They Don’t Teach You How to Grieve as a First-Generation, Only-Child American

As the only child, only daughter to immigrant parents coming from strong Latin and Middle Eastern cultures, I was taught many things of life in this “new” world. COVID-19 showed me that I was never formally taught one constant emotion amongst all of humanity: grief.

Just when I start to learn to process one traumatic event, another hits, and another, and the next—all while grieving a nation I love and a democracy my parents sacrificed to attain.