Healthy Thoughts for 5 Healthy Towns: Life changes can be hard, but rewarding

by Amy Heydlauff, 5 Healthy Towns CEO

On the heels of my recent column about failing forward, Trinh Pifer told me a story about her early life.

Many of you know Trinh, the retiring Director of the Chelsea Senior Center. Even those of you outside Chelsea know her through her senior and other outreach efforts in all five of our healthy towns. However, few of us know how she came to be an American.

When Trinh was five, she and her family escaped Saigon, during its fall. Her harrowing story includes escape onto the sea in a small boat; a rescue by an American naval ship; and life in several refugee camps before a church in Walled Lake sponsored her family and they came to Michigan.

When Trinh started school, she could not speak English. And she didn’t feel very welcome. She told me she was feisty even then, and made up her mind, she wasn’t staying in school. Many of us know what happens when a feisty child makes up her mind. She can make everyone pretty miserable.

Miserable or not, her parents said (in Vietnamese) “Tough luck, little Trinh. Learning to speak English and being educated in the public school system, an amazing American asset, is the only choice we are allowing you to make. For your own good.” There was zero chance she’d be able to communicate or connect with her classmates at first. Her parents actually set her up for short-term failure. How painful that must have been for them, even though they knew it would likely assure a successful future for her.

This story about her young life helps explain why Trinh is such an effective problem-solver. From an early age, she had to figure out how to make life work and how to take advantage of opportunities. Unlike most of us, Trinh knows what a failed society looks like. She knows about harrowing escapes and generosity in the midst of discrimination (or perhaps discrimination in the midst of generosity). As much as failing forward, her family stumbled forward, making one tough decision after the other. Giving up many things. They did the hard work of assimilating into a world they knew to be better than what they left behind, even if the new place wasn’t always nice.

Trinh’s family message is a challenging one for us. It is a classic ‘the devil you know or the devil you don’t?’ If we choose to live the way we currently live, our results will be the same. If it’s not working and we decide to get into that small boat, the waters ahead may be rough.

I admire Trinh and her family for the work they did to find a better life. Her story demonstrates that life-changing work can be harder–and sometimes scarier–than we’d like. And more rewarding than we can hope. I, for one, am grateful Trinh’s family got into that boat. They benefited, and so did their new communities.

Take care, little Trinh. Your life-long journey of risk and reward continues. And it continues with good wishes from all of us.

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by Marsha Chartrand

Marsha Johnson Chartrand, a founder, writer, and copy editor with the Manchester Mirror, is a 50-year resident of Manchester. She has a long history of volunteer and community involvement.