Caregiver Doula Series: Don't Tell Me to Just Sell the House On caregiving, immigrant wealth, and the grief no one names

Thank you Viva Mogi, MPA for sharing what’s not openly discussed or considered -

“I want to sit with you in something that doesn’t get talked about enough in caregiving spaces — the moment someone tells you to just sell the house.

It usually comes from a good place. A counselor, a social worker, maybe even a well-meaning friend who watched their own family navigate this. Sell the home. Use the equity. That’s what it’s there for. And I understand the logic. I do.

But what that advice doesn’t hold — what it can’t hold — is the weight of what that home means to an immigrant family. That house wasn’t just shelter. It was the proof. The evidence that the sacrifice meant something. The thing my parents could point to and say: we made it here. We built something.”

Dad Lives with Me Cindy Martindale Adrian Chung Julia Yarbough