#12 Vulnerability is my superpower.

It’s yours too. Let's remember together.

Vulnerability is my superpower. I say that with a level of confidence I didn’t always have. Confidence that I lacked because I was brought up in a world that conditioned me to believe that I was not worthy of taking up space.

For much of my life, I repeatedly asked the question: “What is wrong with me?” 

“Why do I feel like I give my entire self to people, places and things and always feel like I fall short?”

“Why don’t any of my wins feel like they’ll ever be enough?”

It took many years to realize I was asking the wrong question.

I know now to ask questions like:

“What happened to me?”

“What happened to my ancestors?” 

Not everyone is willing to sit down and discover the answer to this question. Because doing so means having to reckon with the truth of what systems like colonization, imperialism, patriarchy, and white supremacy have done to us.

I just finished reading Dear America by Jose Antonio Vargas and it broke my heart.

While it broke my heart open, and I am grateful, the pain it takes to get there is always a daunting experience that requires a great amount of emotional labor. Reading this book was the first time I allowed myself to take a deep dive into a Filipino immigrant’s story. My parents, who are Filipino immigrants, have shared some stories with me, but they’ve never really gone into too much detail. And I don’t blame them. It’s painful to have to go back and relive certain memories. Most memories, I can only imagine, they are still trying to escape from.

There’s a section in Vargas’ book where he talks about his mother sending him a letter that he wrote to her decades ago, shortly after he, in an unlawful journey to America, found himself involuntarily separated from her.

In this letter, he wrote sentiments like “I always pray that all of you be in good health” and “I really miss all you guys!”

After re-reading the letter as an adult, he shares:

“I don’t recognize that young boy. What happened to all that love and longing I felt for the friends and family I left? Separation not only divides families; separation buries emotion, buries it so far down you can’t touch it.”

This is one of the many sections of the book that brought me to tears because it made me think about my disconnection to my own parents. How many of my family members do not talk about their feelings of loss and grief around being away from the people they love. It makes me think about my dad, whose unprocessed pain showed up—in the earlier stages of my life—as rage and alcoholism. And as much as he’s grown from this, which I am so proud of him for, I still continuously see him use humor as a way to cope and cover up what’s really happening inside of him.

Vulnerability is my superpower. I say that with a level of confidence I didn’t always have. Confidence that I lacked because I was brought up in a world that forced my parents to assimilate, which caused them to pass down a set of beliefs that made me overly conscious of my Filipino-American identity, never quite sure of where I belonged.

I’ve been holding onto some heavy feelings of nostalgia lately. I never thought that I would be wrestling with the concept of time in my 30s. But for so many months, I can’t help but be hyper focused on time and how fast it’s fleeting.

Meaningless disagreements lose their grip when I zoom out to see the bigger picture. When I sit with the impermanence of the time we have in this human form, I can’t help but want to surrender to love. I can't help but spend more time figuring out what love truly means to me and how I can bring more of it into my world.

A couple weeks ago, I called my parents, just to talk. Something I don’t do often. Something I am now choosing to change. I pulled a card from my Parents Are Human deck and asked my mom, in Tagalog, “Ano po ang nagawa ninyo na mas kinailiangan niyong maging matapang?” which translates in English to: “What is the bravest thing you’ve ever done?” And my mom’s answer surprised me, moved me, left me in complete awe.

She said, in Tagalog, “Nagdadasal para sa papa mo habang siya ay may cancer,” which means, “Praying for your dad while he was/is going through cancer.”

The answer caught me off guard and my eyes widened. I never thought of prayer as something that required bravery, but she’s right, it absolutely is brave. To stay hopeful in times of immense despair requires a lot of courage. And hearing her say it in our language hit me right in the gut.

Most of my life, language has always been a barrier between my parents and I.