A Full Heart

Photograph of a letter confirming my promotion to Full Professor

Today, at 4pm, I received notice that I have been promoted to Full Professor at California State University, Long Beach.

This is not my first rodeo as full professor (I was full professor for a year at another institution when I was on leave from CSULB) and it’s not the last institution I’ll be full professor at (since I transition at the end of this calendar year to be the Boeing Endowed Professor of Teacher Education at the University of Washington), but this hits differently because I have been through the entire tenure and promotion process at, and given my heart and much labor to CSULB, an institution which, despite all that institutions represent, contains a community where I have been seen, loved, nourished, and affirmed, in spite of it all.

It’s a big day and it comes at a time of much transition indeed, as I prepare mentally and spiritually for things ahead, as I am on Day 11 of prioritizing the things I love about this work, giving myself grace, and resisting temptations to overwork.

I am grateful that on this day, I am fully present to the culmination of my years of teaching, research, and service to this community. Today, I got to eat lunch and have a mentoring conversation with a former credential student, spend time with research collaborators, and meet with my own femtor and friend. I got to spend an hour and a half on research and got to have my work acknowledged.

Soon, I’ll go to pick up my 17-year old from his last dance practice before the summer break at his studio. To him and my little one, I am not any different than I was this morning. This letter doesn’t mean anything in particular. But, I am most grateful to them and for a partner who has supported me in this journey, even when none of them quite understands why it means so much to me.

I am also grateful to my community who has sourced me and believed in me even when I didn’t know how to believe in myself. I am fully aware that I am because we are, and that no one gets to this place alone.

Finally, I am grateful to my mother who sacrificed a doctoral trajectory to be mother to my brother, whose absence is felt most acutely at these milestones she only gets to witness in spirit. And to my grandmother before her who sent her youngest to study in the US not knowing that someday the baby of the family would be among the few Asian American women who are full professors.

My heart is full of gratitude and love, of community and ancestral strength, of joy and peace.

Onward in community and always in love.

Transitions and Transformations

Photo of me in my office smiling

A week ago, I was entering the last 12 hours of my time in Barcelona, at the end of two weeks in Europe which I promised would be the marker of a new phase of my life, a time when I would lean into spaciousness and dreaming, no longer pulled by false urgency and the demands of the hustle. A time when I would listen more to my internal voice and truth, trusting myself and leaning on community, instead of numbing myself with distractions and stress about things I cannot control.

Honestly, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to keep this up for even a week at home.

This week has been a lot.

There are many transitions happening in my personal and professional life. Some are planned pivots and others have caught me by surprise.

I have cried almost every day this week. I have had a terrible migraine, the likes of which I haven’t known since the darkest time of my life. I still do not have my voice fully recovered. I have found myself in deep moments of grief and questioning.

I have also felt an amazing abundance of peace and joy this week. I have taken walks. I have written every day on research of my heart. I have read. I have responded to e-mails, and worked on administrative parts of my grant. I have connected with people I love deeply in multiple areas of my life. I have taken moments to breathe, to slowly sip tea at the perfect temperature, to check in with myself, to show myself grace. I have been setting intentional boundaries on my time, my energy, and my heart.

This week has been a lot. Abundance all around me. Intention and cultivation.

I don’t like transitions. Change is hard. Unlearning is hard. Acknowledging and choosing what is true for me, even when it is not what I’d like to see is hard. It is especially hard because I worry about the impact of all of these things on people I love.

It has been a week.

But at the end of this week, I am present. I am present to calm. I am learning to pause. I am listening to what my heart wants and what I am called to do. I am remaining open to possibility and moving towards living a life that is honest and grounded in love, even when it is complex and complicated and challenging.

It has been a week, a hard but honest week, a beautiful and confronting week. I am ever more committed to weeks like this, moment by moment, as I move towards creating the world I believe in.

A New Routine

During this time that has been transformative over the last two weeks, it has been clear that my current routine is not working. It is a routine of survival that does not allow me to center myself and touch my humanity and gratitude each day.

This morning, I woke up early.

I love getting up early because the morning hours feel precious.

I checked e-mail because I’m 9-hours ahead so the work day has already ended. I responded to all the e-mails I could before 1pm PT (when I went to bed) and then I responded to the rest when I woke up (around 8pm PT).

I would like to remember that this is just fine. It is fine that I only respond to e-mails during part of the day then catch up after the day is done. It is also fine that I wake up and respond to e-mails first thing. For me, my responsibilities (at least those in the immediate) need to be cared for before I can be at peace.

I did Duolingo and Wordle. Duolingo is, for me, an addiction, and a structured one at that, which has to be done between 6am-noon and 6pm and midnight because otherwise I miss out on bonuses. I am who I am and I’ve come to accept that after a 1347 day streak, I can probably count this as something that is a regular part of my day.

I was restless for a moment after that. In my daily life, there is not time for restlessness after Duolingo and Wordle because there is preparation of kids for school, there is preparation of me for the day, there are things to do.

And there will continue to be things to do. At home, after the things to do in the morning, the e-mails begin and continue all day and I find myself exhausted with only a few minutes between urgent communications in which to actually pause.

A few moments is enough for some things: to breathe, to stretch, to remember I need a cup of tea or to look out the window, to take a short walk around the building.

But it is not enough, when stolen from between e-mails, to fully reconnect with my humanity. It is not enough to thoughtfully engage with ideas, to prepare my heart for the writing and work I’m committed to, to bring my most authentic self to the conversations I’m a part of. It is not enough to sustain me.

This morning, restlessness, when I leaned into it, led me to prepare myself for the day ahead, led me to read during breakfast, led me to write this blog. It let me be human, stopping in the course of writing to answer texts and messages, but without urgency, grounded in love and peace. It led me to stay hydrated and to attend to my body’s signals.

I am always aware of the ways that the systems in which we are embedded, in which I strive to do humanizing work, are inherently dehumanizing.

Yet, I have found myself this year, mechanized by the systems and structures of dehumanization that I fight so hard against.

It is hard to be in the machine and find your way out.

But it is also joyful to find yourself and your humanity again. It is joyful to be in community with those who know you and can bear witness to your evolution. It is joyful to lean into ourselves instead of constantly resisting and fighting to exist. It is joyful to have no one to prove oneself to, but to walk the walk and do the work in front of you.

I am attending to this joy.

And I am confident that in attending to this joy, there is actually no worry about productivity. There is an abundance of contribution that springs from joy, and my joy always leads naturally to a desire to contribute.

But it must start with enough time to touch my humanity.

Soon I will return to my daily life.

I do not know how to stay in this joy in that space.

I do know that while I need time to be alone, I can’t stay in joy alone.

I also know that I am stubborn and often don’t listen to the people in my life who have been telling me for months that I need to take a break, focus on myself, and calm down.

I come from a place where there is always more to do. I have internalized and enacted dehumanizing practices that have suppressed my light and joy for years. It is not easy to unlearn these things in a society where they are valorized and validated and where I am rewarded for hyper productivity whether or not it is sustainable for me.

When I am calm and in the clarity of my heart, I am not afraid. I know I am a writer, that words will come. I know I am a thinker, and can engage with the thoughts of others. I know I am a teacher, and can respond to and build with those I fem/mentor in educational spaces. I know that I can leave and come back and the words and ideas will still be there.

But where I am from, I am rarely in the calm and clarity of my heart.

For me, the solution will not be to reproduce what I have here over there. There are too many differences in society and positioning and context. It may be to spend more regular time here to reground and remember who I am, but I must learn to be within the contexts I find myself, to adapt to that which is and model transformation.

This is long and without a place to end except with these final thoughts: 1) the end must be space that includes gentleness and grace as I find my way, as we find our ways; 2) the way(s) must be found in love-imbued community; 3) to make deeper connection, there have to be boundaries that honor our commitments.

I hope you will support me as I find my way.