“The Heartbeat: Being seen can be more than scary.”
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We got into the car. My mother was yelling at me.
We were late, as usual. It was a 12-minute drive from our house to Beverly Hills High School on side streets.
My mother usually took this time to shout at me about what I should be doing better. To tell me how selfish I was. To tell me how lazy I was. To yell at me in Mandarin with words I didn’t know how to define, but definitely knew what she meant.
I hated going to Beverly. We didn’t even live in the district. I was simply attending because administrators had come to my junior high and needed more Chinese kids to up their minority quota.
“Who do you think is looking at you?” she’d say to me, when she saw I put a little thought into the outfit I was wearing that morning, trying to make knock-offs look trendy because my parents didn’t have the budget to buy anything new while they were deep in debt with their businesses. “Nobody cares.”
By the time she pulled up to the sloping expansive front lawn of our school, I was swallowing a lump the size of the planet.
I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of seeing me cry. I wasn’t allowed to slam the door, so I closed it firmly, then walked away without saying a word.
“Who do you think is looking at you… nobody cares.”
Those two refrains would echo in my mind for decades.
It became a dark scary truth that I hoped no one would uncover, especially when I tried to create a presence online by publishing articles, filming videos, posting on social media, and even writing my newsletter in building my business.
“Who do you think is looking at you… nobody cares.”
What if she’s right?
Today’s podcast episode addresses specifically this fear, the stories we’ve been told as daughters of immigrants that make us stay small when the world requires us to be big, that exists within so many women entrepreneurs and voices of color:
Do I matter?
Is anyone going to care what I have to say?
What are people going to think about the things I write about? The things I share?
Can I do this?
Yes. You can.
Because I am looking at you. And, I care.
If you’re curious about how self-promotion can impact your success, book marketing expert Stephanie Moon shares powerful mindset shifts to help you find inspiration to confidently share your story.
"Finding your voice and seeing authors do that really makes me so happy, you know? And it really allows them to kind of be themselves, you know especially right now as people are flooded with messaging and flooded with content. The only way you're going to stand out is if you're yourself. Nobody else can be you and nobody else can tell your story the way you did, you know."
~ Stephanie Moon
Tune in on your favorite podcast platform today or click to listen here.
P.S. If you know another womxn who’d like these insights too, feel free to forward this to them. I believe all of us will change the world.
