Mental Health Awareness Month
Dearest community,
It has been more than a year since we’ve been able to share breath without fear.
I can’t help but shudder at how this has affected our collective bodies, particularly during this time when there has been such a profound need to simultaneously down-regulate into shared grief and co-regulate into movement.
Like most, this year has been a year of reconciling our similarities and differences and it has had me in my Asian feels more than I have been in a good, long while. Those who have gotten to witness me at closer than six feet (physically and energetically) will attest to my tenderness and fatigue, as well as how it has manifested as a year of devout and unyielding productivity. As a queer feminist who spends their days talking about feelings, I have always understood myself as a bit outside the general “AAPI experience,” and yet I have a core knowing of how deeply connected this incongruence is to being part of the “Model Minority.”
May is both Mental Health Awareness Month and AAPI Heritage Month. For many Asian Americans, the irony of this message is not lost on us. Did you know that Asian Americans (more than any other cultural group) tend to somatize their symptoms when experiencing emotional distress? Additionally, in the US, did you know Asian Americans (more than any other cultural group) seek mental health services the least? And not because the AAPI community needs the least amount of support when it comes to mental health, but because of the countless obstacles, whether internally, externally, or most likely a mixture of both, that make it difficult for Asian Americans to feel safe enough to ask for help.
While problematic, there is much to be learned from the tension of the model minority narrative. Our current world is in dire need of nuance. There is great wisdom in unpacking the lies of scarcity and mutual exclusivity between the well-being of the individual and the collective. As Resmaa Menakem reminds us “Trauma is not a flaw or a weakness. It is a highly effective tool of safety and survival.” But this kind of healing work runs deep and asks us to uncover and face our wounds as we tend to them so that we don’t (again, as Menakem profoundly offers), attempt to soothe it by “blowing it through another person...This trauma never heals.”
My hope is that we can reject the temptation to wager the stability of our social position for an inauthentic offering of safety, using this moment of chaos and wounding to put into question our proximity to power and the necessity of upending it for our communal liberation. I want us to co-create ways to honor our survival strategies and be courageous enough to step into deeper, system-shifting work through the practices of fierce gentleness and tender bravery.
In service of this wish/vision for our communities, I’d like to invite you to a shared Friday morning practice of Wound Care for the month of May on Instagram (@CompassionateRevolt). I'll be doing this on Instagram Live every Friday this month from 9-915am PDT.
In Hope,
Traci
