Wonderemployment

If you have followed my Facebook activities, you may have seen recently that I've been commenting EVERYWHERE about how we should stop celebrating Dr. Seuss. I've posted on every single idolizing event or post that has popped up in my feed in the past month, leading up to his birthday this past Saturday. I've emailed and private messaged local libraries, bookstores, our school district, and nonprofit organizations as well. In case you aren't caught up with why Dr. Seuss is so problematic, I'll share an example email I sent out, which summarizes my concern: Dear [school/library],  I am disappointed to see the upcoming event for families celebrating Dr. Seuss' birthday. While I know many generations have enjoyed his books, his explicit racism towards Asian Americans and use of offensive stereotypes of Black Americans immeasurably taint his legacy of humorous rhymes.  There has been a lot written on this subject and I hope that your staff will take the time to r...

This week I went to the  Center for Youth Wellness's ACEs Conference in San Francisco. It was really special to be able to attend this event because of the personal impact ACEs science has had on me. It changed the way I viewed myself and my life, and has also motivated my interest in public health and prevention. If you are not familiar with ACEs, it stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences. A groundbreaking study  from Kaiser and the CDC has found that childhood trauma, such as abuse, neglect, or household disfunction, greatly increases long-term health risks and likelihood of early death. A while back, Dr. Nadine Burke Harris' TED talk on this topic made the rounds on Facebook, and it is worth watching to understand the significance of this research: Being at the conference, studying this in class, AND thinking about early childhood trauma at work has been a bit overwhelming this week (like it may actually be giving me hives), but it is so important, I have to le...

August is a month of many milestones for me. This year Curtis and I celebrate five years of marriage. And it is also the tenth anniversary of my move to California. It's hard to disentangle the two things because moving here is how I met Curtis, and meeting Curtis is the reason why I've stayed. Interview Trip, April 2008 Growing up in Oregon, I never ever ever thought I'd become a dreaded Californian. Those were the shallow people, the people who drove too fast, the people who were raising prices in our lovely state. There was so much pride in being an Oregonian, though truthfully I didn't have any other points of comparison. In the last semester of college, I got the itch to get away. My thesis adviser forwarded me an announcement for a new program called City Hall Fellows , with sites in Houston and San Francisco. I had never spent time in either place, but I applied to both anyway. By some miracle I was accepted for a placement in San Francisco, and moved here ...

Earlier this week I was being introduced to the director of a partner agency. My coworker said, "This is Mai..." and the other person jumped in loudly with, "My WHAT?! My WHAT?!", clearly cracking himself up. I'm fully aware Mai sounds like "my", a possessive pronoun in English. And that it rhymes with "hi". I'm aware it's a name people may not be familiar with. I've heard every joke and pun in the book from the time I was in daycare to this very f-ing day. Part of my experience of racism has been that it can be dormant for awhile, letting me forget that I'm still viewed differently by the world around me. (The fact that it's not incessant is a privilege I recognize.) I'll be moving along with my guard down, when something ugly pops up and reminds me, "not so fast... you are not one of us, you do not belong here". People feel so entitled to name me, instead of hearing me, that I have previously gone an e...

Holly is turning two this week and I'm going to be making a peanut butter pie for her. When I was at Trader Joe's grabbing a box of graham crackers for the crust, I was hit with the memory of the last time I bought a box of these. I had been discharged from the hospital a few days after my c-section. I was given three different types of pills, all to be taken at different time intervals (4, 6 and 12 hours I think), and some had to be taken with food. With a newborn at home, I hardly got any sleep as it was, but then also needed to wake up at the right times to stay on top of the medications. Getting up was near impossible, so I kept a Ziploc bag of Trader Joe's honey grahams by my side throughout the night. I figured out that if I broke them up beforehand into bite sizes, I could stick whole pieces in my mouth while laying down and not get crumbs everywhere. They somehow tasted good any time of the day, but after that initial recovery period, I didn't buy graham cracker...

I haven't written in a few months, but not for lack of desire. There's been so much I've wanted to say about my experience in grad school so far, and there are even some pieces of writing I've done for class that I've considered sharing. But for the past 16 weeks, the stream of work has been unrelenting, and writing for pleasure and reflection has taken a back burner. Now that I can come up for air, I find myself struggling to string together thoughts. To start with the good, we did it!! We made it through the first semester of grad school. It's just one out of five, but I've been told it's the hardest since it has the biggest course load, and requires the biggest adjustment back into student life. But as of yesterday, here we are on the other side. I say "we" because this was truly a family affair. I am so proud of Curtis' hard work, and Holly's resilience. Some other time, I will write more about the logistics of how we've ma...

Last weekend I had to give a training in the city. I'm not sure that I've explicitly shared online that I am back at my former organization in Chinatown, leading a project to provide consultation and training to health and social service providers on culturally and linguistically appropriate services. Many times this consists of training staff on cultural competence/responsiveness/humility... whatever term you prefer. We call it "widening your personal lens". Over the years I have led some version of this training probably 50+ times. I've facilitated many other types of training too, with audiences of all sizes and types. I don't usually experience much anxiety anymore. I might feel a little nervous, or unsure how a new activity or piece of content will go, but that gut level of fear is gone.  But on my way to the training on Saturday, I was in knots. At one point on my drive there, I had to shove down the urge to cry. It genuinely surprised me, a...