I'm going to need you to keep going 🌼
(invitation to witness a pep talk to myself)
“I’m not allowed to fear my own power or capabilities. I’m meant to free them.”
-me, from a May 2024 journal entry
Do you remember that time senior year of high school when you spoke to your drama director through tears and asthmatic breaths about how the one solo you had for the spring musical revue was cut?
No, not because it was bad, but because the show already had a run time of almost 3 hours and that entire section would be scrapped — but that wasn’t your 17-year-old girl fault!
Do you remember how it took little to no overthinking to know that, upon learning this, you had to walk right up to her in front of your entire cast to express how much pain you felt?
Do you remember that during the next rehearsal, your solo was added back into the show?
Do you remember sitting in that auditorium, days before opening night, soaking in the words from the musical director shouting you out, calling that number you “fought for” as “one of the strongest in the show”?
Do you remember everyone looking at you and applauding you in affirmation?
Of course you remember. You think about it often.
When you’re nervous about approaching or confronting someone about getting your needs met.
When you’re feeling like shit and begin second-guessing how every little thing you’ve done up to that very specific point in time has been a “waste.”
When you’re covered in shame from being just a little too vulnerable and are unsure of how you’re being perceived in front of someone new.
Of course you remember, because this act of bravery is at your core.
You are not the timid version that keeps her mouth shut out of fear of stepping out of bounds with someone who holds more power than you (arbitrarily and colonially, tbh).
You are not the shell you retreat to when you’re in situations that make you feel like you have to shrink yourself (though, in all fairness, it’s a cute-ass shell).
You are not the anxious thoughts that tell you you’re going to flop because honestly, flop culture is a byproduct of hyper-perfectionism and capitalist mass consumption and, really, it’s better to flop than to not have tried at all!
Of course you remember because your core has never left the building and will never leave the building — the lights on that floor might have just been dimmed, flickering, in need of a new switch.
It’s in this remembrance that you keep going. You replace the switch. You find a better, more flattering light (even, deep down, you know you “could win this thing in fluorescent lighting”).
You keep going because you notice how those new circuits light up through every inch of you, extending to the people around you.
You keep going because, actually, it’s all you know how to do. It’s why you’re here right now.
Yes, there will be times when the “going” is slower than you’d like.
There will be times when the “going” makes you feel immortal.
There will also be times when the “going” makes you feel very mortal.
But the choice is always going to be obvious. You keep going because you know the cost of stopping.
You know the cost of yearning without followed action.
You know the cost of losing yourself in something (or someone) that never really saw you.
And when you are seen, like really seen in the fullness of your being, you’ll know it’s because you freed yourself and you kept going.
❤️🌱
journal prompts:
what is the force that urges you to keep going? give them a name and a story.
how does your body signal for you to keep going when your mind tells you to stop?
what are the stories you tell yourself about success? are they your truths or someone else’s?
reflect on the below quote.
some things that keep me grounded in the “going” of it all:
Keeping my birb alive on the Finch app (we don’t gatekeep here and in IMHO it’s one of the only good places left on the internet)
Knowing a woman is responsible for saving the California Condor
The Bay finally getting a WNBA team and me finally feeling like I can genuinely root for a local sports team that doesn’t center men
This hat (so good it deserves its own bullet point)
Living in a time where the aDmInIsTrAtIoN tries it’s best to erase the history and presence of LGBTQ+ folks but we’re stronger and smarter
Remembering that time is a colonial construct and your nervous system deserves better (so you better act accordingly!!!)
Being on the right side of history as Israel continues dehumanizing and starving Palestinians (take action against genocide here)
Getting ancestral reminders that I’m on the right path 🦋
updates you didn’t ask for but I’m giving anyway:
I’m so thankful to have been part of the Asian American Women Arts Association and Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center at SOMArts’s exhibit Brown Palms, Yellow Balms: Reinventing Caregivers of Color as a virtual artist. What started as a personal practice of releasing shame and learning to transmute that shame into art became this piece that is low key changing my life?!?!?! Looking forward to and trusting wherever this journey is meant to lead me.
Another place it’s leading me (in unexpected ways) is the SF LGBT Center’s Building the Block House Party where I’ll be vending everything in my shop* (and then some just for the Bay Area queer baddies)! If you’re around or in town, I hope to see you there this Saturday, May 31st as thee perfect prelude to Pride. 🌈