“The Heartbeat: What happens when we don’t use our voices.”
A weekly email for women entrepreneurs of color filled with powerful mindset techniques to create a life + business you love.
Over the last week, I’ve been wondering what happens to us as women.
That we don’t use our voices to speak up when we’ve been so obviously wronged.
Wounded.
Abused.
Why do we stay silent?
Is it because the person who committed these acts against us is bigger and louder?
Masculine?
More threatening?
I think that most of us, especially if we’re mothers, want what’s best for our children. We’re playing the long game — we know that if we’re patient now, by staying the course and keeping our children’s well-being as the focal point, then eventually, there’ll be elements of truth that are revealed without us having to be the ones to say what they are.
Or, at least we hope.
There’s an element of fear. And a lack of trust in ourselves.
Because of how long we spent believing someone we thought was dear, but who actually became a bully, telling us stories and pulling at the most tender strings of our hearts. They knew where our vulnerabilities were. So they tugged and tugged, and knotted our minds until we believed them when they flung expletives at us.
“Fuck you, bitch! I fucking hate you!”
We believed we were bitches.
We believed we were worthy of being cursed.
Maybe this person raised an arm in preparation to hit. Maybe this person said that they would prove you were an inept mother, because you suffered from postpartum depression, and in those throes of pain, you worried they could.
I believe that women are the strongest.
That we have more capacity for resilience and resourcefulness. That we can put up with more pain. We’ve had to. For generations. Persecuted, not offered the same opportunities, and having to do exponentially more for fewer gains than our male counterparts in a world structured for a certain ethnicity and gender to thrive.
That’s also why we stay silent. Because we shift the focus from what’s wrong to how can we make the most of a difficult, terrible, challenging, unjust, and unfair situation.
I spent the last week in Oaxaca, Mexico with my partner, and we had the most remarkable, spiritually guided trip. Every message from the Zapotec people we encountered was a message for me…
Blessings in an ancient language.
Burning incense to cleanse my past and only hold onto the positive.
Learning about my spirit animal in this lifetime and the other spirit animal that will help me transition into the afterlife — we saw one of the gates to the underworld as we explored prehistoric caves only opened to the public in the last four years.
Discovering the heart line, the one that weaves us through the experiences in this lifetime and into the next, because it’s all one.
And, amidst it all, I held grief.
Grief that I have not been able to feel for the loss of having my daughter only half the time. I spent the last few years rebuilding, rebuilding, rebuilding in every capacity (mentally, emotionally, physically, financially, legally) that it’s only now, as things are going extremely well, that my mind and my heart have said:
“Okay, now is the time. Now is when we heal the thing that has been too painful to reflect upon.”
One morning, I woke up before dawn and sat in the small dining area of our four-room boutique hotel. I couldn’t sleep. I took out my journal in the dim light, a cup of adaptogenic mushrooms in front of me in lieu of coffee, and I wrote and wrote, letting my tears fall onto the page.
It was Thanksgiving the night before. I was not with my daughter. I tried calling her father to FaceTime her to no avail. I watched my partner FaceTime his daughters. I heard their laughter. I heard their joy in connecting with him.
This week of wondering why women don’t speak up is in parallel to learning more deeply than ever before that you can hold a breadth of feelings at once — one doesn’t take away from the other.
You can be deeply sad while also feeling remarkably fulfilled.
You can grieve while celebrating the life you’ve built.
You can experience loss while also letting all the love in.
More than ever, I’m realizing it’s time to pour my heart into my book. To write the stories that want to come through to support other women going through what I’ve been through.
And, because I’m playing the long game, I’m doing it in a way where I’m being sure I’ll be protected.
Because I never want to let people try to keep my voice quiet for fear of the stories I will tell that will reveal more than they want to show to the world.
If you’re curious about someone else who believes that you should say “The Thing” anyway, tune in to Episode 105 of my F*ck Saving Face podcast today, featuring Jerry Won.
Jerry Won is the Founder & CEO of Just Like Media, an Asian American storytelling company home to the award-winning Dear Asian Americans Podcast, whose guests include Vice President Kamala Harris — and you’ll find out the one question he wants to spend an hour asking everyone.
