There is so much pain
Dear reader,
How are you?
Are you like me, barely able to think about anything other than the tragedies in the Asian community? Unsure about how to move forward, or just how to move through the day without a deep and heavy sadness?
Or are you watching from the sidelines, seeing the headlines and the news, but able to move your body without feeling a constricting tension in the back of your chest and shoulders?
Or are you unaware of what’s going on? What’s been taking place every day around the country and around the world for more than a year?
If you’re like me, I say to you: I feel what you are feeling and I see you in all your rage and frustration and sorrow and I want to pull you out of any cages of helplessness.
If you’re in the second group: Give a little bit of your peace to someone who you think might be feeling anything close to the way I feel. Send a message to them that says “I care about you. I see you. I will be there for you.” If that’s how you feel, and I hope that you do.
And if you’re in the third group, I say to you: Diversify your news consumption. Follow people online who don’t look like you or come from your background. And if you need a reason, consider everything you love and are grateful for in your life – your clothes maybe, your house, your car, your guilty drunk or hangover cure. Those jeans, the room you’re in, the ride that gets you from point A to B, your egg rolls or burritos – they were made by hands whose skin tone is darker than yours, more yellow, more brown, colored by their experiences which are every bit as valid and real and human as yours. Wouldn’t you like to thank them?
I didn’t expect to have to take so many breaks from publishing here. I wish I could get back to it, but that wouldn’t be truthful because the truth is there is no more important work to do right now than the work of dismantling the systems that have caused these murders, attacks, and microaggressions to persist.
What drives me most must be a sustainable energy. This sadness is not it. But sharing why it has inhabited me is because I’m a storyteller and there are a lot more stories to be told.
Take care of yourself so we can take care of one another,
Hope