Her Incredible Journey

WHEN LUCY NEM completed her bachelor’s degree in social work in April, she became the first member of her immediate family to graduate from college. Lucy’s family are fairly recent immigrants—refugees, actually, a protected status under international law, defined by the United Nations—who moved to Portland, Oregon, in 2016, after fleeing their home country of Myanmar (Burma) two years before.

In 2015, Burmese refugees made up 26 percent of refugees accepted in the United States, comprising the highest single ethnic group of refugees that year—more than 18,000, according to Migration Policy Institute. The persecution of minority ethnic and religious groups in Myanmar—the Rohingya Muslims, for one, and Lucy’s own community of the Zomi, who are mostly Christian—fueled that exodus.

One of six children, Lucy grew up in the village of Teeklui in Myanmar. Her grandparents, she said, were some of the first Catholics in the village. “Being Catholic is a legacy for our family,” she said. After being kidnapped by the Burmese military, Lucy’s father escaped and fled to Malaysia in 2011, where he obtained refugee status. Lucy and her family treasured the letters her father wrote home. “My mom would call all my siblings, and we would sit around the fireplace,” she said. “Mom would tear up when she read the letters.”

From 2012 to 2014, she and her family emigrated in small groups to join their father in Malaysia.

At a learning center for refugees in Malaysia, Lucy first met Francis Kham. Kham, a fellow Zomi refugee, connected the Nem family with the local Catholic community. After he emigrated to the United States, Kham became president of the Zomi Catholic Community of Portland and served as a sponsor for the Nem family, who arrived in 2016.

“Lucy is a role model for the Zomi community and the larger community,” Kham said. She has become “the backbone” of her intergenerational household, he said, guiding her family through US culture.

Kham helped Lucy with applying to colleges and the FAFSA process, and he even took her to visit University of Portland. When Lucy stepped foot on campus, it quickly became her first choice for college. “I fell in love,” Lucy said. “I feel something is calling me, I feel peace, and I feel belonging.”

Lucy said she decided to pursue social work, in part because of Kham’s example. A social worker doesn’t have a nice car and lives a very simple life, but is able to help many people, Lucy said; “He is my role model, and I want to be like him.”

One of her first interests in social work was in mental health support and psycho-emotional education. When she presented on the experience of migrants and refugees in professor Anita Gooding’s introductory social work class, a student asked a question in response to her presentation that changed the course of her college experience: “How are you feeling now?”

“I couldn’t answer,” Lucy said. “I cried.”

Lucy could talk objectively about the refugee experience, but she found that once she looked inside herself, she was overwhelmed by the weight of its trauma. She left the room and spent the rest of the class period crying.

In her typically resilient fashion, however, Lucy embraced the moment as an invitation to growth.

Previously, she said, she did not speak up about being a refugee. “Talking about being a refugee is kind of shameful,” she said. “People would see me different and kind of judge me if I bring up that I am a refugee.” But that class pushed her to speak more about her own experience.

“Social work class taught me talking about it more is the way to overcome,” she said, “instead of hiding it and living it as if nothing happened.” She wrote again about the refugee experience for her senior research paper. “And I didn’t tear up,” she said.

During her social work program, Lucy interned at Catholic Charities Refugee Resettlement program, where she helped with the food pantry, cultural programs, and orientation. She feels her identity as a refugee can help create a bridge between the professional social workers and the refugees. “I can see both perspectives,” she said.

In her recent internship at SOAR Immigration Legal Services, she has been working in mental health support for many African refugees. “I grew up with men dominating,” Lucy said. “We don’t talk about feelings—we just kind of buried what we feel.” Because, she said, there was not cultural practice to express feelings, it could compound trauma or stress or lead to violence. “Talking about feelings can save lives,” she said.

During her senior year, she began to think of different career paths when she took a Macro Policy and Social Work class. The class traveled to Salem to participate in a lobby program in Free School Meals for all. Lucy got the opportunity to share a testimony of how she relied on school meals throughout high school.

In one of her final internship activities, Lucy led a gratitude practicum with staff members at SOAR. One of the activities to foster gratitude was for each staff member to write a note of gratitude to their colleagues. One of her colleagues wrote to Lucy: “I am grateful to have met you, Lucy, you are smart, wonderful, and I wish you the best.” Lucy smiled as she read it.

“I feel like I’m doing what I really love to do, I am fulfilling a dream,” Lucy said. “I enjoy it, and I am also healing myself.”

RENÉE RODEN is the author of the forthcoming Tantur: Seeking Christian Unity in a Divided City. She lives at St. Martin de Porres Catholic Worker in Pennsylvania.