Healing Our Way Home: Rita Phetmixay on Trauma, Identity & Legacy in the Lao Diaspora

In this crossover episode of Love, Listings, and Legacy, host Sophaline Mao welcomes Rita Phetmixay from the Healing Out Lao'd podcast to explore their shared experiences as Southeast Asian refugee daughters. The two discuss growing up in different environments - Rita in small-town North Carolina facing racism, Sophaline in California's vibrant Southeast Asian community - and how these backgrounds shaped their identities. They uncover family secrets, including parents who escaped war zones, half-siblings discovered later in life, and the difficult choices made during conflict. Their conversation examines generational trauma, mental health challenges, and cultural silences that persist 50 years after displacement from their ancestral homelands. Rita and Sophaline share their journeys of reconnection with their Laotian and Cambodian heritage, highlighting how today's young Southeast Asians are proudly reclaiming their cultural roots through education, community building, and storytelling.