False narratives appearing real. These four words have been echoing in my head for the last week. Four words tucked repeatedly into Anastacia-Renee‘s talk on Imposter Syndrome. They were words of warning about how our own negatively-constructed realities can convince us out of our own greatness, steal joy from hard-earned moments of high achievement, and […]
I’m constantly recreating relationships from my childhood. I think we all do this, for better or for worse, out of a need for security and predictability. For me, I keep trying to recreate the relationship with my older sister, in a myriad of different ways. One of the ways is in a role I call, […]
This is Part 2 of the Internalized Sexism series. If you feel like you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, go here for the first entry. ***The second miles-long kink to undo was patriarchal validation. So many miles. The take-home message here is that when men pay attention to you as a woman, […]
I’m done with resolutions. For someone like me, a recovering perfectionist, all it has done is added more pressure to try to achieve this more perfect state. I make hitting a resolution mean I am good enough. It becomes an exercise to prove worthiness. It’s not great. Instead, I’ve switched to picking a word as […]
Men only want one thing from you. I have heard this phrase or some variation of it for most of my life. The most incessant source, the wellspring that imprints these ideas into you at a formative age, is usually someone who genuinely loves you. Someone who wants to protect you. For me, it was […]
When you say the word “feminist”, some people imagine a bickering, cynical woman complaining about men. Others imagine a business woman in a power suit who gives absolutely zero fucks. Still others think about white women campaigning women’s rights with little regard for the BIPOC women who also fit the same category. But what if […]
“It may look like shifting sand. Some people see colors,” she said. I lay facedown on a table in the back room of a book store. I didn’t expect much as I looked at the back of my eyelids. She began to blow across my body again. Nothing for awhile. Then I saw it. It […]
I’ve felt invisible most of my life. Not seeing seeing myself represented anywhere– books, tv, movies, art, community, society– has cause me to internalize racism about myself as a Filipinx-American. I’ve started to dismantle it by reading back-to-back 4 local Filipinx-American authors who released books this year— Jen Soriano, Allison Masangkay, Ebo Barton, and Donna […]
A part of me doesn’t want to share this piece with you because it means that I actually have to say goodbye to Constance. There’s another part of me that knows her story is important. Black trans lives matter. We do that first by knowing and honoring the stories and lives of Black trans women […]
This birthday was bittersweet. It’s hard. The days are getting darker in more ways than one. One event I can’t get off my mind is the death of my mentor last week. She was younger than me. She was a Black Trans Woman. All capitals. She was a badass community organizer. She was at the […]
I’m back. But I’m not. It turns out that sine wave I was talking about might be burnout. It’s possible I have normalized it into a regular life rhythm. Weird. And eye-opening. I read a newsletter last week where the author’s motto was, “I post on Tuesdays. Not necessarily every Tuesday, but when I do […]
We can easily say, “Black Lives Matter”. But do our actions say it too? In a previous piece for the South Seattle Emerald entitled, “Sleep-Walking White Ally” I explored how the actions of many white allies did not match their words. In this piece, I turn the magnifying glass on myself as an AAPI/Non-Black Person […]
I think I run on an energy cycle. It looks something like this: If you’re a nerd, then you’ll notice this is a sine wave. If you’re not a nerd, this is a squiggly line on a black L. At the beginning of my energy cycle, I expend a lot of energy and make […]
Q-56: Friday, May 1st Quarantine in WA state is extended until May 31st with a 4-phase plan to reopen non-essential businesses. Well…. we’ll see how this goes! Q-57: Saturday, May 2nd I hope to have taxes done and filed next week so I can get unemployment taken care of. Ugh. Taxes though. Almost all of […]
This week, I wrote for the South Seattle Emerald about my frustration with not being able to participate in BLM protests. What is my role instead? In this piece, I try to find the answer while actively working to decenter myself as I search for it. Photo Credit: Max Bender
Don’t tell me what to fucking do. That’s pretty much the gist of my rebel streak. I don’t like being told what to do, not unless you’re someone with integrity I respect. Or unless you have a really good logical reason. It’s something brushed onto the back page of my DNA since the day I […]
Am I doing enough? When shit goes down, I tend to come back to this question. When the pandemic hit, when Trump got elected, when when when… too many too mention, unfortunately. Don’t even get me started. This past weekend was no exception. I wasn’t at the protest in Downtown Seattle this weekend. There are […]
This is a continuation of “30 Days of Pandemic Journal”. **** Q-27: Wednesday, April 1st I don’t want to do anything today. Abbey and Penny’s teacher have been sending loads of emails trying to engage us in some sort of structure. But I’m so over it. When do we get time to grieve before forcing […]
I don’t know why I didn’t feature it here but it’s never too late to include it! Last month, I published an article addressing how all the destructive self-preservation behaviors we are seeing run amuck in the pandemic aren’t surprising to someone who is marginalized. The only difference is that the pandemic magnifies it 10,000 […]
Social media exacerbates my comparison inferiority complex. What do we do when our own suffering during a global traumatic event feels like nothing in comparison to others? Stuff it down? Ignore it? Dismiss it? Does it even matter? I answer that question for you and more over at The South Seattle Emerald in my latest […]
