Reflecting & Vision Casting: 2024 –> 2025

Posted on December 31, 2024 by betinahsieh

What a year it has been.

I came into 2024, officially starting my position at the University of Washington, while going back and forth between my family in Southern California and my new position in Seattle.

The first six months of 2024 was full of back and forth and felt…unmooring. I not only was traveling back and forth between homes, but for almost all of that six months, had no car of my own (thanks to an accident at the end of 2023 and a LONG housing transition which made a new purchase challenging). This time felt full of lessons in depending on community, on discovering what was most true about myself, and on building without assurance.

Being unmoored is not a feeling that I like nor is it one that I’m accustomed to. I’ve found the success I have in my life through controlling as much as possible and proving my worth by doing as much as I can. This control and productivity has brought with it certainty and dependability, but at the cost of keeping my world (relatively) small and keeping me constantly exhausted.

I have spent this year learning, unlearning, rebuilding, listening, and trying new things.

I did hard things. I did beautiful things. I was present to so much happening around me.

I saw my son graduate from high school, move to the dorms, and start college. My daughter finished third grade, started a new school, made new friends and joined her new school’s drama program and student council. I got to be on the podium one last time at Angel Stadium for a CSULB commencement, hood beautiful masters students, and participate in my final EdD chairing. I sold a townhouse and bought another one. I said goodbye to beloved family, friends, and community I had spent over a decade building.

I moved out of California, a place that has been my permanent home for nearly my whole life. I taught a doctoral seminar I invented for my current and past self (and for a group of extraordinary students). I designed a new program. I committed to only traveling once a month without my family (which has meant that I have to say no to things I’d love to do). I co-edited a beautiful forthcoming book. I met (in the flesh) and got to hug friends that I have built deep relationships with online. I went to beautiful new and beloved places. I spent time in nature. Family and friends came to visit our new home and I came back to my old home to see others. I began (and continue) to build community. I went from driving everywhere to hardly driving. I ate so many delicious and beautiful meals.

What a year it’s been.

As I move forward towards 2025, I am taking on passion, authenticity, and prioritizing my family. I am filled with gratitude and wanting to explore how setting better boundaries can move me closer to my most authentic self, letting me focus both on passion and family.

What a year I know it will be.

A Moment of Calm, a Time of Grace, a Season of Love, Anticipation of Joy: Final Reflection – Fall Quarter 2024

Posted on December 13, 2024 by betinahsieh

As is tradition on this academic journey, it is the end of a quarter and time for reflection.

A Moment of Calm

Photo of the Communications building at the University of Washington from Miller Hall

View from my office as I write this part of this post

This has been an extremely busy quarter. After a gradual transition into my position at the University of Washington where I did not teach for the winter or spring quarters last year, this fall quarter has felt hectic. I am still learning how to take on less, how to align with my core, embodied knowledge that cultivating growth requires time and energy, and how to honor the realities of my own limitations. These are hard lessons to unlearn in an environment where there are always opportunities to do more and so many people whom I love and to whom am deeply committed.

All of this is true for me. All of it feels necessary. All of it does not, however, feel comfortable.

This morning, I am starting this post from my office, in a suite and building where (most) people haven’t arrived yet.

It is quiet.

I am taking in the silence.

I am reminding myself that although there are so many things to do, the things to be done, in this moment, are: to breathe, to reflect, to write, to be with all that this quarter has held.

Even though I will pause in 15 minutes for my first meeting, and return to this post later today or perhaps tomorrow, I can capture, treasure, hold, be in this moment.

Presence is a choice.

Moments of calm exist in times of busyness.

They are precious.

I am learning.

A Time of Grace

Photo of handwritten community agreements

This quarter, I taught a course that I created, that I would have wished for in my graduate school preparation. During this course, we used agreements from the Equity Center to ground our work. While all of these agreements were important and powerful, the one that became my mantra was, “Grace with ourselves. Grace with others.”

When we create new things, it requires grace.

When we transition in any form, it requires grace.

When we hold space for others, it requires grace.

I am someone for whom grace with others feels like second nature, but grace with myself can feel impossible.

Yet, this quarter has been a time where I have pushed myself to my limits. I have found myself apologizing multiple times for not being able to be the person I want to be, do (all) the things I want to do, or think deeply in ways that honor the importance of the ideas with which I engage.

I am constantly learning and unlearning.

It is a time that requires grace.

“I think often about the bounds and limits of my own ability to love, and how to constantly push to make space for more and more of humanity.” I wrote these words to a dear-student colleague who pushed me to grow this quarter in my course with her consistent attention to centering love and humanity. This is innately connected with the time of grace. If I am limited in my ability to love myself and to make space for my own humanity, I cannot expand the bounds of love for others.

A Season of Love

As I mentioned above, this quarter, I taught one of my “dream courses,” putting into praxis a course I wished to see in the world.

I did not know when I was in graduate school that being a teacher educator would become a core part of my professional identity (I didn’t even really know this when I started this blog 12 years ago!), but as it has become such, I have grown a deep love and respect for the nuanced complexities of teacher education. This love and respect undergirds my struggles with the ways that many brilliant, beautiful educators are tossed into the “deep end” of (preservice and/or inservice) teacher education without preparation to be teacher educators, often with the assumption that good teaching will equate with being a strong teacher educator.

This quarter, I had the privilege of co-constructing understandings of what it means to be teacher educators and to engage teachers in learning for justice, through pedagogies that honor our shared humanity, our community knowledge, and our unique lived experiences. Each class, particularly our in-person gatherings, felt like community spaces, where we could come, learn, and connect theory to practice, in a place that allowed for our full selves (and where there were cookies).

For our last class, I was able to learn from pairs/ small groups of these wonderful educators, as they taught and learned from one another. We closed class like I close many of our classes, sharing what we would take with us from this class and what we would leave behind, and taking with us a part of a web of yarn that symbolized our interconnectedness even as we move forward in the world.

This week, I read through students’ final portfolios. A theme I saw was the importance of love as a core practice in teaching and teacher education. Other themes like compassion, humanization, and relationality also came through. These stood alongside the importance of core theoretical frameworks, cohesion in professional development, and professional learning communities to promote growth.

I am reminded, as I end the quarter, that I belong, that I am seen, and that I have played an important role in the professional/ academic lives of this wonderful group of scholar-educators. This is love — to belong, to be seen, to contribute.

Anticipation of Joy

It has been an amazing quarter.

I have felt deeply connected to this place and to the people I am blessed to call my beloved community.

So much has been done.

And there is so much more to do.

I am holding tenderly the many tensions that have come up this quarter, unraveling them where there is give, unlearning where there is space, and simply holding where there is too much wound up to unravel in this moment.

I am letting go of things always being done in the exact way and timing that I have scripted out in my head. In doing so, I can make space for co-creation, evolution, and presence.

I am anticipating the end of this year and start of the next with much gratitude and joy.

This life is a tremendous gift and I am excited for what is to come.

Handle with Care

Posted on December 1, 2024 by betinahsieh

I want to start this post by saying, I am fine, doing relatively well considering the season, and doing remarkably well considering the time on the clock of the world.

And also, I am present this morning to the continued tenacity of grief and fragility of “wellness.”

Grief, for me, is an ever-present longing for what might have been and what will never be.

It shapes the way I walk and work in the world. It shapes my reactions to the simplest things and to other, more complex things. It makes me sensitive to things that in seasons when grief is less present would not affect me at all. It makes it harder to be in the world as my best self. It makes it harder to get things done that I want to do. It makes me want to both hide and be seen, embraced, and loved. It makes me feel a deep need to control what I can (my schedule and time, which I want to be largely unencumbered because more scheduled things and things to do make me more anxious) and want to control things I can’t (including others’ actions and reactions).

Fall and winter are hard seasons for me, even when I am doing relatively well.

I have come to accept this and have tried to build in more space and grace for myself and others throughout these seasons.

I remind myself that my grief is stronger in the dark seasons, for many reasons, and that spring will come again, bringing light and growth.

I breathe in deeply and take in the love and acceptance of friends and family who have weathered many seasons by my side and who remain steadfast even when I cannot.

I know these things. They keep me grounded in times, in seasons, like these.

And also, this morning, I woke up tired, with too many things to do, and the weight of grief like a heavy stone in my heart. I woke up feeling disappointed in myself and feeling like I continually disappoint others. I woke up longing for a life that could have been and that will never be.

It is okay. There is nothing for anyone on the outside to do. I am so grateful for the life I am privileged to live. I know that I will be fine and that being with these feelings and writing about them without trying to wish they were not here is the very best thing I can do.

And also, I would remind all of us, particularly those of us less acquainted with grief that we, the grievers, are all around you in this season. We are your friends and family members. We are your colleagues and neighbors. We are the strangers you pass each day on the street. It costs nothing to give grace, show kindness and generosity, and hold space for those who are suffering. As we approach the end of the year and enter the new one, may we remember to handle one another with deep care and the love of being fully human in this season.

A Season of Gratitude

Posted on November 28, 2024 by betinahsieh

Last week, was my mother’s 86th birthday. The other day, I realized that February will mark the 30th anniversary of her passing, and almost 2/3 of my lifetime of Thanksgivings without her.

Thanksgiving has been a complicated holiday for the last 30 years because it was my mother’s favorite holiday, a time in my mind that was always inextricably linked with being grateful for her life, her journey, and all that she had given to me. It’s been complicated for numerous other family issues over the past few years as well, issues that aren’t really mine to share in a public forum, but ones that make today a day where I am ever present to an abundance of grief and loss of people I love. Some of these losses have come through death, others from chosen distance, but all of it, hard to hold because I (still) love with my whole heart and fear being misunderstood and cast aside in those misunderstandings.

This morning, however, as I prepare to welcome 15 people and 6 dogs into my home in a few hours, I am taking a moment (prior to what I know will be a time full of love and likely of chaos) to breathe in deep gratitude.

I woke up this morning thinking about how grievers have a special relationship with gratitude.

To grieve is to allow oneself to love deeply and to know loss. When we know loss of those we truly love, there are many complicated and hard moments that come in the after times. We are forever changed. There is no return to the before times.

And yet, we can come out, sometimes, also more present to all that has been cultivated in the rich soil watered by our tears, all that we have been able to hold and persevere through, and all that we are blessed to hold dear in the present. Indeed, we can recognize the power of the present moment and cherish it because we know its preciousness and ephemeral nature, aware of the fact that everything can change in a moment. We hold the both/and of grief and gratitude today.

In that spirit, some reflections of what I am present to being grateful for today:

I am grateful for community.

Community is all around me.

I have some of the most extraordinary people in my community. I have an incredible immediate family who have seen me in/through some of my worst moments, and choose to love me even more. I have wonderful friends near and far (locally, nationally, globally) who I am privileged to get to walk alongside, whether we are in close physical proximity or not. I have people that have forgiven me for my imperfections and who continue to make precious space for me in their lives. People see me and I feel seen. I do not take that for granted in the least.

I am grateful to be in this place.

I am blessed to celebrate this day this year, and this time of my life, in Seattle, on Coast Salish lands. These are beautiful lands surrounded by sacred waters that are home to so much life and so much beauty. These lands and these waters remind me of the ways that we, like nature, evolve, grow, change, move in cycles, belong to one another.

I am also grateful to be in this place in my life, to be doing work alongside people who are wonderful thought partners, pushing me to learn and grow. I am grateful to create community in this place, even as I walk gently into new experiences.

I am grateful for writing.

Writing is a form of connection that allows me to be my fullest self. There is a certain spark of joy that comes in finding just the right word to express the emotions I feel. (It reminds me of solving a complicated math problem when I was little 🙂) I choose words carefully and think of all writing (perhaps to a fault) as crafted. I have written since I was a child, and as an adult, it is through writing that I’ve found my way back to myself. Writing was there for me in my darkest days when I wasn’t sure I deserved to be in community. It has provided a space of solace and connection and has allowed me to (dis/un)cover myself in ways that I continue to work through in the every day.

I am grateful for you.

If you’ve gotten this far in the post, thank you. Thank you for holding space for me, for connection through this writing, and for the ways you show up for your community. If you haven’t had gratitude expressed for who you are in the world, let me say it here. Thank you for being you. Thanks for showing up. You belong here.

Love to each of you today, in all of today’s potential complexities.

Leaning into Rest, Breath, and Community

Posted on November 24, 2024 by betinahsieh

This was the sunrise this morning from my room.

I am not going to lie (because why would I lie on my own blog): yesterday was a lot.

Birthdays, death anniversaries, significant days in my own life or those of my children, they are often a lot.

Holding space for myself, for others, and getting through things as best I can, it is a lot.

Then the dawn comes, hopefully after a decent night’s rest.

Sometimes it remains hard, even with the beauty of calm skies. Like the weather, life can still be cold (or perhaps it can be especially cold) even when it is clear.

I was reminded of many things during this conference, during the last 24-36 hours, in conversation with many beloved people, holding big feelings (and sometimes letting them go), in sessions that were exactly the right place for me to be. Here they are in no general order:

Sometimes I just need to listen.
Sometimes I should not listen to my own first response and need to give things a minute and get feedback from others.
I have an incredible community who loves me deeply.
My incredible community gets when showing up for myself means I can’t show up for them (in the moment).
Bearing witness is an active choice and comes with responsibility.
Power and position come with responsibility.
Responsibility is complicated.
Humanity is complicated.
Naps are really restorative.
It is okay not to do something every minute of the day, even if part of you (me) wants to.
Sometimes (not always the same sometimes as #2 above), I need to trust myself and stand in my truth (but also maybe sometimes after 24 hours have gone by)
People are truly, for the most part, trying the best they can with the knowledge and experiences they have.

These aren’t particularly wise or new insights, but they were prescient reminders. I am learning to lean into rest, trying to remember to breathe, and building trust in community. I am so grateful, even and especially when I am in my most complicated, human moments, that there we journey together, and that I am deeply loved.

Making Space for the Fullness of Humanity

Posted on November 23, 2024 by betinahsieh

Today is the third day of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Annual Convention (for me, at least). It is my busiest day, with activities related to the Asian/Asian American Caucus (#AsianAmAF) and a presentation with my dear friend, Chanea.

Today is also the day that, 86 years ago, my mother was born in Taiwan.

In February, it will be 30 years since my mother left this earth in her physical form, although her presence has perhaps grown stronger in her absence as I strive to honor her and carry the wisdom she imparted to me, in my youth, with me as I walk in the world as a mother myself, as an educator, and perhaps simply as a human.

It is fitting that I am holding my mother in my heart while attending and presenting at a conference with a theme of, “Heart, Hope and Humanity” as that is what her life brings me.

What I struggle with more is how to hold space for my own humanity in this day that holds much in the present and simultaneously holds much history. So much of so many things.

I don’t know. But perhaps that is because it’s not something for me to know, or even to do. It is. I am. And humanity is…figuring things out as we go along, trying our best to be present along the way.

Sitting with Discomfort

Posted on November 8, 2024 by betinahsieh

This perhaps will not be a super clear post. I am not gathered and so my thoughts are not either, but I am giving myself permission to be just as I am.

[I also want to preface this post with space for however anyone else may be in their humanity in this moment. This isn’t a post of judgment or of advice, this post (like this blog) is a reflection of the spaces that I’m currently exploring, in my full humanity, because sometimes, through writing, I can find those more easily than any other way.]

I have been thinking a lot this week about what it means to sit with discomfort, what it means to come alongside others, when to speak and when to be silent, and what it means to honor one’s truth.

In sitting with the election results this week (which were, to me, unsurprising given the polarized nature of our country), I have been thinking about what it means to live in community, what it means that I was unsurprised by the results, and how, even though I find myself (perhaps slightly) more vulnerable than I may have thought I was a few days ago, I am, in reality, and in the day to day, dealing with the same micro and macro-aggressions that I was dealing with last week, last month, last year. Perhaps this week, the emboldening of some have shifted the micro to the macro, but when one is subject to regular aggressions, honestly, while the macro can be more jarring, at least there’s some strange understanding or acknowledgment that you are being aggressed. People can’t actually ignore (or at least they have a harder time ignoring) when someone spits on you, but it is easy (easier?) to justify away when someone dismisses your competence. I am “too sensitive” (perhaps even a snowflake) when I am incensed that someone questions my expertise (within my own area of study) or gives lip service to something I value so deeply. In the last year, people who I thought truly knew and loved me were willing to completely write me off, despite the fact that I was holding them so close to my heart, because I didn’t move in the ways they thought I should, didn’t say the right things, wasn’t who they thought I was. Funnily enough, whether these (micro/macro)aggressions and loss are acknowledged, they are embodied in similar ways, perhaps for different durations, but perhaps, actually, not so different.

In thinking about community, I am thinking also about my responsibility. For a long time, I have been a bridge builder, a connector, someone who is able to make space for more people’s full humanity than most. Because I have experienced a lot and chosen to respond with deep compassion, this is what I do, particularly when others around me are struggling, and even when space has not been made for my humanity. It is my superpower, perhaps (as my friend Carla’s video reminded the children this week following the election), that I’ve (more often than not) chosen to use the power I have for good, to create spaces for others to thrive. It is my responsibility to continue to build as long as I can build, to continue to use my powers for good as long as I have any power, to continue to pour into teachers, to pour into those who are suffering, to listen, to hold space, to breathe, to give, to embrace the moments of precious life I am given. It is my responsibility to act, in ways that are grounded in deep love.

These things aren’t always easy to hold together. It has been much work in these moments to hold on to the heart of the work, the love of community, when even some of those around me fail to see me, fail to see the importance of community, fail to see the beauty and power that could be possible together, if we truly honored one another.

It is hard, it is sometimes uncomfortable, but through the most challenging moments, I have been blessed with reminders of the joy of family and community. If we refuse to be broken, refuse to let go of those truths, lean into faith with works, there will be joy in the morning, at the end of a sometimes seemingly endless dark. But we can’t let go of one another.

Centering Joy: Light in the Great Dark

Posted on October 27, 2024 by betinahsieh

Having recently moved to Seattle from Southern California, I have been warned about “the great dark.” The great dark, a period between mid-fall (October) and spring (March), is a time when nights are longer, cloud cover is frequent, and seasonal affect disorder peaks.

Friends have offered advice and happy lights, knowing that my family and I may have some adjustment in this transition. They have reminded me to take advantage of the light when we have it, to enjoy the beautiful crisp, clean air and vibrant colors of the fall leaves changing, and to be prepared for the darkness and cold as best I can, reaching out when I’m not sure how to navigate new (to me) situations.

I’ve been thinking a lot about “the great dark” in this season, and how, often, in these times, it feels like a period of much darkness. Amidst ongoing global genocide and warfare, daily exposure to dehumanization, and movements towards more authoritarianism which feel so much like darkness closing in on so many of us, that it can be hard to hold on to hope, to one another’s humanity, and to a belief that light will come again. Feelings of despair can prompt inaction and deep isolation, causing us to be reactive within paradigms of scarcity where we must protect what is ours, instead of operating from generosity where we can make room for shared abundance.

Recently, I had the opportunity to attend a screening of a documentary called Journey Abroad: An Undocu Story made by Erick Arredondo, a Cultural Leadership Fellow who participated in a travel abroad experience as part of the Scholar Fund Cultural Leadership Fellowship. It was a beautiful film which centered the joy, resilience, beauty, and dreams fulfilled for the cultural leadership fellows who took part in a cultural exchange trip to Japan. While acknowledging the real challenges of leaving the country with DACA status, the overwhelming tone of the film was inspiring and filled with joy, connection, and community. The premiere event was also filled with joy, community, and a spirit of incredible generosity and welcome.

Yesterday, I attended the Northwest Teaching for Social Justice conference where climate justice activist and brilliant Marshallese poet, Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner delivered the opening keynote. Through community work with youth, she reminded us that we did not have a right to give up hope, when the people of the Pacific Islands, including youth whose generation will already be irreparably impacted by climate change are continuing to fight to save their islands, their ways of life, and their cultures, amidst devastation that they did not cause. They continue to create beauty, embrace moments of joy, and fight for a better future despite the odds. It was a fitting keynote for a space created in, by, and for community, a beautiful space centered around justice and made for and by educators committed to providing a professional homespace for colleagues working towards justice.

These events reminded me that there is work to be done in the midst of the great dark. We have work to do to come alongside Pasifika youth in their advocacy, alongside undocumented community members to gain freedom from fear of deportation, work to do in our own communities to move towards collective liberation, solidarity, and generous humanizing practices. Whether it is freedom from climate change, from targeted state (and state-sanctioned) violence, or from economic exploitation, these events have reminded me of Fannie Lou Hamer’s words that, “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”

The great dark reminds me to cherish the light, to center incredible moments of joy, to pause in the must do to give myself permission to embrace rest, that embracing my humanity brings me closer to the humanity of others, and restores me to continue the work to which I am deeply committed.

Onward towards the light, in community, centering beautiful moments of joy.

On Children, Endings, and New Beginnings

Posted on August 17, 2024 by betinahsieh

Today, my son moved into the dorms.

He is beginning Early Autumn Quarter on Monday (classes, technically on Tuesday), but moved into his dorm room today, met one of his roommates, and has officially begun a new phase of his life, as I begin a new phase of mine as his mother.

It has been a deeply emotional day.

My son was born halfway through my teaching career, while I was working my way slowly through graduate school. I did not expect to have a biological child at that point in my life, and quite honestly, I probably wasn’t fully ready for one. Just a few months after his birth, the adoption of his older twin sisters (15 when they moved in with my husband and I, shortly after our marriage, just a few months before I found out I was pregnant) would be finalized, capping an 18 month span of time when I went from engaged to married with three children.

I have likely said before on this blog, and I certainly have said to many people in real life, that my son saved my life in many ways.

In the 2 years between completing my dissertation and moving for my first tenure track job (yes, I was on the job market 3 consecutive years before taking a tenure track position), I went through a period of intense struggle and uncertainty. One of older daughters had a very serious health crisis, and because I didn’t know how to “put my own oxygen mask on first,” I also went through a period of extended illness, including a long hospitalization and extensive outpatient treatment. While I was sick and still trying to both financially and emotionally support my family, I was also looking for a new job in academia. People that I thought were friends saw how exhausted and emotionally drained I was, but didn’t know how to help, or thought they were helping, but inadvertently made me feel completely worthless and incapable. It was an extremely dark time.

Through all of this, including periods where I thought the world would be much better without me, I held on, in large part, because of my son. I held on because I knew what it was like to not have my mother there at critical points in my life. I didn’t want him ever to wonder if he could have done something differently that might have led to a different outcome.

It was my battle to fight, but I couldn’t have done it without him there.

My son has been with me on every step of my academic journey.

After getting a tenure track job, for a few months, he and I moved to a different part of the state while my partner stayed in his old job so that we could maintain medical coverage. As I continued to heal and work through the incredible uncertainty of being a junior faculty member, my son was my constant reminder of why I did the work I do, even as I wondered whether this work, that often took me away from him, was worth what it cost in time and energy.

As my son grew older, many of his K-12 experiences were not ideal. I know that having an educator mother didn’t always make them easier. However, I am grateful that we have always had a relationship where he could tell me about what was happening at school and we could talk through if and how I could support him in advocating for himself, or when he wanted or needed me to step in on his behalf (which was rare). I appreciate the ways that, even in the hardest moments throughout his K-12 schooling, he always demonstrated reflectiveness beyond his years and was able to grow from his missteps and learn from his mistakes. He learned a lot about letting go and prioritizing what mattered most to him, even when he was frustrated at situations he wasn’t able to change. I learned a lot from him too.

I have progressed through the ranks of academia from assistant to associate professor, associate to full professor, and then a shift in institutions to where I am now, an endowed professor at a research institution, as he has progressed also, from infant to toddler to child to adolescent to young adult.

We are both at new stages, in the same new place to us, with hope for a brighter future.

I am fortunate that my son is not far from me (in proximity) and never far from me, in my heart.

Today does, however, in real and symbolic ways, mark a notable transition for me, as his mother, one I’ve long been preparing for, but one that I still wasn’t ready for.

After posting on Facebook about my big feelings, my cousin, who not so long ago sent her eldest child off to college, left me this poem by Kahlil Gibran (“On Children”)

Your children are not your children.
     They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
     They come through you but not from you,
     And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

     You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
     For they have their own thoughts.
     You may house their bodies but not their souls,
     For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
     You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
     For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
     You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
     The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
     Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
     For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

So much of this poem deeply resonated with me, but perhaps most in these parts:

My son has never really been my child. He has always been a child of life’s longing for itself in so many ways.

I have always strived to be like him, even (or perhaps especially) in the ways he is not like me.

I have had to be flexible so that my child might fly, in his own direction, and I hope now to be a source of stability, of home.

It’s a big day, another transition, an end to one phase of our relationship as it shifts to the beginning of a new phase. This is a phase that I don’t have a full understanding of, as my mother was gone when I started college (and my older girls didn’t go through dorm housing and 4-year universities), so we will, as we have always done, figure it out as we go.

But as we have always been, we are in this life together, and for that I am exceedingly grateful.

Season Change

Posted on August 14, 2024 by betinahsieh

It has been a season of many transitions.

In the last few days, Seattle has transitioned from clear, sunny skies and 80+ degree temperatures to partly cloudy with rain on the horizon, a lovely, gentle reminder of where I’ve moved to and what’s to come as days continue to get shorter and we move towards autumn, my first autumn fully present to this new environment.

We are nearly two-thirds through a year of transitions for me: new position, new institution, new environment, new home, new opportunities. It has been a year filled with blessings and love, filled with growth and renewal, and also filled with uncertainty and newness.

In the midst of this, I have been navigating a lifelong struggle with boundaries, particularly boundaries in relation to caretaking and relationality itself.

This weekend, we did an activity as part of the family orientation guide for my son, who begins his college transition this week. It was a values card sort activity that had us individually categorize a variety of values into four categories: extremely important to me, important to me, a little important to me, and not very important to me. While the goal of the activity was to talk about shared and (possibly) divergent values, one unexpected takeaway for me was the sheer number of values that I hold as extremely important and important to me. Among them, I classified belonging, love, and care for others as extremely important, which will likely come as no surprise to people who know me.

Care is, and has always been, a guiding value in my walk and my work. I’ve seen (and begun to acknowledge) how that care has often not been extended to myself, and how it can be overextended to others. Part of this is systemic. There is an expectation for mothers, women, and particularly women of color, to do forms of labor classified as “care work.” This work, systematically undervalued, is pivotal to keep institutions (including families, schools, and universities) functioning, and it is, as I’ve noted, expected by society and those around us.

Part of this, however, is individual. I like the communities I’m a part of to function through mutual care. I am a caring person. I want the people in my life to be joyful and successful. If I can help and support them, I want to do that, even if it comes at some cost to me, and without an expectation of return. This is who I am, and I don’t think fundamentally this is something I want to or can change.

However, what I’m working towards is trusting others to care for themselves and being less reactive to their responses as our relationships evolve. In the past, I have spent months (maybe even years) reflecting on choices (and mistakes) I’ve made that may have hurt others, including boundaries I’ve set, but also including things I would have done so differently in retrospect, with little grace or honor for my own intentions and/or humanity. I replay scenarios, in anguish, considering what I should have done. Or, I compromise boundaries that are set for important reasons. In some of these cases, even after apologizing and working towards repair, the relationships have lost a certain proximity that may never be regained. I have been deeply saddened when once close relationships have become more distant even as I know (intellectually) that some relationships are meant to be for a season, and that those relationships are not any less important or less real, even if they may be time, place or situationally bound.

This is a pretty big thing for me to be working through.

Given the depth of my care for the people in my life, it’s actually impossible for me to maintain the level of care that I’d like to have in each of my relationships with all of my people. When I try to do this, the people to whom I’m closest do not get my best self. I am seeing the boundaries of my relationships as my networks expand. I have come to realize that not everyone I’m connected with will be my people and am okay with that.

What I’m coming to greater peace around is that it’s ALSO okay that some people will always be my people in my heart, even if our relationships evolve and we are no longer as close as we once were. Others will be my people for a brief (or long) beautiful time, and then we will evolve in different ways, life will lead us down different paths, and that does not take away, even in the slightest, the gift of our time in deep community, nor does it diminish the deep love that we may have for one another.

I am learning to grow through seasons.

This is not easy, but it feels so important, and key to the freedom to be and to develop new relationships without taking away from those I’ve held and continue to hold so dear.

It is a season of so many changes, but I am grateful for the ways I continue to evolve.

The Life and Times of an Evolving Academic

Join me on my journey through academia as a teacher educator committed to issues of equity