07/31/2025
Education Is the Path to Peace 🌏
My husband and I have always believed that education is the key to love, understanding, and peace.
With heavy hearts, we have been following the recent tensions between Thailand and Cambodia. The news and social media discourse have reopened old wounds, wounds that many of us who survived the Khmer Rouge have tried to lock away for decades.
Between 1975 and 1979, an estimated 1.5 to 2 million people died in Cambodia — through mass ex*****ons, starvation, forced labor, and disease. In 1979, my family was targeted for ex*****on because we were not considered “pure-blood Cambodians.” My mother was one of their victims. The rest of us survived — barely — when Vietnamese soldiers entered Cambodia. That moment remains complicated in Cambodian history, but for my family, it meant survival. I carry deep gratitude for that.
My grandparents had migrated to Cambodia from China. I was born in Cambodia, but growing up, I was never “Cambodian enough” for some, nor “Chinese enough” for others. Today, I am a proud Asian American and a U.S. citizen — yet even abroad, I have been told not to say I’m Cambodian, or Chinese, or even American. So where do I belong?
This question of identity is not mine alone. Across Southeast Asia — in Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos — our stories are interwoven by blood, culture, and history. Many are Thai-Cambodian, or Cambodian-Thai. When tensions rise, how does one choose a side?
That brings me back to what we believe at our core:�
Education matters!📖 📕
✅ Education helps us distinguish truth from propaganda.
✅ Education gives us historical context, so we don’t blindly follow misinformation.
✅ Education reminds us that race is not biology. It is a social construct — used historically to divide, to dominate, to erase.
Genetically, humans are 99.9% identical. “Pure blood” is a myth. It has no place in our future.
Cambodia is where my mother was killed. But Cambodia is also where I found love. I have been married to the most incredible Cambodian man for nearly 40 years. I love Cambodian people. I love Thai people. I love humanity.
That’s why we proudly support Caring for Cambodia, an organization providing quality education to children in Cambodia. We believe education creates thinkers, bridge-builders, and peace-makers. It may not fix politics overnight, but it gives us the tools to choose compassion over conflict, and truth over hate.
To our Thai and Cambodian brothers and sisters:
Let us not be divided by borders or politics.
Let us not pass on pain and hate to the next generation.
Let us rise together — with love, respect, and the courage to choose peace. 🌍☮️❤️
