The Silent Struggle: Being an SA Survivor and Keeping It Hidden from Immigrant Parents

As a sexual assault (SA) survivor, you carry a weight that can be hard for others to comprehend. This weight isn’t just the trauma, but the silence you feel you must keep, especially when you're from an immigrant family. The emotional burden of living through something so personal, so painful, is compounded by the fear of cultural expectations, the desire to protect your parents from heartbreak, and the looming worry of what they might think.

Growing up in an immigrant household, the concept of shame is often tied to family honor and reputation. For many, discussing sensitive topics, especially those related to sexuality, can feel like an impossible conversation. Parents who sacrificed so much for their children might not have the emotional or cultural framework to understand trauma in the way someone raised in a different environment might. In my case, talking about sexual assault—something that already feels isolating—would mean confronting a whole new layer of fear: the fear of disappointing my parents.

There’s an overwhelming sense of guilt that comes with hiding something so huge. When you’re trying to maintain a sense of normalcy in your family, it feels like betraying your own experience to keep your trauma to yourself. It’s like living with a secret that no one is supposed to know, but the weight of it drags you down every single day. But for an immigrant child, the fear of seeing their parents' faces fall, or worse, their anger or disbelief, often feels like it would only make the trauma worse.

Many immigrant parents are just trying to survive in a new country. They focus on providing, working multiple jobs, and making sure you have opportunities they never had. They’re invested in your success, your education, and your well-being, but they often don’t have the emotional space to discuss or process sensitive topics. What happens when something traumatic happens to you and you can’t turn to them for support? You feel like you're carrying their expectations on top of your own hurt.

The silence is suffocating. You want to be understood. You want to feel like you’re not alone, but there’s this sense that if you speak up, you could be shattering something precious—the ideal of the perfect family they’ve worked so hard to build in a foreign land. You don't want to hurt them, but you also can't pretend everything is okay when it’s not.

Sometimes, I wonder how to bridge that gap, how to make them understand without breaking everything they’ve worked for. Would they understand trauma in a way that feels healing or would they see it as a failure, a source of shame? The problem is that these questions often remain unanswered because the conversation is too scary to start.

Being an SA survivor and feeling forced to carry the weight of it alone because of cultural expectations isn’t just painful—it’s exhausting. Every day is a tightrope walk between honoring your parents’ sacrifice and giving yourself the space to heal. The silence becomes your burden, a constant reminder that healing is a process, and sometimes that process doesn’t come with the support you crave.

It’s important to acknowledge that healing doesn’t have to look one way. While my immigrant parents might not have the tools to support me in the way I hoped, I am learning to find support elsewhere—friends, therapists, and others who understand. The conversation around sexual assault in immigrant communities is still growing, but there’s hope that, over time, these conversations can help bridge the cultural gap.

Healing is a journey, and as survivors, we don’t need to carry our pain alone, even if it feels like it. If you're in a similar situation, remember: your pain matters, and your healing matters. It’s okay to ask for help when you're ready. You don’t need to stay silent forever.

Below is a video about other immigrant survivors, but as always you are never alone. 

Tier 2: Working with Immigrant Survivors