Monthly Archives: November 2024

A Season of Gratitude

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A picture of trees lining a walkway on the University of Washington campus in the fall

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.

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Leaning into Rest, Breath, and Community

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Sunrise over Boston Seaport

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:

  1. Sometimes I just need to listen.
  2. Sometimes I should not listen to my own first response and need to give things a minute and get feedback from others.
  3. I have an incredible community who loves me deeply.
  4. My incredible community gets when showing up for myself means I can’t show up for them (in the moment).
  5. Bearing witness is an active choice and comes with responsibility.
  6. Power and position come with responsibility.
  7. Responsibility is complicated.
  8. Humanity is complicated.
  9. Naps are really restorative.
  10. It is okay not to do something every minute of the day, even if part of you (me) wants to.
  11. 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)
  12. 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

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View of the water at the Boston Seaport

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

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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.