On New Year’s Day 2013, my mother died after a long battle with ALS. The day of her funeral was a typical freezing winter’s day in North Dakota. Our family filled up one pew at the church, and at one end were my mother’s cousins who lived just one state away, but this was our first time meeting each other. I realized just how much of a mystery my mother was to me.
She was forced to flee her home in Laos in the 1960s, quietly crossing the thick jungles at night, taking refuge in caves, and crossing the mighty Mekong River into Thailand. She lived in a refugee camp for two years before being sponsored to come to the U.S. This was all that I knew of her childhood. I wanted to know more about why she fled but she never talked about it.
In the years following her death, I became more determined to reconnect with my Lao heritage. I was scrolling on my phone, pregnant with my first child, and discovered Legacies of War’s website. In one afternoon, I read almost every word on the website and learned of the haunting reasons why my mom fled. (I now work at Legacies of War, as the organization’s chief of mission advancement and communications.)
