I set out to write this piece marking 50 years since the end of the Vietnam War with hope ‒ hope for healing and progress.
Then the Trump administration told its senior diplomats in Vietnam not to take part in events marking the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, according to The New York Times. April 30 also marks the 100th day of President Donald Trump's second term.
As a Vietnamese American who immigrated to the United States at age 9, I had hoped to reflect on progress in reconciliation and share my advocacy for a congressional resolution to recognize the incredible achievements and contributions of Vietnamese Americans to the United States since arriving in this country after the war.
But as I reflected, I saw that we are still a long way from true healing and that reconciliation remains far off.
Healing requires honest reckoning with the past and active participation from all sides: physically, psychologically, socially and politically.
Unfortunately, what we've seen has been a few drops in the bucket, and unless we commit to doing much more, it will take us another 50 years or longer to heal.
Of the nearly 3 million American men and women who served in Vietnam, about 5% still report suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder in the past year. PTSD is also prevalent in the Vietnamese American community, often manifesting as depression, domestic abuse and addiction.
My mother still struggles today from her trauma - after losing her husband who was sent to reeducation camp in Vietnam and arriving to America as a single mother with 12 children.
Unhealed trauma becomes intergenerational, passed down like an invisible inheritance. My siblings and I are the product of that, yet we know healing ourselves is the only way to break the cycle of trauma for our children and their children.
The United States has taken steps to address the war's aftermath, but they remain insufficient.
Agent Orange, sprayed over millions of acres of Vietnam, contained dioxin ‒ a chemical linked to cancer, birth defects and long-term ecological devastation. Dioxin is still poisoning people and the land today, and people are still born with severe deformities.
The U.S. government rightly compensates U.S. veterans for disabilities associated with Agent Orange exposure during the war. Meanwhile, Vietnamese American veterans ‒ who fought alongside U.S. forces ‒ receive nothing.
And in Vietnam, where the Red Cross estimates 3 million people have been affected by dioxin, only $381.4 million has been provided by the U.S. Congress since 2007 ‒ a fraction of what's needed to remediate the massive destructions to the land and its people.
In February, projects to clean Agent Orange hot spots suddenly stopped with the dismantling of USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development), placing lives and the environment at grave danger.
Vietnam's government also bears responsibility for reconciliation. For too long, its official narrative has been one-sided, without acknowledging what happened after the war and the sufferings of those who fought for South Vietnam, a country that ceased to exist when Saigon fell in 1975.
Southern Vietnamese like my family suffered not just during the war but also in its aftermath: reeducation camps, confiscation of our property and exile. My father never reunited with us after four years in a labor camp. Overseas Vietnamese were labeled "traitors" and estranged from our homeland. I still remember the day my father was taken away on a military truck.
Healing demands that we reckon with all sides of history ‒ not just the convenient ones.
We also need symbolic steps toward reconciliation. Establishing Vietnamese American Heritage Month in the United States would honor the sacrifices and achievements of our community while building unity and foster healing.
Today, 40% of Vietnamese Americans were born in America. Many don't speak Vietnamese or feel connected to their roots. According to the Pew Research Center, 18% of Vietnamese Americans have hidden aspects of their heritage. As more time passes, cultural identity erodes, and with it, critical links to healing.
I know this firsthand. When I was young, I believed that hiding my traumas and becoming fully American were the key to success. After a while, I forgot my Vietnamese language, culture and, in time, a part of myself. But cutting myself off from my roots also cut me off from healing.
That changed in 1997. I saw a photograph taken by Peter Steinhauer ‒ an American photographer who spent over a decade documenting Vietnam - at an exhibition in Washington, DC. It showed a woman holding a child on a hanging bridge over a winding river, and brought back memories of my mother carrying me through life's crossings.
In that moment, I remembered that I am Vietnamese, and that I needed to rediscover who I am.
Eventually, Peter and I married and founded Vietnam Society, a nonprofit to shine a light on Vietnamese culture, fostering healing and building bridges that help to reconnect young generations of Vietnamese Americans to their heritage. Over the past four years, we've seen how art opens doors to healing. We've watched younger Vietnamese Americans find pride in their roots.
I wish this column could be more positive, but that would be more platitudes and glossing over the truth ‒ which is that five decades since the Vietnam War, the path to reconciliation remains long and uneven.
Ordering U.S. diplomats to avoid war commemoration events in Vietnam is insulting, as if the Vietnamese, Vietnamese Americans and U.S. veterans don't matter. It seems the celebration of President Trump's 100th day in office is more important than remembering the painful lessons of the Vietnam War ‒ which he managed to avoid.
Healing will not come from silence, erasure or token gestures. It must be built through truth-telling, justice, cultural remembrance and human connection.
Erin Phuong Steinhauer is the co-founder and executive director of Vietnam Society.