Estelle is a recent high school graduate and about to start at the University of Pennsylvania. During her time at Mighty Engine, she contributed to both creative and research projects, including helping with the coding of a sentiment analysis for the OUR WORDS HEAL campaign, designing and animating content for the PHILLY LOVES FRESH campaign and generally supporting our team with her smarts and tremendous energy. She’s excited to begin her studies at Penn and continue exploring the intersection of neuroscience, mental health and creative communication. We asked her to write a short post about OUR WORDS HEAL, how she thinks about the campaign, and what it meant to her.
“这有什么好哭的?” (What good is there to cry about?)
My mom said that to me once after I came home upset. I don’t remember what happened at school that day. I only remember feeling frustrated that she didn’t seem to understand why it mattered so much to me. For a long time, I thought my mom and I simply saw the world differently.
I saw someone who was hard on me. Someone who always expected a little more. If I did well, she asked what I could improve next. If I was upset, she wanted me to move on quickly. Growing up, I envied my friends whose parents were their best friends. I wondered why my mom couldn’t be like that.
As I got older, she told me pieces of her story. She came to America from China without speaking English. She has spent over twenty years running a small retail store in a neighborhood where she has been robbed, threatened at gunpoint, and forced to make impossible decisions to keep the business alive. Before any of that, she was accidentally switched at birth. She grew up in extreme poverty with her grandmother while her biological parents unknowingly raised another child.
These are the facts of her life. The harder part is imagining what those experiences did to her.
I don’t know.
But it made me think. What kind of person did life ask her to become? Instead of seeing only the criticism, I noticed the fear underneath it. She was trying to prepare me for a world she believed would not be gentle. Her harsh words felt like proof that she did not understand me, but I can understand better now that it could be the only way she knew how to comfort and prepare me.
Everyone carries experiences that are unseen and misunderstood. The quiet classmate, the impatient customer, the friend who suddenly withdraws. We often meet people in the middle of their stories and mistake that single moment for the whole person and our entire relationship with them.
That’s what I think the critical mission of OUR WORDS HEAL is, to serve as an invitation to choose curiosity over judgment, recognizing that each of us has a story worth being heard and reminding us the most meaningful form of healing starts sometimes with simply being understood.
