Thank you Pepper. :)
That is a very valid thought. Perhaps not everyone is on the same page as experiences vary.
I sometimes think that maybe the fact that my parents only stayed ten years in Australia and then decided to return to Greece where they live the last thirty years, has in some way being a good thing for me (who chose to stay here), as it freed me from their influence and forced me to find my own way and develop my own coping strategies without having them around for support.
My experience taught me that unless I do it myself, no one else will do it for me. And that there’s no right or wrong way, just different ways!
I also think that despite our cultural background, everyone in life has to face their family at some point and make their own decisions. It’s part of growing up, breaking ties, (cutting the umbilical cord), and build your own identity and life based on your own values and not on the values of our family/parents etc. Sure, we all may choose to keep some aspects that may be still relevant and important to us, but every generation moves forward in that constant dance between tradition and change!
Often though, because of the migration process, some aspects of the developmental stages could get interrupted or delayed due to the shock or trauma of sudden change. So families may get closer together and develop ties that perhaps wouldn’t be necessary if they remained in their country of origin. Language, culture, religion tend to become more important for many, once they are removed from their primary context, and serve as identity indicators.
This makes absolute sense and it’s normal survival instinct. We stick together to protect ourselves from the ‘different’, the ‘alien’, and endeavor to preserve whatever aspect may seem as part of our identity.
This leads to some migrant families never breaking away and others controlling each other’s affairs as they still operate under a ‘collectivist’ approach versus the ‘individualist’.
There are advantages to this but also disadvantages. So, some people may find it more difficult to ‘find their own feet’ when they still dancing in other people's shoes!
Luckily, it’s not a competition, and no one is keeping notes!
Hopefully, with discussions like this one, more people would self-evaluate and develop awareness or become more mindful of where they’re at and how perhaps family, traditions, religion, culture (even though having many positives) could also hold back people’s recovery process.