This is NPR's Life Kit. I'm Andy Tagle, one of the producers of this show. But that's

only one part of my identity. I'm also a woman, a daughter, a partner, a Filipino American,

a French-French-Fine enthusiast, a runner, and most recently a San Diego. All this to say,

there are so many elements that inform who we are and how we think and how we show up in

the world. And none of these identity makers exist in a vacuum. We're all just a great

big combination of intersections. So today at the intersection of Mental Health Awareness Month

and Asian-American Pacific Islander Month, we're talking to psychologist Jenny T. Wang.

She says, it's important to expand your lens in order to understand the forces shaping your health

and your identity. For many children of immigrants or even immigrants themselves, part of what

shaped their mental health was the context in which they were trying to build lives in.

Jenny is the author of Permission to Come Home, Reclaiming Mental Health as Asian Americans.

And while no one person's experience will be exactly the same as the next, she says a lot of

Asian Americans can face similar burdens. For many immigrants who came to this country,

my parents included, there were certain barriers. There were things that were kind of threatening

to their environment or to their lives. And that could be racism, that could be not speaking the

language, that could be a lot of different things that made them feel as though they didn't belong.

And so that starts to shape mental health and the narratives in which they might have internalized.

Another through line of the Asian-American experience, the impulse to ask for permission first.

This idea that we need to ask our parents or ask our communities to make certain decisions,

or to live certain lives or pursue certain careers. Instead, Jenny says, it's time to practice

some agency. And so this idea of permission, I almost wanted us to reclaim a little bit,

and consider this idea of permission claiming. This idea that I can give myself permission to go

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