Tag Archives: Mothering

Lost and Found

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Whew. Grief. It comes for you out of nowhere sometimes, or maybe from everywhere.

On a morning when you have a three hour professional learning session to give.

At the end of a week you weren’t sure you’d make it through.

At the start of a weekend that simultaneously holds so much longing, hope and joy.

I am grieving this morning, as I do almost every May when Mother’s Day approaches, and particularly in the last 6 years because my daughter’s birthday is around Mother’s Day.

When I had my daughter, I most felt the depth of the loss of my mother. And my mother’s mother. And being near family.

There is profound loss alongside profound hope every Mother’s Day weekend for me, but especially since then.

My daughter is the continuation of a maternal line of strong women, of those who resisted, in ways seen and unseen, what society said that they could do.

But she also could be the continuation of a maternal line that suppressed so much rage and denied themselves the love they so freely gave to others.

I am the continuation of both those lines, embracing our legacy of resistance and trying to allow myself to feel the rage I carry that my mother, aunt and grandmother did not feel safe to express because of the consequences that might come to them or their families, trying to allow myself to acknowledge that I deserve better, that they deserved better, that my daughter deserves better.

This Mother’s Day has added complexity as I wait for news of my sister, a sister with a shared father but another mother and maternal line, who I have never met in person, but who I hold dearly, and who brings her own stories that I do not know yet.  I know, though, that she holds stories of resistance, and that she has courage similar to my own mother’s in seeking to begin life anew in a country that is not her own among people that are not hers, not yet, but who I hope will be. We will hold her close. First though, I hope her mother can hold her close.

But in addition to all of this, Mother’s Day begin in May which is also Asian Pacific American Heritage Month causes me, today, to pause. It is another layer of loss for me.

As a second generation Asian American, I mourn how quickly I’ve lost connection with my Taiwanese roots.

I struggle to reclaim some of those ties to my maternal line and their histories so that I can share them with my daughter.

My mother, having died when I was an adolescent, before I had the wisdom to embrace her wisdom, and her mother having transitioned before her, left me untethered to their histories. Now, I want to reconstruct these ephemeral moments that seem to be blown into the wind, transcribed in short notes, in script I still can’t read, with my cursory Chinese language skills.

I feel the loss so deeply within me.

There are layers of loss, layers of grief, layers of anger, layers of exhaustion.

There are also layers of resistance, layers of hope, layers of a future that is not begotten by the limitations of our past.

They are both there, these layers, waiting to be acknowledged, waiting to be embraced, waiting for me when I least expect them.

For when I am most lost, then they will find me, and enrobe me in all of the complicated layers that make up this life.

Gratitude in Grief – 100 days and 26 years

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three bunches of flowers in front of two grave markers

I just want to pause to tell my community thank you.

It was an incredibly long day.

There was much emotion.

It was my daughter’s 100th day of kindergarten. The 100th day celebration was new to me when my son had it 9 years ago (and actually had it in both kindergarten and 1st grade, in Chinese and then in English, but I digress), but this time, we were prepared. In spite of 100 days of distance learning, her outstanding teacher put together a beautiful at-home celebration package including a Korean-English 100 days crown & a silicone 100 days bracelet. We added 100 go stones for our girl to count. She had a great day.

It was the 26th anniversary of my mom’s death today. Time was suspended 26 years ago, as my mom passed on a Friday when there was no school, giving me a full weekend of weird liminality before I went back to my normal life (I really don’t know what happened that weekend, where I slept, what I did). The day, I remember, but I remember its emptiness, rather than any fullness. I remember myself trying to record the memories of those moments in my mind because I knew I wouldn’t be the same after.

Today, however, was a day like many others — full of meetings: some I attended, some I led, some I engaged in, as if I was my whole self, today, which I am never really fully on this day of the year. Sometimes I pretend, like I did today, because my schedule is full and I could not avoid the normalcy. In better years (perhaps not in global pandemics), I give myself more grace and space. Today, my schedule was full, but in more moments than not, my heart was empty. I will likely not record any memories of today except that it is the 100 days celebration of my last baby and it fell on the anniversary of my mother’s death.

What I am grateful for, however, is the space to speak my truth, and the openness to receive love of those who walk alongside me in love and in grief.

This morning, already exhausted, I posted on Twitter about the emotions of today. I immediately received many messages of love and solidarity. Throughout the day, friends texted and messaged me to check on me, offering to talk if I needed anything. My husband ordered me food although I did not feel like eating. My children made me laugh. In one of my many meetings, I reconnected with a former credential student who it was a joy to hear from again. I got to participate in a community chat that reminded me to reclaim my leadership even in moments of vulnerability.

There are sparks of joy in the sorrow.

February 3 is never easy for me.

It is always heavy, and usually hard.

But it reminds me of the deep roots that cannot be breached by death, roots of love and of ancestry, of strength of character and survival, of freedom and faith, of community and support.

So I end today sad, as is to be expected, but grounded in gratitude, and buoyed by love. My mother’s love, my family’s love, my community’s love.

Grief & Love

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My mother and me as a toddler wearing a birthday hat

Grief is so hard.

It comes out of nowhere and seems to be everywhere all at once.

I had a beautiful, wonderful day.

And then, it crept in.

Slowly at first, through inklings of self-doubt.

Then a bit more steadily, like a fog determined to roll in.

And now, it is here.

With me.

Everywhere.

Sitting in my heart as I watch my sweet little girl coloring a rainbow.

Sitting in my throat, a stifled flood.

It’s been so long.

26 years on Wednesday.

But my love is deep.

And my grief is fed by the depth of that love.

It is here.

With me.

Sitting in my heart as I watch my sweet little girl coloring a rainbow.

Sitting in my heart as I watch my husband help my son take apart a pen and put it back together.

I wonder if they can take apart my heart and put it back together as easily.

Sitting in my throat, a stifled flood.

Spilling over, running down my face.

It’s been so long.

My love is deep.

It will sustain me.

But grief is so hard.

Holding Space When Humanity Shows Up

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3 bouquets of flowers at a gravesite

Showing up for my foremothers with flowers & gratitude

It’s been a long week, full of humanity.

Way back in February, I gave a TEDx talk on humanizing pedagogies, which in short asked what might happen if we re-conceptualized our perception of excellence, specifically educational excellence, but generally was really talking about what happened if we really started listening to and learning from one another. This week, that talk finally went live on the TEDx YouTube channel, an exciting moment I’ve been waiting for, well, throughout the entire pandemic-borne time of social distancing.

It dropped on a day when I had a very human and humbling moment, saying something out of frustration that didn’t assume the full humanity of a student, within virtual earshot of the student. I took responsibility and owned the impact of my words, but it certainly was not a shining star moment, and it led to a restless night and some good use of the skills I’ve been working on in therapy.

I realized that my reaction to this student, my assumptions of intention, my frustration was bred from my own sense of internalized perfectionism and internalized expectations of performance. This happens a lot when there are situations in which I feel I am dealing with entitlement or where I am working to meet someone 95% of the way, and they want me to move even further. I feel angry, angry that I’ve had to work so hard to get to where I am when others feel that they deserve time, energy and efforts that I have given and given and given at the expense of myself and my family.

Tonight, I read responses from a survey designed to get feedback from students about their online learning experiences. When one student responded, “Nothing” to the question of what professors, the program and university had done to support his online learning, I felt struck, as if all of the efforts that I have put into making this semester work for us all meant nothing.

I also feel these feelings, this frustration, sometimes towards my family, like all I do to keep us afloat, to support their learning and growth as human beings, to love them in the midst of big feelings I am struggling with, is not enough.

I know this is misdirected anger at myself. I hear the echoes of their humanity, or see them struggle and I feel a sense of my own inadequacy.

But it is not inadequacy, it is humanity.

They are teaching me humanity.

This weekend, I posted a Twitter thread after listening to a beautiful conversation that the Black Gaze Podcast (Drs. Shamaine Bertrand & Kisha Porcher) had with Dr. April Baker-Bell about Black language and linguistic justice. Hearing this conversation reminded me of where the internalized perfectionism and expectations of performance came from. It reminded me that these words that I swallow, that only rarely escape (and that I beat myself up for when they do), that this anger, comes from internalized oppression, from years of not feeling good enough around a society that I tried to prove my worth to, instead of accepting that my worth was in me.

Here’s the thread (revised slightly because I caught grammar mistakes in the first tweet that irritated me so I have to correct them now):

Let me tell you, I am declaring being done w/ the shame spiral & apologizing for my #AsianAmerican identity. There’s a lot of work to do as a community, but we can’t do that work if we can’t acknowledge that shame is part of white supremacy that keeps us in our place/

First, I want to shout out Black feminist & linguistic scholars, including the fantastic @BlackGazePod convo w/ Dr. @aprilbakerbell, @DrPorcher & @dr_s_bertrand. Your unapologetic stance that Blackness will save Black people reminds me to stand in my own truth/

Okay, and also shout out to the fantastic essay by @poetpedagogue that reminds me that we cannot abolish systems that promise us opportunity if we play by the rules until we conquer our own internalized oppressive mindset/

So here’s the thing, like many #AsianAmericans, I have made choices, my parents & ancestors made choices. For me, those choices have been rooted in assimilation for survival bc they thought it was the best option/

I am making different choices for myself & my own children, to embrace who we are and reclaim our complicated identities as #AsianAmerican as #TaiwaneseAmerican, as descendent from Han colonizers of Taiwanese indigenous people/

As people who have made choices or had choices made for us that separated us from linguistic identities that themselves were cloaked in language and cultural oppressions that we don’t know, but are our histories/

But I am not ashamed. Part of humanizing ourselves & others is the true belief that people do the best they can w/ what they have & that people, even the best of them, have human moments. When we know better, we must do better, but sometimes even then, we stumble/

Now, what there is for me to do, is the hard work of reclamation, of building community from an insider-outsider space, of listening/ learning/ seeking/ speaking, not from a space of shame, but from one of power, of visibility w/o performance/

Last thank you to @DrK_WhiteSmith for reminding me that we can be responsible for our actions w/o apologizing for ourselves. #Nomoreapologies for my existence. I will own my mistakes & my humanity, but I refuse to apologize for who I am. /end

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Today, I went to put flowers at the gravesite of my foremothers (my mother, grandmother and aunt). Their strength gives me the strength to demand better for myself and for my children, even though I will falter along the way. Even though they faltered along the way.

We are always only human. We are always only learning.

And I am holding space for myself to be however I am, even when I am so imperfect.

And I am proud to be who I am, even when I am so imperfect.

This is the hard work of reclamation.

Reclaiming space to be exactly who I am, in each moment.

Holding space and striving to be in integrity with my most powerful, generous, and loving expression of self.

And loving my full humanity.

Embracing Agency

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A heron sitting on a body of water above its reflection

Image by Mabel Amber from Pixabay

I am doing a lot of learning and unlearning lately.

In my last post, I wrote about the importance of my son being seen and recognized as a leader, something that I worked so hard for all of my life, but which felt so elusive in my youth.

Following that post, he received word that he had been offered a position on the youth leadership team for which he applied.

He had been chosen.

Then he told me, “But Mom, I think I’m going to respectfully decline.”

In my head, I thought, “Wait, what?! But you went through all the trouble of applying and these people see your potential and this is such a growth opportunity for you, and I just blogged about this!”

Fortunately, only some of those words actually left my mouth, and not in those ways. I asked him why he decided to decline.

He responded, “I just don’t think it’s the right thing for me. I went to the orientation before they chose people and heard more about it, and I still don’t feel like I have a lot to contribute to the team. It just isn’t something that I truly feel passionate about.”

This was a good answer.

But, it was so hard for me to let go of this opportunity…for him.

I pushed a bit more, “Well, are you sure? I mean, it’s an honor to be chosen and they feel like you could contribute something, and I’m sure you could contribute something even if you’re not sure what yet.”

He stood firm, “Yeah, I just think that it’s important to really be passionate about something that’s going to take so much time. I don’t want to just do it to do it. And, I think it would conflict with Tae Kwon Do.”

So, that was it.

He declined the spot, and went on with his life.

My son teaches me a lot, but this was an especially important lesson.

Sometimes, life gives you opportunities that are just not in your lane. Or, they’re in a potential lane, but they’re not your passion.

You can be like him and say no, and move it along, so the opening is there for when your opportunity does come.

Or, you can be like I have always been in my life, rushing to say yes because I’m honored by the opportunity or because I’d be good at it or because I feel like I should do it, in gratitude for someone’s belief in me, even when I know that I don’t likely have the time or energy to take one more thing on.

When I say yes in the times I should say no, it always comes back to confront me.

And while that discomfort also teaches me, and makes it less likely for me to say yes (to something I should say no to) in the future, it teaches me from a different place than my son’s lesson.

My son is reminding me to stand in my truth, the knowledge of myself, and faith that other opportunities are around me and will come to me.

He is not worried that he will never have another chance to be part of a team because he knows who he is as an individual.

And he is loved, even when he makes choices that make the tiny inner tiger mom inside me cringe.

That tiger mom self is much harsher on myself than on him.

So, what have I learned in this last week:

  1. We can apply to things we’re not sure we want. We can make choices when the choices are ours to make. We can say no.
  2. Sometimes we’ll say the wrong yes or no. It will still be okay.
  3. The best choices are made when we are fully aligned with our passions, and choose from those places.

I am grateful that I am growing, and learning with and from my family and myself during this time. It is a gift that I am not taking for granted even though sometimes it is uncomfortable.

I am reclaiming my agency and learning to embrace my imperfections, reminding myself that if I keep bringing myself authentically to my life, the doors to opportunities aligned with my true passions will open up.

Being Seen, Being Recognized

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The author and her son standing back-to-back facing the camera

When I was in elementary school, I always wanted to be the class representative, but I don’t remember ever being chosen for student council.

I thought that if I continued working hard at my studies, helping my classmates, and helping my teachers, my peers and adults around me would see my “leadership potential.” I worked as hard as I could to be seen as a leader.

At the 6th grade graduation ceremony, there was one student who would be recommended from our school to be the delegate to the 7th grade Associated Student Body. I was so hopeful that it would be me. I really wanted to start off junior high contributing to my school and knowing people, and what better way than a summer where I would get to work with other leaders?! (Did I mention I was a little nerdy?) I had represented my school in various district competitions as an elementary school student (from spelling bee to Math Counts) and I had been one of the first students in my elementary school to be placed in the highest level math AND English classes.

I waited with baited breath for the student leadership award to be announced.

It wasn’t me.

It was Amy G, the elementary school student body president.

Looking back on this moment now, this probably should have been a given. Student body leaders in elementary school are destined to be student body leaders in middle school and high school…and maybe in life.

Throughout middle school and high school, I tried to run for or show interest in leadership in a variety of ways.

But I was never elected, never chosen.

I excelled academically. I got good grades, tons of academic awards, even scholarships. I was even voted most likely to succeed.

But I wasn’t seen as a leader.

Okay, so grown up me sees model minority stereotype & bamboo ceiling written all over all of this, but little (or at least younger) me didn’t know any of that.

Little me just thought that no one would ever think that I was a leader.

Little me thought that I would never be able to contribute the way I wanted to.

Big me thinks this “not a leader” thing is somewhat hilarious since most of my adult/professional life has been dedicated to servant leadership and now, there are some days where I wish people would recognize my leadership capacity a little less (okay, not really, actually, I just need to learn to set better boundaries). Something shifted somewhere along the line. Maybe it was being around others who, in small and large ways, began to see me. Maybe it was finding and developing my passion. Maybe it was finding and discovering more about my identity. But something shifted. Nowadays, I feel seen for who I’ve always deep down known I was. I feel recognized.

(There are also some days where big me still feels like I’ll never be able to contribute in the ways I want to, but for different reasons. That is less hilarious, but I digress.)

Anyways, fast forward 25+ years…

Last week, my 14 year old got an e-mail at his school account. Someone had nominated him for a youth leadership position, a group of youth who would do community work and speak about the impact of COVID on various communities.

When he showed me the e-mail, he said, “This seems really cool, but I’m not sure that I could do this. I don’t really like to speak to people I don’t know. And this seems like you’d have to be cool and have knowledge and be able to tell people what you believe.”

Trying not to pressure him, I responded, “Well, I think you’re cool, and I think you’re well spoken, and you have a lot of knowledge.”

He replied, “You’re my mom. You have to think I’m cool, and I’m not cool, and I can’t speak to other people, and I have knowledge, but I get nervous when I’m trying to explain it to people I don’t know.”

So then, I said, “Well, you can always apply and find out more about the commitment and then if you get chosen, and you don’t feel like you want to do it or you can, you can say no.”

He looked at me, and said, “You’re smart. I didn’t even think about that. Okay, well then, I’ll try.”

He began the application and on the first question got stuck, telling me he didn’t really have any experiences related to COVID. In talking, he felt that because we have relative privilege compared to so many others, he didn’t really see his experience as valuable or contributing. We talked through it. He wrote some things, a lot of things. Then he finished the application on his own and turned it in. At multiple times in the process, he expressed his own self-doubt as to what he could bring and why someone would nominate him.

He doesn’t see himself as a leader, at least not that he would admit to me, but he does know that he’s someone that has always wanted to contribute to something greater than himself.

I always have seen him as a leader, but perhaps, I’m his mom so I have to think he’s a leader (I don’t actually have to think that, but I do actually believe that). I have also always wanted him to have opportunities to contribute.

More importantly, in this moment, some other anonymous adult in his life, related to school (because no one else would have that address for him), sees him as a leader too, or a potential one, at least.

Mama me couldn’t be prouder.

Someone saw my son the way I’ve always seen him.

In the contrast of how I wished to be seen as a child and adolescent, and how I’ve seen my son recognized, in ways that surprise him, I feel healing and hope.

Every child deserves to be seen for their potential.

As a mother and an educator, I’ve realized this week that one of our greatest roles is standing for the greatness that people may or may not recognize for themselves, within themselves. Our task is to see that greatness and to recognize it, to nurture it and to grow it, to support it and to be with it, in moments of doubt.

Greatness is a gift.

It’s a gift we all have.

If it is unseen and unrecognized, it can take much longer for that greatness to manifest, if it is able to come to the surface at all.

But when it is seen and recognized, particularly by others as young people, it allows us to be our best selves and make our most authentic contribution to the world around us.

I had to do a lot of work to embrace my own greatness. My son will also have a journey towards embracing his greatness.

It did not look like I thought it would. I am imagining that his greatness won’t look exactly the way he pictured it either.

My hope is for more joy in his journey than mine, and that we will learn to see ourselves and recognize for ourselves that which those we love see around us each day.

A Post for Mother’s Day

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My mother and me as a toddler wearing a birthday hat

This is a post for Mother’s Day.

But, really, it’s a post about intergenerational healing that has been a process for me, and that has brought me peace, for the first time in 25 years on Mother’s Day.

My mother died 25 years, 3 months and 1 week ago. I was 16 years old and a pretty normal second generation Asian American teenager. I say that now, because it has taken me a long time to realize this, because it took a long time to understand that the identity conflicts that I was experiencing internally, and the identity conflicts that my mother and I were experiencing between us, were actually normal.  Because of who I know my mom was and because of who I know I am, I know they would have been resolved eventually.  It was painful before she died.  It was traumatic after she died. But, as I’ve come to know her more through others, and as I’ve come to accept not only myself, but the complexities of my identities, I stand in the truth that we were alright, and we would have been great, and we are both whole.

My first two children found me 16 years ago.  My oldest twin daughters were students at the middle school where I taught.  Just a few months after I married my husband, they approached me, and asked if we would adopt them from foster care.  They had lost both their parents, parents they loved deeply. They had experienced, as children, the pain of structural racism and systemic inequality. They were ready to rest their feet.  When they asked me to become their mother, I remembered the pain of being their age without a mother.  I tried my best to provide a place for them to rest their feet.  I tried and try my best to be a mother who listens, advocates, loves, and empowers. It is complicated, but my love for them is deep and constant.  I know that it will forever be complicated because all mother-daughter relationships are complicated, even ones entered into with hearts that truly desire to love one another, and because trauma caused by structural racism and anti-Blackness can’t be erased by a happy adoption story.  But, as I’ve come to love and accept my daughters for exactly who they are, and I’ve come to accept myself for exactly the mother I am and can be in any given moment, I have come to stand in the truth that we are all doing the best we can and that, as best we can, we love each other in our own, uniquely human ways.

My oldest daughters were born in November.  My mom’s birthday is also in November, near Thanksgiving.

My son was born 14 years and almost 3 months ago, on a cold February day. I had not planned to have a biological child when I found out I was pregnant with my son, partly because we had barely had time to adjust to life as a married couple before our daughters came to us, and I was concerned that a new baby (and a biological child) would be even more complicated for them than for me.  But frankly, I hadn’t planned for my girls either (or my mom’s sudden death, to be honest). When my son was born, things did become infinitely more complicated in my family, and I began to completely lose myself.  I was so sick when my son was young. I wanted to disappear because I felt so unable to heal myself, support my daughters and parent my son.  It was, without a doubt, the hardest time of my entire life.  But my son was born with the wisdom of his mother and a deep love for her, for me.  His love gave me a reason to live when I wasn’t sure that I wanted to, and for years, I worried that he absorbed the trauma of my physical presence and my spiritual absence. But, as I’ve healed, he has too. He will always have an old soul. He and I will always be connected in ways that are perhaps “beyond our years,” but he is also a super goofy kid who knows he is deeply loved, and who tells me when he thinks I’m wrong (sometimes more loudly than I want to hear).  He is resilient. I am resilient. He is my heart, and the heart of my healing.

My mom died in February. My son was born in February, on the day after Valentine’s Day.

My youngest daughter was born 5 years ago yesterday, on the Friday before Mother’s Day. She is my mini-me, without a doubt.  I have often told people that she is who I would have been if I had been raised by me.  She is powerful and assertive with those she loves, yet reserved and unsure with strangers. She is brilliant and bright, but sometimes lives in the shadow of her differently gifted older brother. She has big emotions and isn’t afraid to show them.  She is strong-willed beyond belief. And that girl loves her mama with her whole heart.  All she wants is for her mom to take a break to play with her.  She does not recognize my trauma. She brings me tissues when I cry and then goes to play. She asks questions that I would have been worried or afraid to ask. She asks questions about the grandma and grandpa that she doesn’t know (my parents) while being wholly loved and adored by the Abuela & Abuelo that she does know.  She is light and life.  I know that, because of who she is, and because of who I am, because we are unafraid of one another, and because we love one another fiercely, that we will have conflicts.  But, I will stand in my love for her, and leave many words for her, so that she knows how deeply she has been loved and will always be loved.

It is Mother’s Day.  My daughter’s birthday was yesterday. Her life will always be tied to future Mother’s Days.

This is a post for Mother’s Day.

It is my gift to myself, the gift of recognition and love. The gift of peace in the process of healing. The gift of acknowledging all the complexities and reverberations of trauma across families and generations, and standing in love today and the possibility of beauty.  It is a gift of redemption and a belief that the ties of my children to my mother are not by accident.  We are gifts to heal our ancestors. They are gifts to strengthen who we become, even through moments of pain and loss.

Happy Mother’s Day, with love.

 

Two Roads Diverged

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When my son first began studying Mandarin in kindergarten, it was really because I was behind the ball on kindergarten registration and didn’t get him into our public bilingual Spanish school. I wanted for him, as multiracial, multiethnic person, to have connections with his heritage cultures in some way, and I wanted to him to have a connection to his Asian American identity that I had struggled with for so long.

Over the last 9 years, he has continued to learn Mandarin, in dual immersion, Mandarin immersion, and heritage school settings.

In the last few weeks, my husband and I talked with our son about continuing one more year of Mandarin next year. This year, for the second year in a row, has been an increasing struggle for him to stay motivated and next year, we know high school will be more intense for him.

He said he’d prefer not to continue in Chinese school next year.

I believe in listening to my children when I can. He’s old enough to make that choice in his life, and while he would do what I asked him to, I also respect him enough to let him make this choice.

I didn’t realize how deeply it would affect me, nor why it did.  At first, I was both resistant and hurt. It was only one more year.  He could do this.

I didn’t ever go to heritage school and my Mandarin is the worst of anyone in my generation of my family.  Being the youngest by several years in my family, I wasn’t around Mandarin (or occasional Hokkien) as much as my older brother and cousin. I’ve carried it as a badge of shame around my family for a long time.

I grew up in a very white suburb of Southern California (at the time) and the nearest Mandarin heritage language programs were a freeway drive, a fee, and a philosophical gap away — distances that were hard to bridge.

My mother, a single mother who would have braved the freeway and paid the money if she thought that Mandarin heritage school was the right thing for me, never pushed me to go to Chinese school, likely because she was told as a new immigrant that the greatest way to assure her children’s success was to make sure that they spoke accent-free English.

I know she wanted me to learn Mandarin, but she thought that by being around Mandarin speakers (like my grandmother, aunt & her), that I would pick it up, which I did until my grandmother passed away when I was 7.

Then, the Mandarin was more occasional and less important in my life, and I had no desire to learn it, wanting to assimilate into a culture where being cool meant having a crimp in my super-straight hair, sounding a certain way, and having an attitude to accompany it. (Somehow that was never quite enough to fit in anyways.  No matter how good my English was.)

Once, when I was in middle school, my mother asked my estranged father to send Chinese primer books from Taiwan so she could teach me Mandarin, and the zhuyin phonetic system, but that was quickly abandoned after a couple of lessons, which honestly, I have never understood more than in this current COVID-19 “homeschooling period” where I do not have the patience to deal with my own (deeply-loved) children and their general apathy towards learning something I find to be incredibly valuable to their lives.

My mother died suddenly in a car accident when I was 16, my junior year of high school.  At the time, and for a long time afterwards, while I knew this loss marked a huge rupture in my life, that trauma was a deeply personal loss.  I ran away from that loss in many ways, both productive and destructive, for over 20 years.  Some days, I am still running from it.

About 5 years ago, leading up to the birth of my daughter who will be 5 in a week, and moreso in the past 2 years, as I’ve reached the age my mom was when she gave birth to me, I have begun running towards my mom again.

I have begun searching for my history, our history.

I have begun reclaiming my identities as a second generation Taiwanese American woman, as someone deeply rooted in Asian American communities, as someone who can do something about reclaiming my own heritage languages and histories.

I have begun healing traumas, mine for my children, and my mother’s for all of us.

Through my PhD, I was able to achieve the doctorate my mother had to give up.

Through my relationship, I’ve been able to find healing and know what it means to have a partner who is also an incredibly present and loving father to his children.

Through studying Mandarin, I’ve begun to feel more comfortable with a voice that I didn’t have. I have had to show a lot of grace to myself to learn things that are seemingly simple, but that are completely new to me.

Through watching Taiwanese American (and Asian American) films, reading books by Taiwanese American authors, connecting with other Taiwanese Americans who I can see myself in, I’ve been able to find belonging that at a level I didn’t realize was possible.

By connecting with people who knew my mom, by starting a journey to find out more about her, I am beginning to build a history that I worried was lost. I am not so worried about this now because I know that our histories are more waiting to be found than in danger of being lost.

All of this has been profound.

But, it has been my path.

My son may not need to study Mandarin, in this moment, on his path. Or he may not need to study it in this way.

He has a path.

My own language study is profound for me because it is my choice. It is an act of healing and an act of love.

Letting my son choose his path in his own multilingualism and the embrace of his own hybrid identities is also an act borne from the same healing and love.

Two paths diverge…and adventures await on them both.

Grief and Mothering

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Let me first off say that last week was an amazing week.  So, so, so, so many great things happened.  I was selected as a speaker at our spring TEDx talks on campus, a chapter proposal for a book project that I’m excited about was accepted, a call I’ve been waiting on for awhile happened, I made progress on a research project that I love.  So many great things.

Last Friday, my eldest twin daughters also turned 30.  We adopted them when they were 15 so they’ve now spent half their birthdays as part of our family.  Our relationships as a family have been complicated in ways that no one could have prepared me for, ways complicated by our individual traumatic losses of our mothers, by struggles with mental health, by different understandings of how to show love and be loved, by our different races and the ways we walk through the world.  I love them more than the world, but that love carries with it a lot of complexity that I hold close to my heart because it is not fully my story to tell.

In 11 days, my mom would have turned 81.  She died when she was 56.  November and the Thanksgiving season have, for 25 years, been complicated by the deep sense of loss at her absence.  Even more so in the last 15 years since becoming a mother. I’m always prepared for it to hit, except that I’m never fully prepared for it to hit because grief is tricky that way.

This last weekend, I worked with a colleague and her research team to do some data collection at a local aquarium.  One of the families was a mother, father and the mother’s parents with their two young daughters. As I observed the family, I felt the profound emptiness that I have felt before, that my own children will not ever know my mother, and can only hope to have a few memories of my father, who is in his 90s, in Myanmar, and who I know so little about myself, having grown up largely without him. I felt a ridiculous sense of guilt at not being able to give my children that love that grandparents can provide. I felt tired because we sometimes feel so alone as parents, with my in-laws (who love my children deeply) across the country and my own parents not around.

After coming home from data collection, my daughter and I read A Big Mooncake for Little Star by Grace Lin. It was by request of my daughter who said that it was her favorite because Little Star and her Mama are so beautiful.  My daughter sees the beauty of Asian faces reflected back at her.  Although she doesn’t know it, she sees that she can be beautiful and included.  It reminds me that I didn’t see myself when I was younger and how my son still doesn’t see himself in his middle school reading and I feel moved and full of love, but also that there is still so much work to do.

Then yesterday, a text on the Chinese school group chat about the low test scores in the class.  Cue all of my guilt at my son being the only one in the class who doesn’t have any real Mandarin speaking family members in the house. Cue my profound sadness that I didn’t value learning Mandarin as a child when my family spoke it around me. Of course, I know this is structural and due to pressures to assimilate and earn worthiness. I know I am not alone because I’ve heard it in my interview data of Asian American teachers. But, I feel so deeply alone. And I wish that my son still had my mom so that he could practice his Mandarin with her. I wish she could see that I see the importance of embracing all of who we are, that I am proud of all of who we are, that I am sorry I didn’t see when I was his age.

I miss my mom.

In all of it, the joy of the last week, in all the struggles, in all the beautiful everyday moments and the hard, complicated moments of mothering and life, I miss my mom.

Cue grief that comes from the deepest parts of you at a time when you just didn’t think it would be there.

That’s it. That’s the post. Sometimes grief and mothering is just so hard.

Mirrors, Windows, Hopes and Dreams

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A bookmark featuring two of the four Jasmine Toguchi books by my friend Debbi Michiko Florence

Almost 30 years ago, Rudine Sims Bishop published an essay on windows and mirrors in children’s books (which was a keynote address delivered at the CSU San Bernardino Reading conference).  In this piece, Sims Bishop talked about literature as existing “to transform human experience, and reflect it back to us so that we can better understand it,” doing so through providing a window (“imagined or real, familiar or new, panoramic or narrow”) or, in the right light, a mirror for to “see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience.”

Growing up, I read a lot. I looked through many windows, but often didn’t see my own experiences reflected, as a second generation Asian American little girl.  This is not such an unusual phenomenon, even for children of color today. My friend, Sarah Park Dahlen and her colleague David Huyck have created this infographic that highlights the disparities in children’s book diversity, with animals actually having more representation in children’s literature than all non-white people groups combined. I loved reading, literature, the humanities, and studying all of these in school, which I probably loved more than anything.  But I also didn’t see myself reflected in the race and ethnicity of my classroom teachers.  While I loved my teachers so much, I remember only 1 teacher of color (a Latino male biology teacher) in my entire K-12 schooling.

This absence of representation internalized itself in ways that I didn’t fully realize or recognize until fairly recently.  In terms of literature, I thought my voice and my story (or stories of other Asian Americans) didn’t matter.  I felt invisible. I knew I wasn’t quite “American” as represented to me in texts, but I also didn’t really feel Asian. I didn’t embrace the integration of elements of my heritage culture from my immigrant mother and elements of my American culture, which was all around me, but didn’t fully reflect my experiences. I accepted the invisibility of my experience and figured that I should just aspire to an idealized (white) American culture that seemed so cool, but somehow just beyond my reach.

In the classroom, I didn’t think about becoming an English teacher.  Despite my deep love for literature, for people’s stories and for their histories, and despite my success all around as a student, I felt steered towards STEM fields (after all, both my parents were scientists and my brother was an engineer). I didn’t think that my stories mattered in classrooms, in literature, in history, so why would my presence matter? When I eventually did pursue an interdisciplinary major with a heavy emphasis on literature and social science and went into middle school teaching, I labeled myself the “black sheep” of my family.

Despite having taught successfully for many years, obtaining a PhD and becoming an academic, it is still hard NOT to refer to myself as the “black sheep” who wasted her potential in the sciences for a relatively low-paying, low-status profession. I fight this sense of shame internally often, even though I’m so proud of what I do and I know intellectually how important it is.  Sometimes, it’s so hard to feel that truth.

While these disparities and discourses continue to persist, even in 2019, I recently got present to the power (and joy) of challenging these silences and the deficit framings towards my own identities that I continue to battle, both internally and through a lack of representation in larger society.

I got there through reading bedtime stories and doing educational (interview-based) research.

Recently, my 4-year old, Jojo and I just finished reading the Jasmine Toguchi series written by my friend, Debbi Michiko Florence. I love this book series because it’s incredibly charming and it centers around the 8-year old girl adventures of the series protagonist, Jasmine Toguchi, a Japanese American girl growing up in Los Angeles with her older sister, mom and dad.  What I love about this series is that I could really see myself and my Jojo’s experiences in those of Jasmine. Jasmine is an American girl, but in each story, there are elements of her Japanese American identity that are highlighted, whether through the central event of the book (mochi pounding at new year, or taiko drumming for the talent show) or whether a corollary, but important subplot (girls’ day and Jasmine’s daruma). While we are not Japanese American (we are Taiwanese American), the parallel journey of Jasmine as an Asian American girl helped to normalize the bicultural nature of my life that I couldn’t really embrace as a child. (It also helps that Jasmine and Jojo both love flamingos, art and adventure)

Jasmine is so different than what I remember of Claudia Kishi, from the Babysitter’s Club, the only Asian American character I remember seeing in my childhood.  Claudia seemed way cooler than I was (I was much more like her older sister, “Mean Janine”) and she also seemed able to fit in with her (almost all white) friends seamlessly, which made me wonder what was wrong with me.  I appreciate Ann M. Martin’s inclusion of Claudia and Jessi, an African American character, in the BSC series, and the way that Claudia’s character challenged expectations by being the cool artist, but I never really felt like I could relate to Claudia, although I desperately wanted her experiences to reflect mine.

The desperation of wanting to relate to Claudia parallels my sense of wanting to feel like I wasn’t alone in my experiences of not quite fitting in anywhere. Only as an adult have I come to the realization that this false sense of loneliness and isolation is indeed false. For me, this happened through my research on Asian American teachers.  I’ve been recently re-listening to the interviews that are the core of this study, and with each interview,  I am reminded that the experiences that were so isolating to me throughout my life, are actually far more common than little me ever could have imagined.  The sense of difference, the shame of my heritage language and culture as a child, the guilt that I feel as an adult at having had that shame, the desperate attempts at cultural reclamation, the long overdue (and ever evolving) sense of racial consciousness — they are all themes in my data, themes in the lives of other Asian American teachers.

Although I wish these weren’t themes in the data, there’s a strange relief in knowing I am not alone.

This reminds me of the importance of telling these stories.

This brings me back to mirrors and windows, to the parallel journeys that remind us that we are not alone, that our experiences are deeply human, and that our humanity is not lesser than that of anyone else.

I am inspired by these stories and by the hope that these stories bring, that my own children will see themselves through windows and mirrors I could only dream about.