farting, like crying machine. And I love him unconditionally. And I thought if he grows up and talks to me with that tone, how would I feel?
And it would hurt so bad, right? Because all I've done is love this child. And it made me realize that that must be what my parents are going through right now, right? Where I'm talking to them in that way. And so I started going into the conversations with the intent that I am just going to talk to them the way that I hope my kid talks to me one day. And it was hard at first, but you know, with that intention, it really eased their frustrations and stress, know, and their ability to open up really blossomed.
because they know that I'm not gonna show up in this way, but it took time. So that was one big moment. I think the other big moment was my dad crying and I have never seen my dad cry ever, right? And we were talking about emotions in the Asian community and how we always mask it and hide it. And so I asked my dad about his own father and whether he had ever seen his dad cry. And so he started telling me about the story of his dad crying. And then my dad starts tearing up.
as he's doing that, right? And it warms my heart to see that because it was the first time I'd seen it. And it was kind of funny because then my mom jumps in and mind you, my mom, she was taken out of elementary school in fourth grade and to start working, right? And so throughout my childhood, I'm always like, this woman does not know how to joke. She does not know how to be playful. She's so serious all the time. And it was because of that. But then in this moment where my dad's like tearing up, my mom finds her funny side and she's like, old man.
Judy Tsuei (19:50.318)
Are you crying? And I just burst out laughing and I was just like, oh my gosh. And I just ran to my dad, I hugged him and that just unleashed tears. Like it just started pouring and then my mom came in and hugged and it was like all three of us hugging and it was just the most endearing moment. And it really made me realize like our parents are human beings, know, and they have these emotions and yes, maybe they've been masking it, but there's a reason they've been masking it.
And so that, and then, you the funny thing is my dad then, the second time I ever saw him cry was during my virtual book launch party. So there were 60 people on Zoom. My parents had never been on a Zoom call. They joined to share. And my dad started talking about his dad again. And so he's in front of 60 strangers on Zoom, just tearing up. That's so amazing. What a wonderful opportunity and gift for all of you.
And what a memory to have formed. That's so remarkable. I remember the moment that my dad cried and like seeing that vulnerability. it's interesting because just this two weeks ago, I was at an advanced training for my coaching program. So my coach brought me on as a demo and I was talking about the book. I was talking about like the potential response that my family members are having and
and all this kind of stuff. And he goes, I bet you if you go back through your communication, you'll see that you were probably more aggressive than you think that you were, even if you thought you were being conscious or conscientious or whatnot. And that's such a great, we talk about in the coaching program that I do about cause and effect and being on the cause side of the equation rather than the effect.
And so you going back and listening and taking ownership of that is so huge. And I think we all have those kind of, we call them gorillas in the room where like you think you see them, but you don't actually, cause you're so focused over here. You're not seeing this like whole big giant obvious movement over here. So that's so huge that you did that and you had that moment and
Judy Tsuei (21:54.094)
I think it's, my friend had just said recently, you know, do you think that part of your feelings around their response to your book is because even though you're doing this to help other people, even though you're doing this because you believe that it'll amplify voices and share stories that need to be heard, there's a little girl part of you that's still like, please approve me, please like, you know, love me and be okay with me. And so pretty soon you'll be on a big stage like,
literally on stage shouting from the stage about this and what if that outcome doesn't happen? You know, what if that resolution doesn't happen? So I think what's beautiful about your story is you have this moment of coming together, but that's not how it's going to be for everybody. Some people may not have that and they may have radio silence. They may have conflict, more conflict. What do you recommend then? What do you do?
So I always say a couple of things. One is a lot of times we go into these conversations and yes, there's conflict and it is, it what is causing the conflict? Right? And that's why I always tell people one of the first things is to go into these conversations with a why because whys will keep us going. Why is it that you want?
continue these conversations. So after I had my kids, my why was because I wanted something different for my kids. I knew I was carrying baggage. I knew there is like trauma being handed down and I wanted to cut it off. I want my boys to have something different, right? That was my big why. And so knowing what your why is also going in with realizing your goal and your intent is not to change your parents. It is not to have your parents understand you, right? Because if you think about it, if you go into conversation with anyone and you're like,
I want you to change and I want you to understand me. How do you think the other party is going to receive that? They're not going to. They're gonna be like, screw you, I don't wanna understand you. And so you have to go in with the intention of all I want to do is to understand them as human beings. Who were they? What were their lived experiences? What are their belief systems? How were their worldviews formed? What was their upbringing like? What experiences shaped who they are?
Judy Tsuei (24:07.244)
And it's just understanding. It doesn't mean you have to agree with them. It doesn't mean, know, it's just empathy and understanding. And that's what I had to do at first because, you know, the first 20 hours or so of those conversations, I went in with, you need to understand me. I am your child. You're my parent, right? Like nobody's going to respond to that. And so it really is knowing your why, being able to go in with the intent to just understand and being patient and going back over and over. I think the other thing is
I tell people to ease into the conversations. If your parents are going to be radio silent, if they're gonna be unresponsive, first, don't start with the deep questions. Don't ask them what was your biggest regret or what was, you know, like, I call it warming your parents up. So it might be like, what was your favorite food as a kid, right? What did you like to play with? So it's starting with easy questions and slowly getting deeper and deeper.
Like mind you, it took me 40 plus hours over three years. I didn't jump in with the hardest questions, right? The second thing is if your parents are going to say no, so if you ask them, would you like to have conversations with me? And you already know they're gonna be like, nope, not gonna do it. Then don't even ask for permission. You sneak questions in. For example, my parents love to call me and ask me if I've had dinner and what I ate, right? So if they call me and they're asking, you know, what did you eat?
I could just say, I ate this. man, I remember when I was a kid, you used to make that for me all the time and I loved it. What did you like to eat as a kid? Right? Notice I didn't ask permission, I just slid a question in. And so it's like getting them used to responding to you and answering questions and telling you things. And over time, they become more comfortable with it. Those are such great suggestions. I also think that as a mom, you you have two sons now and what a remarkable
kind of legacy you get to share with them. My daughter knows my parents very differently than the way that I experienced them growing up. So she already has a different impression. She loves making dumplings with my dad and, you know, her and my mom will do arts projects and stuff like that. It's very different. But also, like, I had my daughter later in life. And so the amount of time that she's going to get with them is probably less than, you know, a generation ago or whatnot.
Judy Tsuei (26:27.318)
So by the time she becomes aware of maybe questions she wants to ask her grandparents, they may or may not be here to ask. And so what a beautiful gift you've created for your children as well. So better understand the people who came before them. And that's so beautiful. What learnings have you taken that you would like to pass on to your own children? think one, so one big thing is just recognizing that the people around you
the ones who are close to you, the ones you love, everybody is doing the best they can with what they have, right? They have good intent and you might not agree with that. You might not agree with how they've shown up, the things they've done, but everyone around us, I honestly do believe this, we're all human beings. Nobody intentionally says, I wanna hurt everybody in life, right? And so it's having that and the humanity, like the emotions, even my dad who I've never seen cry has cried.
So it's that piece and empathy is so important. I always ask this question to every guest at the end of the show. If you could say fuck saving face about something, what would you say fuck saving face about? Fuck saving face about, how do I word this? It's like just masking up and hiding, right? And not telling my truths. So I will tell you in my 16 years of corporate America, I had a mask on.
I was this tough Asian woman, you don't mess with me, I don't need your help, I'm gonna get shit done. And nobody knew me as a human being. In fact, at one of my jobs, coworkers called me the B word because I was so masked up, right? And I'm like, but I'm so nice. And like, what are you talking about? And now it's so refreshing because I don't mask up, I don't hide, don't like, what you see is who you get.
And it's so liberating because I don't have to pretend to be different things, right? And if you like me, you like me, and if you don't, that's okay because not everyone will. Yes, 100 % to all of that. So if people want to follow up with you, where can they find you? Yeah, they can find me on my website, ameyipcoaching.com. So it's A-M-Y-Y-I-P coaching.com. Awesome. Thank you so much. Yeah, of course. Thank you for having me.
Judy Tsuei (28:54.06)
Remember, if you are interested in joining the group Mastermind, go check it out. It's going to be one of the rare times that you're going to be able to work with me at this price point. I've been raising my prices. We're going to talk about that in a next episode of Step 10 about money, the whole thing about money. So be sure to go check it out, judycsoi.com forward slash mastermind. If you hear this in time, you can save $888 to celebrate Chinese New Year using the code CNY. That's CN as in Nancy Y.
So go check it out today.
Judy Tsuei (29:27.726)
Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If you'd like to support me and this show, please go to iTunes and leave your review. It means so much to me and it'll help others find this podcast. I'll catch you in the next episode. And if you'd like to stay in touch between now and then, please visit wildheartedwords.com and sign up for my weekly newsletter. I've had people share with me that it's the best thing to arrive in their inbox all week. Aloha.
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Keywords: mental fitness, coaching, cultural roots, Asian American, family expectations, personal growth, vulnerability, authenticity, intergenerational healing, self-discovery
