Speaker 1: I started to get older and understand a little bit more.
Speaker 1: I started to recognize that this wasn't the cause of
Speaker 1: a bad child or a child just being a child.
Speaker 1: It was a mental illness and it was something that
Speaker 1: she could not control without the help and support of
Speaker 1: a treatment plan and medication, because nobody knew that this
Speaker 1: was a mental illness at the time. There was a
Speaker 1: lot of blame from family members who had heard about
Speaker 1: what was going on inside my household. So growing up
Speaker 1: as a child, I had a sister and a lot
Speaker 1: of our family members just was a case of bad kids.
Speaker 1: So there was just a lot of blame from them
Speaker 1: saying that, Oh, just make sure you don't do anything
Speaker 1: to upset your mom. It was a lot of walking
Speaker 1: on eggshells. It was a lot of don't do that
Speaker 1: or your mom might get mad. It was a lot
Speaker 1: of that that prevented us from being kids back then,
Speaker 1: rather than worrying about what was actually going on with
Speaker 1: my mom.
Faydra Aldridge: Since you're listening to this podcast, you probably already know
Faydra Aldridge: that having a serious mental illness diagnosis like schizophrenia affects
Faydra Aldridge: not only the individual but their loved ones too. And
Faydra Aldridge: if you happen to be a child of a parent
Faydra Aldridge: who lives with a mental illness, I can bring a
Faydra Aldridge: whole bunch of very difficult challenges growing up. You may
Faydra Aldridge: feel overwhelmed, scared, sad, or even angry, and you may
Faydra Aldridge: resent your parent for not being like all of the
Faydra Aldridge: other parents. Or you may fall into the role of
Faydra Aldridge: being a caregiver and simply trying to fix everything around you.
Faydra Aldridge: But what about the impact that it has on you,
Faydra Aldridge: the child, and your future life decisions? Now, let's be
Faydra Aldridge: very clear here. There's no right or wrong way to
Faydra Aldridge: respond since every situation is incredibly different. And today we
Faydra Aldridge: are so lucky to be speaking with author and academic Dr.
Faydra Aldridge: Grace Cho from Brooklyn, New York, whose memoir Tastes Like War,
Faydra Aldridge: was a 2021 National Book Award finalist. Her book is
Faydra Aldridge: coming to terms with her mother being diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Faydra Aldridge: The social factors that left her feeling incredibly vulnerable and
Faydra Aldridge: the stigma that kept her from treatment for so long.
Faydra Aldridge: Grace, it truly is an honour to connect with you today.
Faydra Aldridge: Welcome to the podcast.
Grace Cho: Thank you so much for having me.
Faydra Aldridge: Okay. So, Grace, let's back up. Now, I understand your
Faydra Aldridge: mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia later on in life. What
Faydra Aldridge: were some of the symptoms that you saw your mother experiencing?
Grace Cho: When my mother was 45, she did not get an
Grace Cho: official diagnosis. I was the one who identified her as
Grace Cho: having schizophrenia because I noticed things like delusions of grandeur,
Grace Cho: thinking that she was involved in government conspiracies. She suddenly
Grace Cho: stopped being able to do the things that she used
Grace Cho: to do. She quit her job. She had been a forager,
Grace Cho: but she stopped going out into the wilderness doing those things.
Grace Cho: She lost an interest in cooking. She started to become
Grace Cho: very suspicious of people who were just part of our
Grace Cho: everyday lives. And I also started to notice what appeared
Grace Cho: to me like her talking to somebody in the room
Grace Cho: who wasn't there. And so as these things started to accumulate,
Grace Cho: I knew that something was wrong and I was too
Grace Cho: afraid to talk to anybody until I had done my
Grace Cho: own research. So I went to my high school library,
Grace Cho: checked out a couple of books. One was the psychology
Grace Cho: textbook and the other was DSM. And by reading those
Grace Cho: two books, I came to the conclusion that my mother
Grace Cho: had paranoid schizophrenia.
Faydra Aldridge: Wow. Grace, that is a lot.
Grace Cho: And I was 15 at the time, and she didn't
Grace Cho: actually get an official diagnosis for another eight years.
Faydra Aldridge: Wow. So how old was she when she was officially
Faydra Aldridge: diagnosed then?
Grace Cho: I guess she would have been 53, 54.
Faydra Aldridge: And at 15, there you are going into the library
Faydra Aldridge: as a teenager to try and diagnosed your mother. I
Faydra Aldridge: can't even imagine what that was like, having the foresight
Faydra Aldridge: to think, I need to figure this out. And then
Faydra Aldridge: coming to the realization that your mother did, in fact,
Faydra Aldridge: have paranoid schizophrenia.
Grace Cho: Yeah, I was always a very studious child. And even
Grace Cho: though I had never known anyone with a mental illness,
Grace Cho: I knew that our society sees it as very stigmatic,
Grace Cho: and especially one that involves hearing voices. So it was
Grace Cho: important to me to know what I was talking about
Grace Cho: before I approached an adult about what I saw going
Grace Cho: on with my mom. And then I approached my father
Grace Cho: and my brother. My brother was seven years older than me,
Grace Cho: so he was out of the house at that point.
Grace Cho: He hadn't lived with my mom during that period when
Grace Cho: I was seeing all the changes and my father was
Grace Cho: a merchant marine, so he was gone six months out
Grace Cho: of the year. So I question how much he observed himself.
Grace Cho: But I was the one who was with my mom
Grace Cho: all the time. So I waited until my brother was
Grace Cho: home on college break and talked with him and my father.
Grace Cho: And when I said that, I thought that she had
Grace Cho: paranoid schizophrenia. They were so angry at me. They accused
Grace Cho: me of being my father's words, a goddamn liar. How
Grace Cho: can you say something like that about your mother? And
Grace Cho: my brother echoed that sentiments, though not quite as harshly,
Grace Cho: but he seemed outraged that I would even suggest such
Grace Cho: a thing. And so once again, I was left to
Grace Cho: my own devices to try to do anything about it.
Grace Cho: So my next step then, because the rest of my
Grace Cho: family was in denial about it, was to go to
Grace Cho: the local community mental health care center. I don't know
Grace Cho: that I would have been so motivated to act if
Grace Cho: I hadn't noticed how these things were undermining her, because
Grace Cho: I do think it's possible to live with voices and
Grace Cho: have a productive and meaningful and happy life. But that
Grace Cho: wasn't the case with my mom. I was seeing all
Grace Cho: of her social relationships unraveling and her ability to work crumble.
Grace Cho: And so I went to speak with a counselor and
Grace Cho: I felt like I was betraying my family by doing that.
Grace Cho: I was so scared because I was only 15 and
Grace Cho: my brother, my dad had already made it so clear
Grace Cho: that I should never speak that word schizophrenic. But as
Grace Cho: I was talking, I started to feel like, okay, there
Grace Cho: is going to be some resolution coming out of this meeting.
Grace Cho: But what the counselor told me was that it was
Grace Cho: too late for my mom, that there was nothing that
Grace Cho: they could do because at the time. So this was 1986.
Grace Cho: We didn't really have much research that was based on
Grace Cho: women's experiences. And we now know that for women, the
Grace Cho: onset of schizophrenia can be much later in life than
Grace Cho: for men.
Faydra Aldridge: Wow. So, Grace, you were 15 years old. You feel
Faydra Aldridge: like you're betraying your family by using the word schizophrenia
Faydra Aldridge: with your mother. And then you seek professional help and
Faydra Aldridge: you're being told it's too late. There's nothing you can do.
Faydra Aldridge: Grace Yeah. Is there any way to put into words
Faydra Aldridge: what you felt at that moment? Yeah.
Grace Cho: The way I often describe it is that it was
Grace Cho: the origin of my han, which is the Korean word
Grace Cho: that loosely translates as knotted grief over injustice. Right. I
Grace Cho: remember literally feeling this knotting in my chest that was throbbing.
Grace Cho: And so now I understand that as this emotional force
Grace Cho: that developed at that time and propelled me forward on
Grace Cho: the journey that I wrote about in my memoir.
Faydra Aldridge: What an appropriate term to use. Yeah. So what did
Faydra Aldridge: you do after you walked out of that clinic and
Faydra Aldridge: you were told it was too late?
Grace Cho: Well, one thing the counselor had said to me was,
Grace Cho: It's impossible to make her get help. Only the police
Grace Cho: can do that. And so my understanding was that if
Grace Cho: there were an incident that involved the police, then they
Grace Cho: would come to the house and take her to a
Grace Cho: psychiatric hospital and tell her that she had to get
Grace Cho: some sort of treatments. That sort of rang in my
Grace Cho: head because it was the one tiny glimmer of hope
Grace Cho: that that counselor left me with. I can't even remember
Grace Cho: what it was, but my mom and I had gotten
Grace Cho: into some sort of a fight and I tried to
Grace Cho: escalate it and tried to provoke her into hitting me
Grace Cho: so that I could call the police. And when they arrived,
Grace Cho: they handcuffed her and took her to jail, which was
Grace Cho: not at all what I thought was going to happen.
Grace Cho: And it was a total disaster. And so I had
Grace Cho: my dad already angry at me for saying that I
Grace Cho: thought my mom had schizophrenia. After that, he was even
Grace Cho: more furious with me. And it was something that my
Grace Cho: mom didn't forgive me for many years, but I didn't
Grace Cho: know that she had been harboring this anger towards me
Grace Cho: for so long.
Faydra Aldridge: Grace, you were just trying to do the right thing.
Faydra Aldridge: You were just trying to get your mom help. Let's
Faydra Aldridge: talk about the role that stigma played in your decision
Faydra Aldridge: to continue trying to get that help for your mother.
Grace Cho: I think that after every attempt that I had made failed.
Grace Cho: When I was a teenager, I just went on to
Grace Cho: live my life and learned to pretend like everything was
Grace Cho: fine because in my family, no one could talk about it.
Grace Cho: And it wasn't until 1994 when my mom got a diagnosis,
Grace Cho: and that was because my brother's wife believed it was
Grace Cho: schizophrenia as well. And I think that she condensed my
Grace Cho: brother to take her to a psychiatrist. But I think
Grace Cho: that stigma has been very strong in my family, even afterwards,
Grace Cho: because I don't remember anyone, maybe other than my sister
Grace Cho: in law ever saying the word schizophrenia, even after she
Grace Cho: had a diagnosis and was taking medication for it as
Grace Cho: a young adult. It became my mission, in a sense,
Grace Cho: to want to understand the context of my mother's life
Grace Cho: in a deeper sense, ultimately to destigmatize the experience of
Grace Cho: what we call schizophrenia. So I think it has been
Grace Cho: very powerful in propelling me forward into my research and
Grace Cho: writing and speaking about it. One of the things that
Grace Cho: I tried to do in Tastes Like War is to
Grace Cho: get the reader to consider the meaning of the voices,
Grace Cho: because what Western psychiatry says is that they don't mean anything.
Grace Cho: It's just a symptom of a broken brain. But through
Grace Cho: the experiences with my mom, I came to understand that
Grace Cho: sometimes these voices were speaking about the past. They were
Grace Cho: speaking about family history and so that we might actually
Grace Cho: stand to learn something by listening to the voices that
Grace Cho: so-called schizophrenics hear. Right. So that those voices should not
Grace Cho: simply be pathologized, but might be a really important source
Grace Cho: of information, not just about that person in relation to
Grace Cho: whatever treatment plan you come up with, but about a
Grace Cho: larger history that we're all connected to.
Faydra Aldridge: Did you start listening to the content in what she
Faydra Aldridge: was saying when she was experiencing delusions?
Grace Cho: I couldn't hear them, but I tried to ask about
Grace Cho: them sometimes in a way that was nonthreatening, that would
Grace Cho: invite her to speak about them if she wanted to.
Grace Cho: So that she knew that I was not one of
Grace Cho: the people who was saying, We need to stop these
Grace Cho: voices and shut them down with medication. And so sometimes
Grace Cho: she would talk a little bit about the voices. She
Grace Cho: would say if they were really bothering her or at
Grace Cho: times when she seemed to have some harmony with them,
Grace Cho: she would mention that. And there were even moments when
Grace Cho: the voices actually were calling out to her certain dates
Grace Cho: that were significant. And those were the dates that led
Grace Cho: me to Korean history. When the clock said 945, she
Grace Cho: would call out the date September 45, which was when U.S.
Grace Cho: troops occupied the southern half of the Korean Peninsula. So
Grace Cho: it was almost as if her interaction with those voices
Grace Cho: helped to guide my research. And I do think about
Grace Cho: think of a lot of my work as work that
Grace Cho: I almost co-authored with my mom because she gave me
Grace Cho: so much guidance in that sense.
Faydra Aldridge: Grace I think it speaks to your strength that you
Faydra Aldridge: took everything that you went through as a young person and,
Faydra Aldridge: as you said, propelled you to make a difference and
Faydra Aldridge: to lead you where you are today. But I can't imagine,
Faydra Aldridge: as you said, just going on with your life and pretending.
Faydra Aldridge: So how did you manage?
Grace Cho: When I went away to college, it was easy to forget.
Grace Cho: Because I had this distance. I went to college across
Grace Cho: the country and so I didn't see my mom that often.
Grace Cho: And so it was this double life that I was
Grace Cho: leading when I was away at college with my friends. Yeah,
Grace Cho: I was able to not get mired in all of
Grace Cho: these issues that my family was going through. But then
Grace Cho: whenever I went back home for visits, there were these
Grace Cho: really painful reminders, and it wasn't until it was the
Grace Cho: year I turn 23. I think that was the turning
Grace Cho: point when I decided to dedicate my studies to understanding
Grace Cho: the context of my mother's life, because that year it
Grace Cho: seemed as if her mental illness got worse. This was
Grace Cho: actually after she got a diagnosis and was put on medication.
Grace Cho: B tried to take her life a couple of times
Grace Cho: that year, and it was when I was in the
Grace Cho: hospital with her, I made this promise that I was
Grace Cho: going to go back to ground school. I made that
Grace Cho: promise because I knew it was something that would give
Grace Cho: her hope or give her a sense of purpose for herself.
Grace Cho: But ultimately, it turned into the space where I was
Grace Cho: able to sort through all of these questions and experiences
Grace Cho: through academic work. I want to say that it was
Grace Cho: the trauma or that pain getting tighter and tighter. That
Grace Cho: was the force that pushed me forward.
Faydra Aldridge: Hey Grace, now we're just going to take a minute
Faydra Aldridge: and we're going to listen to this woman's experience talking
Faydra Aldridge: about her own mother's mental illness.
Grace Cho: I would say that I shut down going through this emotionally.
Grace Cho: So as I said before, protector mode. I shut down
Grace Cho: my emotions and I put up a wall for a
Grace Cho: long time. It wasn't until probably early thirties that I
Grace Cho: took down that wall and started to feel my emotions again.
Grace Cho: It was survival mode and it was a lot of
Grace Cho: resentment for a long time. I think about it now
Grace Cho: and it makes me emotional just the way that I
Grace Cho: handled things back then and the way that I'm trying
Grace Cho: to handle them now. Now that she's medicated, medicating, we have,
Grace Cho: you know, trying to build on that relationship now. But
Grace Cho: it was a lot of resentment and anger. I was
Grace Cho: angry for a long time. I talk to her every
Grace Cho: day and I think she's very unaware of a lot
Grace Cho: that has happened. So it's hard for me to accept
Grace Cho: that because I wish I could forget it, but I can't.
Grace Cho: But I can accept now and the relationship now. And
Grace Cho: she again, trying to separate the person from the illness
Grace Cho: and remind myself of that every day.
Faydra Aldridge: You could hear the emotion in that woman's voice and
Faydra Aldridge: the anger. Grace How did you cope with your mother's
Faydra Aldridge: diagnosis of schizophrenia?
Grace Cho: Well, it's interesting because I can see how easy it
Grace Cho: would be to feel anger and resentment towards the parents,
Grace Cho: because in a lot of ways, it sort of taps
Grace Cho: into these childhood feelings of abandonment because they can't be
Grace Cho: there for you. But I don't think that my anger
Grace Cho: was directed at my mom so much as to external forces.
Grace Cho: And sometimes I felt resentful towards my peers who had
Grace Cho: mothers who could be there for them. I had this
Grace Cho: sense of jealousy that their mothers are coming to their
Grace Cho: graduations or going to their weddings, or that they get
Grace Cho: to leave the house. My mom was essentially a shut
Grace Cho: in for 14 years, so that was really difficult for me.
Grace Cho: But I think that over the course of those 14 years,
Grace Cho: I learned to develop a lot of empathy for her.
Grace Cho: Because the other thing that happened the year that I
Grace Cho: turned 23 was that someone in my family told me
Grace Cho: the big family secret about my mom, which was that
Grace Cho: she used to be a sex worker for the U.S.
Grace Cho: military in Korea. And so once I started to imagine
Grace Cho: that that was her life as a young person younger
Grace Cho: than me at the time that I learned that, it
Grace Cho: just it filled me with so much heartache that I
Grace Cho: saw her completely differently. So I almost started to imagine
Grace Cho: my mother as a child, as the child who was
Grace Cho: denied many opportunities. And so that was one of the
Grace Cho: main pieces that I had to work through, something that
Grace Cho: I saw as the reason that she became schizophrenic.
Faydra Aldridge: You're listening to Look Again: Mental Illness Re-Examined a podcast
Faydra Aldridge: brought to you by the B.C. Schizophrenia Society and by partner organizations.
Faydra Aldridge: I'm your host, Faydra Aldridge. This podcast would not be
Faydra Aldridge: possible without the support of the community. From the bottom
Faydra Aldridge: of our hearts, we want to thank you for caring
Faydra Aldridge: about serious mental illness and everything that's around it. Together,
Faydra Aldridge: we truly can make a difference.
Speaker 3: I still love my mom. I love her more now,
Speaker 3: I think, than I did when I was younger because
Speaker 3: I didn't understand her. And now I do. So I
Speaker 3: have more compassion. I don't know if that was really
Speaker 3: her when she was that ill. And that's what I
Speaker 3: try to see. I try to think that she didn't
Speaker 3: know and her brain was hijacked at the time. So
Speaker 3: it helps me get through, like knowing that my mom's
Speaker 3: brain was hijacked and that was really her. When she
Speaker 3: did pull a knife on people and on the paramedics
Speaker 3: that time.
Faydra Aldridge: You've been listening to Look Again: Mental Illness Re-Examined. And
Faydra Aldridge: for this episode we have author and associate professor Dr.
Faydra Aldridge: Grace Cho, who's giving us an idea of what her
Faydra Aldridge: journey was like having a mother diagnosed with schizophrenia. And
Faydra Aldridge: now we're going to take a listen to another clip.
Faydra Aldridge: We're going to listen to a daughter whose mother also
Faydra Aldridge: has a serious mental illness and the impact that it
Faydra Aldridge: had on her as an adult.
Speaker 4: When you talk about resentment, you have friends that are
Speaker 4: close to their moms and their moms that are always
Speaker 4: normal and they have girl things and they did shopping.
Speaker 4: So resentment of not having a normal mom. And I wish,
Speaker 4: like I said, my daughter, I quite often say to
Speaker 4: my daughter, she's lucky that she's able to talk to
Speaker 4: me and that I can go shopping with her. And
Speaker 4: that's normal stuff. I didn't have that normal stuff. For
Speaker 4: a long time. I swore that I wouldn't have kids
Speaker 4: because I was scared to either be what my mom
Speaker 4: was or have a type of mental illness and put
Speaker 4: my kids through what I was through. And I wanted
Speaker 4: to avoid that. So that's part of why I haven't.
Speaker 4: And then the other part is my mentality has kind
Speaker 4: of changed on that now, because my sister had the
Speaker 4: same mentality for a long time until she had a
Speaker 4: kid and her mindset shifted where she wanted to show
Speaker 4: up in a way that my mom never did. So
Speaker 4: she became the best mom. When that happened, I was like, Oh,
Speaker 4: maybe I could do it. So we'll see. But that
Speaker 4: definitely has played a role in my future.
Faydra Aldridge: So after listening to that clip, Grace, I'm curious how
Faydra Aldridge: your mother's illness impacted your life and the path that
Faydra Aldridge: you decided to take.
Grace Cho: So much of my path was focused on studying so
Grace Cho: that I could understand the context of my mother's life,
Grace Cho: our family history, the history of the Korean War, because
Grace Cho: I think so many of the triggers for what happened
Grace Cho: to her are rooted in the experiences of war. So
Grace Cho: it definitely really shaped the path that I took because
Grace Cho: I just needed answers. I needed to understand what happened
Grace Cho: to her, what might have happened to her, how this
Grace Cho: became our history and what my place was in it
Grace Cho: simultaneously while I was in graduate school. My mom lived
Grace Cho: about 3 hours away from me, and so I would
Grace Cho: go down on the weekends to visit her and cook
Grace Cho: for her. And she taught me how to cook Korean food,
Grace Cho: which was something that she did not teach me how
Grace Cho: to do when I was growing up. So learning to
Grace Cho: cook Korean food for her really changed my life and
Grace Cho: my relationship with her because I started to notice how
Grace Cho: eating the foods of her past provided some sort of
Grace Cho: comfort for her. It also provided me this link to
Grace Cho: the past that I had been cut off from growing
Grace Cho: up because I grew up in this very xenophobic white
Grace Cho: community where you're not supposed to explore your Korean heritage.
Grace Cho: And so all of that was an unknown to me
Grace Cho: until I was in the situation of cooking for my
Grace Cho: mom through her schizophrenia. So in some ways, her illness
Grace Cho: was healing for me because it allowed me to get
Grace Cho: close to her in a way that I don't know
Grace Cho: that I would have been able to and also to
Grace Cho: have access to this family history. And it's interesting, in
Grace Cho: the clip that you played about having children, I did
Grace Cho: not want to have children until my mom died. And
Grace Cho: then almost immediately after she was gone, I had this
Grace Cho: overwhelming desire to have a child. And I think it
Grace Cho: was to try to restore that biological connection that I
Grace Cho: had just lost. Now I have a son. It's been wonderful.
Grace Cho: I did have some fears once I approached my mid-forties,
Grace Cho: the age my mom was when I started to notice
Grace Cho: that she was showing signs of schizophrenia, I was really
Grace Cho: scared that the same thing might happen to me. But
Grace Cho: I did tell myself that I didn't have most of
Grace Cho: the social risk factors that my mom had. I did
Grace Cho: not have the traumas that my mom had, and I'm
Grace Cho: much more educated on the topic than she was. And
Grace Cho: I have a family who knows that I would want
Grace Cho: to seek some sort of treatment.
Faydra Aldridge: Grace, I'm so happy that you have that support system
Faydra Aldridge: around you.
Grace Cho: Thank you. It's ironic, too, because I only got to
Grace Cho: this point of creating family and community around me through
Grace Cho: a very painful process of losing other family members who
Grace Cho: did not agree with the way I wanted to do
Grace Cho: things and who were against me being public about it
Grace Cho: because they were so ashamed of the mental illness as
Grace Cho: well as my mother's history as a sex worker.
Faydra Aldridge: We've talked so much about your mother and what you
Faydra Aldridge: went through as a young person. I'm curious, what is
Faydra Aldridge: your relationship like today with both your father and your brother? Well,
Faydra Aldridge: my father.
Grace Cho: Passed away in 1998. And as far as I know,
Grace Cho: I don't think that he ever acknowledged that my mom
Grace Cho: had a mental illness. I mean, he knew that there
Grace Cho: was some problem with her behavior. And I think that
Grace Cho: he may have suggested that she see a doctor, but
Grace Cho: I don't recall him ever acknowledging that it was mental
Grace Cho: illness or ever apologizing to me for calling me a liar.
Grace Cho: And then other family members like my brother, I think
Grace Cho: he just doesn't want me to be public about it.
Grace Cho: And so he opposes my work and I haven't spoken
Grace Cho: to him since 2020. Last time I spoke to him
Grace Cho: in person, I think was 2013. I'm estranged from the
Grace Cho: family that I grew up in, primarily because of my
Grace Cho: work and because of my stance that it's important to
Grace Cho: speak out about these things.
Faydra Aldridge: Of course, you could have just put your head in
Faydra Aldridge: the sand and said, I'm not going to deal with this.
Faydra Aldridge: I'm going to pretend this doesn't exist. And let's face it,
Faydra Aldridge: that that happens in our society where people would rather
Faydra Aldridge: just pretend that people with mental illness don't exist. Yeah. Grace,
Faydra Aldridge: you have the courage to go to your father and
Faydra Aldridge: your brother. And now, today, you're still being ostracized for
Faydra Aldridge: speaking out. What gives you the strength to keep going?
Grace Cho: When I was 15, it just felt like it was
Grace Cho: necessary for my survival because I mentioned how my mom
Grace Cho: and I were this dyad because my dad was away
Grace Cho: at sea. My brother had moved out of the house
Grace Cho: and we lived in a community where we were still
Grace Cho: considered foreigners. And so I just needed her to be okay.
Grace Cho: So that's why I was so driven then. But over
Grace Cho: time now, as an adult, so many people have told
Grace Cho: me that my work means something to them because they
Grace Cho: also have family members. Who have mental illness or they
Grace Cho: themselves have experienced it. And so that always gives me
Grace Cho: the motivation and the courage to continue.
Faydra Aldridge: And you would talk about how food made or allowed
Faydra Aldridge: that connection between you and your mother to grow. I
Faydra Aldridge: know your mother has passed now, but what was the
Faydra Aldridge: relationship like with your mother during that time, before she
Faydra Aldridge: did pass away and after she was diagnosed?
Grace Cho: It's interesting because she used to be this really passionate
Grace Cho: cook and forager. She just loved to feed people. So
Grace Cho: once I was in the role of trying to feed her,
Grace Cho: it was really difficult for me at first because it
Grace Cho: felt unnatural. It felt forced. It represented a kind of
Grace Cho: loss that I wasn't quite ready to deal with, that
Grace Cho: I knew that my mother wasn't going to cook anymore.
Grace Cho: She resisted it and rejected it at first. But over
Grace Cho: the course of a few years, she started to accept
Grace Cho: my cooking and then start to ask for things. By
Grace Cho: the end of her life, we had a very close
Grace Cho: relationship through all of these shared meals and through bonding
Grace Cho: over the past and family history. And it was really special,
Grace Cho: you know. I think that some of the conversation around
Grace Cho: having a parent who has schizophrenia often is focused on
Grace Cho: what they're not able to provide. And there was a
Grace Cho: time earlier in our relationship where that was where my
Grace Cho: thinking was, too. But by the end, I was starting
Grace Cho: to see all the gifts that she was giving me
Grace Cho: through this relationship, even though it was a very unconventional
Grace Cho: relationship because we were limited to the space of her
Grace Cho: apartment that she never left. Right.
Faydra Aldridge: So, Grace, I have to ask, how is your son?
Faydra Aldridge: Doing today.
Grace Cho: It's something that I think is always there. Right. And
Grace Cho: the idea in Korean also is that it's sort of
Grace Cho: a collective feeling as well. But it doesn't strangle me
Grace Cho: the way it used to. I only feel it's for
Grace Cho: the most part as a force of movement, as something
Grace Cho: that reminds me of why social justice is important. It's
Grace Cho: been very productive for me. It's a creative force for me.
Faydra Aldridge: I love that. And it really has propelled you, Grace.
Faydra Aldridge: Thank you so much for being here today. I really
Faydra Aldridge: enjoyed our chat and thank you for your openness and
Faydra Aldridge: your transparency. Thank you so much for sharing your story
Faydra Aldridge: and your mother's story with us today.
Grace Cho: Oh, it was my pleasure. And thank you for doing
Grace Cho: this podcast. It's such an important conversation.
Faydra Aldridge: Thank you. And a huge thank you to you, our audience,
Faydra Aldridge: for joining us for this episode. Together, we can change
Faydra Aldridge: the narrative around mental illnesses like schizophrenia and end the
Faydra Aldridge: many myths and stereotypes that still exist today. If you
Faydra Aldridge: have any questions or any comments whatsoever, tweet us at BCSchizophrenia.
Faydra Aldridge: And to get our latest episode be sure to follow
Faydra Aldridge: on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere you listen to podcasts.
Faydra Aldridge: Thank you for joining us today. We hope to see
Faydra Aldridge: you next episode. Talk to you soon.
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