What a Curious Journey Life Is
Here I go again, going deep and reflecting before my 40th birthday.🌊💙😌
Perhaps for the first time ever, I’m sitting here writing without a clear idea of what I want to write about.
Let’s just say there’s something big developing in my life that occupies most of my headspace. But I’m not ready to share it to the world wide web yet. The problem is, if I don’t write about that, I feel like I’m not being fully authentic.
And yet, there are other things happening that are worth talking about.
Podcasts, parents, and prickly truths
My podcast hopping led me to Sahaj Kaur Kohli, MAEd, LGPC (Instagram: @browngirltherapy). She’s a therapist specializing in multicultural relationships. Her main audience are second-generation immigrants in the U.S. who juggle their parents’ more traditional beliefs and cultures at home while assimilating into mainstream American culture.
It’s not a perfect tumpak! fit to my experience, but I think Filipinos (and anyone who feels their personal values clash with family expectations) would find it insightful.
What I love about her insights is the nuance: the respect for complexity, the awareness and appreciation of eastern cultures. Parents and kids can both love each other and clash on beliefs. There’s the need for emotional safety… but also the reality that not everyone knows how to provide it.
The episodes I liked most were about:
Boundaries — I finally understood the difference between boundaries and rules.
Family Secrets — Because what pinoy family doesn’t have skeletons we’re told not to air?
Duty — Ah yes, the forever heavy utang na loob.
Double lives and double households
One of the first episodes was about living a double life. I did grow up being two different versions of myself in two different households, though mine wasn’t necessarily a culture clash.
Today, I’m pretty consistent at being just one me. Whether I’m having a bongga lunch with three different cakes for dessert at my mom’s side of the family, or choosing between pork chop and pork barbecue (with a side of cream of mushroom soup, of course) at Valle Verde Country Club with the Ramirez clan, I’m pretty much the same wacky woman.
But it wasn’t always like that. As a kid and into my teens, the two homes had different rules, personalities, politics, and systems. In one house, chocolate, chips, and Coke were always within reach. In the other, you had to ask permission just to take a Hershey’s Nugget.
I don’t prefer one over the other. It’s the marriage of both that makes me me. I appreciate the lessons and the love both families gave me. And I count myself lucky to have been able to hop from one world to another, depending on what best suited my situation.
It stretched my empathy. I had to understand how two very different styles of loving and living could both be valid, both effective. That perspective still stays with me.
The contrast itself was empowering. It forced me to find my own way in between, or sometimes completely outside their influence. I could merge their approaches or land on beliefs neither side held.
All is well and great. But I must also acknowledge that there were prickly thorns in both households that affected me. The positive and the negative can both be true. One doesn’t cancel the other out.
A Rebel Sith and Easy Like Sunday Morning
When I took the family of origin quiz, I had to do it twice: first thinking of myself in my dad’s household, second in my mom’s. The results? Two seemingly contradictory roles: The Rebel and The Easy One.
Honestly, I identify with both.
Working through the accompanying workbook, I had a eureka moment: a link between my childhood experience and a current frustration. The frustration? Procrastination and paralysis. (Funny, considering I was always moving about. Change was and is a constant.)
Procrastination has been eating at me lately and I’m grasping for ways to break through and move forward. The realization about my childhood might help.
There’s a magic in looking back and understanding roots. History is powerful, as long as we don’t get stuck there or use it as a scapegoat. The point is not to excuse ourselves but to break patterns. To use understanding to design the life we want.
Daunting dreams
Setting big goals feels daunting to me.
Having to navigate through the varying currents and waves of my childhood has made me adept at going with the flow. I don’t set goals; I look at existing options then choose within those limits. Dreaming up something bigger and then making it real? That feels alien. Scary.
And yet… I know I can do it. I can build the dream version of my life.
I already see pieces of it around me. When I look back, I’m happy and proud of the life I’ve lived so far: the experiences I’ve gathered, the people I’ve met, the ways my life has been enriched, the person I am.
Now it’s time to piece things together, dream big for the next stretch, and start steering.
What a curious journey life is.
This! "Having to navigate through the varying currents and waves of my childhood has made me adept at going with the flow. I don’t set goals; I look at existing options then choose within those limits." Totally get it!
Aw thank you! I’m glad you were enjoying the podcast!