How Do You Grieve A Distant Home?

I’ve never been to Laos.
Not even once.
But sometimes I still miss it,
like it’s a place that lives inside me, waiting to be remembered.

Diaspora is weird like that. It makes you homesick for a place that was never really yours — but still is. My mom tells me stories in pieces. Not full narratives, just scattered moments:
rainstorms in Vientiane, grilled meat on the roadside, cousins who left and never came back.
I collect these moments like postcards from a country I’ve only visited in dreams.

Growing up, I always felt like I was doing it wrong.
My Lao wasn’t fluent.
My pronunciation was shaky.

Words came out clumsy, wrapped in an American accent I couldn’t shake.
I didn’t know how to tie a proper pa biang or explain the meaning of Baci to anyone at school.
But I still felt this deep urge to belong to something I’d never touched.

When people asked me, “Where are you from?”
I didn’t know what to say. Rockford, Illinois?
But that never seemed to be the right answer.
And yet — “Laos” didn’t feel quite right either. I hadn’t earned it.

Sometimes I felt like a fraud.
Too American to be Lao.
Too Lao to be just American.
Caught in a quiet tug-of-war between pride and distance.

But the older I get, the more I’ve realized that being diaspora isn’t about proving anything.
It’s about carrying.
Carrying what you can.
Even if it’s fragmented. Even if it’s flawed.

It’s in the way I crave sticky rice when I’m sad.
It’s in the way I burn candles during the Lunar New Year.
It’s in the way I still bow slightly when handing things to elders, even if they’re not looking.

Maybe my connection isn’t fluent.
But it’s real.

And I think that counts.

Cover image graphic design by Lisa Wakiyama; original image courtesy of author.