The Journey of Raising a Student-Athlete in the U.S.

I came to the United States from Beijing with my daughter in 2018, and I've now been in Southern California for about eight years. I won't pretend the early years were anything other than the hardest stretch of my adult life. I'm slowly adapting, but "slowly" is the honest word for it — this wasn't a transition that happened on any kind of clean or comfortable timeline.

An Unplanned Decision

The decision to relocate my daughter and our family to the U.S. wasn't the product of some carefully mapped-out plan. It happened gradually, almost unplanned, carried along partly by optimism about my daughter's already-strong English skills. I thought that head start would smooth things over more than it did. Life here turned out to be considerably more challenging than I'd let myself expect — unpacking a household from scratch, managing childcare almost entirely alone, carrying the daily responsibilities of a family while my husband was often away. There's a version of this decision I made in my head before we left, and then there's the version I lived once we arrived. They weren't the same.

From Dance Studios to Golf Courses

I came from a background in dance, which makes it a little ironic that so much of my daily life now revolves around my daughter's budding golf career instead. Developing a young golfer is its own arduous pathway — the time, logistics, the emotional labor of showing up for a sport I didn't grow up inside of myself. I don't hold professional expectations over her; what I want her to take from all of it is perseverance, which I believe is the single greatest asset this process can give her, regardless of where her golf career eventually leads.

Our visions for her future don't always align perfectly — I've wanted her involved in community service and animal welfare work. Interests of mine that she doesn't always share with the same enthusiasm. I've had to learn to respect her interests and her autonomy even when they pull in a different direction than my own hopes for her. That's been one of the harder adjustments of parenting her here — realizing that guiding her well doesn't mean directing her completely.

Meals, Repeated

Before this move, I enjoyed cooking and the rhythm of home life back in China. Here, that same task has become something closer to exhausting — the same meals, repeated night after night, without the extended family or household help that used to lighten that load. It's a small thing to complain about next to everything else this transition has demanded, but it's also exactly the kind of small thing that wears you down cumulatively, meal after meal, week after week.

A Life That Looks Like Single Parenting

My husband remains in China for work, which means my daily reality here looks a great deal like single parenting, even though I'm still married and still deeply connected to him. I try to balance the roles that fall to me — guardian, driver, emotional anchor — often without fully voicing to him just how hard a given week has been. I don't always tell him the full weight of it, which I sometimes think ranting would add additional burden on our mood without helping much in reality.

The logistical strain around her extracurricular activities — golf especially — takes real physical and emotional effort, and I often manage that without much hands-on support from him, simply because of the distance. That gap in shared daily experience creates its own kind of friction in our marriage: it's hard for him to fully understand or participate in a reality he isn't living day by day.

What I Hold Onto

Despite the exhaustion, I feel real gratitude toward my husband for the hard work he's doing in China that makes this entire life possible for our daughter and me. I recognize the sacrifice runs in both directions, even if the day-to-day burden doesn't split evenly between us. I trust the arrangement we've built, even when it strains under the weight of distance and misunderstanding.

I think often about why we made this choice in the first place — a more complete upbringing for my daughter, a genuinely open educational environment, opportunities I don't think she would have had the same access to if we'd stayed in Beijing. That reasoning hasn't changed, even on the days when the reality of living it out feels much harder than the plan ever suggested it would be.

If I could tell another mother considering this path anything, I'd tell her honestly: the adjustment takes longer than you expect, no matter how prepared you think you are going in. But there's a version of yourself waiting on the other side of that adjustment — steadier, more resilient, more capable than you knew — and she's worth the years it takes to get there.