I used to keep my family life private in grad school. A natural disaster changed that

From ScienceMag:

My phone has become impossible to put down. Less than 24 hours ago, a devastating earthquake hit my home country of Venezuela. After hours of calls and messages, I finally know my family is safe, for now. But my relief is quickly replaced by worry about aftershocks and everything that could come next. Sitting in the lab, waiting for a buffer to thaw, I find myself unable to focus on anything else. I’m no longer in lab. I’m back home, surrounded by chaos, fear, and pain. And I am once again tempted to wall off this part of my life.

The panic I felt waiting to hear from my parents was not new. Growing up in Venezuela, I learned that emergencies often came with uncertainty about whether help, medicine, or even electricity and other basic services would be available. When I was 10 years old and got sick during a dengue outbreak, my mother raced from clinic to clinic searching for a laboratory that could run the blood tests I needed. Years later, my grandmother received almost no medical attention during a heart attack that was ultimately fatal. Access to health care often depended on what could be found, borrowed, or purchased elsewhere. More than the events themselves, I remember the fear in my mom’s eyes, a feeling I eventually recognized in myself. Despite those challenges, my parents made immense sacrifices so my future could be defined not by instability and fear, but by possibility and hope.

Those sacrifices brought me to the United States, initially as an undergraduate and now as an M.D.-Ph.D. student. My life here is stable, structured, and privileged. Every month, I pick up my medications at the pharmacy without a second thought. When I flip a light switch or schedule a doctor’s appointment, I do so with the quiet expectation that things will function reliably. I know my family sacrificed greatly so I could be here, and they are proud of the opportunities those sacrifices have made possible. Still, I can’t shake the guilt of inhabiting a reality so different from theirs.

For years, my answer was to compartmentalize. Venezuela stayed in my phone, while the lab was where I focused on experiments, training, and progress. That compartmentalization often shaped what I shared with others. I remained reluctant to discuss my family’s situation with labmates and friends. I had been given an extraordinary opportunity, and I owed it to my family to make the most of it. I believed if I acknowledged how much my family’s struggles affected me, I would be wasting the opportunities they had worked so hard to give me.

However, this summer’s earthquakes exposed the fragility of that arrangement. I could pipette samples and attend meetings, yet mentally I was sitting in my mom’s darkened home, waiting for the power to return. Maintaining the separation no longer felt possible.

As I sat in the lab that first day, scrolling through social media for news, someone called my name, snapping me back to the present like cold water. A labmate who saw the news was asking about my family. For years, I would have dismissed the question and changed the subject. To my surprise, I found myself sharing parts of my past 24 hours, and opening up about parts of my life I had long kept to myself.

The fear, guilt, and uncertainty that I had kept carefully contained for years began to spill into conversations with friends and labmates. Their responses were simple yet meaningful: They listened, checked in, and made space for me to talk about what was happening. Those conversations made it easier to keep sharing. Instead of feeling distracted or weakened, as I once expected I would, I felt relieved. For the first time, I realized sharing my fears and guilt didn’t mean I lacked resilience. It made the burden easier to carry.

Now, when news breaks about Venezuela, I no longer pretend everything is fine. I have started to confide in my labmates and friends about my worries and guilt. I let myself step out of the lab for a few minutes to text my parents, or tell my principal investigator I need a moment to regroup. These small acts of vulnerability are becoming part of how I navigate the distance between my two worlds. By allowing myself to share both parts of my life, I am learning to live with the dichotomy. And in doing so, I feel more resilient than ever.

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