When you grow up between worlds, belonging becomes both a gift and a ghost.
In this episode of the Fem Renaissance podcast, I sit down with Debbie Galias, a young Filipino woman born and raised in Austria, to trace the invisible lines connecting identity, family, and the emotional inheritance of migration.
We begin with the contradictions of Asian parenting, where love is often expressed through protection, expectation, and quiet sacrifice. For many of us, people-pleasing becomes a survival strategy, while social anxiety lingers as its by-product. In this tension between devotion and silence, we learn to read love through performance.
But what happens when that conditioning meets the Western ideal of individualism? When “fitting in” demands not only language but also the soft erasure of our cultural selves?
We discuss navigating performative DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) in white-dominant workspaces, where diversity can be celebrated on paper but rarely embodied in power dynamics. We talk about the emotional cost of being the token Asian woman in the room, the quiet exhaustion of constantly translating ourselves — culturally, linguistically, emotionally.
At the heart of this conversation lies something fundamental: the meaning of family. In many Asian cultures, family is not simply personal — it is moral, social, and collective. It defines who we are before we even begin to define ourselves. Yet for daughters who grow up abroad, that meaning shifts: between love and obligation, pride and guilt, roots and the restless pull of independence.
Every time I record a new episode, I’m reminded how rare openness truly is — how, when women sit together without pretence, the conversation becomes something deeper than an interview.
With Debbie, I was moved by her willingness to share her vulnerabilities — not as weakness, but as a quiet strength. Through her stories, I saw the tenderness, resilience, and compassion that define so many children of migrants.
What I hope to do with Fem Renaissance is to step outside the narratives of achievement that dominate the elite bubble — to listen instead to the voices that speak from struggle, hope, and the everyday work of becoming. Because that, too, is power: the kind that doesn’t need to perform.
This conversation is not about choosing between cultures; it’s about learning to live between them, fully.
To hold the contradictions without apology.
To see both love and pain as inheritances — not opposites.
🎧 Listen to Between Worlds: Children of Migrants.
