Hey, AAPI family,
How are you doing in processing all of this? I hope you're taking the time you need for yourself.
I have been too, and yet it feels like I've also been going online more often than usual to seek out a kind of distanced observational community support system. I bet some of you might be doing the same. So that's why I wanted to process in writing while I'm over here feeling my feelings, in case you need to read through a small section of someone's currently messily organized mind.
I've been contemplating how sometimes I feel a pressure to share my truth in a very colonialized way, when my actual truth is that starting to stitch together my own stories of the intersections of racism and fetishization and gaslighting and misogyny feels, frankly, re-traumatizing. It's an intergenerational trauma that repeats again and again.
And at the same time, the intergenerational power of my ancestors, of the taotaomo'na and maga'håga of the motherland are calling me within. So I'll keep listening to their wisdom and be patient with myself.
So I'm still processing, clearly. And slowing things down and making space. And I hope you're doing the same.
So I guess all I want to tell you, is that I'm so proud of who you are. Take care of yourself in whatever way you need to. We each deserve the right to feel our feelings, to process, and to take up space, and that especially includes you.
Love,
Brigida