M Byen: What We Don't Send Across the Water
October 19, 2026 | Written By: Dr. Erlange Elisme, DSW
The phone rings on a Sunday, and you know the first question before you answer it. Kijan ou ye? How are you? You are standing in your kitchen, maybe stirring something on the stove, maybe holding a cup of coffee that went cold while you sorted the mail. And you say it the way you have said it a thousand times. M byen. I'm fine.
The voice on the other end is your mother, or your aunt, or an older cousin who still lives in the house you grew up in. They are far away, across water you have not crossed in years. They asked a small question. You gave a small answer. Both of you move on to the news, who got married, who is sick, who is sending money for the church roof. The call ends warm. And the thing you were actually carrying that morning stays right where it was, on the counter, unspoken.
Why We Stay Quiet
That m byen is not a lie. It is closer to a kind of care. When you say you are fine, you are often doing math in your head that nobody taught you. You are weighing what it would cost to tell the truth across that distance. If you say the rent went up again, your mother will worry through the night, and she can do nothing from there but worry. If you say the job is heavy, she will carry it in her chest for a week. So you hold it. You carry the weight yourself so it does not land on the person who already carried you here.
There is a long memory inside that choice. Many of us come from people who learned to keep moving without stopping to name what hurt, because stopping was not an option. Silence was not avoidance. Silence was how you protected the people you loved and kept the family standing. Sometimes silence protected us. Sometimes it cost us. Often it did both. When you say m byen on a Sunday morning, you are in that same line, doing the same old work. Your reactions make sense in the context you come from.
The One They Believe Made It
You can hear it in the way the call is shaped. Your mother asks about you for thirty seconds, then moves to what she really called about, and you let her, because being needed is easier than being asked about. You send the money. You promise the barrel will go out before the holidays. You become the strong one on the line, the one the family believes made it, and the strong one does not get to be tired out loud.
There can be another calculation too. How do you tell someone that life here is hard when they believe you reached the place everyone was trying to reach? You can be grateful to be here and still carry financial strain, responsibility for family in two places, and the quiet pressure to prove that leaving was worth it. Gratitude and uncertainty can live in the same body.
There can be another layer to m byen, especially now. Some people are carrying immigration uncertainty on top of everything else. Temporary Protected Status, changing policies, work authorization, family separation, and the fear of what may change next can sit quietly in the background of an ordinary day. Even people who are legally present may not feel fully secure when the rules around them keep shifting. So when someone back home asks, Kijan ou ye?, the honest answer may hold more than homesickness or money. It may also hold the strain of building a life in a place that does not always feel certain.
What the Body Keeps
You can decide not to speak about what you are carrying and still feel its weight. It shows up in the shoulders that will not come down, in the sleep that breaks at three in the morning, in the short patience you save for the people who are safest to be short with. The body is not betraying you. It is telling a truth you have been too careful to say out loud.
This is not weakness, and it is not a flaw in your character. It is what happens to anyone who holds a great deal and lets very little out. You might notice it in small ways. You snap at your child over a spilled cup and feel surprised by the size of your own reaction. You sit down to rest and your mind keeps making lists. You laugh at the dinner table and feel, underneath it, a tiredness you cannot quite explain. Even when you finally sit down, some part of you is still working.
Sponsored Ad
One True Sentence
None of this means you owe your mother the full report every Sunday. You get to choose what crosses the water and what does not. Protecting the people far from you is real love, and you do not have to set it down. The invitation is smaller than that. It is to find one person, somewhere, to whom you can say the truer sentence.
Maybe it is not your mother. Maybe it is a sister who lives in the same city, a friend from church, a cousin who knows the particular weight of being the one everyone assumes is doing well. You do not have to explain everything. You can say one honest line. This week has been hard. I am tired in a way I cannot put down. That one sentence, said to someone who can hold it, does something the body recognizes. We were never meant to carry alone, and our people have always known this. A kombit is not only for the field. The load gets lighter when more than one set of hands is under it.
You can see it happen. A woman sits across from a friend after church, the coffee between them going cold the way it does, and she says the smaller truth first. I have not been sleeping. The friend does not try to fix it. She just nods and says, me neither, not this month. Something in the first woman's shoulders drops half an inch. Nothing in her life has changed. The rent is still due. The water between her and home is still wide. But she is no longer the only one who knows what she carries, and that alone changes what the weight does to her body.
So the next time the phone rings on a Sunday, you can still say m byen if that is what love calls for in the moment. There is nothing wrong with you for shielding the ones you love. But somewhere in your week, let one true sentence out. Say it to someone safe. Let the weight be shared the way our people have always shared it.
Men anpil, chay pa lou. Many hands make the load lighter. It was never meant to rest on you alone.
About the Author
Dr. Erlange Elisme is a trauma-informed care leadership and practice specialist with over 30 years of experience as a school social worker. As Founder and CEO of Elisme Consulting Services LLC, she provides training and consulting to organizations committed to healing-centered practices. Dr. Elisme holds certification in Global Mental Health: Trauma and Recovery from Harvard Medical School, and has completed advanced continuing education in Trauma-Informed Care, Immigrant Mental Health, and Motivational Interviewing. She is a published author, host of the "Resilient Voices" podcast (available in English and Haitian Creole), and a 2025 Gwinnett Chamber Business Excellence Awards finalist. Fluent in English, French, and Haitian Creole, Dr. Elisme brings both clinical expertise and cultural wisdom to her work of restoring resilience in individuals and communities.
Dr.Erlange Elisme, DSW
CEO / Owner & Author
Website:https://elismeconsultingservices.com
Phone number:678-595-6446
Comments