“The Heartbeat: As you face your fear, it decreases.”
For a long time, my therapist has been saying:
The more organized you feel on the inside, the less you’ll scramble to make life feel okay on the outside.
I recently posted an Instagram Reel, where I said, “What I love about being a divorced parent is…”
Those words, when I wrote them out, felt weird to write.
It felt odd to celebrate something I never knew would happen.
It was like I was learning new words on my tongue in a foreign language that I didn’t even know existed a decade ago.
If you can forgive yourself for not having the primary family you thought you wanted, that’s part of grieving.
Being a divorced parent isn’t easy.
But it finally clicked in my brain, after posting the video and seeing the comments from other mothers who’d embarked on a similar journey after me or potentially in the future, that I am not at my best trying to fit into a Leave It To Beaver lifestyle.
So… why would I make myself do that?
Being a divorced parent affords me freedom.
And freedom is one of, if not my top, my core values.
I value time freedom, schedule freedom, financial freedom in my business.
I value space freedom to know that my mental and emotional state is a priority.
When that suffers (and because of the magnitude of my ability to manifest) everything — and everyone around me — suffers.
I was born in the year of the horse, as was my daughter. To say that we buck convention or that we need to roam free would be an understatement.
Would I have chosen this path? As a divorced mother? If you had laid all the options out on the table, I probably would have told you “no.”
For any number of reasons:
Because we’re trained by society, culture, and gender to want something.
We’re not trained to be independent thinkers, despite how much Western culture promotes entrepreneurialism and individualism.
We’re also not trained to be critical thinkers, to go against the grain, to move the status quo. That takes a lot of work. Or, rather, it takes a lot of hard, conscious work.
Falling in line will always be the easier path.
But, I wasn’t built for it when I was young. When I used to talk too loud, laugh too loud, walk too loud. When I used to be the truth-teller in my family, speaking the same way that my daughter observes human behavior. No one around me wanted to hear it.
Because then, you couldn’t unhear it. You would then be at odds with yourself, rivaling against the woman you know you are versus the woman you were taught you should be.
The more that I have faced the fears I believed were too scary to reckon with, the less I have tried to people please everyone.
The more peace I feel.
The more I can let in the love.
The more that going after bigger, bolder dreams isn’t so scary, because I know that I can handle it after all.
The more I face my fear of success, the more I let in the happiness around me.
And I can put to bed these questions:
Who am I to be okay being a divorced coparent?
Who am I to celebrate the life that I have created?
Who am I to be happy?
I’m me.
Judy Tsuei.
And I f*ckin’ deserve this.
You. Do. Too.
Love,
Me
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