Breaking Silent Cycles
In Latino culture, mental health is rarely talked about. It's not that Latino men and women don't struggle with their mental and emotional health; it's that culturally, there’s a stigma surrounding the topic and a lot of feelings are suppressed as a result. So, when Diego heard about Valle Verde (or Green Valley), a program of The Next Door Inc. (TNDI) that works to reduce the negative feelings people have about mental health issues, he knew he needed to sign up for the 12-week course.
One evening, a Valle Verde Community Health Worker (CHW) was presenting to the class about domestic violence. As Diego learned about the different types of domestic violence that exist, an unsettling feeling came over him. The topic weighed so heavily on Diego that he took the time to self-reflect on his drive home.
What Diego had come to realize was that, even though he was never physically abusive to his wife or children, he had unintentionally caused them mental and emotional harm by projecting his own childhood traumas onto his family. As a kid, Diego's parents never talked about their emotions. They would remain silent about their internal struggles in fear of being shamed or being seen as weak by others. Instead, when they didn’t feel okay, Diego’s parents would chalk it up to anything other than their emotional health and often times took their frustrations out on their family.
That night, Diego sat his wife and kids down to apologize for the grief he’d caused them. He explained that by not dealing with his own emotional trauma, he’d unknowingly passed it down to his kids and subjected his wife to trauma of her own, and asked for their forgiveness. Diego vowed to also seek the help he needed to heal and do better for all of them, and returned to the Valle Verde class the following week in search of mental health resources at TNDI.
Our work has never been more important. Help us fill this need in the Latino community to break down stigmas about mental health and build awareness so future generations don’t have to suffer the way those before them have. Now through June 30th your gift will be matched up to $25,000! Visit nextdoorinc.org/donate to double your impact today.