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. ​

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:  
​“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.

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.

I came to the final realization that my continued pursuit of a degree and subsequent licensure in acupuncture and herbal medicine is not a sustainable path for me and my daughter under our current circumstances.  The hard truth is that I can spend the next two years investing a large amount of mental, emotional and financial energy into acquiring a license that will allow me to spend another couple of years pounding the pavement to start a practice or work my way up to a good paying job, which, if wildly successful, will just barely support me and my daughter as long as our cost of living does not go up.  It does not allow me to save for retirement.  It does not allow us to go on vacations.  It does not allow me to indulge her potential desires to pursue music lessons, or dance classes, or skiing, or summer camp.  And there is no room for error, or failure.  If I am not wildly successful, we will struggle.  This is why acupuncture is not the chosen profession for single parents with children under the age of two, in the Bay Area or otherwise.

I wasn’t necessarily surprised when I ran the numbers and came to this conclusion.  I was, in fact, surprised that it took me this long to do it.  I’m sure I knew in the back of my mind that the hard numbers wouldn’t work out, but I wanted to rely on faith and the idea that if I followed my heart, everything would work out.  I would pursue my dreams, one step at a time, and the universe would deliver to me everything I needed to succeed, including a new life partner and a father for Nova who would share in the responsibilities of this family.  In other words, somewhere in there, I believed that someone was going to come and save me.  But in these last few months I’ve experienced tremendous growth as a parent and as a widow, and I no longer desire to be saved.  I have full-heartedly accepted my role as a Nova's only parent, and rather than being afraid of it, I am appreciative of the opportunity to partner with my child, and to grow with her in a relationship that is uniquely ours.  

This is the gold.  It feels wonderful to embrace the life that has embraced me.  But it also means that I must save myself, and my daughter, and I need to put on all the household hats:  mama, dada, cook, cleaner, decision-maker, disciplinarian, playmate, and -- last but not least -- breadwinner.  It’s time for me to get a job.

Here’s the thing.  I can cry about it (which I do) and say that it feels like a part of me is dying (which it does), but from 2010-2014, I granted myself the freedom to do whatever I wanted to do.  I fell in love, I quit my job, I traveled extensively, I studied Chinese medicine, I got married, and I gave life to an amazing human.  During that time I led a life of abundance that many people never experience, and I made decisions that were impacted only by me.  I feel incredibly fortunate to have had that opportunity, and the basic reality is that things have changed.  The decisions I make are no longer so simple, and the structure of my life has fundamentally shifted.  I am, finally, at 38 years old, becoming an adult -- an adult who makes sacrifices for her family.  This is what we do when we have children.  My parents did it for me, their parents did it for them, and I must do it for Nova.  No other choice feels right.

Certainly, other voices rear their heads:
I’m not fighting for this because I don’t want it badly enough, and I’m disappointed that I don’t want it badly enough.
I’m running away because I’m scared.
I don’t believe in myself enough to know that I can make it work.
I am allowing fear, and money, to rule my life.

​I cannot dispute these claims.  They tear at my heart.  But this is where, perhaps, some element of fear is real, and healthy.  This is where we as parents want to do everything in our power to not fuck up.  We want to give our kids the world.  We want them to feel safe, and secure.  The opportunities I’ve had to shape and mold my life should also be Nova’s opportunities someday… and if I choose to make the right decisions for us, they will be.

This is Adulthood.