Broken Teeth, Broken Hearts & Healing: MotherScholaring & Holding Joy

Posted on April 20, 2024 by betinahsieh

Yesterday was a long day to end a week of unlearning.

When we commit to honoring our humanity and embracing joy and healing, I suppose it’s to be expected that our humanity will show up in full-force. I mean, honestly, our humanity is always showing up, but I guess I’m more attuned to it now that I’m not shushing it or judging it and trying to instead, acknowledge and nurture myself.

So this week, plenty of mistakes were made in all the areas that tend to activate my self-judgment the most: finances, mothering, and time. I also did things that were hard but necessary, offering public comment at a commission on teacher credentialing meeting, admitting to myself that not everything was going to get done, and holding my little girl’s hand while she went through an emergency dental procedure.

This last event leads me to yesterday afternoon. I had just finished my last call for work and was looking at a paper revision while waiting for my nail salon date with my dear friend, Anna. My phone rang and the name of my daughter’s school office came up. My daughter has had many a share of accidents in her young life. We generally get 1-2 calls a month about her hitting her head on something and have gotten used to concussion protocol. So when I saw the office number, I was concerned but not alarmed.

When I answered the call, I realized that this accident was more serious. She had tripped on the blacktop and hit her front teeth. There was a lot of bleeding and crying. I rushed out the door and ran down to the school (which is fortunately a 10-minute walk; 7-minute jog) from the house and found my little one in pain and in need of serious dental intervention.

After dealing with the frustration of my phone refusing to connect to the internet to find her dentist’s number which I somehow didn’t have programmed into my phone (or maybe I do, but I didn’t look there in the moment), my husband arrived, found the number, called the office and we were on our way.

My youngest daughter is one of my greatest sources of joy. She brings light, energy, and joy into every space she occupies. She is bold, hilarious, and amazingly self-expressed. She is also kind, caring, and incredibly loving towards those around her. My little one is the one who has always called for me to be home more, to make time for her, to take care of myself. She is goals for me in so many ways and she holds me to high standards as a mother.

Because of all these things, as I was walk-running to her, the inevitable heartache and self-questioning began. Yes, I was there for her in this moment, but what if this accident had happened next week or last week (when I’m traveling)? What if her accident had been more serious? (This is a huge fear of mine because I have extreme trauma from accidents.) What if she didn’t really know how much I loved her?

These are hard questions that I struggle with a lot. Because of my commitment to my professional self, I have missed out on major events for my kiddos, both good and bad, and it doesn’t ever get easier. Even when I’m ACTUALLY there (like yesterday), I still have guilt triggered about the moments when I’m not there. My children have an incredibly competent and loving father in my husband, but I am still often left with not feeling like I’m the best mom they could have.

Fortunately, the immediate fix for my little girl was quick (although not covered by insurance) with follow up in a few weeks to give her teeth time to heal from the trauma (hopefully) and re-root in their place. Depending on how they’re doing in a few weeks, she’ll have additional procedures, and they’ll reconstruct cosmetically a part of her chipped tooth, but eventually everything will be fine. After sleep, she’s feeling better although still adjusting to a tooth splint and some very sore gums.

I’ve realized, however, that the tensions around my MotherScholar life aren’t going to go away (at least not for a while without more explicit unlearning).

Still, I am lucky to take my cues from my little one who slept it off, cuddled with me this morning, and is happily using baby medicine syringes to feed herself mango smoothie this morning. We’re going to go to the library later to check out graphic novels, after my make-up nail salon date this morning. I’m grateful to take my cues from my son who is spending his morning playing video games before his last concert with his high school orchestra. I’m even (more begrudgingly) taking cues from my dog who is always resting, eating, and self-soothing.

This is, I suppose, my full humanity. I continue to work to embrace it. It is not easy, but it is joyful and authentic, and if anything, I know how to do hard things.

Mothering Moments

Posted on February 15, 2024 by betinahsieh

February is an emotional month.

This February, particularly, it has been a metaphorical roller coaster, because of an actual roller coaster (model that my son and his physics group had to design for his physics class) and because, well my son turns 18 today.

I birthed an adult.

This morning, I shed some tears when I thought about this morning 18 years ago, waking up with light contractions. I would go to a local Indian restaurant with my sister in law for lunch, and she would urge me to eat as much as I could since this was likely to be my last meal before the baby came. We were stuck in traffic on the way to the hospital where they were not sure they should admit me because I wasn’t “that far along,” but did because I lived 30 minutes away, “just in case.” Less than 2-hours later, when they came to check on me, my son was imminently on his way. They rushed to call my OB/GYN who had been finishing up a leisurely dinner, sure that I wouldn’t deliver any time soon. He arrived just as I was pushing, in time to cut the umbilical cord and hand me a little boy that was half of me genetically, but held my whole heart.

I can’t fully describe how much I cherish my son. His early years were some of the very hardest of my life, when I was struggling with severe health issues that nearly killed me while also completing a doctorate and going on the job market. He was with me during the most exhausting parts of the tenure process, and sacrificed a lot throughout his K-12 schooling, switching elementary schools 4 times (because of moves and fit) and still never feeling like he quite belonged, even when he found stability in his 7-12 grade secondary school. While he considers himself pretty lucky to have had the life and family he has, things haven’t always been easy. There have been moments where he’s felt lost, including many where he’s felt alone and questioned his decisions, wondering if he’ll ever find his people outside his family.

This hurts my heart because he still holds so much of it.

Today, he turns 18.

We are waiting on college admissions decisions and anticipating the many transitions adulthood will bring.

He is irritated about the many, intense projects in his physics class, one which culminates today, only to shift focus to another due in 4 weeks.

I am irritated because sometimes I can feel his irritation, but I can’t force him to talk about it, and so I can’t help him through it.

We are exhausted from late nights and uncertainty, which neither of us likes, from things we can’t control and things we perhaps should have done better.

We are human.

In the journey of the last 18 years, perhaps no one has helped me to grow in my own humanity, humility and imperfections as much as my son. Few people have shown me as much unconditional love, grace and understanding as he has. He reminds me to care for myself and that I’m doing a good job as much as I remind him of the same.

I love my son with my whole heart.

What a gift to be his mother.

What a gift to journey together.

What a gift to receive his love and grace.

I hope the next 18 years bring all the joy and belonging that he so richly deserves, beyond that which he has in our family, as he moves out into a wider world, and that we continue to journey through those years together.

Legacies of love

Posted on February 3, 2024 by betinahsieh

29 years ago, my mother died unexpectedly in a car accident.

A year ago, I was interviewing for a job that would be a significant turning point in my academic career and bring enormous change to my personal life.

Although the moments where I can recollect my mother’s physical touch and even her voice become scarcer and scarcer over time, my proximity to her and her guidance to me is as strong now as it has ever been.

There have been so many benchmarks that I wish my mother could have been physically present for:

My high school, undergraduate, and doctoral graduation ceremonies
My marriage
The birth of each of my children
The start of each of my professional careers (middle school & university teaching) and positions along with the moves that accompanied several of them

Yet, as I reflect, I know that my mother has always been with me in these moments, that I have been even more aware of her presence through her absence, that she has been guiding me through the choices I’ve made (including the many mistakes along the way). Through her loss, I feel the depth of her love; I’ve come to understand the strength in her sacrifices; and I’ve arrived at a place where I feel that my healing is a healing that spans generations and brings the best of her into the lives of my children, even though they will never meet in person.

Somehow, although to my knowledge, my mother never set foot in Seattle, I feel closer to her when I am on Coast Salish lands. Perhaps it is because of the deep relationships that local indigenous tribal communities have with both the lands and their ancestors. Or perhaps it is because I somehow feel she guided me to this part of my journey, reconciling with a place that caused a rift between us before she passed. Perhaps it is because I am healing and choosing what to bring through the present transition to this new place.

This week, through work with my therapist, I realized that I’ve been holding on to guilt, particularly in relation to my mom — survivor guilt, mainly, but, in many ways also, guilt for many privileges that feel undeserved and guilt for never being able to give back to her when she gave so much for me to be where I am today.

It is a process in letting that guilt go, in embracing that what she would have wanted was for me to live my best life, and in fact, that this was, in her heart, much of what drove her. I understand this, as I feel these same emotions towards my own children.

For perhaps all of these reasons, unlike many years in the past, today, I feel a certain peace, or, at the least, a movement towards peace. It is a peace punctuated with sadness and loss, but overwhelmingly filled with love and gratitude.

That is my mother’s legacy, not one of loss, but one of deep love that I’ve tried in all ways to pay forward to those in my life.

I will never not acutely miss my mother or wish she were here with me physically. But today, I feel her near me, more than ever, reminding me that I am stronger than I think, than the world might think I am, that I carry wisdom of generations, and that I will weather the seasons and transitions ahead.

She is in my heart, and the legacies of love she (and her mother) have passed down to me are as alive today as they have ever been.

My Mama Heart

Posted on October 6, 2023 by betinahsieh

Where We’re At…

My 17 year old son is in his senior year of high school.

He holds one of the biggest pieces of my heart.

It has been a lot for both of us.

Last Saturday, we went to a family lunch to celebrate my birthday where we think we both ate bad oysters. His symptoms were worse than mine and while I was feeling better by Tuesday, he woke up on Wednesday morning with new symptoms, a fever and aches which we now think are part of a stomach flu virus, which took another turn for the worse in the wee hours of this morning. Food poisoning –> Stomach flu in one week, for a foodie and a senior (or anyone for that matter), is a lot.

He ended up missing three days of school, including his community college class and an after school project he was supposed to support. Tomorrow, he was supposed to retake the SAT, but we canceled it because his health (and the health of others in the room) are more important than the 50-80 points we estimated he might improve his score. This is the last SAT session that he can make before he needs to submit his college applications (he will be testing for his 3rd degree Tae Kwon Do blackbelt during the November test date).

All of this has been a thing, but mostly it hasn’t, except that I wish he felt better.

How We’ve Been

Both of us have been stressed lately.

At the beginning of this week when I was feeling extremely ill and not able to sit up for long periods of time, the 11 projects I’m working on (several of which have looming deadlines) felt completely overwhelming. In addition to these projects, conferences that I’m helping to facilitate are coming up in less than two weeks and I felt completely unprepared. The multiple transitions in our lives have been weighing on my heart.

My son was upset about his science class where, for the first time ever in his secondary school career (in a STEM subject), he felt that his grade didn’t reflect his knowledge at all. He was stressed about the SAT. He recently failed his first attempt at his drive test. He’s been struggling with injuries that aren’t allowing him to do the final demonstration/ testing that he wants to.

It has been a lot for both of us.

What We’ve Learned

Somewhere in this week, we let go. We (independently) came to the realization that we couldn’t do more than our bodies would allow us to. We remembered that our worth (to those who truly care) is more than a set of numbers, is more than our productivity, is more than getting everything right. We recognized that we both are privileged enough to be in places where the consequences of missing a few days will not be dire (when we have family members who don’t share this same privilege). We came to understand that we had to trust the process, the universe, God, ourselves, that we would get to exactly where we needed to go even if it didn’t look the way we thought it should.

[We also realized that a school that could not see past 50-80 points of difference on a standardized test (which is truly not a measure of skills needed to succeed in college) into who he is isn’t a school he should be at anyways.]

The stress can blind us from seeing one another, from seeing ourselves, and from listening to our embodied wisdom. Our bodies could not go on. They forced us to listen. It’s been a hard lesson to learn in some ways, but so important.

Seeing Ourselves and One Another

One of my 11 projects involves interviews with teachers. I interviewed three this week and at each of these interviews, my mama heart felt a deep tenderness (this has been happening A LOT in these interviews). What has struck me about these educators is that they seek to see their students, to create a place of belonging for them. They want students to feel like they have someone who cares for them on campus.

Next month, my 17 year old and I will present together on a panel with other friends (of mine, at least) about his high school experience, which has largely not been this. Hearing these teachers reminds me so much of what my mama heart yearns for, that this quietly extraordinary young person that I’ve known for 18 years (before he was even born) is seen, is affirmed in his unique form of amazingness, that he is loved and held by more than his family, for the entirety of who he is.

This week, as hard as it has been, reminds me that we’re going to be okay, even if this journey for him hasn’t been all that I wish it was and even if it still isn’t exactly what I imagined.

Sometimes, we have to let go of these visions to see one another; sometimes we have to let go of what is hard to embrace what is in front of us.

In all of it, we have to trust.

My tender mama heart is learning and leaning into this, even as one of its biggest parts is aching.

Feeling Transitions

Posted on August 10, 2023 by betinahsieh

Today was my son’s last first day of his K-12 (primary/ secondary) schooling career.

Throughout this “rising senior” summer, I’ve had moments of fleeting awareness that this day was coming, that this benchmark would arrive, sooner than I was ready for it, and today, it did.

I did not need many Kleenex, as I predicted I might. Although a few (just a few!) tears were shed, mostly I did okay sitting in the passenger seat as he drove himself to school. I didn’t break down into heaping sobs after he left, like I did the first time I dropped him off to daycare as an infant. I know he’s going to be great and that we will navigate his senior year together which brings a lot of calm in my heart, even as change is hard.

Today, though, marked the first time I felt in my body the transitions we are going through this year. My son is off to his senior year. I am no longer department chair. I am transitioning roles and institutions, preparing for a move, cycling off important service roles, proposing new projects. There is a lot of motion.

People have been asking me for months how I’m feeling about all of these transitions. I have simply replied, “I don’t know. They don’t feel real to me yet….” until today, when they all feel real and immense and a little overwhelming.

This is a place I know well. Change has been a constant in my life for a long time, one I used to spend much energy running from. I am practicing, instead, what it means to be with all the things, to breathe deeply, to hold boundaries, to claim rest, to cultivate joy, in times of upheaval, in times of change, in times of transition.

I see my imperfections reflected in broken boundaries, in insecurities, in a tendency to continue doing too much for too many, but I am learning to give myself grace, to return to myself and my breath, and to see my imperfections as growing edges, staying present to the love and joy that is around me if I just pause to let it in.

I am also drawing from deep wells of community and dipping my toes into a growing pool of self-affirmation that I am beginning to fill. In holding space for myself to choose work and a walk that is generative, in learning to trust the choices I make that are aligned with the energy and commitments I have, I am making progress, slowly, but surely towards the better world that I believe in.

Space

Posted on May 7, 2023 by betinahsieh

May is a beautiful month for me.

May is also a hard month for me.

This year, as it has been for the last eight years, my daughter’s birthday and Mothers Day are within the same week, with the end of the academic year the following week. I am tired. I often wonder if there will be another Mothers Day that does not feel exhausting, as my heart and mind are divided between wanting to celebrate my daughter and the extraordinary gift of her life, deeply missing my mother, particularly as I get closer and closer to the age she was when she died, and the bustle of the end of an academic year.

May is a time of internal and external conflict. Outsourcing birthday parties, while easier, is pricey, and seems to add on to my perpetual discourse of inadequate mothering, even in this busy professional time, full of events and celebrations, for students, staff, and faculty in my college. This year, as department chair, it is particularly busy, as there is more to support and coordinate with less of the heart work and interaction with students that brings so much light to my academic work. This year, I’m also in the midst of final preparations for a grant-funded conference that is the work of my heart, and while I am confident everything will work out, it is a stressful time in terms of coordination according to the timeline that works best for my head and heart. And our college graduation coincides with two awards ceremonies for my son (school-sponsored and countywide) which I will have to miss as a member of the platform party.

In a few hours, my daughter will celebrate her birthday with my husband’s family, our family, and my sister. It will be a beautiful time, and a hard one. It makes me remember how different our lives are. It makes me remember whole families and how mine still perpetually feels broken, even as I try to repair it in this generation. I am so very tired. And I am holding a lot of sadness. I am also holding so much joy in her having this time with her aunties and uncles and cousins and abuelos, swimming and playing, in her full joy.

In these last several years, I have been working on making space where there is none, and holding space for all of the complexities of life, particularly as someone who loves deeply and whole-heartedly. I have been working on giving myself the grace I so freely give to others. I have been working on being with what is, while working towards what is better.

It is beautiful work, and it is hard.

I hope that if you’re reading this, you will also hold space for me today, for others who are balancing grief, joy, and the myriad other emotions that may come during this time of year. I also hope you’re holding space for yourself. I hope that you will feel the warm embrace of love surrounding you, that you will have moments where you’re able to laugh freely and cry loudly, as you want and need to. I hope you will hold on to better when the moment feels not good enough, and that you will find, make, and take space for yourself in the midst of all you are doing and all that you are for others.

I am, you are, we are beautiful, in this midst of these hard times.

We are very much imperfect, but we are trying

Posted on February 20, 2023 by betinahsieh

Tonight, we celebrated my son’s 17th birthday which was earlier this week.

My son is an extraordinary person.

He was born an old soul and has always been ahead of his time in both wisdom and depth.

He and I share an inability to do less than our best and a sense that when we give less than 100% to anything, we are letting others, and more importantly, ourselves down.

Even though others encourage us to give less, it leaves us feeling like everything is getting short-shrift, like we are letting everyone down, and like we really need to do better in our lives.

It is quite something when your children reflect the hardest parts of yourself back to you.

Tonight, my son started his birthday dinner saying that he needed to do better at surviving. He was near tears. He has been like this a lot lately.

I have been worried, but much more than that, I have been sad, that someone who is such an incredible human being would feel such a depth of despair.

But also, I understand.

So I asked, “Is there anything we can take off your plate? Is there anything you feel like you’d want to give up?”

He named a few things. One is not for now, and can be pushed back a few months until he feels like he can give more of himself. One is perhaps not for ever, something that he tried because he loved, but which morphed into something that felt more like an obligation than joy.

I see his potential in all the things, so in some ways, I could see why he didn’t even want to say aloud these things. He was worried he would disappoint those who had invested in him, those in his community, us. He was choosing to continually disappoint himself (not having the time, energy, or strength to give his all) to avoid disappointing everyone else.

He is not a kid who gives things up easily, and he is someone who has always been cautious with his time. But school is a lot, and between school itself and multiple extracurriculars, it is too much.

Yet, he looks around and sees others doing more, and he worries it is not enough.

I understand.

Tonight, as we were waiting for our first course to arrive, I looked at him and said honestly, “You know, I think that’s great that you want to set some boundaries on your time and that you want to give yourself some space to really devote your best to what you’re doing. I get it. I can’t give less than 100% to things either without disappointing myself. I wish I knew at your age how to let some things go.”

His body has been rebelling lately. He says there are days he feels more like he is 70 than 17. I told him that maybe his body is telling him he is doing too much as well, that our bodies hold wisdom our minds don’t allow us to consider.

He understood.

He decided to talk to those in leadership in the two areas he is going to delay or take himself out of. His initial concerns about what they might think of him somewhat assuaged by the assurances that it is likely they will understand, and by the reminder that those who truly know him and those who truly love him are there for him because of who he is, not anything he does.

We had a really good birthday dinner. He was able to enjoy the food and come back to himself. He was relieved. I am grateful.

But most of all, I am reminded at how much I have to learn from my children and from mothering.

I have felt so much of what he is feeling recently, so much of not wanting to let anyone down but feeling so limited in time, energy & spirit, that I am, in effect, letting everyone down. I am not capable of giving less than my best. I can’t fight against that.

So I have to do less.

Take things off my plate so that I can enjoy the feast that is in front of me.

Trust that people will understand when balls and plates and activities drop.

Trust that those who love me do so because of who I am and not what I do.

We are on parallel journeys, my son and I, to accept our own humanity, the limitations of our time and energy, and to make wiser choices that allow us to remember who we are, instead of trying to be all things to all people.

We understand.

We are very much imperfect, but we are trying.

We are in it together.

And we are well loved.

Waves

Posted on January 23, 2023 by betinahsieh

Today, it has been hard to stay present.

We had planned to get together with my in-laws to make dumplings for the new year.

Then I woke up this morning to the news of the Monterey Park shootings and it felt like the world froze.

I protect myself from grief. I am good at surviving.

Today, I decided it would be the day for my little one to try on my mother’s qipao, one that I’ve had for years, that I wore at 19 (and through my 20s). It fit her perfectly. (It’s longer on her than it was on us, but otherwise perfect.) My whole heart. How I wish my mother was here to see her granddaughter in her dress, or how I wish she had seen me in it, for that matter.

I protect myself from grief. I am good at surviving.

We went to make dumplings, to my sister-in-law’s house. As I began chopping the scallions and ginger and garlic, to mix them with the ground meat, soy sauce and rice vinegar, the familiar smell of home, of new year, of myself, flooded my senses. I wrapped the dumplings with my kids and my sister-in-law. I made dipping sauce as my husband cooked the first pan. We savored the dumplings, then devoured them, until there were none left, until we were full. It was joyful.

That joy was resistance.

But it was also not all there was to the day.

I protect myself from grief. I am good at surviving.

On our way home, the wave came for me, sweeping me in its undertow, as I found out more about the shooter, more about people close to me who had people close to them with ties to the dance studio, as I began to breathe, as I attended the pain in my back that I woke up with this morning. The wave came as I sat with the dehumanization I’ve witnessed on social media today, since coming back from my hiatus, the lack of respect for grief, the inability to sit with what is, in our quest to have answers about why.

Of course the why matters, but our humanity matters more. Families are shattered, lives were lost; we are left again feeling unsafe. It is time to draw from our shared humanity to come together, to hold space for grief, to push past the numbing needed to survive, to allow for the heartbreak that is the first step towards healing.

I am present now. And I am so incredibly sad. I don’t want to simply survive and raise my children in a world where the best they can hope for is survival.

I know that my path is to continue to push for transformation, for a world that is better, where there is hope and where the humanity in us connects with the humanity in “them,” where we recognize that us and them are constructs that we can move beyond, if we truly want to move past the fear that constrains us.

But tonight, I am just so, so sad.

I am letting myself be just as I am, because not pushing down that grief, making space for it to be, is the first step towards a world where we are free to be.

And that is everything.

Today and every day.

All the Things, All the Time

Posted on November 11, 2022 by betinahsieh

Today was a day like all my days used to be.

This morning started off with a 2-hour working seminar with my French colleagues in French. I’m grateful and excited for our collaboration, but I also was extremely stressed about how this would go since I’m only used to functioning in French when I am actually in France, not when I’m in the states and thinking all the time in English. I’m also not yet fully adjusted to speaking about my research in French so everything takes longer and is more tiring.

In the 20 minute break between the seminar and my next meeting with the current dissertation student I’m working with, I ate, because I couldn’t eat anything before the seminar because eating is hard when I’m nervous. I was also trying to work on revisions to a draft statement on censorship for the state organization I lead.

Then I met with my student and had a good talk about how she can move forward. She was really encouraged to hopefully start interviews for her study early next week. (Later she would find out that the “interviewees” with whom she had hoped to conduct her interviews were likely bots or trolls.)

The AERA (American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting) notifications began rolling in around this time. 1 accepted roundtable and an additional role as a discussant. A little disappointing in some respects (particularly regarding a panel that I felt confident would be accepted and wasn’t), but on the other hand, a little relieving, as I’ll be able to attend sessions and reconnect with people for the first annual meeting in a very long time.

A mid-afternoon appointment led to moving remote offices multiple times in the afternoon and I began to fall behind on the slippery slope of e-mails and meetings (as my phone was also blowing up with text messages).

Before I knew it, it was time to pick up my son and shuttle him to TaeKwonDo, while grabbing In N Out drive thru and eating in the car.

After I drop him off, I usually find another “remote office” (often a Starbucks) to catch up on the e-mails lest I become buried alive. But, two of the myriad texts were requests for support from my dissertation student (regarding her interviews) and a lecturer colleague (and former student, about an incident in class).

After two femtoring calls (both of which were on hard, human topics that are exhausting to navigate on one’s own) in the hour and a half at TaeKwonDo, it was time to go home.

The e-mails were still there.

But, so was my little one who could not decide on dinner after her soccer practice.

I made her some scrambled eggs, with a side of grape tomatoes and milk and, finally, the e-mails.

Now, the e-mails are “done” (are they ever done though?) and I am about to begin a “long weekend” but there are two meetings that I could not fit in anywhere else tomorrow (and maybe a third on Saturday) and a couple of things I have to catch up on.

Where is the time to breathe? Where is the time for rest?

It is there to be claimed.

I have realized that I rest in this writing. Not in all writing, but certainly in the flow of these words onto this blog. It is sacred space and sacred time. It is restful.

So in the midst of all the things and all the time today, I am, in this moment, choosing me.

And that is a small, but significant, victory.

Voice and Visibility: The Wisdom in Our Words

Posted on October 1, 2022 by betinahsieh

What does it mean to believe that the stories we tell to our children have value to our academic communities?

What does it mean to stand in that truth despite in the face of multiple submissions, multiple revisions, multiple rejections, and finally an acceptance, a publication, and a piece in the world that reflects pieces of our hearts?

We (Cat, Ruchi, Judy & I) started this journey many years ago. My daughter was in her 3rd year of life when I first wrote my letter to her. She is now approaching 8. 5 years is a long time, but the words of my letter are still true. They are excerpted in the article, and they have changed slightly over the course of our writings, but I share here the full text of a version of my letter to my children, the wisdom of which I hold true, that words are powerful, that our humanity is powerful, that our love and the co-creation of a better world is powerful and possible.

So grateful to my sister-scholar, co-author, collaborator, friends. So grateful to journey together. So grateful for your belief in us, our words, our letters, our children, our hearts.

Betina’s Letter:

My dear children,

This morning on the car ride to school, N and I were talking about how much I work and how sometimes he wishes I would work less so that he could have his mommy. I know you have all felt this way, even J, in her short three years of life. So, I am writing this letter to explain why: why I do the work I do, what I hope from that work, how that work is an extension of my love for each one of you and how I hope that, one day, we’ll work to create a better world together.

Words are powerful things. I became an English teacher because I saw the power of words and stories. With words, we can tell our stories and see shared humanity through others’ stories. I see the way that labels have been used against you; used to separate you from others; used to assume placement or assign privilege. I have seen how the ways you read, write, speak and listen lead others to believe things about your worth. I know literacies represent power. I want the future teachers I work with to understand that power. I want them to think about whose voice is missing. I hear your voices but, so often, voices like yours are silent and silenced in classrooms.

Growing up, I hesitated to use my voice. I was “too loud” for my position as a Taiwanese American girl and simultaneously “too American” (for my family) but “never American enough” for my friends. I knew little Mandarin and even less Taiwanese, and what I did know became lost in discourses of “English Only” and assimilation at school. As I struggled to fit in with my (mostly white) peers, I lost my sense of self. I lost my words and any desire I had to be who I was. Only through mothering and writing am I beginning to reclaim my voice and all that it represents, because I want you to see the power of your words, in English, in Mandarin, in Spanish (the native language of your father), as a citizen of this world.

As I’ve taught you the power of words; I also teach them the power of words. My teaching means I spend many late nights away. I know this has hurt you and I’m so deeply sorry. It has been hard for me as well. But I must teach these new teachers because I remember entering urban school teaching at 22 years old, how much I still had to learn. I know now (but didn’t know then) that almost all parents and educators are trying their best, even when their bests conflict, because educators’ perspectives are not always parents’ perspectives. I teach them that traditional classrooms aren’t necessarily best; in fact, they work best only to reproduce societies that are inherently inequitable. I teach them to see that each student brings assets to the classroom, and to honor student knowledge and experiences through relevant teaching curriculum. I teach them that rigor and relevance aren’t mutually exclusive, and that both are critical to address inequities. I challenge their thinking when they ask why some students don’t want to learn. I hate it when I hear that. I don’t want you to be in a world where teachers think that some students don’t want to learn instead of looking at what they can do to support students right where they are. I teach them to start with who students are, but to not ignore the standards that are often gatekeepers to their success. I help them understand that denying access to innovative curriculum because of their perceptions (or even realities) that students may not have internet in their homes isn’t a way to address challenges of 21st century learning. I push them to go beyond themselves because I know they hope to one day teach children, you, those like you, those different from you.

These children, like you, are my children too, and I feel a responsibility to them as I am responsible to you, as your mother. We are collectively responsible for one another although each of us develops as an individual. I want you to understand our collective responsibility and I want future teachers to understand that. I want to help build schools that work in a society that works better for everyone. My role is supporting teachers in their work. It is an important role. It is an investment in the future, your future, and our future. I spend time away from you to make an impact on the identities of teachers who I know can be so powerful for students. I know because teachers have shaped your lives.

I am doing the best I can, as your mommy, as a teacher of teachers, as a human being. You are always with me, and I with you. I am always thinking of you and the world I hope you will contribute to. I love you and each of you has given my work real meaning. You are my hope and my light; you help me find my voice and use it to speak powerfully for justice and against misrepresentations of youth. Each of you, and each child in the world, needs great teachers who can support you to grow into your best selves. So, when I am away, I am working for you, pushing towards hope. One day, I hope you, in your own ways, will also push towards greater understandings, using your words to push towards a hopeful future. I hope this letter helps you in these days and those days.

The Life and Times of an Evolving Academic

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

Tag Archives: Mothering

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Voice and Visibility: The Wisdom in Our Words