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I recently had the privilege of hearing Lisa Ong, Founder of Wishing Out Loud, speak during an organizational function. It was a pivotal moment for me. In my 20+ year career, I’ve never seen an east Asian female spotlighted as a keynote speaker at a company event. Lisa’s warmth, encouragement, and her mantra of “wishing out loud” unlocked something in me.

For the past year, I’ve been thinking about how I can support the AAPI community from an authentic place. I realized I could use the messiness and traumas of my life to lift up others. I want to help steer a new generation of AAPIs with trauma in their backgrounds onto paths of empowerment and healthy expression. It’s broad strokes for me at this point – but I’m wishing it out loud (thank you, Lisa) in a public forum. 

I realized I could use the messiness and traumas of my life to lift up others. I want to help steer a new generation of AAPIs with trauma in their backgrounds onto empowerment and healthy expression. Share on X

My beloved mom, now in her golden years, is sweet as apple pie. Back in the day, she was a classic OG tiger mom. She brought over from Korea the style of child-rearing that she experienced, which she would deploy with a colorful mix of Korean and English profanities that I now find endearingly hilarious in retrospect.  

She came to the United States married to a much older man, fleeing a home where she had been abused. The abuse followed her. Mom had me at 19. She was alone in the states, without family or a support system. 

I didn’t realize growing up the crushing burden Mom carried with her. I didn’t see her pain through her angry, violent outbursts. My stepdad and I did our best to love her within her limits. 

Mom has since found peace, God, friends, sassy style, and has fully bloomed into the magnificent woman I always knew she was. I’m on my way there.  

When I moved out after graduating from college, I had no clue how to navigate life in a healthy, self-respecting way. It took years for me to recognize and reject abusive behaviors in relationships. Years to begin valuing myself. And it took becoming a mother to understand what love was supposed to be.  

Some AAPIs walk around in this world fully killing it, bossin’ it up and completely confident in who they are and what they bring. Others carry a lifetime of traumas and/or behavioral conditioning they either never reconciled or faced late in their lives, and every day is a push-pull internal battle.  

So, these are the questions I’ve been contemplating: How do we build support systems and facilitate healing for struggling AAPI families while respecting cultural boundaries? How do we create deeper cultural awareness in workspaces that are trying to figure out what microaggressions and model minority biases even mean? In what ways can we connect with and lift up our AAPI youth so that they reject harmful conditioning, navigate life feeling empowered regardless of their upbringing, and hold on to that personal power throughout their lives? 

How do we build support systems and facilitate healing for struggling AAPI families while respecting cultural boundaries? How do we create deeper cultural awareness in workspaces? Share on X

Life and Lenny Kravitz have taught me to Let Love Rule. I want to root my efforts in empathy, compassion, learning, and humor. I would like to connect with some bold folks who aren’t scared of trying something new and going off the path to break through barriers. I want to reach out to those who are trapped in a generational cycle of abuse and trauma and can’t find their way out.  

It took me decades to find my purpose in life. And I’m honored to walk with my fellow Asian Americans on this journey.