For over 30 years, I’ve worked with clients from diverse backgrounds—many from immigrant, refugee, or minority communities. And I’ve come to understand something that psychology textbooks rarely emphasize:
Emotional support is not a luxury. It is a survival need.
But in so many cultures—especially those shaped by trauma, poverty, colonization, or migration—emotional support was never part of the vocabulary. When your parents were focused on survival, fleeing war, rebuilding from loss, or simply trying to put food on the table, they weren’t thinking about emotional validation. And that’s not because they didn’t care. It’s because they didn’t receive it either.
This absence of emotional support wasn’t personal—it was generational.
And now we see the cost.
Entire communities are struggling—not because they’re broken—but because the cycle of silence was never interrupted. People don’t know how to say what they feel. They think pain should be swallowed. They mistake emotional numbness for strength.
And so, I created MFriend.
MFriend is not just a chatbot. It’s a multilingual, trauma-informed emotional support line that listens—without judgment, pressure, or cultural translation. It offers a safe space to speak in your native language, whether it’s Korean, Mandarin, Arabic, French, Hindi, or English.
It says what so many never heard:
“You don’t have to explain yourself. You’re allowed to feel. I’m here.”
I built MFriend because we can’t wait for every school, every family, or every institution to change. But we can create a voice that helps people feel heard now.
And sometimes, just that—being heard in your own language—is the first crack in the wall.
The beginning of healing.
The seed of generational change.