To the Ones Who Crossed Oceans for Me
A letter to the tenderest part of my soul and my reason for existing (literally)
Some stories live in the marrow. We don’t always grow up knowing them by name, but we feel them—in the caution we're taught, the foods we're asked to hide, the way our parents scan a room before speaking.
This one’s for my parents, who crossed oceans, balanced cultures with bare hands, and built something expansive out of both love and loss.
Dear Mom and Dad,
You didn’t know I was watching.
Not when you were quietly translating the world for me—figuring out which lunchbox snacks were “too Iranian” for the playground (me today would love lavashak and khoresht packed in my lunch, BTW), which PTA meetings to speak up at with ideas about how to incorporate our traditions into school curriculums, how much of our heritage you could let spill out at home without it making my life harder outside of it. You were balancing cultures with your bare hands, as if you could shield me from the sharp edges of both. You did such a good job at it, even when I know it felt impossible.
I see it all now. I’m a mother myself, and the weight you carried lands differently in my body.
Mama, you came here as a child, alone. That sentence still knots in my throat. Who does that? Who is required to find courage that young? You didn’t have the luxury of childhood in the way most people imagine it. You became fluent in sacrifice before you became fluent in English. You’ve always carried your softness like a shield—gentle, but immovable. The literal backbone of our existence. Our soft place to land, which continues to be extended to everyone you encounter. To be loved by you is a homecoming in ways I’ll never be able to adequately express, but it will forever be something I aspire to.
Papa, you came as an adult, with your full sense of identity already formed, and still chose to unlearn and relearn so much. You created work, stability, and purpose in a place that didn’t always want to see you. You walked into systems that were not built for you and still built a life that held all of us. You did it with joy and humor, and you continue to find the glimmers in every moment of your existence. I used to cringe, in the way most kids do, every time you called a stranger “my friend.” I now see it for what it was—your way of disarming those who may have felt threatened by your presence.
Together, you created our family—a place that feels safe not just for the four of us, but for everyone who crosses the threshold of your care. It’s the one part of yourselves you refused to compromise: your abundance of love for all.
That’s not to say things have always been easy or simple. We’ve endured the hardest of times, and through it all, our family became masters of adaptability.
Sometimes that meant leaning into silence. Biting our tongues in moments when we wanted to speak up but didn’t know if it was safe. Smiling politely through microaggressions, keeping our heads down, passing as much as we could. Other times, it meant showing up with joy and boldness: you voting in your first election, holding your heads high even when the headlines tried to shrink you. Finding celebration in the home you built from scratch. Honoring your grandchildren with reverence. Watching this beautifully diverse family blossom—with four grandchildren, sons-in-law who call you "Mamani" and "Papa," and a legacy stitched from Iran and California, born in Manhattan and Tehran and Mashad, grounded in survival and joy.
After 9/11, I watched the world unveil its unkindness towards us. It was my first experience, but it wasn’t yours. Our home was vandalized. People who had once smiled at you began to look at you with suspicion. It was a shift that gutted me, not just because I saw what it meant for your safety, but because I saw what it did to your spirit. You knew how to adapt. I had just never witnessed it in this way before. I was old enough by then to notice the way your voices quieted in public, the way you scanned rooms, the way you prepared me to move through the world with caution rather than celebration.
And now, in this version of America—post-Trump, mid-travel bans, amid ICE raids happening in our own communities—I feel your sacrifices humming louder. You made a home here so your children could belong. And still, belonging is not guaranteed. It can be revoked with a policy, a headline, a president.
But here’s what you did, despite it all: you raised me in love, not fear. You taught me that grief and joy can sit side by side. That we come from people who are not just survivors, but poets, philosophers, teachers, warriors, and healers.
I carry you in every room I walk into. In my therapy work. In the way I mother. In the way I advocate for those still navigating borders, visible and invisible. Your story is the root system beneath everything I do.
I didn’t always have the words to say thank you. And maybe this isn’t quite thank you either—it’s something wider. A bowing down. A remembering.
I see you now.
And I’m writing it down so the world can, too.
Love,
Your Daughter
P.S. If you’re carrying a story like this, one shaped by migration, adaptation, or the quiet strength of those who raised you, I’d love to hear it. Feel free to share in the comments or forward this to someone whose love shaped your survival. Our stories deserve to be witnessed.