Cindy Ly

In my house, you didn’t talk back. Not to your parents. Not even when they were wrong. Especially not when they were wrong. To speak up was disrespectful. To disagree was betrayal. I remember being a child, carefully bringing a bowl of soup to the table. My dad turned

I never got the birds and bees talk. I never got the tampon talk either. Sex wasn’t something we discussed in my household—it was something we avoided. It lived in the background, unspoken but omnipresent. It was the silent reason I wasn’t allowed to go out, to

My first diet started when I was five years old. It was the cabbage soup diet.  While the rest of my family watched TV, my mother had me doing jumping jacks and sit-ups in the living room. It wasn’t playful. It wasn’t bonding. It was shame disguised as

How I unlearned obedience, reclaimed my voice, and found freedom "Be quiet." "Only speak when spoken to." "Don’t talk back to your elders." These weren’t just rules in my house—they were gospel. People used to praise my family for how “well-behaved”

There’s a timeline I inherited—clear, rigid, and unforgiving. Graduate college. → Get married. →Have children. In that order. At the right age. Not too early, or I’d shame the family. Not too late, or I’d be a leftover. Like Goldilocks, everything had to be “just right.” By

In my family, food was love. It wasn’t said out loud. It was ladled onto plates. The more food on the table, the more love in the room. Whenever I came home from college or for the holidays, my mother would light up: “I’ll make your favorite.” That