Healing The Asian’s Shame: From Bankruptcy To Financial Abundance with Jenny Thao Ngo
Life is unpredictable and it can often feel impossible to find a balance between what you want and what you have. Perhaps you are feeling trapped or constrained because of your cultural boundaries. Whatever the case, I’m glad you’re here with me. Our guests on Asian Women of Power all have similar backgrounds and traits like me. They have found a way to create a life, which gives them the freedom, power, and choice to be who they want to be while still respecting their culture. Our guest is no different.
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Jenny Thao Ngo is a transformational healer, coach and intuitive. She has been featured on global telesummits like You Wealth Revolution and From Heartache to Joy. She has a unique multidimensional healing process that allows her clients to remember their divine essence, connect to their inner knowing, and free them from limiting themselves in wounds of the past. I am excited to learn more about her secrets. Please help me welcome, Jenny Thao Ngo. Welcome, Jenny. I’m happy that you are here. Take us back to the time before you came to America. What was your life like in Vietnam?
Thank you so much for having me on the show. It’s nice to be here with your audience and to have this special platform to share with other Asians, especially Asian women of power. One of my favorite movies growing up when I came to America was The Little House on the Prairie because it reminded me so much of my childhood. Watching that movie brings me back to the time when I lived in Vietnam. I grew up in the countryside of Vietnam. At that time, we have a house that was made of mud and straws and we didn’t have electricity, indoor plumbing or running water. I remember having to go to the neighborhood well nearby to fetch water. We washed clothes the old-fashioned way with our hands. I remember going to gather dry wood to cook in a self-made stove with three stacks of bricks. We didn’t have a watch and we tell time based on the shadow of the sun. I have about three pairs of clothes and that’s it.
I will go to school for a half day and when I come home, I’ll switch with my brother who would then go to school. I would take over the chores at home by taking care of the herd of cows and buffalos that we had. My parents worked hard on the farm from dawn to dusk. I didn’t have any resources like tutoring or extra support, so I did pretty bad in school. My teachers were spanking me literally almost every day because I didn’t know the school work. Whatever I got in school, that’s what I got. I flunked every grade. I luckily passed when I went to summer school.
Even if this was the case, it was a bittersweet moment where I know we didn’t have a lot and I remember not having leftovers. You have to eat and if you don’t eat, then there’s no more food afterwards. I don’t remember not having food to eat on most days, but I do remember this one incident where I was so hungry. There was nothing else to eat anywhere, there was no guava or ripe mangoes or ripe bananas. I saw a bunch of green baby bananas and it was so bitter. I tried to eat it, but I couldn’t eat because it was so yucky. I remember stealing my neighbor’s sugar cane to eat it. I got caught by my father and I got spanked pretty badly. At that time, I didn’t know what I was doing, I guess I was hungry or I wanted some sweet stuff.
On the other side of the coin, I remember growing up in poverty helped me become self-reliant. Whatever toys that we needed to make, we made it. We couldn’t afford to buy things. For example, if I wanted a marble, I would go to the railroad track, get a rock, and keep grinding away until I get a round marble. If I wanted to make a set of pots or animal set, I would go to the stream, pick up some fresh clay, and then make these toys.
It sounds very tough, but it’s also sweet because you were so innocent. You were exposed to a lot of nature because you could tell time by the shadow of the sun. The reason you were not doing well in school was that you did not have time to study at all. When you came home from school, you had to help out with the family chores by taking care of those buffalos. By the time your shift ends, the sun is already down and you cannot see any more, therefore, you cannot study. That’s the reason you didn’t do well in school when you were in Vietnam.
Now that I have children of my own, I have a six-year-old daughter and a three-year-old boy, it requires a lot of tutoring and extra help for her to even learn her alphabet and remember her numbers. Just the basic stuff that we take for granted, we need extra help. I didn’t have that. I thought there was something wrong with me, “Why was I so dumb and why couldn’t I do well in school?” Knowing better now.
It’s because you did not have an opportunity, not because of your mental ability. The environment that you grew up in did not give you that opportunity to learn. When did you come to America and how did you come here?
I came over to America when I was ten years old and that was in 1989. We moved to North Carolina on the East Coast of the USA. We came over this program called the Homecoming of the American Children. My parents adopted my oldest brother. He’s half American and half Vietnamese, so he’s considered Amerasian mixed. Our family has a total of seven people, my parents, and the five of us. I have four brothers and I’m in the middle.
Was your half-brother the eldest one in the family?
Yes. My parents told me that they just got married and they had my older brother. When they came to visit one of my aunts, they said, “This orphan kid needs a nice home.” This was in the early years, maybe it was after 1975, the downfall of Vietnam. A lot of people were poor and there was not enough food to go around. Thinking about adopting another mouth to feed was hard. My parents knew that at least they have food they can provide. They went ahead and adopted him. His mom gave him to one of her best friends to take care of her three kids. Actually, he has two other siblings. My parents had to go through this process of asking permission from his spirit mom who has passed away to see if they can adopt him and somehow that happened. Growing up, I knew him as my brother. I didn’t even think he was different from me. I either didn’t know any better or what, but he’s always been part of my family.
You didn’t notice any difference, but what about him? Did he notice anything different when he grew up like, “I look different than you?”
Probably in his late teens, that’s when he hangs around with other people. I remember him mentioning as a teenager that he was bullied and picked on at school. There was this song that was saying like mixed people have ten ears or eyes or something like an alien.
Was that in Vietnam or in here?
That was in Vietnam. The other kids noticed that he’s different and they made fun of him for being different. Because of that, he didn’t like school. He would go to school but then would skip school as a result.
You came here with four other siblings. How were your siblings doing in school when they came here?
When we came here, we had to learn English from scratch. We didn’t know any English at all. We went two or three years in ESL, English as a second language, and got acclimated to the culture and learn the foundation of the language like the alphabet. I did well in school when I came to America. I remember sitting on a plane and coming to America. I had no clue where America was. My parents just took a leap of faith at that time. We went to a country we didn’t know and we didn’t have any connection. We heard some stories like there were so many things in America. It’s almost Columbus’ time, you may or may not make it.
In case we didn’t make it, we can go to another place. I remember sitting on the plane, reviewing my past and how I did bad in school, there was an inner guidance that took over me and said, “Jenny, you can start over. No one has to know your past. No one has to know that you were dumb and you were poor in school.” That was that moment that I decided, “I’m going to start over and have a clean slate.” Ever since then, after two years of ESL classes, I made straight A’s all the way up to high school. I even made 4.0, 4.2 GPA. In addition to that, I attended extracurricular activities like sports, soccer, volleyball, and other sports while taking advanced placement courses and making above 4.0 GPA. I did well in school because of my determination. It’s not because I’m smart, but I was determined to do well.