Reflections on Community, Service, and International Motherhood from the Asian Pacific American Feminist Psychology Convention

It has been two weeks since the 3rd Convention of Asian Pacific American Feminist Psychology in San Diego.

As often happens after meaningful professional gatherings, I find myself reflecting less on the schedule and more on what lingers afterward. Certain conversations continue to echo. Certain faces come to mind. Certain moments reveal themselves more clearly once I have returned home and resumed the rhythm of everyday life.

This year's convention was particularly meaningful to me because APA Division 35 Section 5 (Psychology of Asian Pacific American Women) has become one of my professional homes. It is a community where I have found mentorship, friendship, and companionship. More importantly, it has been a space that has supported the ongoing process of forming and integrating my Asian American identity.

Identity formation is often described as something that belongs to adolescence or early adulthood. Yet I have found that identity continues to evolve throughout life, especially coming to the United States at age 32. As an immigrant, psychologist, and mother, I continue to discover new layers of what it means to belong—to communities, to cultures, and to myself.

Perhaps that is why I continue to return.

Serving the Community

This year, I once again served as the Volunteer Committee Chair, a role I previously held during the convention in Hawai'i two years ago. While attendees often experience a conference through keynote addresses, presentations, and networking events, there is another layer that quietly sustains the entire gathering. Behind every registration table, room transition, and conference welcome is a community of volunteers helping to create a space where connection can occur.

There is something deeply meaningful about contributing to the container itself.

As a psychologist, I often think about how growth occurs not only through insight but through relationship and environment. The same is true for professional communities. A convention is not simply a collection of presentations; it is a community built through countless acts of care, coordination, and collaboration.

I was grateful to work alongside an incredible team of volunteers whose generosity, flexibility, and dedication helped bring the convention to life.

Watching the reel now, I am reminded that some of the most meaningful moments happened between scheduled events—in shared laughter, quick problem-solving conversations, and spontaneous encounters in hallways. These moments may not appear in conference programs, yet they are often where community becomes real.

Continuing a Conversation on International Motherhood

Another meaningful part of this year's convention was the opportunity to present my poster, Multi-Rooted AAPI International Motherhood: Navigating Systemic Stress and Feminist Visions of Liberation.

This work has been a deeply meaningful journey.

In 2024, while serving as Co-Chair of the International Task Force for APA Division 35 Section 5, I helped host a panel on international motherhood. The conversations that emerged stayed with me long after the panel concluded. At the time, I recognized how rarely the experiences of internationally mobile mothers were named within either psychological literature or broader cultural narratives.

Since then, both my personal and professional life have continued to evolve around this theme.

As an immigrant mother raising a child across cultural contexts, I have become increasingly aware of the unique experiences that emerge when motherhood unfolds across multiple countries, languages, and systems. As a clinician, I have also witnessed how many women struggle to find language for experiences that do not fit neatly into dominant cultural narratives of motherhood.

Over time, I found myself searching for a framework that could better capture this complexity.

My poster presentation represents one step in that ongoing exploration.

A Multi-Rooted Framework for International Motherhood

In this work, I introduce the concept of multi-rooted international motherhood and describe three interconnected layers of identity that shape this experience: Relational Identity, Cultural Identity, and Geopolitical Identity.

Relational Identity

Relational identity reflects the many relationships that international mothers simultaneously navigate—as mothers, daughters, partners, caregivers, and members of extended families that often span continents.

Cultural Identity

Cultural identity reflects the ongoing negotiation between different systems of values, traditions, languages, educational expectations, and parenting philosophies. Many AAPI international mothers find themselves translating not only language but culture, helping children move between different worlds while attempting to remain grounded in their own.

Geopolitical Identity

Geopolitical identity highlights the broader structural realities that shape family life. Immigration systems, citizenship, global mobility, economic resources, educational opportunities, and political contexts all influence how international motherhood is lived and experienced.

Together, these layers create a form of intersectionality that is often overlooked.

Naming the Invisible Labor

For many AAPI women, international motherhood involves seasonal movement between the United States and Asia-Pacific countries. While this lifestyle can offer rich opportunities for connection, it also carries significant invisible labor.

There is the physical exhaustion of long-distance travel with children.

There is the developmental labor of helping children navigate multiple languages, educational systems, and social environments.

There is the emotional labor of serving as a container for children's transitions, uncertainties, and adaptations.

There is also the reality that what is often called "vacation" becomes something else entirely. Travel frequently centers around family responsibilities, caregiving obligations, and maintaining relationships across borders. Time, energy, and financial resources are invested not in leisure but in sustaining family connections that stretch across oceans.

Feminist Visions of Liberation

Yet the story does not end with stress.

What continues to inspire me about international motherhood is the way it challenges monocultural assumptions about what motherhood should look like.

Living between worlds often disrupts dominant ideals of intensive mothering, individualism, and self-sufficiency. Instead, many international mothers cultivate networks of care that extend beyond the nuclear family. Grandparents, relatives, family friends, and transnational communities become active participants in caregiving and belonging.

In this sense, international motherhood can become a site of resistance.

By integrating ancestral wisdom with contemporary realities, these mothers create alternative visions of family and community. They reclaim interdependence not as weakness but as a fundamental human need. They demonstrate that care can travel across borders and that belonging can exist in multiple places at once.

The goal of this work is not simply to identify challenges but to name experiences that often remain invisible. Naming creates recognition. Recognition creates understanding. Understanding creates possibilities for support, healing, and change.

As clinicians, researchers, and allies, we need frameworks that acknowledge the complexity of these multi-rooted lives.

As mothers, perhaps we need permission to recognize that our experiences are worthy of being named in the first place.

Multiple Professional Homes

Two weeks after the convention, what remains with me is not only the poster presentation or the volunteer experience, but a renewed appreciation for the communities that continue to shape who I am becoming.

APA Division 35 Section 5 remains one of the places where my Asian American identity continues to be nourished, challenged, and integrated. It is a community that reminds me that psychology is not only about individual healing but also about collective liberation, cultural belonging, and social transformation.

At the same time, my work continues to be deeply informed by Jungian psychology and symbolic thinking. While these professional communities may appear different from one another, I increasingly experience them as complementary. One invites me to explore the inner landscape of psyche, symbol, and meaning. The other continually calls my attention to culture, history, power, and collective experience.

Together, they offer a richer understanding of what it means to be human.

Closing Reflections

Professional identity does not need to be singular.

Like the multi-rooted mothers whose stories I seek to understand, I continue to grow through multiple lineages, multiple communities, and multiple ways of knowing.

And for that, I am deeply grateful.

Between communities, cultures, and continents, I continue to discover how service, belonging, and international motherhood shape both my personal and professional journey.