三 (sān) Cultural Bereavement
Is it possible to lose something I never truly possessed? If not, then what are these echoes of sadness and unease that follow me like a shadow?
Over the years I've gone through different phases, at one point rejecting my culture and my heritage entirely, associating it much more with my parents’ past than any possibility for my own future. More recently, I've begun to embrace my heritage and seek out cultural connection, yet somehow this has only sharpened my sense of loss. I was surprised to discover there is a specific name for these ambiguous feelings.
Coined by an Australian psychiatrist in 1991 after interviews with Cambodian refugees (Eisenbruch, 1991), the term cultural bereavement sought to explain the sense of loss felt by those thrust into a completely new environment and forced to undergo a “reorganization of the self” (Gupta, 2022). Researchers were the first to link grief, loss, and identity formation in this context. Over a decade later, the term was expanded to include immigrants more broadly, examining the experience of uprooting and the mental health outcomes associated with cultural bereavement (Bhugra et al., 2005).
I strongly suspect this phenomenon also applies to the descendants of immigrants, and I find myself wondering, how many generations are required for this self-erasure to unfold?
Over the years I've gone through different phases, at one point rejecting my culture and my heritage entirely, associating it much more with my parents’ past than any possibility for my own future. More recently, I've begun to embrace my heritage and seek out cultural connection, yet somehow this has only sharpened my sense of loss. I was surprised to discover there is a specific name for these ambiguous feelings.
Coined by an Australian psychiatrist in 1991 after interviews with Cambodian refugees (Eisenbruch, 1991), the term cultural bereavement sought to explain the sense of loss felt by those thrust into a completely new environment and forced to undergo a “reorganization of the self” (Gupta, 2022). Researchers were the first to link grief, loss, and identity formation in this context. Over a decade later, the term was expanded to include immigrants more broadly, examining the experience of uprooting and the mental health outcomes associated with cultural bereavement (Bhugra et al., 2005).
I strongly suspect this phenomenon also applies to the descendants of immigrants, and I find myself wondering, how many generations are required for this self-erasure to unfold?