When I was younger, I journaled a lot. It was my way of processing my feelings that had nowhere else to be released as well as unconditionally and lovingly accepted. I would write in my notebook with fervor, trying to capture my adolescent problems in barely legible writing.

I’d start my entries with a simple “Dear Journal.” But why? Who was Journal? Was I really addressing my wide-ruled notebook?

Journal became my confidante, my friend, the one who knew me best. They were everything and nothing but certainly more than just a notebook. I might as well have written “Dear God” or “Dear Spirit” because, looking back now, I wrote as if I was speaking to a larger than life force.

When I wrote “Dear Journal,” I summoned an entity to witness my experience. I was only able to share so much with Journal because they were going to accept me no matter what I felt. They held space for me, listened and allowed me to work through my thoughts without rushing me. How I wish everyone had a Journal in their lives.

One response I have consistently received to my writing over the years is “I’m so glad you wrote about XYZ. I’ve been feeling the same way.”

I have learned that no matter how topsy turvy/random/overwhelming my feelings seem, chances are, someone and, more often than not, many people I know are feeling the same way.

In our culture, there is a lot of toxic pride in our pain/sadness/confusion/loneliness where folks holdfast, white knuckled onto it. It becomes a center stone of our self identity.

Because our culture overvalues independence and weaves it in with the idea of “success,” we are conditioned to work through pain alone because A) we are weak if we admit to all or any of the feelings, B) our pain is so unique no one can help us through it, and C) no one really cares about our pain because they are focused on their own lives.

We wallow in our pain alone, further imprinting into our psyche that we are our faults and doubling down on not looking weak or unstable by keeping it all to ourselves.

In a world where we are mass marketed to and are treated as a number, being the “only one” of anything feels nice and validating, and we will grasp at whatever that one thing is even if it is something terrible. We proudly claim the scarlet letter as our own, not willing to look around to see if anyone else is wearing the same one because if others also have that scarlet letter, then we lose who we are – we become just another person.

We have been conditioned to think that pain and anguish and feelings are meant to be felt alone because our pain makes us who we are. Our identity becomes wrapped up into our pain where the borders of each bleed into one another. The fear of losing that identity prevents us from sharing or seeking empathy and also prevents us from showing empathy.

The reality, though, is bonding over pain is much more powerful than trying to one up each other on our surface level happiness and success. Bonding leads to connection which leads to community and helping one another. It’s not that we can’t rise out of our pain with our own will power and knowledge and abilities, but it is so much easier to do it together.

Watching my soon-to-be 2 year old playing with Magna-Tiles, I was in awe as he built towers with the small square tiles. I had to hold myself back from offering him the other, more exciting shaped tiles. It was obvious he was working on mastering the squares and introducing the others would have been too much.

It made me think of the phrase, “Don’t be a square,” which means don’t be so boring or unimaginative or a party pooper, but what if being a square is exactly where you need to be? What if “being basic” and taking it at your own pace is the best way to honor yourself? What if “Don’t be a square” says more about the person saying it than it does about anything you do or don’t do?

One of my favorite things to take pictures of is the sky.

How deceiving is it that a three letter word can encompass so very very much?

I see the world made up as the sky, earth and sea (note: this is not an official scientific explanation). Approximately 70% of the planet is water, and the earth, by simple calculation, is ~30% of the planet.

But the sky has no end and no beginning. There is no way to quantify the sky. Like the earth and sea, it is home to animals, but it expands beyond that.

It is a canvas that the clouds, sunlight and moonlight color daily. The sky holds endless variations indicative of its infinite nature. In my dialect of Chinese, Heaven and sky are the same word. To me, the sky is where Heaven is housed, and Heaven (in a non-denominational way) represents infinite existence, knowledge and wisdom. When we seek answers, we look up. We expect wisdom to come from above, and we look for guidance from the sky.

The sky is not afraid to take up space. While earth and sea fight for the puny surface area of the planet, the sky expands further than the eye can see and the heart can feel. If the sky were a person, they would lay in the middle of a king size bed unapologetically stretching arms and legs to all four corners.

The sky is where dreams and desires come from. Where twinkling stars of faraway galaxies grant wishes. Where the moon magically influences our cycles and dreams. Where the sun’s heat drums up desires and lights our internal fires.

The sky is both earthly and pure magic.

How deceiving is that three letter word?

Kids have this gift of cutting through the fluff and getting to the most important question their inquiring minds want answered – “Why?” My youngest says “Why, Mommy, why?” in the cutest little voice with a hint of a Chinese accent.

Besides the classic “Why is the sky blue?”, from my family, I have heard…

Why can’t we have pizza for dinner (again)?

Why does that man walk like that?

Why don’t you and Daddy take baths?

And tonight, I heard “Why do male gymnasts wear pants (when female gymnasts don’t)?”

They see patterns and call it out when things don’t make sense to them.

Tonight’s question made me wonder – maybe all the various conversations/protests/changes we are seeing around diversity, equity and justice is because we are finally listening to our kids and not dismissing their questions or just expecting them to adopt the way things have always been. Maybe the reason some “Why’s?” are so hard to respond to is because we don’t like the answer but now they can no longer be ignored. Maybe our “woke” kids are waking us up.

Before I had children, I half-joked that when I became a mom, I was going to pretend that we were poor and I could not speak English and have them take on the responsibilities that I had as a child – basically have my children re-live my childhood.

Wow – what a total trauma response to my youth.

I’m glad that I never followed through because what I wanted to happen would never have come to fruition!

So what did I want?

I wanted (and still want) my kids to become grateful and good human beings.

But it would have been a disaster. Besides the obvious terrible ramifications of living a childhood where your mom completely lied to you, it would have never worked because my children are different than I am. They are growing up in a completely different time under a different culture.

I cannot raise my kids like they are subjects in a controlled petri dish. They are their own people and will have their own destinies. And who says that only scarcity and a hard life creates grateful and good humans?

Further, trying to perpetuate my own trauma into the next generation is not generative. This type of thinking is something we should all look to disrupt and heal within ourselves.

Have you ever wished you could go scorched earth because of a mosquito in your bedroom?

I have.

Multiple times in the past week in fact.

I’m a mega attractor of mosquitos, and I have very intense and painful reactions to their bites.

If you ever question the impact you can have as one little person in this big world, think of the mosquito currently stealthily zooming around my room.

Our thoughts and behavior reinforce the beliefs we hold. This includes the ones we inherit from previous generations as well as the ones we develop from all of the situations in our lives. Our primitive brains want to be right regardless of whether that belief is really beneficial or not. If we believe that money makes people evil, we will operate as if that is true and reject money because we don’t want to be evil. I heard there’s something like 500,000 such beliefs in our brains that dictate how we go about our lives – some in beneficial way and some limiting way.

Being someone who disrupts those limiting beliefs is a brave thing. It is not easy to swim against the current, to recognize those thoughts and to dismantle them, but know that it is possible.

We are all born artists, and we start imagining and creating as soon as our brains allow.

As children, all that we knew for a while was how to express ourselves – uninhibited, in 100% raw form. It did not matter if we were “good” or “bad” or what our medium was – we did it and we loved it. So simple.

But, for many of us, at some point, we stopped. There are as many reasons as there are people who no longer create. Maybe because someone told us we were not creative or maybe we were over-praised, or maybe other things became more pressing and the list goes on.

This must be one of the deepest wounds a person can hold – experiencing something that stopped us from creating with pure unattached joy.

This is why we must create now. Getting back to a version of ourselves who could create without abandon is a reclamation of self – a message to that young child saying, “I see you and you are worthy of joy.”

There is nothing more fundamental to the human spirit than self-expression through art.

The thing is everyone can do art of some form. It absolutely wrecks me when someone says, “I’m not creative” or “so and so can draw better than me.” Everyone is born an artist because we are all born connected to our sense of self-worth and create without abandon. There is zero concern of what others will think of us or our art. We imagine, mix and put it all out there to our spirit’s delight.

We marvel at a toddler’s every scribble because a scribble is a miracle. When does that toddler’s scribble become less magical? When does that scribble start being compared to another child’s art? When do they become less proud of it?

Art is innate within all of us. Everyone is worthy of art and art is worthy of them.