Serene Hudson Interview, October 28, 2020

Today is October 28 2020 and this is Shae Corey interviewing Serene Hudson on Their Story. And just before we begin the interview just to clarify do I have your permission to record this interview?

Yes, you do.

Perfect. So just to start off, why don't you tell me a little bit about you and your self.

Yeah, so I am a kind of one-and-a-half generation filipino-american. I was born in the Philippines, but my mom had reverse emigrated from the states to the Philippines so she would be anyway, she's second generation, but my father is first. So I grew up mostly here in the United States from the age of five through 10th grade. And then we went back to the Philippines for three years and I went to school in Chicago. I have a Bible theology background as well as intercultural studies. And I love Israel and the Jewish people and it's very much on my heart to be someone that educates others about their history and the state of Israel.

I love that. So, where did you grow up in the United States, Chicago?

Yep, Chicago for half the time and then we moved out to the Seattle area actually for fifth grade through 10th grade. So it was quite a change from being city folks to being in a rural or mountainous area and it was a wonderful experience there too.

What was that transition like for you?

It was a lot of culture shock actually because the culture of the Pacific Northwest is quite different from Midwest, but it was kind of--I was young, I was in fifth grade, but I could definitely feel the freedom of being in nature and it was fun to get to know people at our church that were very different but also had a welcoming and warm environment. And actually one of the closest families that we love, still to this day, are Mexican. And that was us kind of like being embraced by the Mexican family and just being a part of their family instead. They're a big the diversity of this to places like going from Chicago to Seattle.

Yeah, and so was there a big difference in the diversity of those two places, like going from Chicago to the Northwest?

Definitely in terms of our connections here in Chicagoland with the Filipino community and we also had relatives here as well. Like my parents are musicians so they're are a part of this Filipino American choir that became like family for us. But in terms of going to church, our church was not very diverse, but there was a Puerto Rican family there that we became close to and we're still close to now. When we went out to the Pacific Northwest. It was definitely less diverse, but growing up, I didn't really feel so much of a lack in that because of that Mexican family. We were as warmly welcomed by them as our Puerto Rican friends in Chicago at our church. And then there's also quite a bit of an Asian population in the Seattle area. So we would we lived on the Kitsap Peninsula which was across the water from Seattle, but we would often go to Seattle and and go to the Asian areas. So yeah thankfully didn't feel kind of devoid of a diverse community around me.

Yeah, and so growing up, what were some of your family traditions that you guys did?

Yeah. So as a Filipino family, we would always celebrate Noche Buena which is staying up all night on Christmas Eve and ringing in Christmas Day at midnight. And it was always a huge family gathering with a ton of food everywhere. And you know a lot of my extended family are in Ministry and in the pastorate or music ministry. So we would all be in our separate churches doing the thing, and then once we were done with whatever Christmas Eve service we would gather at one house and celebrate together until the wee hours of the night. What else? We wouldn't do as much of like the the American holidays like Halloween, but we did Thanksgiving. Yeah, we did definitely Thanksgiving Thanksgiving is very easy to absorb into any culture, lots of food, lots of family gathering. And I guess when I think of traditions it really has to do with the celebration of holidays.Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, So, what were—you said your parents were musicians, is that what they did for their careers or did they do something else? 14 00:05:37.450 --> 00:06:38.167 Yeah in the Philippines they were both professional musicians. My dad played in the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra, and then my mom was on the pop side of things. She sang at some hotels and like kind of upscale clubs as well as recorded commercial Jingles, which actually it's funny. Her commercial jingles for some of the products remained being played in the Philippines for like 30 years. It's really interesting. Yeah, the run of that and then here in the United States my parents who are in full-time Ministry, but also music so my dad was a music pastor and my mom also worked in the corporate setting but really the heart and the career was music ministry. So even as a family as kids we would go around and do concerts with our parents and sing in churches and conferences and stuff.

Yeah, that's so fun. So, did you or do you have any siblings?

Yeah, I have two sisters, one older and one younger. And then one brother who is the youngest of the four of us.

Wow. What was that dynamic like growing up?

He was definitely the baby of the family. Like I was 11 when he was born. So it was really fun to have a little guy around and I helped take care of him quite a bit. And in our culture, the birth order is a very significant and important thing in terms of like the role that you play in your family. And so older sister in Tagalog is is Optica. So my older sister who is the firstborn she was about to and then the sisters underneath our thoughts it as a title with the name. Hmm, and then older brother is kuya so these are titles, but if you're the first you just, that is your name.

Oh, wow.

So so as atas in the family, we would take care of our younger siblings. My older sister and I are just a year and a week apart. Yeah, so we were kind of like the big apis and then we took care of her younger siblings. And yeah, I definitely see that kind of dynamic also with my cousin's lives and across, across the cousin line, we call older cousins atas as well. So that kind of familial hierarchy runs across and outside of the immediate family to the extended family as well.

Yeah, that's super cool. I like the communal nature of that. That's really fun. Yeah, so thinking about your family now and kind of your career, what's your family like today?

Yeah, so I'm married to David. He's from Missouri, a small town outside of st. Louis. So he's a big Cardinals fan and we met on Eharmony. He was studying at the University of Madison Wisconsin when we met and so he moved down to Chicago after we got married seven years ago. And we have two kids, Evan is six and Mahalia is two and they're awesome. I love them.

That's so fun. So he... you mentioned that he has a Ph.D. What's his Ph.D. in?

Right. It's in composition and rhetoric. So it is a combination of...really it feels like a sociology realm in the humanities. In practice it is writing studies. So learning how people learn how to write, understanding your best pedagogy and things like that and then actually teaching academic writing. He also heads up the writing center at the college he works at.

Yeah. That's awesome. So thinking of your family and your parenting style, how do you think that your parents influenced you as a parent?

Definitely big time and I can see that influence because of the contrast with my husband and his parenting style and where he comes from. So in Asian culture, it's very like strongly valued this concept of respect for your elders. And so most of the time parents are pretty strict and I can see that strictness coming out in my own parenting. Where something that you know, one of the kids says I was like, whoa, that's really disrespectful and I'll you know, really talk to them about it. Whereas my husband comes from less about culture like that. So something that happens where maybe you know, our son talks back to him. Where I would be like, Argh! he's like, you know what that wasn't a good way to talk to Daddy, you know, like it's a lot more calm and less intense and I really see the cultural dynamics playing out there and I think that we balance each other really well and then another way that I see the culture playing out is just how close we are to my family because grandparents and extended family are very important in our culture. So, many times we host Christmas, Thanksgiving and other things here at our home with not just my parents and siblings, but like second cousins, Aunts, Uncles... the spread right! And we don't have that big of a house. We just cram in here and it's like a thing and that's what my kids are growing up with. It's different on my husband's side mostly because his immediate family is in Europe. They're doing Ministry there in Sweden and just have lived there for years. But I feel like I'm the one that like presses us to go visit his aunts and uncles in Missouri, like, Come on, let's just go! and let's do Fourth of July with them and we actually did go to Missouri when they had lifted their lockdown restrictions and I was like, let's go to Missouri and like let's go get haircuts. And that really is because I value very much our kids knowing and getting to hang out with extended family. Like it's important to me that they know where they come from and where their other side of the family comes from, where dad comes from.

Yeah, I love that. So when did you have your first child?

Six years ago. So yeah, we got married late. And so I had Eban at 35. I just turned 36 I think. No, I was just turning 36. So yeah, basically end of my 35th year.

Yeah, and what was that experience like for you?

It was generally good. Like I was working full-time and the pregnancy was good. I worked all the way up until like the week before he was born and becoming a mother is just something else. There is a beauty to it. There is a wonder to it and there's also a lot of work, you know, and I really appreciated our birthing class actually. I felt really empowered by the instructor because she talked about viewing labor as something that is powerful and natural. And basically surrendering to the power of the birthing process, but still being fully engaged in it, right? It's something that kind of takes over your body that you're born to do, but you still also have to be 100% engaged in that process and giving your all. So, I loved that she talked about the pain being more like something that was so powerful in your body.Like the muscles that were working together and it really helped me to think about the labor process in a different way. Instead of being scared about it, which was like my first seven months like I don't know how much that's going to hurt, I don't know if I can handle it to being like, yeah, it's going to hurt but it's more like it's because it's so powerful and your muscles aren't used to doing those things. And so I decided to go ahead and do my labor without the epidural.Some of the things that that instructor showed us on film was like the moms that decided to do it and the moms who decided not to do it and those that decided not to do it who felt like, you know, at least from their doctors perspective they were not at risk and they were healthy and they you know, it was going to be okay. I really like heard them out which what was meaningful to me in those films were like you can you can feel your body more you can you know, when you need to push right because like here it comes here is the contraction. So to me it was like a very empowering experience to give birth to our son to become a mother.

That's wonderful. My mom was a midwife for like 20 years and yes, she's a big advocate of natural birth. So I've been signed up for natural birth, since I was born.

Really? Yeah, that's awesome.

Yeah, I'm glad it was such a good experience for you. She would be very excited to hear that you had a good experience.

Yeah, I wish I could find that instructor and just thank her for that because I think that if more of us would-be mothers and mothers could think of labor that way there would be so much less stress.

Mhm, yeah, and I think that there's also a lot of contributing factors to stress of the media and not media, necessarily but the different ways that it is portrayed in shows and things like that, make it seem really terrifying. But yeah, so did you have a lot of support with your children? Did you feel supported by your community or your family after you give birth?

Yeah, definitely my parents were, they live in the suburbs and we were living in the city at the time and they my dad would drop off my mom 4 days a week all the way from the suburbs. It would take them like at least 45 minutes to get to our place and if you drop her off and then go to work in the city. And so yeah, we definitely felt that support. We were kind of new to the church community that we were in time. So it was less there, but with our second child when we moved out to the suburbs, we found an amazing church that we're still at and the level of support that we received from them with the second birth was incredible because I had some complications with the second one and actually injured my back quite a bit from the labor. Or something after labor, I don't even really know when it was and the church just came around us and supported us through that. It was a huge testimony of their faith and the love that they have for people.

That's wonderful. So thinking about that, what do you wish that you would have known before you became a mother?

I wish that I had known as a working mom, like what kind of an emotional strain, it would be to feel like your heart is being torn out the first time you have to travel, for example, away from your kids. And just like I heard about it, but you know, you don't know it until you're in it. But you know, I go to Israel quite a bit for that educational purpose. And the first time that I left our son, I think he was maybe three, it was just so painful. Like I had to really separate myself emotionally, but I didn't do that until like I left right and then once I left and I was in the taxi or whatever on the way to the airport, it was then that I could be like, I'm going Israel. I'm doing my job and I love my job and this is awesome like but it wasn't without the emotional trauma almost and separating from someone that was almost like a part of me and he was! Because he was inside of me, you know, and I've experienced the same thing with our daughter too. She's still small, but I'm just grateful, so grateful that my husband is supportive of both my motherhood and my professional life. And without that I don't think I could I could go through that emotional strain every time. But I am grateful, especially during this time.Strangely the silver lining of Covid-19, and I think I've heard this from a lot of other parents too, is that as much as it has affected us to varying degrees, one thing that is true is that we've all appreciated and valued the extra time we've had at home with our kids. And that is like a big gift, I think for me.

Yeah, and just kind of thinking about Covid. How has that changed the ways that you've been able to interact with your kids? Having them at home, because you have really young children, of having them around all the time, has that been difficult?

Right, it was challenging. I think the first three weeks where once I had an office to go to, right and I would you know be mom at night and in the morning before work, but I would just be my professional self during the day and so it was a really tough transition because I was like feeling a lot of stress having to still perform for my job, but at the same time like caring for my kids and being around them and they weren't used to that right and so it was like Mama's home. And usually when I was home, I was all there right for them because I was home I wasn't working and then when we had to do both in the same space, it became really stressful. But eventually like I set up our guest room as our office and what we do now is like I kiss them goodbye after breakfast and they're like bye mama, get kisses and then I go to the upstairs office and not to the downtown office. So it took like three weeks to a month to transition and after I did transition it was still stressful but it was at least a new normal and I was able to get into a groove.

Yeah, it's all about, I feel like a lot of things with children revolve around routine. So if you can transition into a different routine that works, you're good.

True, yeah.

Yeah, but how do you think that becoming a mom changed you as an individual?

I for one thing, as a Christian too, I had so much more awe of God. That this process of developing a child in your womb. It's just such a miracle. It is awe-inspiring and I have a very good friend who is in her 90s now. She doesn't necessarily have a view of God that is like personal or close, but she would always say to me whenever she was having a child. She was very much in awe. And I think that the Miracle of Life is something that we don't really grasp as much as we should but I think the Lord has helped me to grasp that and so it's changed me in that like I am very much more in awe of God. And I love one of the Psalms, Psalm 139. It says, I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made your works are wonderful. I know that very well. And even like as I mentioned I had an injury, back injury. As I went through therapy and as I went through like my recovery because I was in physical therapy. I was learning a lot more about like how the muscles are made and how the body is made and how it reacts to things and how it really recovers.Even in the midst of like being broken physically, I was in awe of the beauty of the body, right? And that was like post-labor was like it's like wow our back muscles are so intricately woven together. It's amazing. Everything is connected. So that part in terms of my faith being like sight like I was able to visually and physically realize how awesome God is and how loving too, and attentive to our bodies.And then I think too I've become a lot more self-aware. Being a parent, being a mother, makes you see yourself in contrast to your kids, in contrast to other parents, in contrast to your spouse in contrast to your parents. It's like, oh all this stuff was going on around me and all of these characteristics and values and ways of doing things that I thought were normal, but actually they can be different too. And that's okay. So it's like being more aware of what I grew up in and what I understood as normality was actually maybe culture or just personality or whatever. So yeah, I think self-awareness and just in everyday life I've changed in that like I don't just have myself to take care of. And that has definitely broadened my perspective of human beings around me. It was so very nice to just have myself to take care of like get up in the morning. Just get ready. If you're late, you have yourself to blame. You know, now there's a lot of different contingencies that could happen to your day because you're a mom and it's probably made me more sympathetic to others where I wasn't as aware before about the needs of mothers, or working mothers, at that.

Do you think that it changed your approach to your career at all?

Yeah, for sure. I was in a job, I'll call it a job before my career really started. And you know, I wasn't so invested at the job. But I am entirely invested in the career that I have now. It has definitely and it was like, it's like my dream job, right? Because I believe in what I'm doing and I get to be paid for it. But being a mom has tempered that. Like actually, being a mom is my priority. That's my number one career. It puts my career goals and advancement in a different light and something that I've been reading it's called the emotionally healthy leader. It's right over there. My bookshelf. It talks about how to be an emotionally healthy leader, you really have to lead out of your marriage or lead out of your singleness. So basically in other words, like don't neglect your personal life. Actually, it should be your priority and the limits that are placed on me as a working mom because I have a family are actually limits that I should embrace and it makes me a better manager because I do have a team that reports to me. It makes me....and none of them have children. Only one of them is married. It makes me want to encourage them to think about their careers in the right light, like it's not your identity. It's not what makes you, you. But really you should you should focus on your family. You should focus on your marriage, should focus on your singleness if that's what stage of life you're in or that's your chosen status. And then the job should flow out of richness that you have outside the job. Otherwise, you just get burned out and it's not the kind of life that you could be living.

Yeah, I love that perspective, that sounds like a really good book.

Yeah, it's a really good book so I've been talking about it with everyone. So I will send you the link!

That's how you know it's a good book, when you can't shut up about it.

Right! Exactly.

I love that. So what's your favorite part about being a mom?

I love the brightness of my kids eyes when they are excited about something or learn something or accomplish something that they're really proud of. My son is very much into art and drawing and he's recently gotten into drawing tutorials on YouTube because that's what we did when Covid hit you know, like art time! Let's do something online! And so now he's like recording his own drawing videos and just like his excitement. Like he looks like a professional like he's obviously very influenced by the videos that he's seen and he's using their words and their tone but it's like he's so excited about that and he's speaking into the camera and he's like, oh, wait a minute. I forgot a little nostril over here. You should do this, too. And as a mom, that's really cool to see your child really get into something and then want to teach about it and just like the light of his eyes. And the other day this weekend, we had a project where we were creating book characters out of our pumpkins and it was like for his school's pumpkin decorating competition. And I don't know if you've heard of the books Piggy and Elephant?

I think so. Yeah.

It's by Mo Willems and it's like a series of books of these two characters. So we made our big pumpkin the elephant and a little pumpkin the piggie. And after the whole thing, he was just so proud and he was so excited and wanted to show everyone and just, I love that about being a mom. I love seeing someone who's your child excited about something that is related to his talents and his natural inclinations and just to like bring that out of him. And with my two-year-old, it's some yeah, she woke up this morning. She likes hanging out in her crib and she was doing some funny thing with one of her stuffed animals and just like her looking up at me and having these bright eyes and just like she was just so happy and that's just the best.

Yeah, I love that. So kind of transitioning from talking about your role and experience as a mother, in what ways do you think that--and this is kind of a broad question, but in what ways have your experiences as specifically a Filipino woman shaped your life, do you think?

I will say it in terms of like being Filipino but also having a very like Americanized Filipina mother it, it's a little bit different. I think from maybe my cousins or fellow Filipino friends. Being of a different culture in our country has given me a lot of perspective on difference, on the beauty of difference and on the difficulties of having a multicultural backgrounds. And especially at this time, I feel it's been really worthwhile and valuable for me to reflect on my backgrounds and I will just tell you I've been thinking about this a lot because I was asked by my organization to film a talk about how do we champion diversity in our leadership? And that project really helped me to think again deeply about my background and part of that was my mom. The reason why she decided not to stay in the United States, even though she was born here and her family is like very patriotic, very devoted to America as many immigrants are because of the opportunity that they found here. It was in the 1960s that specifically 1968 a very turbulent time in our country that my mom decided she didn't like it here. She hated it. She went back to the Philippines and lived with her grandparents. And the reason for that was they lived in New York and Bobby Kennedy was their Senator and they loved him. He was like their household name. And he was assassinated, right? And so that death really affected her experience at school as an Asian American, as a filipino-american where her school suddenly was very divided. Which it used to be a very close-knit community for her, but one day when they called an assembly to discuss and to just like address the death of Martin Luther King that was just two months before and then the recent death of Bobby Kennedy, the white kids sat on one side of the gym and the black kids on the other side. And she had never seen that before they were divided and then she had nowhere to stand, she had nowhere to belong. And I just was I've known this story for a long time and I've actually given a speech about the story in my previous position, organization because I was involved in diversity things there too, but it wasn't until this past week when I was preparing my Ted Talk Style video for an actual like live delivery of the speech on Sunday. I realized that Bobby Kennedy was assassinated by a Palestinian immigrant. And both the Civil Rights Movement and the Middle East conflict had a huge impact on who I am today because my mom went to the Philippines, lived with her grandparents, went to the University of the Philippines, met my dad there and then I was born in the Philippines. And then now I am very much involved in issues of diversity and difference and multi-ethnicity here in the United States, but fully like in a career relating to Israel and it's like all of these things that transpired in 1968 kind of put all of those conflicts together and that has had a huge impact on what I do now. I'm devoted to these things. It's in my career to like build understanding between people that are so at odds with each other, and being Filipino in that is very interesting in that when I was mostly engaging with the Jewish community in order to build some bridges of understanding between Christians and Jewish people I was like the only non-white person in the mix, right? And that was always a curious thing for the people I was around but eventually it was like, yeah, you're a part of us. Like you understand our hurts and our frustrations from our perspective. So you're part of us. And I think that has had a huge impact on me as well. I don't know like I could just keep going on and on with this, but I'd love to hear what you might be interested in hearing more about.

Yes, sure so when you're talking about your mother's sense of displacement in the feelings of not belonging did you experience those as well growing up?

What is really interesting is that I didn't. And I think that I can attribute that to my parents desiring for us to grow up free from feeling either that we were less, or that there was all this conflict in the world. Which there was! You know, we came back to America in the early 80s. It was not as bad obviously as the 60s, there was still stuff going on, but I was not aware of it, right. I felt very like integrated. The Filipinos like to assimilate. All right, I know that's not such a great term for some people but Filipinos, at least of what I know of my parent's generation, was that they were very proud of America and so to be able to immigrate to the United States of America was a huge blessing, and to pursue your dreams and aspirations here. And so when most Filipinos would come to the States they're like ready to just be Americans, to integrate. And we did you know, and my mom is American so we didn't have any accent, you know coming here. She spoke English to us at home in the Philippines. And so even that wasn't like a separation for like a second generation person. It wasn't until like college that I realized like. Oh, yeah, I should really think about racism and that people are suffering from it and I never experienced it, but then it was later in life that my parents started to tell stories about how we were discriminated against from this teacher or whatever, but they shielded us from it. Like I don't know if...(Internet Static)

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Great. So where did it cut off?

So, you had mentioned your parents later on telling you about different types of discrimination. That you had experienced but they had shielded you from it.

Yeah, right, and I was saying that I wasn't sure that was a good thing and generally I think it was a good thing for me. I had enough insecurities to deal with growing up, you know as it's hard not to be insecure sometimes and that might have been more detrimental for my development. I guess if I had known everything that they had experienced and I think that is also in a sense a privileged position because like we could get away with not talking about it in our home that we could still like have careers. We could still engage and not feel hampered by discrimination or racism. But I guess I just find it a curious thing and I haven't actually asked them about if that was intentional, if they talked about it, or if it was just how they decided to do it in the moment, you know that they would shield us from those conversations that were obviously discriminatory. I guess what I do recall, in my older childhood that they didn't keep from us was the fact that we were here in the United States kind of by accident, like we got stuck here because a Revolution broke out in the Philippines. That's a whole other story and I'm sure that there's like so many things that I could connect to my identity with that Revolution and like my mom did not want to be here and my dad came to get us and then he ended up going to school and the whole time, they wanted to go back to the Philippines, right? They just like this was not their gig, but the organizations that we tried to go back to the Philippines with were like white majority and couldn't conceive of sending brown Americans as representatives of their org to other countries and like they would talk about that but I never realized that was discrimination. It was just like this frustrating thing, right? Yeah, and now looking back at it. It's like thanks guys, you know, like realizing that was racism and that should have been called out and that should have been confronted. but as the person that is the recipient of that like you can't really advocate for yourself that well. It has to be someone that is in a position of power to say, No, that's not right. You know, like let's challenge these perceptions and I have all those words now, right because I'm in this work, I'm in racial reconciliation work. And it's very interesting to look back on my life and to analyze it now.

Yeah, so when you were mentioning their, the experiences that they told you about later on, would you mind sharing one of those with me? Like maybe an experience with a teacher or like what that looked like?

You know when I said that, I was like it's so vague in my memory I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to think for a second. And it's kind of coming back to me. Like maybe it was with my younger sister, something about not necessarily being accepted at a school because she wasn't white something. I can't remember now because that does represent what was taken away in a sense. Ah, I think I know what it is now. So when we moved here to Chicago, we were in New York first and I'm going to Chicago, I had done kindergarten I believe in New York and then when we came to Chicago and my parents were enrolling us, at the school that we were enrolling us at was a public school. And they decided to hold my sister and me back a year. And so I did kindergarten again and my older sister did first grade again. And I do remember very specifically that my parents were upset about that because they really felt like it was because either we were immigrants or because we were brown. My sister ended up like skipping a grade late, I just stayed in my normal grade, you know, I'm all right. I'm here. I can do this again. But you don't, you don't know these things when you're a kid. But I think they told us about that, maybe when I was in fourth grade or whatever that it was like a very upsetting thing. And education is very important to my parents, to Asians in general, and your academic success is very much what the rest of your life hinges on and so to be held back some in some way, in Kindergarten even, was a very big affront. And plus my mom considers herself thoroughly American, so it felt like something very, very wrong that she experienced, that her children experienced. So yeah that, that is the thing. It came back!

Yes. You remembered!

I hadn't thought about that in years.

So, do you have any, maybe memories of experiencing like more direct racial prejudice or you know, just growing up, maybe when you were in college or anything like that?

(Internet Static) ....Jewish history and I'll give a little bit of context. It makes sense as to why this would mean something, I just happened to take the course on the history of Israel that is really powerful for me. I was taking a course on the history of the Holocaust and from that history, I learned the very horrible way that Christians have persecuted Jewish people for 2,000 years in the name of Jesus. And I was just devastated by that. And I remember distinctly in one of those sessions where I was learning about what church fathers said about Jewish people, what Martin Luther said about burning their houses to the ground and making sure that everything is ground to the ground and then realizing that the things that he said in his rants were actually implemented during Germany and to think that that was done in the Name of Christ. I decided in that moment, like I'm going to be a different kind of Christian like this is no this is wrong. And so I dedicated myself to loving and supporting Jewish people trying to get to know them. And to hear from their perspective and through that journey, I became very close friends with an older woman who was a donor to the Jewish studies graduate school that I went to we just became friends and I called her grandma and in many ways, she wouldn't have it like I wouldn't call her that's her face, but I would just call her by her first name and she just doted on me as if I were her granddaughter and it was just a really loving relationship and it was just fun to learn from her hang out with her and get her vibe. But there was one moment when you know, she would always be like concerned that I wasn't getting married. You know, I was in my mid-20s or maybe even early 30s, probably early 30s. It's just like why aren't you dating anyone and you know, like a very Jewish mother thing to do, you know, and I just thought it was super cute and stuff. And then she was like, You should really.... you know what? I think you should dye your hair. I think maybe that's the problem. And I think that maybe and all these things that she thought that would help me by changing my appearance and it hurt me so much like it wasn't it wasn't discrimination or racism, but it was this concept that you should change yourself because that's why you're not attracting anyone. You shouldn't be brown. You should be white and that will help you. And I was just like, oh as much as I loved her and I think it's because I love, I loved her so much. She has now passed and I miss her dearly but it was very painful and it was like, oh, yeah, I'm different and from her 85 year old perspective like that shouldn't be a thing. It's hindering you, and you should change yourself. And I think that was probably the clearest experience of like resistance to difference that experienced. I'm sure there are others and it's because I choose to cross racial and ethnic and cultural lines, like it's what I do. I love it. Actually, I have a degree in intercultural studies, you know, it's like ethnographies and and studies about culture and now to talking about race and being a part of protests. You know like this is what I do and so I received it as something that was mentioned in love but was highly ignorant. Yeah, but it was okay. It was just painful.

Yeah, so thinking about and mentioning protests. Would you mind describing the protest that you went to?

Yes, and I'm just really really grateful to you for like letting me talk all this stuff out. It's actually super valuable for me. The protest this summer was a very specific one. It was Asian-Americans marching for Black lives. And I guess relating back to your previous question, I never felt in danger of being an Asian-American except until this year. And the reason for that is because when Covid broke out and it was this dread disease that came from China. Suddenly those old forms of anti-Asian racism came out in the American mainstream. And it really affected me deeply because like I said, I really had never experienced racism personally, right? And I'll rewind a little bit from when Covid hit to February of this year, feels like ages ago now, but my mom and I went to a conference in California for Asian American women in leadership. It was Christian women in leadership and it sprung from a podcast that's called Someday is Here where Asian-American Christian leaders are coming together and talking about these experiences of growing up brown or Asian in America and like just coming together and having some solidarity and realizing, Oh being Asian has affected my life. Let's talk about that. You know because Asians like...we're like we want to assimilate and like we want to excel and we're fine. We're fine. We're not going to speak up about things. But suddenly like we go to this conference and it becomes a period of like valuing being an Asian American Christian woman in leadership. You know, like I've been talking with my mom a lot more about her experiences and hurdles that she faced the I never heard about, again being shielded from that as a child. And so I became connected to a network of Asian American women, as well as men. Asian American leaders in the church, which then formulated into the Asian American Christian Collaborative, spurred from the anti-Asian racism that broke out in our country because of Covid. And there were reports, many, hundreds of reports documented by the FBI and some kind of Watchdog orgs now of incidents of anti-Asian violence. Even like children being assaulted in the parking lot of grocery stores, and there was like a two-week period that I was afraid to go out. Because I am Brown and Asian-looking and I was like, okay, this has just gotten real for me because people that look like me are being assaulted on the train. They're being assaulted either verbally or physically at stores. If you cough or sneeze as an Asian person in public just watch out, you know, and being now connected to the women and to just like the Asian American Christian Collaborative. I just experienced a communal form of solidarity because we were suddenly, explicitly called out to be discriminated against because of fears and everything. And so the Asian American Christian Collaborative then, when George Floyd was killed--murdered, decided, we have to stand with our Black brothers and sisters. We have just undergone a very painful, vulnerable moment for our Asian-American community and realize that the Black community...just this is their experience for hundreds of years. So the leaders of the org that I'm friends with organized a march in protest and in solidarity and it was specifically for Asian Americans to come out in support of the African-American community and it was controversial. People in my own family did not approve and it was very meaningful, very, very meaningful for me to have a place to do that. And actually our church is very active also. Not in the Asian American thing, but just in general calling the church to respond and so they went to a march in downtown Chicago. That was really big, thousands. And my husband got to go and I decided that I would just... we decided we wouldn't get a sitter. I would just stay home with the kids. It was kind of going to be a long night. And it was also at the time where you weren't sure if it was safe to do that because of the protests were still in the form of like they would get violent, they and so it was like a thing that you decided on very carefully to go join a protest. And so I stayed home with our kids and with our six-year-old. We we have this book called Martin and Mahalia, his words her song. And we read that book while Daddy was marching and just talked about the importance of marching and showing your solidarity for people that were being oppressed. And so by the time this Asian-American one came out, I was like, Yes, I get my chance! Because it was during the day, we could get child care and it was my husband's second march and my first and it was just such a wonderful thing to be able to see my community come out like, Filipinos, Koreans, Chinese, South Asian. It was really really cool. And we started in a park in the north part of Chinatown Chicago and then moved to downtown Chinatown and and then moved to a prominent African-American church just blocks away. And like, interestingly I worked in Chinatown as an English teacher during grad school, and I knew that we had a Progressive Baptist Church somewhere in the South Side, but I never realized how close it was, because our communities are so separate. They just like we had to roll off after the Chinatown part just to get back to the babysitter. But I was like, what is this six blocks down the street, same area, definitely different neighborhood, but it was just like one of those moments where you realize that you have to reach out to each other. You're not that far away in terms of experience or even proximity. I have to blow my nose.

No, go ahead, go ahead.

So yeah, it was a very meaningful experience and I think that it had an effect too on my community, like social media community, which is your community when you're on lockdown, you know! And like a good friend of mine who is full-time in racial discussion work, she was just like, thank you so much. Like from the Black community to the Asian Community, thank you. This means a lot to us and that meant a lot to me that we could have that kind of comforting effect. And I think as a Christian one of the one of the passages I've thought a lot about especially when people react to the statement that Black Lives Matter and they counter that by saying All Lives Matter, there's a passages in Corinthians. It says if one of the body, if one part of the body hurts the whole body hurts and this is a way to hurt with people that hurt let's not dismiss that hurting. Let's come alongside and understand why this is causing so much pain and there are other points to argue maybe, other issues to debate and not to see eye-to-eye on, but to not empathize? That's not Christian. We need to come together, we have to have solidarity. We have to express it from various communities. Like I was really appreciative of the stand we were able to take as Asian Americans to be supportive and to be a an ethnic minority group that was different. To come alongside and say yeah, we hear you and we know a little bit of what you're going through because of what we have experienced ourselves.

Yeah, I think that's great. I'm so glad that you got to go to that, you and your husband. But sorry, I lost my question. So, when you were talking about a lot of the fears that were kind of going through your brain or experiencing did any of those relate to your children as well?

Yeah, I wouldn't even think about taking them out. It's interesting being in a multiracial family. My son looks very fair. He's like, his classmates did not realize he had a Filipino mom, like he's Filipino. Because he's very white looking and actually it was funny when we went in for like an after-school program one of his Filipino classmates and his mom were sitting at a table. And she volunteers at the school, so she knew Evan and everything and then we came together as a family. She looks up at me. She's like I didn't know Evan was Filipino! because like he doesn't look it and then my daughter Mahalia is very brown looking she like looks more Filipino and so we have both in our family. So anyway, all that to say like, Eban, in that time, I wouldn't have feared for his safety if David had taken him out, but Mahalia maybe and myself obviously, so and that's something that I never had to think about before. And I am very sympathetic. And actually I was traveling with an African-American friend of mine, that same week that George Floyd was killed and just grieving and mourning with her and thinking about her newborn son African-American boy so precious so cute. And I said to her, We're going to make this a better country for him. And she just wept because she didn't think it could happen. And just the pain, you know as a fellow Mom, to think that her little son would have to grow up in a place where he wasn't safe because of how he looks. And that I don't have to worry about that, necessarily for my kids, but I think about it because she is my sister. And what hurts her hurts me. And even though it might not relate directly to my family, it does hurt us as a family and we want to make a difference.

What do you think thinking about these connections that you have and how deep a lot of these connections run. What do you think motivates your activism the most?

My Christianity. And sadly, we haven't been a good witness to the love of Christ, to the world. So I already mentioned Church anti-Semitism which was horrific and a complete denial of Jesus and of the the love and the reconciliation and the Oneness that he prayed for on his last night here on Earth. It is my Christianity, my dedication to God's vision for the world. And it sounds so cliche or it sounds just like not real but it's all throughout scripture that the plan was always to bring Redemption to all the nations through Israel through the descendants of Abraham Isaac and Jacob and to one day restore that beauty and the Perfection of the Garden of Eden, right? If you look at Genesis, and then you look at Revelation, Revelation is a restoration of all things including the nations being unified together worshipping The Savior who redeemed them.So it is my love for what Jesus came to do that propels me to do this work, even though it's hard and it's funny that just recently I launched the diversity conversation officially in my organization and everyone was so excited and got so much support. And I came down from the stage and I was like you clap now, but it's not...this is not an easy road. But in spite of that this is what we are called to do as Christians, to to be a testimony of Jesus. And that Jesus is one that reconciles people to God and people to each other. We're not supposed to be lording power over each other, we're supposed to uplift the oppressed and the needy and to be advocates.It's a Hebraic way of life, right? The prophets and the law speak to Justice uplifting the Foreigner, and the Stranger and reflecting that kind of righteousness where people are protected provided for and can thrive so truly this is a biblical, Christ-centered pursuit for me.

Yeah, and thinking about your connection to other mothers and your own role as a mother. Do you think that being a mother at all motivates your activism?

For sure. Yeah, and like I said for my friend that I mentioned a fellow mother wanting to create a better environment for her son, as if it was my son. And for my kids to not just...it's really not just so that they're shielded from suffering and pain and the discrimination, but that they could freely engage their culture and whatever it is that they decide to do to make an impact for that same Jesus, you know, like not to be hindered by that but to use whatever it is that God has given them to live and to serve and to have an impact. I don't want them to have the fear of being assaulted or demeaned. I want to protect them from that and I want them to flourish as individuals. And yes, but that really is secondary for me honestly because I said earlier that my family is my priority, it is, but number one is the Lord. Like what he has called me to do as an individual, as his daughter, I am doing it to honor Him and out of fear of Him too. I mean like I was thinking about this this morning. It's like if you have a holy fear of God, you will realize that nations and communities will be disciplined for the way they have acted whether in promoting justice or not. So like in a holy fear of my God, who calls us to obey him, that is what motivates me. And obviously I want my kids to grow up in a safe, flourishing environment, but God's going to take care of them, too.

Yeah, I think that's great. I think I have my last question for you. Just in thinking about your activism and kind of your working towards a better future and creating a better world, what are your hopes for the future or what do you wish upon the future?

I hope and I pray that the work that I am doing and others that are close to me and those that I don't know would be impactful. I hope the most for those who call themselves Christians, Christ followers, that they will recognize: this is a moment for us to respond. This is not a moment for us to just hope that things calm down so that we can get on with what we were doing before. This is a catalytic event and my earnest hope is that people will stop to listen and be changed. I can only speak for myself and maybe people that are close to me that are doing similar work, but just like, please listen to what I just said. I just gave this speech and I just had this conversation and I just made this post. My hope is that I can interrupt and counter some assumptions and just usher people to the next step in this conversation, right? We all have ways to grow as it relates to racism and being accepting of people, loving people. Let's just take the next step and you know looking back at the 1960s recently and the reactions of many in the church, good and bad, like I want my kids and my grandkids to look back on what we did in 2020 and 21, 22 and say they, they helped change this for our generation, for future generations. And I just earnestly desire that for the church and I'm really really grateful churches like ours and others that have taken seriously this moment and said let's use it to educate, use it to confront, use it to protest for the sake of our faith and for the sake of others. I earnestly hope that this is a moment that the church takes a turn in America. I think that there are a lot of us more than I realize and maybe I see what I see because I'm on social media in my little echo chamber with people that agree with me, but I feel like there are voices out there and I pray that in this next generation of Christian leadership there would be more people who are self aware, aware of history and less resistant, less defensive and willing to look at what we've done as a culture. For example to Native Americans to African Americans to Asian Americans and say listen, we recognize that hurt. We accept it as part of our history, but we're going to change that now.

I love that. Well, are there any questions that I didn't ask that you wish I would have, or any kind of closing statements that you'd like to make?

Yeah, I'm actually curious and this will be probably be a result of your research. You probably don't have everything now, but I'm just curious about the other mothers and how much that has influenced activism and maybe for you like, how did you settle on this very specific demographic.

That's a good question. So I was just really interested in the different ways that being a mother impact the desire for change. So thinking about having young, either young children or just really any age of children and how that might affect the way that people want to shape the future for their children. And so that was really kind of what I was interested in. And so you're my second interview. So I think that what's kind of popping up is a bit of intersectionality. So people like it is a factor, but it's not usually a driving factor. So it is an influence for sure and it's definitely a big affecting factor of people's lives, being a mom. So it's been really great and really interesting so far. So, yeah.

Well, thank you for including me.

Of course!

It's been really a pleasure to share with you and to be part of the research.

Thank you for allowing me to interview you.

For sure.