Hi, let’s get to know each other :)
It has always felt odd to me — well, let’s begin honestly since we have just met here — I have only noticed it felt odd to me recently, as age sneaks up on both me and my parents. Tried again then (if not always), it has frighteningly felt odd to me — unsettlingly, curiously, deep down in the pit of my stomach felt odd to me — that I do not know my parents.
Two people who watched me grow up, take my first steps, make a million mistakes, transform into a woman (who still — some days — feels like a child, but maybe that is a gift or a reflection for another day). And I know my parents only here and now. They know me in a thousand forms, I know them framed or flattened down to “mom” and “dad”. Never as kids or pre-pubescent teens or adults alone in New York City. I never knew a 10-year-old boy playing skelly on Long Island or the only Asian girl in class told to put her head down on the desk when she couldn’t keep up with a new language in her first years of school in America.
I guess, then, I am asking, how well do you know your parents? Really, I am asking how well do I know myself?
Thinking honestly again, I should say, I do know my parents. I know they cherish singing lessons at age 52 and our labradoodle, Maple; they enjoy kombucha in jars and rice crispy treats straight from the pan; they love my brother and me (except, maybe, when they catch us binge-watching The Bachelorette). And how incredibly lucky I am to have that (yes, a show where I can let go of all expectations for myself, but moreso a family where doors never slammed when I grew up).
This could become a rambling about a million things — the privilege of knowing my parents, how family systems are so different, the ways none of us know what we’re doing — but I know I am just another email in your inbox, and I can guess you only have so much time to spare (so thank you, really, for taking a moment for us to reflect together, and, yes, I will go on without getting sucked into the infinite web of tangents that arise from the idea of how or if we all fit together).
I am on a journey back home.
After over a year of pandemic and watching loss materialize in many different ways, I think often about the ways that stories appear and disappear, about the importance of recording our own history, of refusing to let violence or virus erase us, of creating our own records — taking back our own narratives. I think about what it means to tell the stories of our mothers.
I’d love for you to join me on this journey.
So I ask, how well do you know your mother? How willing are you to know yourself?
Question #1:
TLDR; what is this?
As impending crisis after impending crisis piles up, I am often left thinking about how I will remember my parents’ story even when it feels like the world is ending. And, as a child of an immigrant, I find that time and time again my mom and I say to each other “you just don’t understand.” In most relationships, there is love and there is disconnection. My mom lived a whole life in another country that I hardly know. I live a whole life on corners of the internet my mom will never experience. When my grandfather passed away, I was left with a plethora of questions I wished I had asked him. Asking questions of our parents is a way of recording history. Remembering each other is one of the most powerful things we can do. And especially for youth who don’t see their own stories reflected in media often, we can take that power into our own hands by writing down our own families’ stories. As someone whose love language is words of affirmation, I see writing down each other’s answers as not only a radical act of rewriting our own histories, but as a simple act of love.
Each week, I’ll be talking to some wonderful human being of the world about motherhood, family and identity. Then I’ll leave us all with a question we could ask our mother (or anyone who fills that role in your life). And hopefully, together, we’ll learn a little something.
And… who’s behind it?
Hi, I’m Julia. I love dogs, clouds and songs with unexpected samples. I study journalism and digital social media in Los Angeles, California. I overthink a lot. I write about mental health, being multiracial, and sometimes about my mom. I’m really glad you’re here :)