The Roots We Leave Behind

My Story

Fifteen years ago, I left Kazakhstan, my homeland, behind and moved to the U.S. for school. It was mid-April, and my late-night arrival to Wisconsin coincided with a severe snowstorm. The next morning, upon cracking open my eyes and taking in the soft grayish-blue light of the overcast sky seeping through the window, a flurry of realizations swept through my mind: “I’m a seventeen-year-old in a foreign country who barely speaks the language; I don’t know anyone here; all of my family and friends are now an ocean away.” Then I felt wrapped into the warm comfort of another realization and smiled: “I’m home.”

I’ve since heard that this is not an uncommon experience for immigrants, or even travelers - the feeling of expansion when suddenly you realize that you now have two (or even more) homes/homelands. The expansion that comes from a burst of love and belonging for a place before you even get to know it. Some say that it’s the homecoming of your soul; others - that it’s an implied recognition of a place where you resided in your past life. All I know is that I loved the feeling and wanted to honor it. Yet at the time, it seemed that the only way to honor it was by rejecting Kazakhstan and choosing this new country as my only ‘real’ home - after all, I couldn’t possibly have more than one homeland, right?

Fifteen years ago, I didn’t just abandon my home, my culture, my traditions, and my people - I cut myself off from my own roots. I had tied a tourniquet over my primordial appendages and over the years kept on inquiring perplexedly as to why they went numb and stopped moving. But I didn’t just turn off the nutrient supply to my own rootlets - I clipped them in the other direction as well so that I too stopped getting the nourishing sap from them. I was a tree without roots wondering at her own instability. A tree whose trunk was hollowing out, while I kept blaming the echo for the growing emptiness. I knew something vital was missing, but I focused on collecting new fixtures rather than checking the foundation of my internal architecture. (Yes, I made quite a metaphor soup here, but no regrets - bon appétit!)

Fortunately, all that negligence and abandon didn’t result in a complete amputation of my roots. But it wasn’t until a recent transformational training I attended that I grasped the extent of the damage I was causing to myself. The moment I finally allowed myself to tap into the long-suppressed love and adoration for my homeland, culture, and people, the tourniquet flew off, the dam burst, and I was quite literally swept onto my knees by the overwhelming feeling of expansion and liberation. I sobbed to the national anthem. I felt connected to every person on the streets of my hometown. I rejoiced at the sound of Kazakh music. I was the heart of a mother that rediscovered her long-lost child and expanded exponentially to contain all the love she forgot she could feel.

The tragedy wasn’t choosing one home over the other - it was in believing that love required choosing. I cut off something vital to make becoming someone new easier, but it was only true on the surface - over time, I came to realize that my old self was still there, just waiting to be integrated. The initial choice allowed for progress and transformation, but eventually the two parts had to be integrated into a whole. In the end, it wasn’t about discovering my one true home but realizing my heart was capable of having more than one. And even though I’m not ethnically Kazakh, I’m a proud Kazakhstani who loves and respects the culture and traditions she grew up around and the history and people of her homeland - I’ve rediscovered my roots and now I’m slowly revitalizing them.

Invisible Costs of Immigration

It’s such a surprisingly natural thing to embrace assimilation at the expense of one’s cultural authenticity and even belonging. Many immigrants tend to follow one of the two extremes: complete abandonment of the original culture in favor of the new one or complete disregard for the new culture to preserve the original one. Being an extreme, each of the paths comes with its own costs and benefits. In my case, I wanted to truly belong in my new home - the United States - so much indeed that sustenance of anything related to my origin seemed like a betrayal of that pursuit: I distanced myself from Russian- and Kazakh-speakers (after all, I wanted to perfect my English); I avoided anyone from that part of the world; even in my own head, I became a Kazakhstani-in-transition-to-American. I wasn’t completely ruthless in my abandonment though - I still enjoyed Nauryz, baursaki, and other aspects of my homeland - but when the question of my origin usually came up in a conversation, I started to find myself begrudging the very need to bring Kazakhstan up. At the time I simply didn’t realize that there was another option (and likely not just one), that belonging wasn’t a zero-sum game, that loving one place didn’t diminish the love for another, or that identities didn’t have to compete.

Let me take a quick pause here to clarify the definitions, since I talk about roots quite a bit and it can get confusing. To me, roots are those aspects of your environment that you grew up around, were exposed to, or in (imposed) interaction with, whether or not you appreciated or even accepted them at the time. Maybe it’s the language your parents spoke at home, the holidays your family celebrated, or the customs you were forced to participate in. Maybe it’s the sense of absence and longing that permeated your household because your parents (rather than you) were the ones to abandon the cultural factors of their own upbringing. Maybe it’s the barely noticeable grief that clung to your parents (or their parents) around not engaging with their homeland traditions, or on the contrary - the embarrassment that accompanied you through your childhood for the excessive ways your family stayed connected with those traditions. All of those little things can be indicators for where your own roots lie in stasis, waiting for your return. Hmm, I suppose I haven’t made it more clear, have I? The challenge is that roots and what they represent are most obvious when they are absent, rejected, or cut off; and what makes them even more conspicuous are the associated emotions of anger, frustration, and embarrassment - each of which occasionally serves as guilt-in-disguise and culminates in regret, hollowness, and longing. Such as an inability to talk to grandparents due to a language gap, or passing judgement on members of one’s community for adhering to a custom that one deems silly and wasteful.

All of this also makes the root-less immigrant somewhat similar to an atheist whose family is still comprised of believers. What if I vehemently disagree with certain traditions or aspects of my culture? That’s okay. Proper re-integration of one’s roots is about wholeness and integration, which inadvertently leads to reduced internal conflict rather than more dissonance. The goal is to recognize what you’re longing for and bring that back into your life. I even suspect that this is where the applicability of this essay actually expands beyond just immigrants and their assimilation plight and encompasses anyone and everyone who’s moved around and left behind parts of themselves. Every place, every community, every culture that we integrate into for a while leaves their footprints on us and draws new facets of our identity.

After all, we are constantly showing up as slightly different versions of ourselves depending on the social, cultural, and linguistic contexts. The curious thing that happens here is the culture/language-related anchoring of one’s perspectives, mindset, and behavior. In simple terms, by switching, as completely as possible, from Russian to English at the age of seventeen, my Russian-speaking identity got “frozen” in her adolescence, while my English identity took on the qualities of maturation and growth benefitting from the years of deliberate identity development. Over the years, the differences between the two identities became particularly evident to people who became privy to observing both of my identities. Just imagine, there may be versions of myself that stopped developing because I stopped inhabiting the contexts in which they existed. What happens when I meet them again?

This stasis phenomenon seems to especially afflict those immigrants who attempted to chop off their roots in hopes of growing new ones in their place. And it affects so many aspects of our identities. For instance, when I speak Russian, I tend to speak more quietly, breathe more shallowly, have more tension in my throat, unless, of course, I notice all of that and consciously change my vocal inflection to more English-esque - slower, deeper, more vibrant. Or I apparently exhibit a lot more tolerance and acceptance in my thoughts when thinking in English, yet have more self-compassion and positive energy in my mind when thinking in Russian. The list can go on. You see, I know who I am in English, since the past decade of my self-exploration has been navigated primarily in that language. In Russian, I have a much less clear picture of myself. In Kazakh that picture right now is barely existent. Unfortunately, same with Ukrainian (I am ethnically Ukrainian, as both sets of my great-grandparents immigrated from there). I’m sharing all of this to demonstrate that there’s a chance that who we are with respect to our roots might not necessarily be who we know ourselves to be now, but that shouldn’t invalidate the significance of those facets of ourselves and what they bring to the table - the round table of our identities amalgamated into our identity core (or core identity).

Sometimes the rejection of roots can stem from their association with an identity we’re trying to leave behind (e.g. think about the inequality and pressures of social hierarchy in certain societies). Sometimes the rejection of our cultural identity is intended to serve as a political stance (e.g. think about the recent Russian immigrants who oppose Russia’s war with Ukraine and the perceived pressure to abandon their roots completely, lest they risk association with the horrendous military actions taken by the government of their homeland). Sometimes it’s even instrumental to our survival (I’m sure you can come up with your own examples). Still, none of those necessarily makes the attempted cultural amputation easier or less harmful. It may appear simpler and cleaner - to just cut it all off completely - but it’s the kind of simplification that simply sends invoices at a later date. I now hold that roots can be a big source of our internal wholeness, sustenance/energy, and stability. Because instability isn’t just about not knowing where you’re going - it’s about not knowing where you’re standing from. It’s also possible to not experience the absence despite an obvious lack or rejection of a cultural connection with the roots - low cultural engagement isn’t necessarily equivalent to weak roots. Rather it’s the quality of and longing for the connection that, if unsatisfactory/unsatisfied can eventually fester up. Assimilation isn’t immediately ‘bad’ and reconnection with heritage isn’t inherently ‘good’. Obviously :) But the former can indeed be restrictive and the latter liberating - I’m just inviting you to reflect on how that might show up for you.

Revival of Roots & Integration of Identities

Here’s the thing. It’s okay to have abandoned your roots at some point - it was the best available decision at the time based on who and where you were. That decision served you and likely served you well for a while. It allowed you to expand into another culture, even if initially that expansion was interpreted as replacement. Hopefully, by now, you’ve discovered that the expansion can actually mean addition. It’s also okay to no longer wish to abide by that decision and long for a change. So let’s get to that, or more specifically, let’s coach ourselves a little around the revival of and reconnection with one’s roots. And when I say “reconnecting” - we’re not restoring some pristine authentic version of ourselves who existed before immigration. Rather, we’re bringing previously separated developmental branches back into contact through integration. We don’t want our old roots back exactly as they were - we have changed and they might not function the same after all these years. We just want them alive in the person we are now.

So, here are a few coaching/reflection questions for you that might help to create a map of where your roots are alive, dormant, severed, rejected, or perhaps simply irrelevant, and how to reconnect with those that you miss.

Recognition:

- What places, languages, cultures, communities, traditions, people, sounds, foods or rituals feel somehow personal to you, even if you don’t actively participate in them anymore? Where are the roots? Which are healthy? Which went dormant? Which do you actually want to nourish?

Rupture:

- Which parts of your background have you deliberately distanced yourself from, hidden, minimized, mocked, or tried to outgrow? Which parts of your roots evoke disproportionate embarrassment, irritation, defensiveness, or shame? What have you left behind?

Function:

What did distancing yourself from them allow you to become, gain, escape, or survive? What did this cultural separation once do for you - and is it still doing that job?

Cost/Longing:

What, if anything, became unavailable to you as a result of the separation? What do you miss? Which parts of your identity are lying dormant? Which parts of your roots evoke disproportionate grief, tenderness, nostalgia or longing? What do you wish you knew/practiced in relation to your heritage?

Identity:

Who are you when you inhabit that neglected cultural/linguistic context? How is that person different from the version of you who lives most of your life now?

Belonging:

Where do you feel entitled to say a culturally encompassing/relevant “we”? Where do you hesitate to say it?

Inheritance:

What part of your roots do you actively want to carry forward? What do you consciously want to leave behind? (Yes, you can pick and choose - that’s allowed - no need to be black and white about it.)

Integration/Connection:

Which parts of yourself currently feel as though they have to take turns existing? What do they have in common? What would reconnecting look like if the goal weren’t authenticity, exclusivity, or “going back,” but simply greater wholeness?

Experiment/Practice:

What’s one small piece you’d genuinely enjoy bringing back into your life this month? (Review the list of potential experiments/actions listed below but remember it’s not so much “Listen to music from your homeland” but more “What part of yourself becomes available when you do?”)

Simple Experiments/Actions:

• Create a playlist with songs in your native language or from your homeland

  • or learn to play/sing a song of your choosing

• Learn to cook a few traditional dishes

  • or explore restaurants that serve traditional cuisine

  • or find a few foods/drinks in the local markets that remind you of home and stock them in your pantry

• Rent traditional clothing (the very authentic kind) and take a photo in it

  • or buy clothes/trinkets that reflect/refer to your heritage

• Learn or restore the language

  • and/or read, learn about, and engage with history, traditions/customs, and literature/art

• Organize cultural celebrations (or cultural deep dives) on a regular basis by bringing everything together

  • and/or discover, connect with, or create your community

  • or hold a cultural day on a monthly basis when you cook traditional dishes, listen to pre-selected songs, etc.

In the end, becoming someone new sometimes requires separation from who we were. The mistake is assuming that separation must remain permanent. Eventually, growth may require integrating what once needed to be left behind—not by returning to the old identity, but by allowing it to participate in the new one. This notion reaches beyond immigration. It touches language. Family. Places. Communities. Former selves. Maybe even careers and relationships. But as you might have already suspected - that’s a topic for another essay.

P.S. For further exploration, there are actually several questionnaires you can take to get a better idea about the characteristics of the relationship you have with your ethnic identity, acculturation, and identity assimilation style:

• The Ethnic Identity Scale (EIS) that determines degrees of ethnic identity exploration, resolution, and affirmation.

• The Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure-Revised (MEIM-R) that emphasizes the exploration and commitment aspects of ethnic identity.

• The Vancouver Index of Acculturation (VIA) that assesses migrants’ orientations toward mainstream and heritage traditions.

• The Bicultural Identity Integration Scale (BIIS-2) that captures characteristics of a bicultural identity in the domains of affect (harmony vs. conflict) and cognition (blendedness vs. compartmentalization).

• The Multicultural Identity Styles Scale (MISS) that measures two distinct strategies (hybrid and alternating identity styles) used to achieve and maintain a bicultural identity.

P.P.S. This particular essay is more of an opinion piece, based primarily on personal experiences, anecdotes, observations, and ensuing speculations. The image is from my illustrated poetry book “Ode to Hope and Despair.”

AI use disclosure: Amadeus (my ChatGPT) helped me brainstorm some of the coaching questions above and also do spelling/grammar check.