On This World Refugee Day, Our Story and Yours...

Today is #WorldRefugeeDay and June is #ImmigrantHeritageMonth. Since Laos In The House started in 2015, our mission remains to promote storytelling in the Lao American refugee community through the mediums of art. These stories, shared by many of you, have become one of the few ways we learn our histories and can teach them to our children. Since the arrival of Lao families in the 70's and 80's, there are very very few American history books that include our faces, our names and our homeland. These also include stories of moms pregnant with babies, sons reuniting with fathers, young siblings who stuck together... and those who didn't make it.

They too, crossed rivers, broke curfew, entered foreign borders, traveled without documents, falsified names and silenced themselves for the chance at freedom and a future - for us. The current U.S. administration policy to separate families is not one we support. As refugees, we know the pain of losing family members, of giving up the opportunity to ever see them again, of never knowing their real identities. It is a story we acknowledge in our family memories but not one we wish for others to bear.

The above collage are photos of our volunteers, their parents, siblings and children - all the people they couldn't imagine having lived a life without. #LaosInTheHouse

If you'd like to share your story, and include it in the LITH Stories Board, please send all words and pictures to stories@laosinthehouse.com. We'd love to hear from you, all stories are welcomed.