James' World 2

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She introduces herself by her first name, Sarah, and for all anyone here knows or cares, these facts mark the beginning and the end of her story.

But at home, after she puts her 5-year-old son to sleep, she sometimes starts to cry and can’t stop. She cries because the man she was building a life with betrayed her trust and abused her body. Because she should have left him but she stayed. Because of all that happened next.

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In her home state of Wyoming, Sarah navigates how to raise her son the right way. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

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Sahaj Kohli, whose family immigrated to the United Kingdom from India, struggled with an identity crisis familiar to many children of immigrants.

As the first in her family to marry a non-Indian, the first to go to therapy and the first to start talking openly about mental health, she found herself needing an outlet to share her challenges. In 2019, she founded Brown Girl Therapy, an online mental health community for children of immigrants in the West, to marry her two passions of mental health advocacy and narrative storytelling.

Wherever their parents were born, children of immigrants are often straddling two cultures. They are being raised with values inside the home that can be different from those they are experiencing outside of it.

Immigrant parents still teach their children in the ways of their home country, often rooted in deferring to elders. That’s why children of immigrants can struggle with chronic guilt, noted Kohli, who earned a master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling from The George Washington University in Washington, DC.

Children of immigrants don’t all share the same experiences, but Kohli learned behavior patterns and obstacles that many of them face. Setting boundaries and discussing mental health with parents will be the focus of her forthcoming book, “But What Will People Say?”

“If you aren’t doing what is told of you,” Kohli said, “you feel like you’re doing something wrong or betraying your family.”

In a conversation with CNN, Kohli shed light on the struggles that first- and second-generation Americans face while also offering guidance on how to navigate difficult conversations.

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When it comes to mental health, Sahaj Kohli knows that children of immigrants face unique cultural challenges.  Samuel Hall

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The first 25 times I read “Goodnight Moon,” I cried. Not in a dainty, tear-dabbing way; I’m talking Niagara waterworks, heaving sobs and a red nose.

My firstborn daughter was only a few days old, swaddled in a blanket printed with baleful teddy bears, when we made our first foray into the iconic picture book by Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd. I’d been a mother for long enough to know how little I knew: My bathing and feeding skills were weak. My diapering experience was limited to Cabbage Patch Kids. The one-handed stroller collapse that would become my signature maneuver was a mirage shimmering beyond a desert of sleepless nights.

Reading was something I could do with aplomb, and I thought the experience would be soothing for all involved — including my husband, who was sweating over instructions for a bottle sterilizer that looked like R2-D2. I picked “Goodnight Moon” because I remembered how veteran parents had slapped their hands over their hearts when I unwrapped the slim hardcover at my baby shower. The vote was unanimous: “That one is the best.”

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It’s the first book many babies receive as a gift, and one of the few that parents will keep when their child is grown. Why does this 75-year-old story have such staying power?

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You are sitting at lunch at your desk, worrying that the report you just finished isn’t good enough. You know about the benefits of self-compassion and wonder if practicing it would make you feel better about your work.

For example, there is one self-compassion exercise where you think of something that bothers you about yourself. You then write a letter from the perspective of a compassionate friend. There’s another exercise in which you imagine a compassionate friend comforting you as you struggle. And there’s an exercise meant to tackle the self-critical voices in your head.

You could use a compassionate friend right about now to reassure you about your report. You imagine a friend sitting next to you, saying words of reassurance: “It’s OK, you did your best on the report and that’s all you can ask of yourself. It will be fine.”

But your friend’s imagined words feel empty. You don’t feel any better. In fact, you feel worse; now you are thinking about that time you turned in a report that your boss thought was terrible. You are now even more convinced your report is bad.

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Greater Good

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— Searching for the Right Reasons

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Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Yuricazac/iStock/Getty Images Plus.

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