[be]ing Asian American

This is pretty personal blog post. Which isn’t to say any of the others haven’t been, because they have, but this one feels more sacredly personal. It’s because I want to share a little about what my journey has been as an Asian American and understanding this part of my identity. 

Two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to sit on a panel to share my race and faith story, how I saw the image of God (Imago Dei) affirmed and unaffirmed in my racial identity. While I’ve done a lot of thinking about being Asian American, it has usually been in spurts of time about one or two specific timepoints in my lifetime. Rarely have I considered it from the beginning of my life and the way it has influenced my thought processes, mentality, or behaviors to who I am now. 

Sitting down to write my 15 minutes of story (which by the way was much longer than I thought it would be), I felt a bit lost. I wasn’t sure where to begin and didn’t think there was anything terribly significant I could share. I’m easily prone to comparing myself to others and measuring the perceived significance of my story by someone else’s I have perceived as far more significant. So I did not think I would be sharing anything of importance. 

Thankfully God knew what He was doing, and the weekend before I had had the opportunity to co-lead a mini workshop on helping college students understand their own ethnicity and faith story. I copied and pasted the framework I gave to them and used it to frame my own story. God took over and before I imagined I’d be done, the 15 minutes was completed. 

As the night began and the panel was gathered, the designers of the night thanked the “storytellers” multiple times expressing deep gratitude for giving them, and the rest of their community, the honor of listening to our stories and for our willingness to share deeply and vulnerably. Up until this point, I had kept brushing off their deep heartfelt thanks, not because it wasn’t genuine, but because it felt too much for me just sharing my story. It wasn’t something so crazy so why was everyone making a big deal out of it? 

But in that moment, after having written it all out, practiced it with my husben, and feeling the nearness of the night, the weight and significance of what I was about to do hit me, “Oh, these are some really honest and vulnerable things about my story I’m sharing with people. Not just about how I grew up, or what I was taught to believe, but how that is continuing to influence my viewpoints, my beliefs about others, myself and God. People here are going to know things about me some of my closest friends know nothing about, things I have just connected the dots of for myself. YIKES.” 

Because in all honesty, this isn’t something I share often with others. I hold the process, thoughts, and beliefs, rather close to myself and to those in my life I consider “safe.” Mostly because I am still doing a lot of internal processing, which can be messy and incoherent, and also because it’s such an important part of my identity and impacts so many other parts of who I am that I’m hesitant to give too much to others too quickly, especially if I’m not sure how someone else will respond. 

Over the last ten years or so, I’ve been learning more about my racial and ethnic identity and learning how to point out the broken bits and celebrate the beautiful parts. I’m learning the parts of being Asian American that I have believed falsely, the lies I have believed. While this isn’t easy, and it can be painful, it helps me understand where I’m in need of truth and through that process growth and beauty can happen. 

And as I have been learning how to celebrate being Asian American and wanting others to learn how to embrace, grow from, and celebrate their own ethnic identities, I’m learning I need to share my own story. I need to share my own story because we learn from one another’s stories and tend to relate better when it’s more personally told to us. I need to share my own story and be willing to share how I’m celebrating my ethnicity if I want others to be doing the same. 

It was a part of why I wanted to start this blog. As I’ve started to follow more bloggers and read more of their stories, I noticed a lack of Asian American female stories. While I’ve loved all the stories and bloggers I have followed, having people who can also share about their ethnicity that is similar to mine and their journeys is helpful and beneficial as it influences life and daily living. I wanted to be sure my blog had an aspect that reflected who I am as Asian American, not because I believe myself to be someone of superior influence who had the Asian American voice and expertise, but because I could maybe be another voice of color someone else could relate to. 

So if I stepped into this blog scene with that being an expectation, then I kind of need to allow that part of me be seen and heard. So here’s to the beginning of that and sharing my journey (although far from complete) of be-ing Asian American with you!