EPISODE 80: [PERSONAL ESSAY] FROM SLEEPING IN MY PARENTS’ CAR TO PUBLISHING A BOOK
SHOW NOTES
Today’s episode explores how a memory of mine was recently triggered, one where I spent a lot of my junior high years living in my parents’ 1980s Toyota Minivan, because they were carting four kids around, trying to save two ailing businesses: my father’s construction company, and the aquarium store they also owned. As they continued to dive deeper into debt, they would drive all over Southern California with us, going from suppliers to Home Depots, until they were too exhausted to drive the 45-min back home to the Westside.
So, we’d sleep in the van, parked in my father’s construction warehouse. We’d wipe ourselves clean in the early mornings via the deep industrial sink, my mother would drive us to LA and drop us each off at school, and then drive back to Rowland Heights, and home again to feed us, then repeat the whole ordeal again. When I heard Trevor Noah narrate a similar experience at his stepfather’s used car repair warehouse in the book, Born a Crime, I casually mentioned it to my husband at the time. He looked alarmed. I said the same to my current partner who paused, came close to me, and said, “You’ve been through more than most people. You’re a strong woman.”
We’ll talk about resiliency, taking radical responsibility, resources for healing (I’m loving the Brain.fm app!), NFTs & VeeCon, and more.
We also explore:
The Little Book of Tibetan Rites and Rituals: Simple Practices for Rejuvenating the Mind, Body, and Spirit that you can read on your Kindle!
FULL TRANSCRIPT
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
parents, life, opportunity, people, feel, continue, warehouse, growing, express, day, episode, create, la, eldest, moving, similar, memoir, early morning workout, live, support
Judy Tsuei 00:07
Welcome to the f*ck saving face podcast where we're empowering mental and emotional health for Asian Americans and beyond by breaking through taboo topics. Life may not always be pretty, but it is indeed beautiful. Let's make your story beautiful today.
Hello, hello. Okay, we're trying something different because my computer, my laptop totally went kaput. And so now it's being repaired. So I'm using a another laptop, I tend to get laptops sent to me all the time from different clients who I work with. So I have several instock, actually. So we'll see if this is going to create the same kind of sound quality as the previous episodes. But we are now in season three. And I wanted to update you that we've applied for a Google podcasts, kind of intensive scholarship training, we've applied for a Berkeley Center for greater good about intellectual humility. And we're doing all of these things to really encourage that this podcast continues to grow and that it reaches the right ears and opens up hearts and minds. And so if you'd like to support, we would love your support, you can go to fuck saving face.com That's fuck without the U and make a contribution there, you can send me money on Cash App, which you will hear at the end of this episode. And I've been turning that cash up into Bitcoin. So you know, all sorts of exciting things that are coming our way. So this week's episode is going to be about more of that personal sharing that so many of you have said that you love, I wanted to announce that I will also be speaking at the Vincent Lupo Park in San Gabriel on Saturday, May 7, from four to 7pm, where we will be having a block party and a community rally. It's called compassion and SGV presents block the hate. And it's an opportunity to really just amplify Asian Americans in the area and all surrounding just about the different issues that we face the different challenges and different opportunities for growth and support and connection. So I hope that if you are in town, you will come join us. There's an Eventbrite link in the episode so that you can sign up Tickets are free, and it'll be a wonderful opportunity to meet you. If you've been a listener and you're in the LA area.
What else has been going on? So I was talking with my partner the other day, and we were getting ready to do an early morning workout. It's kind of our mental health sanity check. And one of the things that came up during our conversation is the fact that I used to live in my parents car. So he kind of looked at me he paused and he's like, wait, what I didn't know this about you. I'm like, yeah, when we were in junior high, when I was in junior high, you know, my parents, their business was about 45 minutes away. So we lived in West LA, which they purposely chose to live there so that we could assimilate with the white people. And yet they drove 45 minutes each way, if not more, my dad was like the human Thomas guide, you could ask them about any street. This is before GPS, and before Google Maps and all that kind of stuff. And I could tell them, hey, I'm stuck in a little bit of traffic on this freeway. And he could navigate me street by street to get to where it is that I needed to go. But you know, he just went throughout all of LA and Orange counties to work with his construction business. And so my parents also had an aquarium store. And the aquarium store was in Rowland Heights and they were driving you know, if you've ever been in LA traffic, it is a fucking monster. So I don't know how they were able to bear it. But they did this every single day. And they had four children in tow. And so I'm the eldest and at that time, I was in junior high, and I'm nine years in age difference to my youngest brother. So they will cart us all around, and they would bring us from place to place so I would go with my parents during the summers, especially when we didn't have school. And we would go to different warehouses, different fish, suppliers, different providers, you know, scooping out fish, helping to bag the fish, helping to pick up supplies going to outdoor vendors going to Home Depot with my dad, and they were so exhausted by the end of the day that we would just pull up into the warehouse where my dad stored all of his construction tools. And we would take that Toyota minivan that 1980s Toyota minivan, put down the seats, put down some sleeping bags pass out there. Then we would kind of do this towel shower in the bathroom because there was not a full shower in this warehouse. It was just an office, you know, strip mall essentially. So it was just a normal
bathroom sink and then we would clean ourselves off and my parents would drive us all the way back to West LA to go to school, drop us off and then repeat and so I hated the summers If we weren't in summer school than we had to be carted around, we didn't get opportunities to do camp or to play or anything like that, that I do for my daughter now. And then also, you know, we were exhausted, like, these are some pivotal developmental years, and we are sitting there, late at night, cold in the warehouse, sleeping, you know, amidst sawdust, and just tools everywhere, power tools, all of that kind of stuff. aquariums stands that were half built all the things, and with my parents arguing like crazy with each other, they were suffering from extreme financial hardship. So all of this time was so chaotic. And I remember reading Trevor Noah's book, and he, it's his memoir. And he describes how he used to have to live in the cars that his stepdad had at this car repair shop, this auto repair shop. And it just brought me back immediately to what that was like to try and get comfortable to just being so uncomfortable. I remember getting my period when I was at this warehouse and not knowing what to do. Because, you know, not only did I not have those kinds of conversations with my parents, but there were no supplies, I was the eldest. So I'd be there with my siblings trying to figure out how to play in a gravel parking lot. When you know, my parents were just running around, what felt like with their heads cut off just trying to get to the next day and get to the next day. During that time it also because there was no kitchen, there was no way for them to cook for us, they would take us to Chinese restaurants and try to feed us and so we got very accustomed to eating out. And so in retrospect, I think about my grandmother's cooking, and how we just didn't really fully appreciate it. When I see photos or old VHS tapes of that time, I think about all that heart and that love and that cooking, and I just wanted spaghetti or, you know, just trying to figure out life at that time. And I find something that's really interesting to me now is that there are moments that I found myself in the last day or two, especially when I've been really overwhelmed, because on top of having a marketing and branding agency, one of my former clients asked me to come on full time, and because of the offer of equity and health insurance benefits for my daughter and all of these other wonderful perks, and just simply because they're a unicorn of a company in which I just love everybody who I work with, and all of the work that they do. Also doing that, in addition to this podcast, in addition to having the little book of Tibetan rites and rituals coming out through Ulysses press, and then now me pitching out my memoir. So there's just plenty of things going on. And I'm also a divorced parent, which means that 50% of my time is spent being a single parent and just doing everything on my own. Not really having an extended family, I have an amazing community of other moms around and I'm so blessed and grateful for that. But at the end of the day, it's me and her. And so when I find myself exhausted, I realized that I start to get very angry. And I started to get angry at the fact that I am supremely good at being able to be there for the other people in my life. I have a deep intuitive sense that was actually deepened by this neuroscience intensive that I completed a couple of weeks ago. And
I was able to just rewire a lot of kind of let go of a lot of old traumas to show up with a no bullshit attitude to be unapologetic, and how I am now to reframe my parenting style with my daughter, all of these really amazing, great things that have happened. And because of the way that your brain works, and because of the neural mapping, and the circuitry, it will just continue to build new neural networks. So over the next year, as was explained to me, it's going to be an upward trajectory, this arc of me becoming more and more amplified of who I'm meant to be. And along the process, you know, there's still things that I need to shed. So I find that one of the things that I need to shed right now is this anger and this frustration, because when I get to the sense of being a bit tired and you know, maxed out, what I think about is that I never got a childhood that I never had an opportunity to just kick back to trust that anybody else had my back to know that the adults in my life were capable and qualified to take care of me and I never had that confidence in them. And so because of that it feels a bit like I was shortchanged. And it's not fair, that I didn't get this opportunity. So because from here where I stand now, moving forward into my life, there's not going to be that there's not going to be this opportunity for me to kick back because I'm the owner of my life. I'm going to V con in Minneapolis in May and we're going to be my business mentor and I are launching we've launched actually our NFT branding and marketing agency, but we're going to be there to network to learn To just be in the space, this burgeoning web three space, and it's really exciting. In addition to all of that, there's just the sense that, you know, I won't, I will only continue to evolve into more and more leadership and impact roles. And I'm not going to devolve, and I'm also, as Gary Vaynerchuk would say, like, the only way that you can feel empowered in your life and not a victim is to know that you have full 100% Radical responsibility for everything that happens whether or not it's happening to you are because of you, you take full responsibility for that. And so because of that, I know that adulting is hard, I know that there are so many other people who have it way harder than I do, or that, you know, no one, just adulting is hard. And so, because of this, I'm not playing a victim mentality. But I can see just how angry I am that I never had that reserve to pull from that I didn't have a well of joyful, abundant, you know, relaxed times I grew up in severe scarcity, deep fear, deep anxiety, about whether or not our phone lines are going to get cut off or electricity, whether or not we were going to be able to become, you know, what my parents were going to build, if they were going to make it through because they were constantly arguing with one another. And then when they weren't doing that, they were arguing with me at me, coming at me or my siblings, it was just a really messy time. And so I feel like one of the things that I'm growing into, and I'm moving into my 44th year, which is Chinese superstition, would have it, not the luckiest numbers. But according to my Vedic Astrology, my you know, different charts and whatnot, it's only going to get better from here, which I believe and I feel in my heart. So all of that is to say is that being human is a mixed up messy kind of experience. And so if you are like me, and you grew up as a child of immigrants with a lot of these similar stories, just know that you're not alone. And no, I full on feel so much. Appreciation, I
guess, gratitude that it's made me who I am, because I feel like I'm able to accomplish so much more. And my resilience and my resolve are unparalleled. I, I know that I'll figure it out, I know that I'll get it taken care of. But it doesn't mean that it doesn't come with these pepper rings of frustration or isolation or upset at a past that I can't change. And instead just figuring out how to be human, be open and honest and authentic, express myself as best as I know how, and move forward with getting my needs met. So right now I find myself feeling challenged and struggling. And this is not just something that, you know, I've observed, it's actually been reflected back to me by different practitioners of astrology, holistic practitioners, reading my, for example, my network chiropractor reading all the scans from the way that my autonomic nervous system works, all of these things, of me being very intuitive and very aware of what other people need, and being able to provide that it served me very well in life and in business. And yet, when it comes to my turn, that it's extremely challenging it, I've had someone say, like, it feels like you are repeating yourself or that you're using words, but people don't seem to fully grasp the gravity of what it is that you're trying to express to them when you are in need. And that's exactly been my experience, which I have to tell you. It's also super frustrating. Because I'm a writer, my whole entire life is built upon words, I very much know how to express what other people's sentiments are, and even my own sentiments, when I need to express them. And yet, there's some sort of disconnect that's happening between what it is that I am trying to convey and the weight at which it lands so that other people understand what it is that I'm trying to say. And so right now, in my growth opportunity, I'm learning how to better express that and get those needs met and better understand myself to get those needs met. So all of this is just to share that there is so much growing for each and every one of us and our growing isn't going to look like anybody else's. So you may have heard, or you may hear in future episodes, the different guests that I bring on a lot of them and also share that like this is one narrative, any movie that you watch any story that you read, it's one narrative and you may resonate very, very much with that narrative, but it's still just one perspective in one view. So when I was teaching yoga, and I was able to interview someone about diksha, which is This method and path towards enlightenment, they were saying that however many people there are on this planet, that is how many paths to enlightenment there are. So I used to think it was this path that seemed to resonate with me the most, or this teacher who figured this out with similar life experiences or this ethos or ideology or approach, but you are going to continue to evolve and your consciousness now won't be what it is in the future, it's already changed from what it was in the past. So it's up to you to become a master of your own life. And that I always believe life is an upward moving spiral. So that it gives me the opportunity to have grace and compassion for myself, when I find myself hitting upon similar lessons, I remind myself that it is not the same, even if it feels similar inside of me, I'm approaching it with a different level of awareness that I didn't have before. And so ideally, as I continue to refine, I won't come across those same exact or similar lessons anymore. But instead, I will evolve and grow into something else. And so I hope that this whole episode today was just to help you normalize whatever it is that you're going through to encourage you to seek the help that you need. One of the conversations that I've been having with my partner is I'm fully aware that he is not the be all and end all of my support system. And that we still have different learning as to people coming together creating a dynamic, and that I have other people in my life, many, many other people in my life. And I've always been really resourceful and knowing who to go to for what sometimes I wish it could be a catch all one person can do all of these things. But instead, I know that if I'm feeling challenged in this area of my life, and I'm going to need to go here, if I'm feeling challenged in this area of my life that I'm going to need to go there. And so I hope that you actively participate in your own healing, that you understand that the more questions that you ask, the more answers you will find. And that will lead you to the next thing. And so the next thing into the next thing. And so it may not be that on your quest in your path, you
find exactly the solution right away. But you keep on looking and you keep on going and you keep on growing. So that is what I have to share with you today. We have more exciting interviews to come, we have more mindfulness episodes to come as well. I've been loving brain FM as an app, it makes meditations feel like they're going by so fast. And it's using binaural beats and science to really kind of tap into your brain pathways with what it is that you need. So there's different things like focus when you need to focus on work or creativity or sleep or whatever it is. So for me right now, I know that with the level of energy, and charge that I'm feeling around certain things, and also the need to just kind of relax and find some quiet that I'm going to go move my body, and I'm going to exercise and then I'm going to slow it all down and find some mindfulness for me, I hope that you were able to do the same, to get the support that you need to continue to become who you're meant to be. Remember that I've always said that I believe hurt people hurt people. So to help heal the world, we can stop hurting ourselves, and stop perpetuating any intergenerational trauma or create the kind of legacy that we would like to leave behind and be the people that we want to be to make the greatest impact. And when I say greatest impact, I don't mean that you need to be shouting from a platform. One act of kindness can create the most remarkable ripple effect. So I hope that you are able to find your own center and your own space and I look forward to connecting with you in our next episode.
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