SEASON 2 EPISODE 64: WHAT I'VE BEEN UP TO & WHAT'S TO COME THIS SEASON
Welcome to the first episode of season 2 of the F*ck Saving Face podcast!
In this episode, I chat about my hopes and dreams for this upcoming season — listen in for updates on the episode schedule as well as a peek at some amazing upcoming guests, including public policy expert Jeff Lee and female entrepreneur Natalie Molina Nino and so many other amazing guests. There will be personal essays and mindfulness episodes as well. I’m really hoping to expand the scope and theme of this podcast and include so many voices from different backgrounds. In this episode I also share what I’ve done and learned during this break between seasons.
Feel free to join my private Facebook group or email me at hello@fcksavingface.com.
Transcript
Judy tsuei:0:06
Welcome to the fuck saving face podcast. I'm your host Judy sway. And together we'll explore mental and emotional health for Asian Americans and beyond all by breaking through taboo topics, like may not always be pretty, but it is indeed beautiful. Let's make your story beautiful today. Well, hello, welcome to season two, we are back.
Judy Tsuei:0:31
So I was checking my listing for my podcast. And it looks like the last episode debuted on August 5 2021. We are now in October. So it's been a good break. And I'm really glad that I took it. Today's episode is going to catch you up about what I've been up to, and it will share a bit about what's going to come in season two. So I've already done an incredible array of interviews, these guests are top tier, they're absolutely amazing. And I am looking to branch out, it will still be mainly focused on supporting Asian Americans.
But we will be talking on a wider scale about just the shared experiences that many different cultures and ethnicities and different marginalized populations may have so that we can truly start having this bridging conversation and offering more access points to people to really find the kind of mental and emotional health support that they need without the stigma attached of the different taboos that we may have been raised with. And I first want to preface that even though this podcast is about mental and emotional support.
Even though there are mindfulness episodes and personal essays and experts are on the show. This is by no means expert advice for you in your specific situation and lifestyle and season of your life. So whatever it is that you need, I highly encourage you to find the right fit support. And that might look any number of ways for you to really reach out if you feel like you're struggling or experiencing challenges or simply need to bounce ideas off of someone, I highly advocate all of that. And a lot of these experts that I brought on to the show are here so that they're offering different perspectives and maybe different styles of practice that you weren't necessarily aware of.
So it's up to you to do your own research, you are empowered, you always have a choice. And if you're listening to this right now, it means that you know, these topics and these conversations are something of interest to you, you want to grow, you want to evolve. As I had a conversation recently with my partner, you know, this is all about how I want to always reach for the highest common denominator, I want to grow and elevate and have that intrinsic motivation to do that.
I mentioned before in season one that I am a sensory seeker. So it doesn't matter if I'm just driving down a different street or trying a different restaurant. It's just something that I need to know that I'm expanding and growing and just making the most of this incredible life that we have. When I say this incredible life, trust you and me that I have struggled deeply with different forms of depression. So you know, when I was in high school, I was suffering very drastically from an eating disorder and different iterations of an eating disorder that I would then deal with for the next 10 to 15 years of my life. And then I had postpartum depression, postpartum depression. You know, I went through a lot of anxiety. People tell me all the time that they see me as very calm, is very nurturing. And someone once pointed out that there's an analogy that I'm a little bit like a duck, where I look very calm on the surface, but I'm paddling like crazy underneath. And so that will lead into my first story of what I've been up to over the last three months.
So I brought up this analogy to an expert that I've been working with who does network chiropractic work. And you might have seen this on goop. It's something that I've been really interested and fascinated by and simply wanted to learn more about so thankfully, a neighbor Carrie, who is like family to me. She knew of someone here in San Diego. And so she mentioned that she'd gone to see this woman and that she'd brought her kids to go see this woman since they were very young. You know, her kids are now teenagers and young 20 somethings. So I came to her from a very trusted source. And during our first two sessions, there was a lot of analysis, scientific scans of my spine, and we did a resting test to see where I am, where my sympathetic nervous system is, where my autonomic nervous system is. And both To my surprise and my relief, it really showed that after sitting there for five minutes where I wasn't allowed to meditate, I wasn't allowed to read. I just had to kind of sit there quietly by myself because my system is on overdrive all the time.
The experts said that it was as though my feet were on the gas all the way down all the time, even when I'm at rest. So explains a lot of what I've always felt of me being hyper vigilant because of the family of origin upbringing, that I have everything and everything was always so chaotic. And you know, after having worked through years and years of therapy, it could be considered emotional abuse or physical abuse. And so if you've listened to season one, a lot of that was me attributing it to being raised Taiwanese, American, or Chinese American. And then it was part of the culture.
So imagine my surprise when I went and lived in Shanghai, China, and then lived in Taiwan, and saw very different cultural understandings of connection, and even physical touch. That was very surprising to me, and very jarring, because then I had to rewrite the story that I've been telling myself for so long, about the ways that my family was because of our culture, when in fact, you know, culture might have played a little bit into it with a tiger parenting and things like that. But it was also just the unique structure of my family. And you know, where we are. Now, I just took my daughter to go meet my parents at Lake Paris, they bought a new camper van, we lived in a camper van. So we drove at dawn so that my daughter could go fishing with my father. And it was a lovely trip. And if you had told me that my family would be now the way that it is, or the relationship that I have with them, I wouldn't have believed you when I was younger. But also, that doesn't mean there's not still room to grow. There's plenty of things that are still sometimes feeling like open wounds, or triggers or whatnot. And so I've always said that it's really interesting to be human, where you are evolving and moving through your life and day to day having new experiences, while you're also trying to process through all the experiences that happened before that, so can be a very intense experience at times.
But I have incredible episodes from season one with a lot of different psychotherapists and different you know, mental health professionals that you can listen to Episode 59 with Kj nos rule, Episode 14 with Sharon Kwan, who wrote several Huffington Post's articles that went viral, and myriad mindfulness practices throughout season one that you can listen to, to kind of dive into your own journey a bit more. So the reason that this work was so important to me is because I've known for a very long time that my nervous system is constantly on alert, and that even at rest, I don't really always feel like I'm completely rested. So I wanted to address that because over the last three months, I've also completed a book proposal, sent it to an agent at CAA, and sent it to another agent at a different agency. And both of the agents came back and said that they were not interested, they thought it was a great idea, but that there were areas of improvement, and then it wasn't the right fit for them. So you know, I've done PR, I used to be a travel writer, I'm very well versed in terms of pitching and what that takes and being okay with the nose, I recently transformed a former contract freelance position into a full time position. And even in that they were saying, like, I hope that you're not going to be offended if you're writing, you know, gets critiqued and whatnot. And I've been doing this so long for over two decades that I have no ego attached to any of the book proposals. It was me putting forward my memory, so me being on display. And then hearing feedback, such as just the industry, when it comes to memoir is really based on how big your platform is.
And then also how I needed to make it more accessible to more people, which was challenging for me, because in all of my writing, and you know, all the newsletters that I've ever sent my blogs, the articles that I published, it's always been the specificity which people have related to not because they've gone through the exact same experiences. But in that specificity, I touch upon what that core emotion is that we all go through. And that is what people are able to translate into their own lives. Over and over again, I've heard you know, I may not have gone through exactly what you went through, but I knew exactly what you were talking about. So getting this feedback and talking to different friends of mine and my book coach and people who've gotten huge publishing deals, they all say that it's a marathon. And it's a years-long process. And I understand that. But I also understood that my nervous system just wasn't ready for that. It just maxed out at the different things that I have to navigate in my life.
So if you listen to season one, you also know that I am a divorced, single parent. And that even though it's been two and a half years since my divorce became official, there are still things that I have to deal with. Part of that is co parenting. And you know if you've been divorced, or that's something that you're considering. It's interesting to be in a dynamic where you've chosen to close the relationship in the way that it was probably for any number of reasons. And for me, the reasons were very clear, and you know, it was definitely an avenue that I took to embark on a much help Fear, mental, emotional and physical life. So if you've been divorced, and perhaps that the relationship didn't resolve in the best of ways, then you still have to navigate when you have a child together, co parenting with someone you'd rather not be, you know, connected with more.
So it's a very interesting dynamic to be in. And then specifically, when it comes to the relationship that I was in, there was a lot of trauma that occurred during the marriage. And so it's taken so much in our work to heal that trauma. And to come through as a stronger, more self respecting person, I would say, and also to be the kind of mother that I want to be for my daughter. So there are different experiences that I'll talk about in season two, where it's really required me to elevate and to show up fully putting into practice that statement, would you rather be kind or would you rather be right, because now I've seen what it looks like when you choose to go down the path of wanting to be right, and then the pathway of wanting to be kind, especially when it comes to choosing to, you know, put my role of mother first above my need, my egoic need to be right, or vindicated or justified or whatever that might be.
So the work that I'm doing in this network chiropractic work, which is long term, she told me after our initial assessment that I had three options, I could choose not to work together, I could choose to do short term work, which is four to six weeks, and that that would indeed very much change my life, or that we could work together over the course of nine months. And I chose the last option because that is truly where I feel like it will help me get to the place of my life that I want to be to manifest, create, you know, build myself in a way where I can truly go after the dreams that I want to have, and not be held back by old pattern thinking, old experiences.
So one of the things that I've also done over the last three months is I talked to a therapist again. And I realized in our first session that I hadn't actually talked to anyone professionally since I got divorced, we had talked to a couples counselor, a couples coach, you know, multiple ones, actually, throughout the course of our marriage. And I had talked to a child therapist to ensure that my daughter would be set up in this next phase of life. But I hadn't talked to someone specifically about me. And the reason that I wanted to go to her is because I had been in a new relationship for over a year. And I wanted to make sure that the choices that I was making moving forward were coming from a healthy place, not coming from a place where I was scared and running away, not coming from a place of you know, trying to do the right thing or people pleasing or anything like that. So it's that work combined with the network chiropractic work, combined with physically getting so much stronger. My partner has a peloton. Never thought I would enjoy it. But I love the feeling of getting stronger. And during the time when I was married, my body was in severe pain. So not only was I in emotional pain, I was in severe physical pain. And that involved a lot of tension that I was holding in my neck, my shoulders, my knees were constantly dislocating a lot of this stuff that when you study where emotions are held in the body, it makes a lot of sense for all the things that I was going through then.
So as a summary, over the last three months, I've written a book proposal and sent it out. I am now gaining more clarity on how to structure it. And I was actually thinking that in this season, too, I want to bring you along that journey with me because one of the pieces of feedback is how to offer more access points, so that the audience wasn't super Nish focused solely on Asian Americans. In full transparency. I've not fully gained clarity around this, I was talking to a really good friend of mine today, who said that rather than going through and rewriting the entire proposal, which took me like six months to do, it was the biggest labor of love, the biggest declaration of me and my writing and my story that I'd ever put out there in the world.
That, you know, I could just work on the elevator pitch and really get clear on what that mission statement is, which was very helpful for me, because part of this journey of writing this book and doing this podcast is to know that I have a voice, and that I can stand confidently in that voice. And I can trust that this content that I'm putting out there is helpful to a large audience that I may not have connected with before because of whatever shame and stigma I held myself, trying to live as a person who is white adjacent or trying to issue my own Asian heritage to try to fit in and assimilate which is something that I no longer want to do. So all of this stuff is very new to me still. It's very You know, close and near and dear to my heart, and I'm walking through it. And I want to exemplify that you can also walk through vulnerability in your dreams, and that things may not unfold the way that you think one of the emails that I got back from the agent had said that she knows what a trying process this can be. But then in all of her experience as an agent, she hopes that I embrace the valleys as much as the peaks, because she's seen in her own experience, and with all the authors that she's worked with, that the valleys become just as beautiful and meaningful as the peaks. So it was a lovely message to get. And that's what I'm hoping to share with you is that in season two, you will see that there are as many valleys as there are peaks, and that that can be normalized, so that we're not living in the social media squares, in the illusion that everything has to be perfect or a highlight reel, but that you can be a very real person and still be loved and honored and respected and still have things work out even in the middle of it when it doesn't seem like it is. So you know, even recently, I had a moment where I'm navigating the situation with my ex husband that really felt like it kind of broke my human spirit for a little bit where I didn't understand how things could be so potentially unjust, or just how you could be aiming to be a good person, and not be able to control all the x factors around.
And just knowing the dynamic that we've gone through. And knowing in my mind, the way that however the outcome of the situation would be, however, would be perceived by him. It just sent me into just this place of probably darkness and shadow and doubt. And then I did a peloton ride this morning where the instructor had, you could see that she genuinely embodies this self confidence. And that she was saying, you know, you can turn the Why me into a try me. And that you can put on that crown as the Regal queen who you are, and know that you are worthy, and that your human spirit can continue to shine, even in the middle of adversity. So it was definitely a message that I needed to hear at that moment. It really helped me kind of dust myself off and come back and shine and to focus on all of the wonder that I have in my life, from my daughter to the work opportunities. Also, last three months, I launched a strategic content marketing agency and hired a couple of junior copywriters. They're amazing, the work that we're doing is amazing.
And then also was asked to be part of the founders Institute where I'm now mentoring all of these founders of all these different startups on branding and marketing and what it is that they need to communicate. It's been a remarkable experience, and the interconnectedness, the ways in which I'm able to work with so many different industries, because of my multi passionate nature, and all of my ridiculous life experiences and how they all come together so that in any conversation with anyone, I have resources to pull from, I have different insights, different lived experiences. So if you feel like you're kind of an odd duck, and you know, have been having a hard time finding your way and finding your place and exploring who you are, know that you're not alone. And then all of that can come together in such an incredible way that maybe you don't yet realize.
Judy Tsuei:18:23
So that's all of what I've been up to. When I reached out to my incredible podcast editor, he asked, you know, what have you been up to? And I filled him in on this stuff and a bunch more. And he's like, yeah, it's never boring with you, which is a refrain that I hear from many, many different people. So stay tuned, and you will continue to be involved in the exciting adventures of this wild life. what's ahead in season two, first of all, we're going to slow the pace of it a little bit. So before I was doing three episodes a week, which anybody and everybody was telling me is a lot. I like content, I generate a lot of content. But I also realized that I want to continue to make this sustainable for the long term for everyone, everyone who's involved in it, my assistant, my podcast editor, you know, just anybody who is involved in this and myself. So we're going to slow things down, we're going to go to one time a week, we're still going to have three different styles of episodes and I'd really love to hear from you. If there is a style that you'd like more or that you'd like to see less of please email me Hello at flex saving face calm. That's fuck without the you and share your thoughts. I read every single email. I love hearing from you and hearing you know what a potential difference insight impact that this podcast can make. So in season two, we have unbelievable guests. We have Francis Tang, who is the founder of awkward essentials. Definitely go look that up.
We have Jeff Lee. He's a public policy expert. He was working in Afghanistan just an incredible human just so gregarious and generous and who has gone through the rigmarole and as an Asian American male, and is going to share those experiences. We have Justin Kang, he is a venture capitalist, Natalie Molina Nino she will be my first non AAPI voice who I very much resonated with, when I read her book leapfrog, which I recommend to all female entrepreneurs, especially women of color, her book, you know, it had a lot of similarities with my story. And my immigrant parents. And this is one of the areas that I'm going to look to to bring forward and season two, which is to bring more voices of different backgrounds. And let's explore the common themes that we've been going through, rather than, you know, just focusing on specific stories necessarily, but like how all of these stories tie together, so that we can have more bridging conversations. We have Sarah massada, the co-host of Dear white Women. Unbelievably, they have a book coming out, and so many more guests. So I hope that you will tune in, we will still have personal essays during one week. And I really will be using that as an opportunity to practice the style of writing that will be in the book forthcoming. However, that is, oh, I also forgot to mention, I do have a book coming out with an independent publishing house through Simon and Schuster. And so if you search Simon and Schuster, my name would be up there, it's the five Tibetan rites that are going to be coming out in early 2022. a legit book that will be on bookshelves, so I do have a book coming out. And as well working on a memoir, after the personal essay, you know, the book chapter kind of episodes, we'll have interviews with experts to elaborate on that theme. And then again, I will offer mindfulness practices.
The following week, after that, a lot of you have shared how much you love it, how much you love it. Well, my voice. So thank you very much, and just listening to my voice, you know, whatever you're doing, walking around, cleaning the house, and then having the opportunity to come back to yourself. I think that that's so important. It's so wonderful. And I hope that you know, just gives you a moment of reprieve and a reminder of how absolutely incredible you are. So easy to forget, when we're struggling through something we're going through a hard time. But each of us was designed beautifully and individually to be here. And you know, during one of my episodes with Dr. Sam CO from last season, we talked about how if you were offered two bouquets of flowers, one of them completely plastic, one of them live and fresh, which one would you value more. And,
Judy Tsuei:22:35
you know, he said, you'd probably value the fresh flowers. But why? Because it's fleeting, because you know, they're not going to last forever. So you enjoy them while you have them. And you enjoy their beauty because you know, it won't last forever. And so for all of us and all of our lives, everything is fleeting. It was a term that helped me a lot in the early days of parenthood and this too shall pass. It helped me when I was going through my divorce. And just understanding that none of this lasts forever, you will rise and you will try them. And then you will experience a new growing opportunity. One of my favorite things that I've learned over the last three months is about the chambered Nautilus. So you may have heard this, and I had no idea. You know, in addition to the magical Fibonacci sequence that they say, is within the shell, and all the sacred geometry that's in there. It's the fact that the Nautilus you know, the creature that moves from one chamber builds the next one that moves into that, and then builds the next one.
And that's how the spiral appears from one chamber to the next. And this, I learned from Michael sailor, actually, who is, I think, the longest standing CEO of a public health company, and don't quote me on that, but I know that he has an extreme amount of Bitcoin, which I've been learning about crypto over the last few months as well. I'll be diving into that in season two, for all the different philosophies behind it, as well as the opportunities to really decentralize money and create more accessibility. And truly, if you are like me, and maybe had a harder time learning about all the traditional financial models and all the things to know, anytime I tried to learn about it from a traditional route, it was very, like overwhelming and confusing. But learning about crypto has enabled me to learn about all of that in a very, very manageable and much easier way. So I don't know if my brain was just designed to understand crypto are what it was. But I dove deep into that world setting of limit orders and all of that kind of stuff and understanding the philosophy of how crypto even came about which is super exciting. And especially the fact that women are so underrepresented in the space is really incredible.
Anyhow, going back to listening to an interview with Michael Saylor about this, you know, he was talking about as he was building his tech companies that in order to evolve and stay competitive and stay at the forefront of what he was doing, he had to become like a champion nonetheless, he had to let go The old, move into the new let go of the old move into the new, but not letting go of it so that you forget about it, but letting go of it so that you're building upon what you've learned before. And I just love that idea tremendously. So I hope that season two also builds upon everything that we've cultivated and shared in season one, and that it just continues to evolve from here, I have no idea, you know, what all can come of it, I'm trusting in the journey in the process, and that this space needs to continue to grow and more voices need to be heard. And hopefully, you know, whatever background you're coming from, wherever you are in the world, that there's something that you can take away to come back to when you need it most. Or to open up your mind in ways you didn't think. And just so that we can come back to this philosophy that I've always had, that hurt people hurt people. So in order to truly heal the world involves healing ourselves. And when we feel healed, and whole, or healing and hold because I don't know if being fully healed is actually a thing to achieve or attain in our human experience since we continue to grow and shift and change and experience. But if we can truly embrace feeling safe and secure and strong within ourselves, that we can stop perpetuating, you know, lashing out or creating imprints on the world that create more pain.
That is something that I've always been super passionate about. And I hope that in season two, we really explore that more. So to close today's episode, I want to share that I've changed my facebook group, you know, it's gone through many different evolutions. It started as a mom's group when I was coming on cool. I then became this support for my creative marketing agency. And then it became, you know, just a platform for me to have a safer space to explore different ideas. And now it's where I hope to have more honest and open conversations with you as a listener if you'd like to join in. So if that's something that's of interest to you go to Facebook, go to groups and search flexing face, that's fuck without the you. You could also find me on Instagram there. And you can always email me. I would love to hear how the show can better support you with what topics you'd like to learn more about. And, you know, just building this community of healthy connections.
27:28
I really really love that. So I will see you next week where we will debut an interview with the unbelievable co hosts Sarah Emma Sasha of Dear white Women, the podcast so you can go head over there and listen to that right now if you want to catch up, and then we will have a mindfulness practice. So hope you have a beautiful rest of your week. And I will talk to you soon. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. You can follow me on Instagram at fuck saving face or have an honest conversation with me in my private Facebook group. Fuck saving face. That's fuck without the you. If you enjoy this work, please help to see it. The best ways to do that are to share it with your friends and networks. Subscribe rate and review on your listening platforms. And of course through your thoughtful financial donations. You can buy me a coffee or treat me to lunch or share an even bigger lab at flex saving face calm again. That's fun without the you
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