Category: #52essays2017

  • i want more meaning from this life

    This past Tuesday I went to New York City and did all the things I love– visit art galleries, take a class and learned something new, browsing bookstores and buying, eating Poke, sunny day, saw the STORY store, had a meeting with GABRIELA NY–  but I wasn’t fully engaged. I realized that I wasn’t as…

  • Being Mentally Ill with #WalangHiya

    In honor of #WomxnsHistoryMonth2017, I’m collaborating with AnneMarie of Formation of a Filipinx American where I wrote a blog to reclaim the phrase #WalangHiya, which has been traditionally used to shame Filipinxs. Her edits were crucial for me to dive deeper into how shame badly affected my mental health, and how speaking about my mental illness openly allowed…

  • writing ambitions laid out and fun-sized

    I attended the 22nd Annual New Jersey Book Arts Symposium at Rutgers-New Brunswick in November and it was FANTASTIC. I loved being there and I was so glad I took a day off from work to attend! I wish I blogged about it immediately since a lot of my experiences are now lost to the…

  • you are beautiful and necessary

    I think I have a problem with accepting compliments. I used to be really bad and think they’re lying and look at them weird and just brush it off. But now at least I can say thank you and smile, because I am genuinely touched that they said such sweet things. Yet, I still don’t…

  • inner and outer spaces

    2015 bleeding into 2016 and its entirety feels like the year where I was discovering spaces. Like the Asian American Writers’ Workshop where I found a community of fellow uhh AA writers just like me. It was also the year I discovered I was queer. And Gabriela NY which is a Filipina womxn group that…

  • you’re one step braver, little one

    If I want to become and be known as a mental health advocate, I’m going to need to speak honestly about ALL aspects of my mental illness. I’m bipolar and I’ve had severe depression for years and have experienced mania. Depression is relatively easy to talk about since it’s the most discussed and most publicized…

  • #52essays2017

    I came across this interesting challenge for 2017. Created by Vanessa Martir, those who join must write an essay every week for the duration of 2017. Here’s the post if you want to see the guidelines, but do read this in depth, poignant blog by Martir on what she (re)learned while writing essays in 2016.…