i was in the philippines when Obama had his goodbye speech. i remember crying and getting up to turn away, walk away, but still stay within earshot. my dad and i went thru some additional countries in southeast asia. our week-long trip was scattered with moments where we were glued to the tv, just observing what was unfolding in the us. 2am in singapore’s airport, i watched the inauguration live and had to lie down because of the dizziness from stifled hyperventilating.
sept 27, 2012 i was raped. bodies have an unusual memory -- or is it my brain? but every sept/oct, since 2012, panic attacks persist. 2016 was calmer, though, as if my body had finally started to let it go.
but these past 6 months have had the familiar sensation of fright when you’re falling in a dream.
realized today that i need to start putting this down somewhere because i’ve been stuffing down the rage and the fear deep inside since january. i need a plan. i know myself well enough to know that the pursed lips, wide eyed response inadequately addresses the microaggressions that keep showing face in my personal and professional life.
it’s almost funny because clinically we’re told that stress can take start to weight you down up to 6 months after the event. ha.
The winner of Glamour's 2016 essay contest shares a story of heartbreak and in-the-kitchen healing.
I’m so tired of white guys on TV telling me what to eat. I’m tired of Anthony Bourdain testing the waters of Korean cuisine to report back that, not only will our food not kill you, it actually tastes good. I don’t care how many times you’ve traveled to Thailand, I won’t listen to you—just like the white kids wouldn’t listen to me, the half-Korean girl, defending the red squid tentacles in my lunch box. The same kids who teased me relentlessly back then are the ones who now celebrate our cuisine as the Next Big Thing.
I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, in a small college town that was about 90 percent white. In my adolescence I hated being half Korean; I wanted people to stop asking, “Where are you really from?” I could barely speak the language and didn’t have any Asian friends. There was nothing about me that felt Korean—except when it came to food.
At home my mom always prepared a Korean dinner for herself and an American dinner for my dad. Despite the years he’d lived in Seoul, selling cars to the military and courting my mom at the Naija Hotel where she worked, my dad is still a white boy from Philadelphia.
So each night my mom prepared two meals. She’d steam broccoli and grill Dad’s salmon, while boiling jjigae and plating little side dishes known as banchan. When our rice cooker announced in its familiar robotic voice, “Your delicious white rice will be ready soon!” the three of us would sit down to a wondrous mash-up of East and West. I’d create true fusion one mouthful at a time, using chopsticks to eat strips of T-bone and codfish eggs drenched in sesame oil, all in one bite. I liked my baked potatoes with fermented chili paste, my dried cuttlefish with mayonnaise.
There’s a lot to love about Korean food, but what I love most is its extremes. If a dish is supposed to be served hot, it’s scalding. If it’s meant to be served fresh, it’s still moving. Stews are served in heavy stone pots that hold the heat; crack an egg on top, and it will poach before your eyes. Cold noodle soups are served in bowls made of actual ice.
By my late teens my craving for Korean staples started to eclipse my desire for American ones. My stomach ached for al tang and kalguksu. On long family vacations, with no Korean restaurant in sight, my mom and I passed up hotel buffets in favor of microwaveable rice and roasted seaweed in our hotel room.
And when I lost my mother to a very sudden, brief, and painful fight with cancer two years ago, Korean food was my comfort food. She was diagnosed in 2014. That May she’d gone to the doctor for a stomachache only to learn she had a rare squamous cell carcinoma, stage four, and that it had spread. Our family was blindsided.
I moved back to Oregon to help my mother through chemotherapy; over the next four months, I watched her slowly disappear. The treatment took everything—her hair, her spirit, her appetite. It burned sores on her tongue. Our table, once beautiful and unique, became a battleground of protein powders and tasteless porridge. I crushed Vicodin into ice cream.
Dinnertime was a calculation of calories, an argument to get anything down. The intensity of Korean flavors and spices became too much for her to stomach. She couldn’t even eat kimchi.
I began to shrink along with my mom, becoming so consumed with her health that I had no desire to eat. Over the course of her illness, I lost 15 pounds. After two rounds of chemo, she decided to discontinue treatment, and she died two months later.
As I struggled to make sense of the loss, my memories often turned to food. When I came home from college, my mom used to make galbi ssam, Korean short rib with lettuce wraps. She’d have marinated the meat two days before I’d even gotten on the plane, and she’d buy my favorite radish kimchi a week ahead to make sure it was perfectly fermented.
Then there were the childhood summers when she brought me to Seoul. Jet-lagged and sleepless, we’d snack on homemade banchan in the blue dark of Grandma’s humid kitchen while my relatives slept. My mom would whisper, “This is how I know you’re a true Korean.”
But my mom never taught me how to make Korean food. When I would call to ask how much water to use for rice, she’d always say, “Fill until it reaches the back of your hand.” When I’d beg for her galbi recipe, she gave me a haphazard ingredient list and approximate measurements and told me to just keep tasting it until it “tastes like Mom’s.”
After my mom died, I was so haunted by the trauma of her illness I worried I’d never remember her as the woman she had been: stylish and headstrong, always speaking her mind. When she appeared in my dreams, she was always sick.
Then I started cooking. When I first searched for Korean recipes, I found few resources, and I wasn’t about to trust Bobby Flay’s Korean taco monstrosity or his clumsy kimchi slaw. Then, among videos of oriental chicken salads, I found the Korean YouTube personality Maangchi. There she was, peeling the skin off an Asian pear just like my mom: in one long strip, index finger steadied on the back of the knife. She cut galbi with my mom’s ambidextrous precision: positioning the chopsticks in her right hand while snipping bite-size pieces with her left. A Korean woman uses kitchen scissors the way a warrior brandishes a weapon.
I’d been looking for a recipe for jatjuk, a porridge made from pine nuts and soaked rice. It’s a dish for the sick or elderly, and it was the first food I craved when my feelings of shock and loss finally made way for hunger.
I followed Maangchi’s instructions carefully: soaking the rice, breaking off the tips of the pine nuts. Memories of my mother emerged as I worked—the way she stood in front of her little red cutting board, the funny intonations of her speech.
For many, Julia Child is the hero who brought boeuf bourguignon into the era of the TV dinner. She showed home cooks how to scale the culinary mountain. Maangchi did this for me after my mom died. My kitchen filled with jars containing cabbage, cucumbers, and radishes in various stages of fermentation. I could hear my mom’s voice: “Never fall in love with anyone who doesn’t like kimchi; they’ll always smell it coming out of your pores.”
I’ve spent over a year cooking with Maangchi. Sometimes I pause and rewind to get the steps exactly right. Other times I’ll let my hands and taste buds take over from memory. My dishes are never exactly like my mom’s, but that’s OK—they’re still a delicious tribute. The more I learn, the closer I feel to her.
One night not long ago, I had a dream: I was watching my mother as she stuffed giant heads of Napa cabbage into earthenware jars.
She looked healthy and beautiful.
Michelle Zauner is a writer and musician in Brooklyn.
“one stormy night my girlfriend saw what we thought was a dead sparrow below our balcony. he was barely breathing, covered in ants and completely blind.
“we brought him home and put him in a box. after spending a night in our bedroom, he woke us up with high pitched tweeting. we tried feeding him, but without any luck, so we placed him on our balcony. he continued tweeting non stop for three hours.
“finally, his father found him and started feeding him. he brought his chick huge bugs and bread every 10-15 minutes all day long for two weeks straight.
“he was getting bigger every day, but he was still blind. i called a vet, and he told me to try simple eye drops. it worked like a charm! he even started hiding from us behind our flowers. soon, his father started showing him how to fly trough the window.
“one day he just left – we knew this day would come eventually. we became really worried because that same night, and for the next few days, there was really stormy weather. however, three days later, he came back and fell asleep in one of our pots.”
Beyoncé’s “Love Drought” Video, Slavery and the Story of Igbo Landing
[image description: Beyoncé in the music video for “Love Drought” marching into the water followed by a procession of black women]
Beyoncé’s LEMONADE is filled with incredible artistry and stunning imagery. One of the most striking images for me on the visual album, though, occurs in the video for “Love Drought”. Much has been said about how LEMONADE draws influence from Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust, but less has been said in these same conversations about how the story of Igbo Landing is central to Daughters of the Dust and how the story of Igbo Landing- an act of mass resistance against slavery-also shows up in a really pronounced manner in the “Love Drought” Video.
[Image description: Donovan Nelson’s artistic depiction of Igbo Landing in charcoal. It shows the Igbo slaves marching into a body of water with the water already up to their necks and their eyes closed. Image via Valentine Museum of Art]
For those who don’t know, Igbo Landing is the location of a mass suicide of Igbo slaves that occurred in 1803 on St. Simons Island, Georgia. As the story goes, a group of Igbo slaves revolted and took control of their slave ship, grounded it on an island, and rather than submit to slavery, proceeded to march into the water while singing in Igbo, drowning themselves in turn. They all chose death over slavery. It was an act of mass resistance against the horrors of slavery and became a legend, particularly amongst the Gullah people living near the site of Igbo Landing.
Not only is the story of Igbo Landing one of the key themes of Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust, which influenced LEMONADE, but its imagery also appears to be central to the “Love Drought” video. In the video, Beyoncé marches into the water followed by a group of black women all in white with black fabric in the shape of a cross across the front of their bodies. They march progressively deeper into the water before pausing and raising all of their hands toward the sunset.
[Image description: Beyoncé marching into a large body of water by a beach followed by other black women]
This scene and the video as a whole also occurs in a marshy, swampy landscape, matching African-American folklore descriptions of the location of Igbo Landing. In addition, this is all mixed in with imagery of Beyoncé physically bound in ropes and resisting their pull, which directly evokes slavery, resistance and the events at Igbo Landing for me.
[Image description: Beyoncé on a beach leaning backward as she appears to be resisting the pull of a taught rope]
Lastly, I would like to note how Beyoncé and the group of black women she is with very deliberately rose their hands while in the water toward the sunset. For me this recalled how the act of mass resistance at Igbo Landing was mythologized in many African-American communities as either the myth of the “water walking” or “flying” Africans. In the latter legend, the Igbo slaves walked into the water and then flew back to Africa, saving themselves in turn.
Below is the myth of the “flying Africans” at Igbo Landing as told by Wallace Quarterman, an African-American man born in 1844 who was interviewed by members of the Federal Writers Project in 1930 (via wiki):
Ain’t you heard about them? Well, at that time Mr. Blue he was the overseer and … Mr. Blue he go down one morning with a long whip for to whip them good… . Anyway, he whipped them good and they got together and stuck that hoe in the field and then … rose up in the sky and turned themselves into buzzards and flew right back to Africa… . Everybody knows about them.
[Image description: Beyoncé and several black women partially submerged in water by a beach and raising their arms toward the setting sun]
Seeing Beyoncé and a group of black women marching into the water and raising their hands collectively toward the sunset reminded me specifically of this last interpretation of the story of Igbo Landing where the slaves flew to their freedom.
There are lots of potential interpretations for this video and the visual album as a whole but the core imagery of the “Love Drought” video - marshy landscape matching folklore descriptions of the location of “Igbo Landing,” images of Beyoncé bound in ropes and resisting their pull, a collective march into the water and holding their hands out toward the sky as if they were about to fly away together-basically screamed out to me as the story of Igbo Landing as I watched the video. It’s such a powerful act of mass resistance against slavery and as an Igbo person living today in America, it was moving to see imagery which reminded me strongly of it in LEMONADE as well.
How to get an INFJ to open up? (Or a conversation guide with feelers for thinkers)
Two tactics to stimulate deeper conversation:
1) Ask blunt, direct personal questions
Of course, give them the option to not answer if they don’t want to (without the passive aggressive emotional manipulation – no “oh you don’t have to answer, I know you don’t care/trust me” crap). Give them time to think about it. (Or do it over text).
2) Share something intimate about yourself
If you take the first step with showing vulnerability, they will most likely take the invitation and follow your lead.
During the Conversation:
- Let them talk it out.
Let them finish an anecdote/rant/etc… I don’t find comfort when I say, “I’m feeling sad because this happened” and someone else says, “Oh I’m sad too…this is why I’m sad….let me rant more.”
- Listen without judgement
Don’t say “Oh that was so _stupid/dumb/mean__ of you.” That’s the fastest way to shut me up. If you are going to judge without listening to everything, you aren’t worth confiding in.
-Try not to be condescending/overly reductionist by providing simplistic solutions.
I’d love it if you have advice, but – The Fe in me takes advice better if presented as ( “Have you considered ___… I’m not sure but it may work because ….”) instead of ( “Just do this! Duh…” or “If I were you I would have done ___, did you not think of that?”). Offering a simplistic one sentence solution is reductionistic. If you think something that has really distressed me has a simple one-sentence solution that I haven’t considered, that’s often potentially insulting.
- Ask her follow up questions or “how did you feel” questions, express genuine concern
- Bond over a similar story from you/or empathy.
After:
-Acknowledge that you enjoyed the time/intimacy
I know INFJ’s tend to have a fear that sharing too much about themselves will become a burden or impose on others (If you are an INFJ it is NOT, people actually appreciate being a part of your life too). A “That was cathartic” or “Thanks for sharing” or “I enjoyed our conversation” makes me happy.
These are just tips for anyone looking for pointers on communicating with those INFJs in there lives that I find work particularly well for me. Of course, no infj should take it granted that the other person has to communicate in exactly their style without bothering to reciprocate the effort. Hope these help!
Some people survive and talk about it. Some people survive and go silent. Some people survive and create. Everyone deals with unimaginable pain in their own way, and everyone is entitled to that, without judgement. So the next time you look at someone’s life covetously, remember…you may not want to endure what they are enduring right now, at this moment, whilst they sit so quietly before you, looking like a calm ocean on a sunny day. Remember how vast the ocean’s boundaries are. Whilst somewhere the water is calm, in another place in the very same ocean, there is a colossal storm.
People Survive in Different Ways | Nikita Gill (via meanwhilepoetry)
Emotional labor is often invisible to men because a lot of it happens out of their sight. Emotional labor is when my friends and I carefully coordinate to make sure that nobody who’s invited to the party has drama with anyone else at the party, and then everyone comes and has a great time and has no idea how much thought went into it.
Emotional labor is when I have to cope, again, with the distress I feel at having to clean myself in a dirty bathroom or cook my food in a dirty kitchen because my male roommate didn’t think it was important to clean up his messes.
Emotional labor is having to start the 100th conversation with my male roommate about how I need my living space to be cleaner. Emotional labor is reminding my male roommate the next day that he agreed to clean up his mess but still hasn’t. Emotional labor is reassuring him that it’s okay, I’m not mad, I understand that he’s had a very busy stressful week. Emotional labor is not telling him that I’ve had a very busy stressful week, too, and his fucking mess made it even worse.
Emotional labor is reassuring my partner over and over that yes, I love him, yes, I find him attractive, yes, I truly want to be with him, because he will not do the work of developing his self-esteem and relies on me to bandage those constantly-reopening wounds. Emotional labor is letting my partner know that I didn’t like what he did sexually last night, because he never asked me first if I wanted to do that. Emotional labor is reassuring him that, no, it’s okay, I’m not mad, I just wanted him to know for next time, yes, of course I love him, no, this doesn’t mean I’m not attracted to him, I’m just not interested in that sort of sex. Emotional labor is not being able to rely on him to reassure me that it’s not my fault that I didn’t like the sex, because this conversation has turned into my reassuring him, again.
Emotional labor is when my friend messages me once every few weeks with multiple paragraphs about his life, which I listen to and empathize with. Afterwards, he thanks me for being “such a good listener.” He asks how my life has been, and I say, “Well, not bad, but school has been so stressful lately…” He says, “Oh, that sucks! Well, anyway, I’d better get to bed, but thanks again for listening!”
Emotional labor is when my friend messages me and, with no trigger warning and barely any greeting, launches into a story involving self-harm or suicide or something else of that sort because “you know about this stuff.”
Emotional labor was almost all of my male friends in high school IMing me to talk about how the girls all go for the assholes.
Emotional labor is when my partners decide they don’t want to be in a relationship with me anymore, but rather than directly communicating this to me, they start ignoring me or being mean for weeks until I have to ask what’s going on, hear that “I guess I’m just not into you anymore,” and then have to be the one to suggest breaking up. For extra points, then I have to comfort them about the breakup.
Emotional labor is setting the same boundary over and over, and every time he says, “I’m sorry, I know you already told me this, I guess I’d just forgotten.”
Emotional labor is being asked to completely explain and justify my boundaries. “I mean, that’s totally valid and I will obviously respect that, I just really want to understand, you know?”
Emotional labor is hiding the symptoms of mental illness, pretending my tears are from allergies, laughing too loudly at his jokes, not because I’m just in principle unwilling to open up about it, but because I know that he can’t deal with my mental illness and that I’ll just end up having to comfort him because my pain is too much for him to bear.
Emotional labor is managing my male partners’ feelings around how often we have sex, and soothing their disappointment when they expected to have sex (even though I never said we would) and then didn’t, and explaining why I didn’t want to have sex this time, and making sure we “at least cuddle a little before bed” even though after all of this, to be quite honest, the last thing I fucking want is to touch him.
Miri,
“Emotional Labor: What It Is and How To Do It”
(via amberying)
I want every man I know to read this and really think about how it might apply to you because if there is one overarching theme among you all it’s that you read this stuff and share it and nod and go “yeah wow men suck” and NEVER THINK THAT IT IS TALKING ABOUT YOU. IT IS.
[Speaker on the Mic] When you have an opportunity to tell two black girls to shut up and get off stage, and you don’t; and you shake their hands and you smile and you step to the side and you listen. That is a firm difference from turning around and staring at a little black girl and saying, “Shut up. I’ll talk to you later.” You’re being rude for allowing people to say that to her. I’m going to tell you, “The proof is in the pudding.” every time. If I can find a picture of you from fifty-one years ago chained to a black woman, protesting segregation. Then, I know fifty-one years later. You’re willing to close your arms, hold your head, and listen to two black girls yell and scream, rightfully so, as opposed to someone who will tell you to shut up. [? Clinton, Speaker, and young black girl speaking at once?] As opposed to someone who will tell you, “Later.” When it comes to your children dying in the streets. I know. I know that the only person I have the conscious to vote for is Bernard Sanders. [crowd applause] I know that the only person that my logical, beautiful, black mind will allow me to vote for is Senator Bernie Sanders, and I want to tell the other side, I know from going around and shaking hands and hugging these beautiful black faces in South Carolina, that god damn firewall got a crack in it. [Hilary:] Umm. Okay, back to the issue. [Audience Member:] Thank you! [Hilary:] The issue that I was reported– @captioned-vines
I made a post about why black voters are voting for Hillary. I am still waiting on my answer and everyone who is going to answer my question should watch this video first and then tell me why you are voting for Hillary. This video obviously shows (at least to me) that she does not care about me, my family, some of my friends, or other people in my culture. So please, some one who is voting for Hillary and not Bernie, answer me this:
Why are voting for Hillary and not Bernie?
three months ago, I quit my corticosteroids and an immunosuppressant for my eczema because something didn’t feel right. I eventually learned that I had grown addicted to my corticosteroids and that the only solution was completely quitting. now, I’m going through withdrawal.
I don’t want to post pictures until I’m more healed because I’m so sensitive about how I look these days.. but I have learned a lot.
I’ve learned, for one, what it feels like to be a complete fucking flake, lol. there are too many plans that I just up and dropped because I just wasn’t having a good day with my skin and it would give me anxiety attacks.
I’ve also realized that my best friends are my aunts. two of my aunts have been uplifting and hilarious, not really sure how I got so lucky to end up with them. kudos, also, to my uncles, for picking phenomenal women.
I’ve finally internalized just how much Huy loves me. going through Topical Steroid Withdrawal is fucking gross and terribly inconvenient. I shed enough skin to fill a dust pan on a daily basis. on the floors, on my clothes, in my car, on Huy’s bed. I regularly have insomnia/sleep staccato’d with scratching fits. Huy has white sheets? I got blood on them the first night. I ooze plasma on his pillows. how does Huy react to all this? he doesn’t react, he just responds. I can feel him get up at night to sweep the flakes of skin off his side of the bed. he still kisses me hello, still kisses me good morning. I have cried over this condition multiple times, frustrated and Huy always reminds me that I’m going through necessary changes. it can’t be helped, but I’ll be okay.
as usual (I hate this about Huy, lol): he’s right.
also, happenstance has brought me to great groups in school and at work. the medical assistants I work with are so understanding and so encouraging. their persistent support has made work some sort of.. sanctuary for me, haha. with school, my classmates often remind me that my eczema isn’t that bad and are always forgiving when I’m so fucking exhausted. I love my teams.
TSW is hell, but as they say: if you’re going through hell, keep going.
