The Vulnerability ​Movement
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Please join me on a journey from grief to surrender, from fear to empowerment, from uncertainty to.... uncertainty. 
"When you become comfortable with uncertainty, infinite possibilities open up in your life."  ​
~Eckhart Tolle

The fight.

4/8/2021

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I took my mom to the hospital this morning.  

It’s a familiar drive, one we’ve become accustomed to over the past year.  We talk about the family, my dad, her doctor.  We talk about how far she’s come, and how acupuncture has been pivotal in supporting her through the intensity of modern medicine.  We talk about me opening a practice again someday.  She says I can make a difference.

I do not ask her if she is scared.  It is not a question worth answering.

Since the diagnosis last year -- Stage 4 Undifferentiated Pleomorphic Sarcoma -- her 77 year old body has endured two major surgeries, six weeks of radiation, six rounds of chemotherapy, experimental immunotherapy, multiple biopsies, and countless blood draws, CT scans, and MRIs.  Today is what we hope will be the third and final surgery to remove a large mass in her right thigh, a mass that materialized five months ago out of nothingness, ghost cells that played silently on a seemingly clear MRI before building a spiral around her nerves and vessels.  We can be thankful, at least, that they decided to say hello.  To give her a chance to fight.

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I'm moving to Colorado.

12/29/2016

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Roxborough, CO
It's happening.  January will be our last month in the Bay Area.  If this comes as a surprise to you, it also comes as a surprise to me.  But sometimes life just happens like that...

Some of you know that I purchased a new construction condo in Denver that closed in November.  You may also know that I've been deliberating a move to Colorado on and off for the past 2.5 years where the other half of my family resides, and each time have determined that my attachment to California -- to my friends, my community, my family, the climate, the air, the landscape, the comfort, the familiarity, the ties -- were too strong to break. ​

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The state of the world, my silent racism, and the choice we all have to do better.

7/14/2016

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Joanne, age 5. Around the time when things got hard.
It’s been a rough week.  I honestly have not known how to write, act, think, speak, express, or rationalize in the wake of the world’s current events.  I am heartbroken, and I feel helpless.  The whole world has gone mad.  
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Hate crimes, terrorist attacks, bombings, police shootings, civilian shootings, cities under siege and starving to death -- and here I am, in my cute little cottage in the suburbs, trying to build a life for myself with a still-heavy heart and less energy than is required to raise a toddler, and I am truly at a loss for how to respond.  Just today, a truck intentionally plowed through a Bastille Day celebration in France killing more than 70 people, and it's almost too much to process.  The mind goes numb.  

Day after day, I search for the right words.  I try to tease out meaning from my overloaded brain.  I know there is something worth saying, something profound that will lend hope and comfort to the suffering.  But I can’t find it.  My mind runs in all directions, and hits a wall each time.  It feels like I should give up and get cozy on my couch with a movie and a bowl of popcorn and let someone else figure it out.  Life keeps moving.  Onto the next.

But I cannot continue living my life in earnest with blinders on.  I cannot turn my heart against the suffering, and pretend it doesn’t affect me.  This, what is happening in the world, is happening to all of us.  Pretending that we are immune to the fear, violence, and prejudice that fuel these rampant ideas of separation and superiority is to pretend that we are not human.  Lives are being destroyed and disregarded on the basis of arbitrary power, and we all have our stories of power and prejudice to consider.  I am struggling through mine, but I am willing and wanting to learn.

John Pavlovitz writes in a post from July 7, 2016 about the deaths of two black men, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, at the hands of police officers:  
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“As a white man I realize that I’ll never escape some inherent racism. It’s built into my operating system. My whiteness and nearly five decades in the cushy shoes of privilege will continue to create blind spots for me that are almost impossible to discern without a great deal of self-awareness, a lot of help, and a teachable spirit. And even then, despite every way that I try to stay aware of it, I will still unknowingly participate in both personal and systematic discrimination.”

I so appreciate this admittance.  We really need more of this.  Less finger pointing and more willingness to investigate the ways in which we participate in racism, fear, and ignorance.  The lives that have been taken cannot be brought back, but we can make sure they were not taken in vain.  

We can allow these events to increase our self-awareness and work harder to be better, kinder, more loving and compassionate humans.  We can get curious about the emotions that surface when we’re faced with people and things that we don’t understand, people that are different from us based on color, religion, sexual orientation, financial need, mental and physical disability, criminal status, the list goes on.  We can admit that we have not walked a mile in another man’s shoes, that we feel inherently separate from that which we have not experienced, and that sometimes, what we don’t understand scares us.  This is being human.

What is not being human, is to choose fear and hate over love and empathy.  This pattern is learned, and it will destroy us.  

I grew up as a 1st generation Chinese girl in upper middle-class (white) suburban America, fearing white children for the racial slurs and jokes they would throw at me and turning against my race for the pain and isolation it caused.  
I grew up hating being Chinese.  I hated that my parents spoke another language that was used on the playground to mock me, I hated that my slanted eyes were an amusement to others, and I hated being simultaneously ridiculed and overlooked at school.

Treatment of this kind at a young age without any acknowledgment or invitation to discuss my experience with teachers, parents, or other forms of authority drove me to believe that the messages I received were true.  I was inferior because of my race, and it was within ordinary limits for me to be punished for that.  My response back then was to try as hard as I could to be white, to join them instead of fight them, to separate from my ethnicity as much as possible.

As I grew into adulthood, the racial landscape seemed to shift.  Moving out to California after college likely played a role in that, where being Asian was hardly considered the minority.  I got a job, I met a white man, I married, and those decades of feeling like an outsider were essentially erased.

It wasn’t until my early 30s that I began to recall this plight I had carried as a child, this silent racism I participated in against my own race, this belief that white was superior to non-white.  It was a “Holy Shit” moment, an amazement to me both then and now, that we can hold these asinine ideas about ourselves and the world without even being conscious of it.  I learned a lot about myself during that time.  But it is obvious to me now that I still have a lot of work to do.

There are layers upon layers of deeply rooted beliefs and narratives that need to be uncovered and investigated.  Prejudices run deep, and the messages we receive as children are not easily dismissed.  I look around today, and I wonder how much of my life has been informed by my race-related experiences as a child.  The large majority of my friends are white.  With one exception, I have only been with white men.  I have chosen to live in predominantly white neighborhoods.  I say I am all for equality and diversity, but there is very little diversity in my life.  Something is not right.

And after saying all of this, I still don’t know what to say.  I do know that I wish I’d taken a different path as a child.  I wish I’d had a safe place to talk about what I was experiencing.  I wish I’d been strong enough to fight back, to ask for help, to want to understand what was really happening instead of silently accepting that racial power exists and that I am powerless to change it.

But it’s not too late.  As long as we are alive we can choose to challenge our beliefs and rebuild our identities.  In our hearts, if we go back to the time before messages of fear, hate, and separatism were implanted, we can find our true nature -- loving kindness for all beings everywhere and a willingness to walk alongside our brothers and sisters with mutual honor and respect.  

May we use this tumultuous time to fuel our own evolutions and guide the next generation towards a more loving and peaceful existence.  May I have the courage to address my own demons and change the lens I've been hiding behind.  May all humans everywhere choose love and empathy over fear and hate.  What a wonderful world it could be.


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The million dollar answer:

6/25/2016

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​I am hitting a wall of doubt, uncertainty, fear.  My head is full of questions, my energy feels stifled, and I’m experiencing the kind of mind-spinning overwhelm that makes me want to disappear.  I am feeling grateful too, to have this summer to reflect and work things out and be with my family, but it’s marred by my constantly questioning mind, scouring itself for answers, wanting to know where my life is headed.

Here's the short list:
  • How am I going to finish my book?
  • What exactly is this vulnerability movement, and what is my vehicle for inspiring change?
  • Is coaching the right avenue for me?  
  • What is the truth behind my attachment to alcohol?  
  • Will I ever fall in love again?  Do I want to?
  • What are these deep insecurities that have plagued me since childhood all about?
  • How do I find the courage to practice vulnerability in my day-to-day, not at a computer, not in writing, but with real people in real life even when I am afraid of being judged and misunderstood?
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I look at this list, and I don’t know how to tackle it.  My mind is in overdrive, skipping from one topic to another, trying to make sense of my inner workings, waiting for that Eureka! moment when everything (or, at least, something) starts to click.  

But the spin continues, and I do what I can to stay in the center of it, breathing and observing and leaning into uncertainty.  Reminding myself that the answer itself is not the point; how I get there and my open-hearted exploration of this human experience is where the richness and the real answers lie.

And, I realize, I am grateful to have questions.  I am glad to not know all the answers.  What kind of life would that be, to stand in complete certainty about life and its mysteries, to know exactly where the road leads, never seeking and never scared, never challenged or stretched?

I choose to ask these questions.  Even if they haunt me, even if they scare me.  The road ahead seems to jog and branch and disappear into darkness, but I invite myself to stand tall with the discomfort of not knowing, to walk into fear with love and compassion, to continue seeking with curiosity, and to let go of urgency.  When we are uncomfortable, when we are scared, when our expectations are shattered and we choose to keep moving, this is the hard part.  It is also the place from which we can thrive.  

I believe I can create something great.  And in this moment, that is the only answer I need.  
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Answering the Call

5/3/2016

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Wow.  What an extraordinary few days.  Last week I was anticipating an upcoming interview with Google, and today I am embarking on an entirely new venture altogether.  I am going to finish my book.  I am going to expand my blog.  I am going to dedicate myself to helping those who are suffering (that's all of us) find grace and healing through vulnerability and self-expression.  I am going to teach.  I am going to coach.  And I am going to raise my daughter in the way that feels right for me, for us.  I am a million times grateful to have the resources to do this.  ​

My main fear about going back to work was putting Nova in preschool 50 hours a week.  She is not yet two, and though she is a flexible and social child, I felt our relationship would suffer after I'd just figured out how to open up and accept this single parenting thing, which has me running towards instead of away from her.  I know a lot of kids, kids younger than Nova, are away from their parents full time.  And I know that some of them only have one parent.  Parents need to work, financially we must provide for our family.  But somehow I manage to find myself in a situation where the surviver's benefits we receive from social security are enough to cover our rent and fixed expenses, and give us groceries and gas money, and the other basic necessities.  It's not fancy living, but it's enough.  And no, I'm not saving for the future (which my parents are quick to remind me of), but I need to make this decision in the present.  I gift myself this possibility.

I have a window of opportunity here -- a space where the light shines in -- this moment in which we have found ourselves a new home and it feels like the road stretched out before us is beckoning:  What will you make of this?  Will you step into your power, follow your calling, and offer your gifts to the world?

I have decided to go for it.  I have so much to share.  I am scared to death, but that's the whole point, isn't it?  Do what you fear, and you will never fail.  You can only grow.

I must thank every single person who is reading this and every single person who ever read anything that I wrote.  You were -- you are -- instrumental in my healing process, in my transformation, and in the courage I have to move forward.  Thank you thank you THANK YOU.

​Let's do this.
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    ​Author

    Joanne Chang is a writer, mother, widow and movement-maker.  She lives in Denver, CO.

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