I came to the US at the age of 25. I had never been out of Nigeria. My age and the novelty of my “abroad” experience intensified my culture shock, my nostalgia, and my loneliness.
Of all the above three emotional states, loneliness was my biggest struggle. After several decades of living and working in the US and interacting with educational immigrants and others who came to the US at a young age like myself, I have come to believe that loneliness is the biggest plague afflicting the young, single immigrant.
I made friends and acquaintances but I was still lonely. Loneliness is not about being alone. That is solitude, which I actually love, and which served me really well as a graduate student as it enabled me to focus and get work done.
Loneliness, contrary to what many people believe, is the absence of an intimate network of people you can call and relate to as family.
That’s what I lacked. That’s what many young, single immigrants lack. It creates a void, a yawning chasm in you. And that chasm grows if not filled.
That chasm, for me, was quickly filled by Barbara and Robert Pierce, the parents of my friend and colleague, Steven Pierce, Margaret Pierce, and Anne Schaum.
Barbara in particular, and in ways that she may not realize, filled one particular void that, for us boys, is detrimental to our being: separation from our mothers.
We started talking on the phone after Steven introduced us. She said I had a standing invitation to their home in Ohio. I couldn’t wait for Thanksgiving break in November. That trip to Ohio was a healing adventure because, from August when I arrived to November, I had been suffering mentally and emotionally.
The hospitality Barbara extended to me healed my loneliness and provided me with everything I needed to survive my adventure in the US: family, stability, inspiration, and comfort.
Barbara may never understand the depth and impact of this gesture, but when she told me that she would be my mom in America and that I should tell my birth mom in Nigeria not to worry and that I had a mom in America who would take care of me, a heavy emotional burden was lifted from me. It was as though she knew that I was missing my mother’s comfort, unconditional love, and support badly.
How did she know that I needed a motherly figure in my life in America? Maybe she could sense it. Advancing herself into the role of my American mom marked the beginning of my American journey. I knew from that point on that I not only had a family but a mom in America.
And Barbara lived up to that responsibility and more. She told me to call her mom. It was a delight to have somebody in the US to call mom in emails and phone calls. She made sure I was warm, buying me my first fancy winter coat and gifting me several other winter gears.
That first Thanksgiving, Barbara provided me with a family stability I lacked in the US. I partook in Barbara’s elaborate family Thanksgiving dinner—my first in the US. Barbara provided a warm, comforting maternal embrace that did much to assure me that I would no longer be lonely in the US.
That Thanksgiving visit broke a mental and emotional barrier. I had a breakthrough, in the lexicon of mental health therapy.
After that, I spent every Thanksgiving and Christmas with the Pierces, and Barbara was always at her maternal caring best. I always looked forward to those trips as they helped me heal and destress. She cooked the best meals, and was a masterful home manager, even while working a demanding fulltime leadership job.
One of my favorite things was looking forward to what presents I would get from Barbara for Christmas. She never disappointed. Somehow, she always knew what I needed, but I suspect that she got “expo” from Steven, with whom I talked from time to time and who knew the needs of a poor graduate students, being one himself before he finished and left for his first job.
Barbara, above all else, was an inspiration to me. Did I mention that Barbara is blind? Yes, she became blind as a child (see first comment for a video of her interview about her life and activism on behalf of the blind community)
In my first few months in America, I was constantly overwhelmed by all the new things I had to deal with, the new demands I had to fulfil, and the never-ending stream of academic work that I had to do. At times, it felt that the world was caving in on me. I had what people now call imposter syndrome. I doubted that I would survive this grind. I feared that I would flunk out of the PhD program, unable to cope with all the different transitions I was struggling with.
The inspiration to not give up, to continue, to be tenacious, and to find the inner strength to power through those moments of self-doubt and overwhelming pressure came from seeing Barbara approach life with an incredibly sunny disposition while skillfully tackling a range of personal, family, and professional responsibilities.
It was my first time seeing a person with a disability outwork and outperform those of us without one. It was inspiring beyond my capacity to describe. It was transformative for me. The first time I saw her in her element, independently juggling multiple tasks and demands on her time, I told myself that I had found the reason never to contemplate giving up.
Why am I writing this? Two reasons. I recently watched with pride a video Barbara’s daughter, Anne, posted of her mother’s interview, which I referenced earlier. That interview introduced me to a side of Barbara I never knew — her story as a person and a lifelong advocate for the rights of the blind. My love and admiration for her grew even more.
The second reason is that, as I’ve grown older, I’ve become more attuned to the need to give people their flowers while they’re with us.
One of my most fulfilling road trips in America so far is the one we took to visit Barbara and Bob in their new, smaller retirement condo in Ohio several years ago.
It was important to me that my wife and kids meet this woman who, more than anyone else, made my life and transition in America much less challenging — a woman without whose informal adoption of a 25-year old man from Nigeria, the life of their spouse and dad would have probably taken a different trajectory in America.
Over the last decade or so, I’ve encountered similar stories of young, single African immigrants like myself finding familial and maternal support with American families. In fact, I decided that one day I would tell this story after I began seeing similar stories online.
Notably, I saw my friend, Ikhide Ikheloa, who, like me, came here as a young, single man, post stories and photos of his time visiting with his American mom and dad, the Pacl family, who incidentally live in my Nashville suburb of Hermitage.
Ikhide and his family regularly visited and vacationed with the Pacl family until the passing of the patriarch of the family a couple of years ago.
How many similar stories are out there untold, waiting to be told?
I think that this is an aspect of the American immigration story that’s hardly told and that gets lost in the sensation and hysteria of the current anti-immigrant and xenophobic extremism.
The human story of immigration is always more humane and ennobling than the political story of immigration.
*Moses Ochonu is a distinguished professor of history at Vanderbilt University, USA.
