Episode 121: Rebel with a Cause: Disappointing Your Parents Done Right
In this episode of the F*ck Saving Face podcast, Judy Tsuei introduces her new book, aimed at empowering Asian Americans and voices of color.
The conversation explores themes of cultural identity, personal growth, and the importance of mental and emotional wellness.
Judy shares her journey of breaking free from societal expectations and the significance of belonging, while also discussing the ten steps outlined in her book that encourage listeners to embrace their true selves and navigate family dynamics. The episode culminates in a reflection on the relationship between money and self-worth, emphasizing that true value comes from within, not from financial success.
You can support the Kickstarter campaign and get a copy of your book: bit.ly/shamelessbook.
Takeaways
July was a phenomenal month for sales.
The focus is on school season and stadium business.
Margins have been exceptional despite lower dollar values.
There is plenty of inventory available for sales.
The supply chain is in constant communication regarding global issues.
New systems have improved operational efficiency.
Employee recognition is important for team morale.
The company is preparing for 2025 budgets and plans.
Optimizing inventory is crucial for increasing sales.
Team building events like picnics enhance workplace culture.
Episode Highlights
00:00 Market Update and Sales Performance
02:52 Operational Improvements and New Systems
05:55 Supply Chain and Inventory Management
08:49 Employee Recognition and Team Building
Transcript:
Judy Tsuei (00:02.646)
Welcome to the F*ck Saving Face podcast, where we're empowering mental and emotional health for Asian Americans and voices of color by breaking through taboo topics. Life may not always be pretty, but it is indeed beautiful. Make your story beautiful today. Welcome to season five of the Fuck Saving Face podcast. So this is an extremely special season because it's focused on my Kickstarter launch.
for my book, How to Disappoint Your Parents in 10 Shameless Steps, A Modern Asian American Guide. Now, even though Asian American is in the title, I've had different people read sample chapters. And these are everyone from children of immigrants to anybody who's ever felt like they're the black sheep of the family, someone who's just kind of gone against the conventions and gone against the grain of living a life differently, never necessarily feeling like you belong.
or you've always been that person who's just felt called to do something differently, to pursue your passions, even if everything external of you has encouraged you to fall in line. So this book is for you, for that free, wild -hearted spirit that is, you know, everything from my daughter's name is Wilder, the company that I built is called Wild Hearted Words, we're soon doing a rebrand and elevating and growing with two incredible new business partners.
I've launched my personal brand judytsway .com where I'm coaching executives and women founders and building your personal brand and shifting your mindset and really owning your voice like never before. So this entire season will be a culmination of all of these efforts and it will be a mix of all of that. So first and foremost, the Kickstarter campaign launches September 23rd, which is when this episode drops.
And I would love, love, love and be so honored if you would support it within the first 24 hours. So as you're listening to this episode, please click on the link in the show notes or go to bit .lee, B -I -T dot L -Y slash shameless book. And then you can help support the campaign. And so the more support that we can rally within the first 24 hours.
Judy Tsuei (02:14.924)
The more that Kickstarter will potentially consider it as a project we love and then announce it on their homepage and even more so, they may email it to their entire list. And so the reason that I want that is because I believe it's time for us to have a collective voice in amplifying our visibility and our need to be seen and heard to really underscore.
our unique needs for mental and emotional wellness by being this group that's been marginalized on the periphery, exploited throughout history, and now more than ever, creating the sense that we belong because, you know, with so many of our counterparts, growing up, when I was met with anyone, they would say, where are you from? And I'd say I'm from LA and they're like, no, where are you really from? And yet my friends who had European ancestors or
you know, anyone who looked more homogenous with the dominant majority wasn't met with the same question. So there's always that understanding of you don't actually belong. And I want to really help cement the fact that we do belong. We belong in this country, we'll belong in our bodies, we belong in the spaces of our careers and our families. And especially, I have a biracial daughter. I want her to feel like she's proud of her heritage and that she can create that identity
from the different disparate parts of her. She's made of these two cultures that I grew up in, of the West and the East. And so if this is resonant with you, you can see a video that I posted on the Kickstarter that my dear friend Janice helped me create. She's a film editor and now a coach herself for women going through different pivots and transitions. And she helped put together this beautiful video where my daughter narrates lines from the journals that I had written when I was her age. So the first time I saw this video,
I completely melted. It felt like this culmination of all of these things that I've been working so hard for. So if you've been a fan of this podcast, I highly encourage you to go check out the Kickstarter and any support that you can give would be amazing. Even if you share it with your networks, energetically, if you support it, monetarily, if you support it, I would just be so honored and grateful. And I know that it means so much more than simply.
Judy Tsuei (04:32.718)
me. This is me speaking up and out for all of us. I'm also, because there's 10 different shameless steps, bringing in voices of other women, women of color, women experts who will amplify each of the lessons and they will share their own stories of how it's shown up in their lives and their careers. And then they will also offer insights. So with each step,
I'm going to break down in different episodes and then bring on a guest who will share and just kind of bring their story to light so you can hear it more than from my voice and my telling. You're going to hear some samples of my own work that you would get if you support the campaign. There's different levels of support that you can give, including working with me, having me help build your personal brand.
helping you with mindset coaching. And then if you want and you're not from San Diego, an opportunity to come surf with me, to spend the day with me, to really explore San Diego and let it be an opportunity for you to put yourself and your mental and emotional and physical health as a priority. So with all of that, in this inaugural episode of this season, I wanna share with you summaries of the 10 different steps so you can get a preview of what's to come. Okay, step one.
Walk loud, talk loud, think out loud. Let yourself be the center of attention. Born a month premature, I pushed out of my mother's womb ready to be done with her. I talked too loud, walked too loud, laughed too loud, and my nature was just too much. I became the star of every elementary school play, and not just the overachieving teacher's pet, but the school pet, until I got to junior high, didn't get the part in A Christmas Carol that I wanted, and was appointed the behind the scenes prompter instead.
From there, I began to fall into feeling small, developing an eating disorder to disappear. It was though I was told, you belong behind the scenes, not in front of the scenes. I never wanted any more to be the center of attention. Yep, my parents forced me to participate in Chinese speech competitions, memorizing ancient poems complete with hand gestures, then getting on stage to try to speak it out loud in words I just simply didn't even understand. My mother was the Chinese speech competition coach.
Judy Tsuei (06:49.602)
Her other pupils always won and I kept losing. I think as a woman, as a woman of color, there are so many societal constraints, cultural constraints that make us feel like we're too much. But if I'm a lot, you can go find less. Pay attention to the patterns and the way the world is shaming you because that'll help you find your own way to shamelessness. Step two, fail out of math, become a writer and a tattooed yoga teacher instead. Every Saturday we went to Chinese school and MAC, a local Japanese math tutoring center.
I could not get long division. My father, in a rare instance of having to bring me to the session, came in angrily to ask what was taking me so long until he showed me how to do the math. I went from excelling in math to being placed in logic where nothing made sense. I failed that class. I failed math analysis in high school. I began to write for hours at a time, telling myself stories, escaping the world that I was in. My mother forced us to keep journals to improve our English.
and I have pages and pages of self -loathing from the time I was seven. I won a high school creative writing competition at Beverly Hills High School. And even though they only usually choose two winners in the graduating class, the year that I submitted, they couldn't decide who were the best two, so they chose three. When I stood next to Prentice Benjamin, I couldn't believe my writing was as good as hers. My mother had been good at writing. I won Chinese essays she forced me to enter.
In college, not knowing how to pick classes or what a major was since I was the first one in our family to attend a university in the States, I eventually chose to double major in English and mass communications. What are you going to do with an English degree? My engineer friend asked me. Become a tribal writer, become a successful marketing writer, become a yoga teacher, become published. Everything that comes from those challenges and those hardships could potentially be all of the things that help you to
achieve the goals that you want to achieve. And there's an episode from season one of the podcast where I interviewed Victoria Jane of human design. I've been studying more and more into human design of understanding your blueprint of how you're meant to be in the world, what your unique gifts are. And so I highly encourage you to explore that because we are not all built the same. And if we were allowed to live, if we find that bravery and that boldness to live by what is
Judy Tsuei (09:10.486)
right for us and if everybody in the planet did that we would all symbiotically fit together so well. Step three, D -Fang the Tiger. I listened to Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother during my first adult trip back to Taiwan when I was invited by the country's tourism board to write about their cycling as a pastime. In a bus filled with fellow writers, all of them white men except for one, I listened to my childhood being replayed in my ears. Practice piano, get straight A pluses, I'm never gonna tell you you're good enough.
My parents believed it was okay to hit us, to pull our palms out and take a large wooden rolling pin to hit, thwap, whenever we didn't obey. I spent hours listening to my mother yell at me as she told me to kneel down and face the corner of our kitchen, not allowed to lean back onto my heels for reprieve. My father's go -to disciplining method was to hit us until one day when I was doing my usual routine of helping to bathe my three younger siblings, I saw a bruise on my brother's left butt cheek the size of the palm of my hand.
I told my brother to wait, then walked outside of the steamy bathroom, looked at my father who's reading the Chinese newspaper at the dining table and said, if you ever hit my brother again, I will report you to the police. As I continued to defang these tigers, my mother found Christianity as a source of healing and brought my father into the fold. I have a lioness tattoo on my forearm, which I got while living in Taiwan as a reminder of how fiercely I will protect my cub.
without using my fangs on her. Step four, go to lots of therapy and talk about all your problems. During my senior year of high school, I began to throw up in the bathroom of a law firm where I was working. That same law firm where I called my sister repeatedly to check the mail to find out that I got into UC Berkeley. I had discovered I was legally allowed to work at the age of 15 and a half, so I went to my high school job board.
searched the typed out blue index cards for local opportunities, then applied to as many jobs as I could. I got two, working as a clerk at a law firm and then working as a clerk at an insurance firm. Within a year, I would add a third, working as a clerk at a tutoring firm. I went to school during the day, took the bus to each of these jobs, then took the bus home at night. I tried to finish my homework, but would first pass out, wake up at 2 a to finish, then my mother would drop me off at school the next morning berating me the entire way.
Judy Tsuei (11:32.974)
My parents didn't have money, so this was how I kept up with students in one of the most affluent neighborhoods in the world, just to have enough money to buy an ice -blended mocha and a chocolate chip cookie from Coffee Bean. I paid my own way through SAT tutoring prep classes because I knew I had to get better than the 1260 I first got, the 1340, and then finally the 1450. I paid for my own college applications. I was watching an after -school special, warning against the dangers of eating disorders, and discovered two white girls who had been starving themselves like I had.
but then one of them discovered bulimia. You can eat and throw up and not get fat, I thought to myself. It was eye -opening. I tried it and was hooked. I skimmed over the fact that one of those girls on the show died because her heart gave out. For the next 15 years, I would battle anorexia, bulimia, compulsive exercising and overeating, and body dysmorphia. I binged and purged my anger at my family and not being taught how to deal with the feelings inside of me.
until I figured out that the healthiest way to live was to be open and free about the very thing I had been trying to hide all along. There's so much freedom in revealing secrets and revelations and knowing the right healthy ways to do that. Step five, start watching porn, masturbate, get your pelvic floor massaged. The first time I discovered masturbation, I didn't realize what it was. I just knew that it felt good.
until my mother walked in on me and told me how disgusting it was, or I was, and then I felt like I had to hide my sense of pleasure for the rest of my life. She criticized what I wore and thought that when I wore skirts, I was seeking sexual attention. I thought that using a tampon meant I'd lose my virginity. I had no one to tell me otherwise, which is why I didn't try tampons until college. At the same time, I began to starve myself in order not to be seen. My father, meanwhile, had porn lying around. He didn't try to hide the fact that he was seeking satisfaction.
and usually outside of his relationship with my mother. She hated that my father and I were so similar, that we had great rapport. So she treated me the way she would if she had to interact with the woman he was having an affair with. I began to watch porn, felt disgusted, then over two decades later found that it helped me survive the relentless nausea of hypermesis gravidarum during my pregnancy. I didn't know you could touch yourself. I didn't know how to find pleasure. Now I use words like vulva, anus, vagina with my friends.
Judy Tsuei (13:49.016)
with my daughter so that she knows how to own her body as she grows up and to protect it and to have a healthy relationship with it. Pleasure isn't something to feel guilty about and porn doesn't have to be demonized. That there are movements for women to own our sensuality and our sexuality. There's power in naming our confusion and these mixed messages and then finding a way, wrestling forward in ways
that abandon the patriarchy and honor and prioritize women despite all the shame and the taboo and the industry of sex. Step six, get pregnant on purpose before getting married, then live in a van and get divorced. Within two weeks of meeting my husband, we consciously chose to conceive. By three weeks of knowing each other, I was pregnant. I called my mom to tell her, but first warned her that if she didn't have anything nice to say, she didn't have to say anything at all. I'm pregnant, I told her. She said, I knew it.
My family has always been intuitively connected. They asked if I'd get married. I said, I'll think about it. My husband later told me that he proposed not because he wanted to, but because he was doing it for my parents. When he did ask, every cell in my body wanted to shout no, but because he did it publicly and because I hadn't yet found my voice, I said yes. I was pregnant after all. It was the right thing to do. We got married on 9 -9 -2014. The nine nine is translated in Mandarin as longevity as good luck.
My father took his Chinese calligraphy scrolls and wrote a Bible verse for us to commemorate the occasion. When I warned them that we might not have a ceremony, even though they had flown out to see us where we lived on the North shore of Kauai, because of how desperately nauseated I was barely in my second trimester, my mother asked, is it because your fiance is having second thoughts? I threw up on the way to the airport to pick them up. A year and a half after my daughter was born, my postpartum depression was running rampant and hadn't yet hit its peak.
I couldn't handle being on the island anymore. And even though a few months after my daughter was born, it was clear the healthier thing to do would be to divorce my husband, who had now regularly taken to yelling, fuck you, when he was angry. I suggested we get a camper van and drive around the mainland for the better part of a year. So we took all of our problems and jam them into a 24 foot space without a break from one another. We arrived in Austin, Texas when I got too cold to live in our tin can any longer.
Judy Tsuei (16:10.912)
After we settled, the three of us in separate bedrooms in an expansive house, my two year old would unknowingly rip apart our marriage scroll into tiny shreds. The one rebellious thing she had ever done as a toddler. As we began our divorce proceedings, my mother would flip flop between supporting me and asking, why can't you just live in the same house for your daughter's sake? When I told my three younger siblings what was happening, each of them said in their own way, don't do what mom and dad did, get divorced. I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop.
And when it did, I bought a new pair and kept right on walking. So when you've experienced trauma throughout your childhood and you don't know what a healthy relationship looks like, you can tend to perpetuate it with a sense of unworthiness. But you're not unworthy. You can create healthy relationships, healthy new patterns, own your own voice, know that there are always opportunities for course corrections, and be willing to reevaluate. It's a practice. It's not about perfection. Step seven, tell your daughters grades don't matter and that she doesn't need to go to college.
My ex -husband is a Waldorf teacher. My daughter went to a Waldorf school. I gave birth to her naturally on an island in the middle of the Pacific, became a yoga teacher and a Reiki master, worked at a mindfulness app and buy organic food. I tell my daughter to talk about her feelings, to call her body parts what they are, to be unafraid to speak her mind. When my parents ask about the future of my daughter's education, where is she really going to go to school? Just like people used to ask me, where are you really from?
I tell them she's going to go to this Waldorf school for as long as we're able to send her and that it's right for her. What about her grades? What about college? ask. Have you seen the news? Have you seen how you can buy your way into schools? There are more than that one way to succeed. tell them. And then we argue. As much as possible. I try to teach my daughter her worth is intrinsic, not extrinsic. She does not need external validation to tell her that she is smart or worthy. She's allowed to take up space.
I focus on building her social emotional skills so that whatever happens in life, she has a well of resources to pull from. Already her parents are divorced and so she's learning earlier than most that there are different realities that exist and that she has to navigate perpetual change. I tell her grades don't matter. I tell her kindness counts. I tell her that she can create her own brand of happy. She has more stamps on her passport at the age of nine than I did at 26. We've lived in three countries and four states together.
Judy Tsuei (18:32.206)
I've lived in 40 something places in over 20 something cities in five states and five countries. My daughter knows how to breathe when she's stressed and how to advocate for herself even with her parents. Education can happen in any number of ways. And for my daughter so far, it looks like experiences, travel and relationships more than grades. The best education doesn't come from memorizing dates in school, especially when the narrative is often written by the victor rather than the victims.
There's power in owning your own mind and learning how to think, how to love yourself, how to have good relationships, how to be a wise parent in the future if that's what you choose to do, how to handle money and how to be healthy. Step eight, trip your balls off. In fifth grade, I went on trip to Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch through the D .A .E. drug abuse resistance education program. At the time, I didn't know that decades later research would show how ineffective D .A was at keeping kids off drugs.
Instead, winning this opportunity simply underscored that I was being guai, good, and keeping clean from all the things guai Chinese kids don't do. But since then, I've done DMT, taken mushrooms, smoked pot, even tried acid. I pursued breathwork practices and Wim Hof ice baths. I've done a sweat in a Native American teepee. I've explored a lot of things to transform my consciousness beyond what I was originally taught as well and good, because I believe in epigenetics, in energy, in manifestation.
in more than we can see with our own two eyes. I believe in healing. My friend, a man who's appeared on Shark Tank, led me in the DMT experience and gave me one piece of advice. You'll meet a point where you feel like you want to control everything that's happening. That's where people have a bad trip. I would suggest letting go and seeing what unfolds. While I once married a white man because the messages I received told me that this white adjacency was one way to quote unquote make it, I felt the most unsafe in my life in that relationship. The real safety comes from knowing yourself.
and trusting your own resiliency that you will find a way to thrive no matter what. Expand your mind beyond judgment into exploring innovative ways for higher understanding. Step nine, move back to the countries your parents fled and name your child something your parents can't pronounce. My parents fled from China to Taiwan when the communists were taking over. My father was three, my mother was one. I asked them when they said they fled, if they meant they knew they had to move and planned accordingly or if they ran like someone who knew.
Judy Tsuei (20:56.59)
that they were about to be attacked. They said they ran. When I was 24, I moved to China. that's good. They're going to take over the world, my mother said. When I was 40, I moved to Taiwan. Why would you do that? It's so dangerous there, my mother said. I thought they would be proud that I was going to learn Mandarin, something that they perpetually pestered me to do when I was growing up. I'm still only as literate as a toddler when it comes to reading Chinese characters, but they were disappointed.
While living internationally, I was featured in a Fast Company article about children of immigrant parents moving back to their parents' home countries to create a better life. I named my daughter Wilder, and a week after she was born, I realized, my god, I named my daughter something my parents can't pronounce. Chinese people can't say the W, the L, or the R. My mother called the next day. She would arrive a few weeks later to help me, or the traditional 30 -day postpartum care. You named your daughter something we can't pronounce. I know, I just realized that.
How would you say it? asked them. Ryder? When I asked my mother to give my daughter a man or a name, she said, you named your daughter something that is not a good thing in Chinese. Wilder, wild soul, wild love, too wild to handle. Your parents may have wanted something different for you when they emigrated to the US. You can still reflect upon your own core values and live in ways that are boundless and boundaryless. Step 10, money doesn't make you matter.
and also maybe buy some crypto. You don't have to be the most competitive person in the room to prove to everyone that you're not weak and you don't have to get rich to prove that you matter. Money is only an approximation of success and it's so easy to compare up or down because all parts of the spectrum are available. Yep, money isn't a fair reward system given that whoever is closest to the flow of cash and can address pressing pain points takes the biggest cut. Income disparity has
actually increase between the highest and lowest earners of the Asian American ethnic group. When you grow up with a scarcity mentality from your immigrant parents, how do you realize that there are other people in need? How do you begin to participate in philanthropy? How do you create more equity? And what is your value if you choose to see abundance as simply more than money in the bank? We all need reminders of where our value truly comes from. For many Asian Americans, we've been taught money is the root of safety and success.
Judy Tsuei (23:15.906)
yet our worthiness cannot be measured in monetary terms alone. The cheat sheet for all of eternity. It's better to shamelessly disappoint than to shamefully try to please. I'm going to include a hit it and quit it list of being a good quote unquote test taker when it comes to shamelessly living a life on your own terms. We'll go through self -reflective practices to address the guilt and shame explored in the previous chapters I mentioned, and I'll share insights on how I've created more freedom for myself, a different dynamic for our family,
and lived into the truth that when one person changes their role within the collective, everyone also changes to fit the new paradigm. Allow yourself to fail, fail, fail, because making mistakes is where we gain wisdom. Let yourself grow up. You have permission to transform a sense of powerlessness to self -love. And then finally, there's the epilogue, where my relationship stands with my family now. I will tell you that multiple people who've read the sample chapter have asked me, have I talked to my parents about this book? Have I told my siblings that I'm writing it? And they all know,
to some degree. And I do plan to share it with them before I make it live and available to everybody, as it's a work in progress. And the more that I can get support with the Kickstarter campaign, the more that I can focus on bringing these stories to life. But I have to say that becoming a neuro -linguistic programming coach and practicing all of the different exercises has monumentally shifted my relationship with my parents so that I now look forward to hanging out with them.
I really enjoy my time with them. enjoy the time that Wilder gets to spend with them. So this epilogue is answering these questions. When you actually put all these ideas into practice, what happens? How do you deal with a fallout of disappointing your parents? Because let's be honest, this shit is hard. And here's another hard question that needs answering. What do do if maybe your parents were right about a few things? This bonus chapter will explore questions that readers will have like, do you ever want to revert back to people pleasing?
Do you ever have to ghost your parents for a period of time to set boundaries? Do you lose sleep over setting boundaries or does it start becoming easier? This epilogue is the ultimate invitation to individuation. As I've always said, life may not always be pretty, but it is indeed beautiful. Make your story beautiful today. Thank you again for listening to this episode. Again, if you feel called, I would be so grateful and so honored if you would go to bit .ly slash shameless book and check out my Kickstarter.
Judy Tsuei (25:38.862)
It will run for 60 days and all support and always is so welcome. And it's going to mean so much. This is truly my passion project come to life. So this season up ahead will feature more snippets from the book. It will feature interviews with different individuals bringing those steps to life in their own ways. And I hope that it supports you in feeling less alone in what you're going through.
and that you know that there's someone out there championing you and championing our collective voice together. Thank you so, so much.
Judy Tsuei (26:15.502)
Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If you'd like to support me and this show, please go to iTunes and leave your review. It means so much to me and it'll help others find this podcast. I'll catch you in the next episode. And if you'd like to stay in touch between now and then, please visit wildheartedwords .com and sign up for my weekly newsletter. I've had people share with me that it's the best thing to arrive in their inbox all week. Aloha.
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Keywords: Asian American, mental health, emotional wellness, personal growth, family dynamics, cultural identity, self-acceptance, Kickstarter, book launch, empowerment
