DS Proposal

After graduating from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, this semester, I plan to travel to Bogota, Colombia. While there, I will also celebrate my abuelita's, also known as my grandmother, 95th birthday. While buying my airplane ticket, I began to think about the last time I spoke to my abuelita and how sad it made me realize that the last time I had spoken to her was in 2014. Yet, what I find more unfortunate is thinking of how my mother has also limited her communications with her, mainly because of my abuelita's age. Short conversations on the phone cannot replace the much time spent with her if my mother still resided in Colombia.

For this reason, I have decided to base my digital storytelling on how immigrant families react to having a long-distance relationship with loved ones. Since my abuelita's birthday is coming up, my digital story will serve two purposes besides completing the assignment. One purpose of the report will be dedicated to my mother and her relationship with her mom. The second purpose will be as a montage of the family that has missed the opportunity to be part of each other's life, which I can gift to my abuelita for her birthday. Demonstrating how important she is despite the lack of communication, we may give.

Long-distance relationships (LDR) are defined by geographical separation from one another. According to the National Library of Medicine, aging immigrant families are studied on the importance of intergenerational relations proving an immigrant family's firm adherence to heritage culture and high prevalence of coresidence, close-knot relations, and frequent support exchanges. (Guo, Man et al, 2020) Mainly when referencing close-knit relationships it was referenced by the study performed by Guo, Stensland, Li, Beck, and Dong that "longitudinal studies on older adults have reported that over time, departure from cohesive family relations such as infrequent contact, emotionally distant relations, and reduced support elevated depressive symptoms" (Guo, Man, et al., 2020) 

The structure of my digital story will first reference the background of my mother and her journey to the United States from Colombia. My mother will be the primary account because my grandmother is the only grandparent alive. Then the topic would transition to speaking of the remainder of the family and how she feels being separated from them. I would then get the opinions of other family members and see how the separation has impacted them as well. I would also like to get a segment where they would compare the emotions they had when being separated first happened compared to now, even after establishing their own lives. 

The digital story I hope to achieve would help enlighten the trauma that past generations faced when faced with LDR. 
 

Work Cited

Guo, Man et al. “Transition in Older Parent-Adult Child Relations in U.S. Chinese Immigrant Families.” The Gerontologist vol. 60,2 (2020): 302-312. doi:10.1093/geront/gnz146