November 3, 2022 • 51 mins
Do you feel like you’re a good ancestor? What does it even mean to be a good ancestor? In this episode of Parenting Decolonized, I welcome Jana Lynne (JL) Umipig, a Creator, liberation educator, Ilokano healer, and cultural/knowledge bearer. Listen in as JL and I talk about how to be a good ancestor as you decolonize your life.
In this episode, we talk about…
How colonization impacts Filipino people.
The intersectionality of intergenerational trauma and colonization.
Challenges we face in setting boundaries and communicating with family, especially elders and parents.
JL’s tips for people struggling with familial boundaries in their liberation journey
….and more!
To connect further with JL:
Follow her on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jlcreator
Don't forget to share, rate, and let me know what you think of this week's episode on Facebook and Instagram!
Read the TRANSCRIPT here: https://parentingdecolonized.com/episode-57-what-it-means-to-be-a-good-ancestor-with-jana-lynne-umipig/
This episode of Parenting Decolonized is produced by Crys & Tiana.
In this episode, we talk about…
How colonization impacts Filipino people.
The intersectionality of intergenerational trauma and colonization.
Challenges we face in setting boundaries and communicating with family, especially elders and parents.
JL’s tips for people struggling with familial boundaries in their liberation journey
….and more!
To connect further with JL:
Follow her on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jlcreator
Don't forget to share, rate, and let me know what you think of this week's episode on Facebook and Instagram!
Read the TRANSCRIPT here: https://parentingdecolonized.com/episode-57-what-it-means-to-be-a-good-ancestor-with-jana-lynne-umipig/
This episode of Parenting Decolonized is produced by Crys & Tiana.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:12):
Welcome to the Parenting Decolonized Podcast.I'm your host, Elanda Williams, entrepreneur,
conscious parenting coach, and single momto want Amazing Tyler. I'm on
a mission to help shine the lighton how colonization has impacted the black family
structure. If you're a parent thatwants to learn how decolonize, you're a
parenting You're in the right place.Let's do this, Okay, fam Before
(00:38):
we hop intoe, I just wantto let you know that this mama home
speaking to j L. Her baby'sin the room. And if you know
anything about me, I am asingle parent. She is not, but
I am. And sometimes we justdon't have We just there's there's nowhere to
go where the babies aren't. Soyou will hear the baby in the background
crying and speaking and talking. Ifthat's something you're not able to handle,
(01:00):
I completely understand. But I justwant to put that out there that that
will be part of this episode,So enjoy. Welcome back to the Parents
Decolonized Podcast. I'm your host,Gelanda Williams, and today I have with
me Jenna Lynn Umi Pig. Thankyou so much for joining me. How
are you. I'm blessed. Thankyou so much for having me. It's
(01:23):
really great to be in conversation withyou day. Yes, I'm so excited
to talk to you about this subject, which is being a good ancestor.
We are going to get into that, but before we get down and dirty,
I want you to tell the folksall about yourself. Yeah. I
usually want to introduce myself in yourspace as I do, name where I'm
from, ancestral and alish name,the names of my immediate ancestors who will
(01:47):
whose names will also come up,and that's my daughter Callelia. Y'all will
be hearing her in the a coupleof times over we are Mama's. Just
to reiterate, my name is Jennalyncalled it terrib me big. I also
go by j L. So alot of folks know me by that name
that was offered to me by someof the young people that I worked with
here in New York when I firstlanded here thirteen years ago. But my
(02:09):
family comes from the northern part ofthe Philippines and a part of the island
of Lucon called Ilocos. My mother'sfrom a Locas Norte in a place called
a good food and my father's froma loco Sore and a place called Santa
Maria. And my mother's name isRose Marie called a tero me pick.
My father is good, a friendof world to me, pig. And
another living ancestor in my life whohelped to raise me is my grandmother on
(02:34):
my maternal side. And then Icalled the terra. So I name them
first and foremost just to kind ofbe in relationship to the truth that I
actually can only name maybe up tomy great grandparents on either side and then
like can't really reach any further.But something that allowed myself to be very
true too is that you know,even if I don't know the names of
(02:59):
my ancestors beyond me, I knowmy name really well, yes, And
so I make sure to say thatreally strong, so that my daughter and
their children and their children after willbe able to say my name if someone
were to ask them to call intheir ancestors in any space in the future.
So those are some things to share. I'm educator at kind of the
(03:22):
forefront of my work, working withyoung folks fifteen sixteen years now working in
education, but also working as anartist, primarily doing arts that speaks to
social justice and has its own formof activism and the ways in which it
speaks to and responds to the culturalshifts in the world and the ways in
(03:45):
which I live through them as aperson, as a human being. And
I also do healing work in thediaspora, some ancestral practices, but also
some practices that have been adopted fromteachers in the diasport who teach from other
land origins. And I'm also adeath dueler, So that's like something that
(04:05):
I've been standing firmly on, particularlyin the past two years now, necessarily
you know, in relationship to theworld. So those are some things about
me. Yes, I'm so happyto have you on. And you know,
I don't know if my audience isspeaking to y'all directly, if you
all understand how colonization has impacted somany people, with especially Filipino people as
(04:30):
well. It was Spain that colonizedFilipino and so there's actually a lot of
Spanish words and even in the Cuisinesyou can you can taste it um and
it has till this day, samewith you know, with indigenous people of
the America's Turtle Island, African Americansand beyond that impact is extremely felt throughout
(04:55):
the generation. So we're going tobe discussing like general intergenerational like trauma and
how to be a good ancestor aswe decolonize, right, because a lot
of us were basically indoctrinated into thinkingthat we needed to only really care about
a generations behind us. You know, when we get a little bit of
(05:16):
money, you you buy you bymy house. You don't put your money
up for your child. You buyyou by my house. That kind of
stuff. So how does that comeup in your in your culture? Oh,
that's it, you know, it'slike the deepest of deep conversations.
Um. You know, like myfamily was one that we have three generations
(05:36):
here in the United States. Mygreat grandmother on my maternal side was the
first that I know had migrated umhere, particularly to Hawaii. So that's
actually where I was born and raised, isn't I know? Huw to Lulu
Hawaiian. My great grandmother was thereand then she brought over her children little
by little on not all of themdecided to come to the United States.
(05:57):
But another thing that some folks maynot know is that like Philippines was actually
a commonwealth of the United States fora really long time, and there was
a point where they were trying tomake us into a state. We kind
of had the same, actually almostthe exact same relationship to the United States
that Puerto Rico had, So wehave very similar histories about colonization. But
the difference was that there was rightafter World War Two, the Philippines gained
(06:18):
their independence after fighting beside the Americansoldiers for the freedoms of the United States.
My grandfather and my mother's side wasactually also a soldier during that time.
But there are a lot of differentinjustices that take place in having this
type of like colonial imperial type ofrelationship to the United States with the Philippines.
(06:44):
One of the things is that likethere's a glorification of the way that
the United States is in the Philippines, which I'm sure is very common for
a lot of folks in the diasapurand the ways in which they've seen a
lot of their elders, their parents, their grandparents, like really relate to
culture. We were in a positionvery often when we were growing up in
(07:04):
my generation, so just learning focuson I'm an eighties, so like when
I was growing up, we werein a time where you know, my
parents were really in a place wherethey didn't even want to teach us to
speak the language of our family becausethey were in a position of believing that
we wouldn't be able to thrive ina capitalist existence if we didn't speak English
(07:26):
properly. So yeah, like wewere in a position of learning the language
of our people. And my familyactually speaks a particular language, not dialect,
called Ilocano that's very specific to ourregion. There's like a thousand languages
in the Philippines, so it's it'ssomething to just kind of be said for
us to be in relationship too.There were certain cultural things that my parents
(07:48):
were just like, you're not goingto do that. You're going to be
American. You know, you're goingto be raised to be an American first
and foremost. And I know thatthat's very true for a lot of difficult
you know that is it's like Ihave to assimilate to be accepted, and
the closer and proximity I am towhiteness, the safer I feel like I
(08:09):
will be. And then you know, you get hit with the reality like
I'm not safe, but you youknow, I feel like as a parent
that had to that has to besuch a difficult thing because they know what
it felt like, you know,very outward and overt white supremacy in their
face. So it's like, howdo I protect my kid? Right?
(08:30):
And I feel like a lot ofblack folks do that in a different way.
We do it by let's move towhat we feel like it's the safest
part, which is usually the whitestpart. Let's get our kids out of
this school system that seems to be, you know, that doesn't have really
good education, and then put themin this predominantly white space where they're now
(08:50):
racially targeted every single day. Soit's like the lesser of two evils are
trying to figure out how to keepyou safe. But even then it works
because at the end of the day, it's not about us. We can't
keep our seat. We can doall that we can, and the delusion
of white supremacy that folks want tohold on to is what keeps us unsafe.
(09:11):
I also just feel like those negotiationslike did a number my ability to
even just accept like the trueness oflike who I was, or I felt
like I was contending with that veryoften, and what it turned into was
me being the rebellious child, orbeing the child that was defiant or the
one that like you know, questiontoo much or you know, even still
(09:33):
to this day, like my motherand my father have a very difficult time
understanding what it is that I doand I who I am in the world.
So it's like it's a really it'sa really trying thing. And as
I start to grow my own childand be in relationship to her becoming in
(09:54):
the world, I'm always in questionof like how much I'm imposing on to
her because of my ideas of whatI believe is her stepping into her greatness
and her wholeness and me actually listeningand being true to like who it is
that she lets us know she is, which is something that most definitely was
(10:15):
not, like, you know,the way my parents raised me. When
I when I graduated from from highschool and college, it was like,
no, that's my degree, likemy mom's like those are high degrees,
you know, Like it's not they'renot yours. I did the work to
fank you so that you could behere, which there was. There is
a level of truth to that,and also there's something there, right because
(10:37):
like the prescribing to all of allof it and like wanting me to be
shaped and formed in that in thesereally elitest ways. So you know,
my degrees were in theater and thenalso in cultural studies, both in my
underground and then my master's I wentinto like a deeper form of education related
to social justice. But my mother, you know, her idea of that
(11:00):
would always be like, well,the ultimate goal, right, is for
you to go to Broadway, orthe ultimate goal for you and education is
to become a professor. Right,You're going to go back to your get
your PhD. Like it. Itwas always like ray and never enough,
and that's it was. If that'sa function of capitalism and white supremacy culture,
we know that that elitism is timeand the transactional nature of parenting.
(11:22):
In that way, it's like weowe our parents a debt because of the
sacrifices they had to make under whitesupremacy, and we are always we're never
going to be able to pay thatdebt. So they have to always remind
us of it, but we won'tever be able to repay them for that.
It doesn't matter if you became adoctor or you became a professor or
(11:43):
danced on Broadway or saying on Broadwayit would have been then just been like
okay, well now are you thelead? Are you the producer? Now?
Like It's never enough, and that'sthat's a function of capitalism where you
can never be satisfied. It's more, more, more, do better,
be better? And that pressure,I don't even know what the hell kind
(12:05):
of pressure A lot and I didn'tfeel that kind of pressure, but I
know a lot of first generations,like generation people whose parents immigrated here still
feel that immense pressure, and theyalso feel immense pressure to take care of
their parents, like Okay, Igot this degree, I got this money,
and now I have to I'm theprovider in the household, and I'm
(12:26):
just like, when do you getto just live your life. That's actually
a conversation me and my sister havebeen having pretty deep her and I.
I feel like I have a verydifferent relationship than what we experienced from our
elders with their relationships to their siblings. And it's on purpose because the two
of us are really working hard tobreak a lot of the different toxicities that
(12:48):
we we understand us embodying in ourdaily but she's the eldest, I'm the
youngest, and we also were theonly two girls growing up amid like fourteen
grandchildren for a really long time,so we had a lot of responsibilities.
Is the you know, female bornfolks a part of the path. There
(13:11):
was a really big thing about well, when you were talking about the idea
of like having a debt, wehave a word in the Philippines or a
phrase in the Philippines called utagnal,which basically means like your sole debt that
you have to those who provide foryou, who help help you along the
way in your path in your life, and it causes a lot of shame.
(13:33):
That is a keyword that I feelis something that we contend with often
for ourselves. Is like being shamedby our elders for not doing or for
not being the people that they wantus to be, or like being in
a position of doing the things thatthey want us to do in the world.
And my sister being the eldest,she often is put in that position
(13:54):
now as like this matriarch, right, like she needs to step into into
the role. Now that my eldersare getting older, they have this expectation
for themselves that they're gonna that mysister's gonna take on everything, and she's
just feeling all this pressure, andthen it creates resentment toward me because I'm
not being to the same thing.Not that I wouldn't step into some of
(14:16):
the stuff, but I do distancemyself and I tell her, like,
there's very many moments where I'm tellingmy sister, like, don't get involved,
just don't do it. So becausewhat I'm hearing too, because I
you know some of that, Ido feel that pressure to be like the
family matriarch at forty two years old, and my mom is like not trying
to hear that. She's like,I'm still the mom. She still wants
that authority over me. But thething is, it's the boundaries. Right
(14:41):
like you start thinking, you startdigging through, they're really just underlying sort
of issues that come up when yousort of parent in this traditional way.
Are you're living in this traditional waythat is shaped by colonization, and you
dig into how it should use astrips you of agency, strips you of
(15:03):
autonomy, tramples on your boundaries.Again, these are all functions of colonization,
of white supremacy, delusion of capitalism, and a patriarch, So not
feeling like you can ever say noto your family. Your family asks you
to do something, they expect youto do it. There is no negotiations,
there is no no, and that'sthat's not that's not, that's not
(15:26):
okay. I should be able tosay no and you can feel wherever you
want, but it shouldn't be likea whole last family drama around it,
you know. Yeah, And it'sso easy to just get caught up like
it. You can like have suchsolid boundaries when you're not present to a
too. So one of the thingsfor me is that my family lives on
(15:46):
the West Coast, mostly in Hawaiiand in California, and I live here
in New York, and so I'mdistanced. And that was a very conscious
choice and also maybe a subconscious choiceat one point to not be drawn like
taken in by a lot of thethings that you know, I feel like
(16:07):
we're hindering me from just stepping intomy life and fullness based on what my
family wanted from me. But Iwent back home recently and I was there
for a whole month because it's beena really long time. My babies in
the world. She's got to havea relationship to my family as much as
my partners here on the East Coast, and so I wanted to be intentional.
(16:29):
And my sister was like, yo, come and stay with me for
a month. And I was like, all right, I work remote,
we can make this happen. Andslowly but surely the threads were pulled and
I was really coming to an understanding, like about how much the boundaries really
have to do also with physical distance, like, because it's hard not to
(16:52):
get coiled up in all of thefamilial tensions and all the stuff that's going
on when it's right there in theroom next door, Like how do you
ignore that and be in a positionof not feeling responsible in some way like
what you were saying, you know, like to not be brought into it
in some way. And it's somethingthat we're still dealing with it, and
me and my sister had a lotof conversations about the ways in which we
(17:15):
want to do better for each other. But yeah, a lot of it,
just like for me, is likewe just have to not feel like
we have that responsibility. This islike a tricky one, right because the
elder conversation that the elder conversation istricky. Yeah, and it's because we
as a collective, right, we'renot so part of you know, indigenous
(17:41):
cultures, most cultures in the globalmajority is we function as communal societies,
as collectives. So there is stillthat sense of I need to kind of
honor my elders and take care ofthem if that's necessary, you know,
as they age. And I don'tthink that's any I don't think there's a
(18:03):
problem with that. My issue iswhen the needs of the elders become more
important than my needs and my andmy child's needs, because that's not gonna
happen, right because I still havea life and I still have a life
to live, and I don't subscribeto the same line of thinking that I
need to give up everything in orderand that's called honoring. I don't think
(18:26):
that's honor because I don't think that'sare like you know, when I think
about, you know, my ancestorswho were enslaved, I don't think that
they would want to listen. Idon't know y'all like that, but I
don't think you know, liberation includesautonomy, it includes agency, it includes
boundaries, and to love someone ityou know, in the Bell Hooks definition
(18:49):
of love, which is basically yougot to give up ownership of that person.
There's still ownership and love, there'syeah and so, and when they
ask us basically to be like thisperson or these people for the family,
and basically you have to make allthese sacrifices because they're elders and are asking
you. It does get tricky.But it's also like it's privaty colonizing because
(19:12):
you're going to have to Unfortunately wealways have to give stuff up, but
we may be ostracized buy our familyfor saying, listen, this is no
longer the way I want to Iwant to do things. I want to
start a different family tradition where wehonor each other, everybody honoring each other,
Like I deserve honor too, Ideserve protection and safety. Yeah,
(19:34):
yeah, I feel it. Youknow what's coming up for me as you're
saying all of this is also likethe boundaries that have to do like one,
yes, you know, like there'sa very real aspect of it of
like oh, like you need totake care of me like physically until like
the ending of my life in theseparticular ways, and this is what it
(19:55):
looks like. But there's this otherlevel of that has been coming up pretty
often and since I was a kidtoo, of like making us aware and
making it known, like how muchwas sacrificed and like the guilt of all
the things that yes, that dead. That's like I struggled my whole Like
all of this trauma that I carriedis because like I wanted you to have
(20:18):
a better future, and so youowe me that. And my sister and
I had this conversation because there wasa point where I was talking about boundaries
in a really particular way, andshe did have a moment of just kind
of being like, you know,it's gonna be real with you, like
sometimes when you talk about this wayabout particularly our mother. She's just like,
(20:38):
I'm just like, why do youhate mom so much? Like she
asked me that, and I wasjust like, oh, you're you're getting
it twisted, right, You're gettingit twisted. Like I don't need to
forego and sacrifice my love for myselfand my care for myself just because I
have compassion for what's going on withmom. Absolutely do have compassion. I've
(21:02):
done so much work to be anunderstanding of what types of traumas it is
that our mother may be holding thatmaybe she hasn't even contended with. But
that doesn't mean that because I understandthat I'm supposed to forego my understanding of
the trauma that was placed on meand that has come also through her because
a lot of the times for us, right and if maybe not just a
(21:25):
lot of times, the trueness ofmany of us who grew up in immigrant
households is that the first colonizers thatwe experience were our own parents or the
elders. That there's the guys ofprotection, unders of protection, and I'm
trying to give you this better life. I'm going to colonize and impress you
exactly and take away your agency andtravel on your boundaries because this is how
(21:45):
the world is and I have toprepare you for it. And it's the
same song, just a different melodyfor the black community as well, And
it's all a function of colonization.And I think as you do this unpacking
of like general like intergenerational trauma andtrying to figure out like how do we
(22:06):
as the cycle breakers move now?Right, because we know that our family
is gonna be like listen, whowho are you? What do you mean?
You're not gonna what are you talkingabout? Like our family is gonna
be mad at this period. Wewill be the black sheep. We will
be the folks who may not getinvited to things, or if we are
invited, it's still like, well, this is my house, do this,
(22:29):
that and the other, and thatwould be the first person to leave
too. So it's like it's hardto be decolonizing when there's so many people
are in your life that are notthere yet. Yeah, and then this
is one like a distance, youknow, and that's just like the real
thing. And I think that maybeeven my way of survival at this moment.
(22:53):
Sometimes I think about this in relationshipto my daughter, you know,
and I know that they're gonna bemoments like we're going to be contending with
one another as she grows into herway of being and like her generations are
gonna have a lot different experiences ofthe world. And I wonder for myself
where my lines are gonna be,you know, because I wonder often like
(23:18):
did my mother and my father knowthey would have these lines with me?
Did they just think that I wasjust going to be this person that they
imagined in their own form of whatliberation looked like in under the guise of
colonization, look like I hope thatwe have some alignment, you know,
like I'd be like sometimes I'm like, I think that my liberation is a
clear one. I hope that itis, you know. I hope that
(23:41):
there's some integrity in the ways inwhich I'm trying to raise this young one
to be held and honored in theirwholeness. But I also know, just
kind of in human nature and humanway of being, in just the complications
of a life, that there aregoing to be moments for her and I
contend with one another. And anotherthing that I'm hoping for is that we
(24:03):
have the types of protocols and relationalcare developed between the two of us that
between us as a family with alsoher father that will allow us to have
the conversations around those conflicts that won'tdamage us further, but that maybe the
openings for us to all grow intobetter beings as we continue to be in
(24:26):
relationship with another. I don't wanther to feel like she needs to distance
herself from me when there's conflict,you know what I'm saying. But I
think like as we parent them,like when you colonize in our parenting.
I'm you know, conscious parenting.We're conscious of that. We're conscious.
I feel like a lot of thepeople who are not doing this work intentionally.
(24:47):
It really is just kind of likeI was taught this, so I'm
doing this, and it really isthat binary. It's really that binary.
It's like, this is what happenedto me. I turned out fine,
So this is what I'm gonna doto you. And it is not until
somebody comes like us, come acrossand we're just like, uh, actually,
I'm not fine, and I wantto do something different where we start
(25:07):
to question everything and we learn differentways of being with our children, of
honoring them, of showing them thatthey matter, all that stuff, and
in doing that we form a relationship. So when they are when when your
baby is like I don't agree withyou, it's not gonna be where you're
just giving her a silent treatment andyou're pissed off and you're cussing around.
(25:30):
It's gonna be like, all right, well, what's your what's your position
on this? Like it's gonna bea discussion. That's what I hope,
at least for over here, youknow, where I hope that she when
I'm talking to her, she'd belike, actually, no, that's I
don't agree with that, and wedidn't have a discussion about it. The
problem that I always come across isI feel like I can't have a discussion.
(25:51):
I feel like I am shut downand I feel like my feelings don't
matter. And it's the same feelingI have when I was a child.
So I'm not going to even tryanymore. I'm even gonna try anymore.
I'm gonna distance myself in certain ways, either emotionally and physically, and I'm
just gonna go about doing the workto prepare the harm that was caused to
make sure I'm not causing the sametype of harm of my kid. So
(26:11):
I feel like, you know,you can. Those sort of wonderings are
how we get free. I don'tknow that's not the word, but that's
how we are free by like askingourselves those questions and not just saying like,
well let me just leave up achance, like no, will I
be the person? What will ittake? And that's why I say for
people, if you want to bethis type of parent, you want to
(26:33):
be a conscious parent, the bestthing you can do is think about your
why why do you want to dothis? And my big wise, I
want G and I to be friendswhen she's an a dope, I want
her to call me. I wanther to think of me as someone she
can trust. Let's go, youknow, call me up and be like
what you're doing, Let's get abeer and we out, you know,
sitting together at a restaurant, andwe're having an actual conversation, not one
(26:55):
that's forced, not We're having agreat conversation like friends. So then I
have to work backwards there. Whodo I have to be in order to
have to make that relationship happen?And that's exactly what you're doing by asking
yourself those questions. You know.Yeah, I think about my wives pretty
often also, and I really appreciatelike just posing that to our community in
(27:15):
that way, because you know,I think a lot of my wives or
because the things that I want withme and her are like didn't exist with
me and my mother or me andmy father. But you know where it
kind of did exist was with meand my grandmother, Me and my grandmother.
And this is like the funny partabout like ancestry and just like lineage,
(27:38):
you know, like where I haveso much at tension with like my
direct parents, my grandmother was theone that like continue to instill in me
some of the things that feel likemy core values and the way that I
move in the world. And asI continue to have that relationship with her,
I'm like, I have to breathereally deep, because, like I
see how much my mother steps intothe role as a grandmother right now with
(28:03):
my daughter, and she's treating herin ways that I'm like, you know,
that's what I oh, what I'vealways wanted. Like one of the
things, you know, one ofthe things that was held the real for
me was that when I was akid, I was called a cry baby.
Like that was a big thing becauseI was very and I still am
to this day. I'm very ledby my emotions, Like it's very,
very present. I've learned to communicatethem better and I've learned how to be
(28:27):
in a relationship to them in waysthat I understand are a part of the
ways that I navigate and have acompass for justice, a compass for care
and compassion of others, a compassof like safety endangerment, you know,
And when I see it with her, because she's definitely an emotional creature as
well, and will let us knowhow she's feeling, which both me and
(28:49):
my partner as we reflect on ourchildhoods and being similar, we're understanding,
all right, this is where weget tested, you know, as to
power which ways we're able to contendwith that because our parents couldn't, Like
I would get locked in a room, like they literally throw me in a
room to go and cry and screamand and deal with my emotions in there,
(29:11):
and then when I would come out, they would make it seem like
nothing and happen, you know.And I want for Kaliliya to be in
a place where as she gets older, that she can feel like she can
be in her emotions and it's notgonna make me distance myself from her,
and vice versa, that if I'min my fields, it's not gonna make
her feel like she's gonna distance herselffrom me, but instead that we can
(29:34):
see each other as human beings.Like I really like pray for that because
my mother for all of the reasons, like anytime my emotions start to show
up, there's an immediate like,oh, we're not having this conversation anymore,
Like I'm not talking to you evenas an adult, you know,
as a child that was like I'mgonna lock you in the room. I
can do that as an adult.Now it's hanging up on the phone with
(29:57):
me. It's like going like stonewallwhile I'm in a space in the same
room with her, Like it's thesethese types of things that I hope to
move beyond in this past. Butthen I see her with Collie and she's
fade up, like Collie's crying.I'm here like just kind of trying to
be with her, and my mom'sjust like give her whatever she wants.
(30:18):
She like, you're making differences,Like I mean, I'm gonna be honest
with you, Like, you know, one of the things I can't say
is how I look at how differentthe grandparent and grandchild relationship is to the
parent child relationship. And my motheris a great grandparent. She's really she
loves my daughter. She wants tobe around her all the time. She
(30:41):
has respected that. I don't wantto you know that I'm a non violent
parent, and I love to seebecause I you know, I see them
together. It really does help hillthat part of me where I felt like
something was wrong with me. Thereason why I couldn't get that, Like,
you know, I felt like shejust didn't like me. And it
wasn't until I became an adult thatI realized I had nothing to do with
(31:03):
me that was that was all her. But she just didn't know how to
like talk about it and be h, you know, having all that stress
and and be apparent she's hard.Now that I'm going through it, I
completely understand. I'm just learning howto deal with it differently. So when
I see how different I mean whenI say night and day, how different,
how different it is. I remembera time where I walked in and
(31:25):
my mom is like talking mess aboutsomebody, and like she held that she
was holding that baby. That babyis spoiled and that's why she did this
at the other Meanwhile, she's literallyrocking my daughter to sleep in her arms.
Jia's legs are almost to the ground. She's so long. I'm just
like, you're sitting up here talkingmess. You've walked g in asleep.
Every time it's over this girl,I walk in, my mom is like
(31:47):
on her chair. They're both sleepand the girl is on her chest.
Like she completely went against everything shewould say about what it takes to raise
a child, and it's doing thingsI'd love to see. So you know,
for some people that's hard. Forsome people just like why couldn't you
do this with me? And forme, I'm just like, well,
they couldn't at that time. Andthis is why I always say people hate
(32:09):
it. People are always doing thebest that they can at any given moment,
and sometimes that best is harmful.Sometimes that best is toxic and abusive.
Sometimes it is really just unfriendly andharsh. And other times their best
is letting their grandchild. You know, I'm going to sleep on their chests
(32:30):
because they have that space now,they have that it's a different energy.
Their best is different now and understandingthat we are always at any single moment
doing the best that we can withwhat we have in under these oppressive systems,
and that's a hard pool people toswallow because they hear best and they
(32:50):
think they should have tried harder.I'm just telling you right now, people
they are and sometimes they just can'tand it has nothing to do with you,
and that's shitty and I'm sorry,but it has nothing to do with
you. And especially when it comesup with like black and indigenous people of
color, I just have to remindthem like our parents were once children.
So your mom probably did all thatright with the emotions right because her mom
(33:14):
probably told her to stop crying exactly. You know, she probably was never
allowed to show her emotions when shewas Yeah, it's just generational trauma.
Yeah, this is like the imaginingand a meditation that I've like traversed a
lot of different times with different communitynumbers and relationship to what it means for
us to you know, be doingthis tending and reparenting of ourselves and our
(33:35):
inner children, and don't know whatit might have looked like for us to
also be in relationship to our parentsinner children, Like if our inner children
for ourselves were in relationship to theinner children of our parents, Like how
on which ways would they marry eachother? And how on which ways would
they be able to inform one another? Like what it means to be held
(33:58):
in wholeness? You know, Ithink that like one of the things that
I have come to deeply understand andbe really in like deep um inhales and
exhales around, is that we haveway more tools people like we're are you
right now talking about this on apodcast? I'm saying like that that just
(34:19):
is not something that was allotted toto like my family, And I'm sure
like this is very true in yourown community, but like the stigmatization of
like um, mental health work ofany sort. And that's not even what
they would call it back in theday, right, like we would we
call it like you're going to seelike a cuckoo doctor, which is what
my mom would say. It's calledyou know, like um when we would
(34:40):
tell her that we were going tofair what's with It's like, you know,
yeah, I'm just like why areyou going there? Yeah, you're
you're not crazy, like you know, I'm like, well, but the
world makes us crazy. So Ithink we all need spaces in which we're
being held to really contend with thethings that are happening to our mentalities because
of the stress is that you alsohave faith that have caused some tension in
(35:02):
our relationships. But like yeah,like I know that my mother and my
father and my grandmother just were notallotted those those types of relational I don't
know what that like the resources wereall the books and it just wasn't and
(35:22):
the time, right because when youare spending most of your time just surviving
it's very hard to learn, it'svery hard to um really be able to
come out. And that's that,again, is the function of capitalism.
And this is why even today todaywas in July fourteen, twenty twenty two,
they released the footage of the UvaldiI think that's how you say the
(35:45):
school shooting. They released the campfootage, and I'm not watching that ship.
We have been sobody sensitized by seeingall of these, you know,
black trauma kids being killed. Andwhat that does to us is inexhausted.
It makes us hopeless. It makesus tired. And when you are hopeless
and tired and exhausted, you don'thave space to go and to figure out
(36:08):
how do I I'm gonna go figureout how to learn now about about this,
that and the other. It's veryhard, I must say. We're
doing it. But we have acircle, we have more resources, we
have more people around us. Thereis not one person that I don't think
my mom knew one person that wasn'twhooping the whipping their kids growing up.
So who do you go to,like, you're doing this thing that nobody
(36:30):
else is doing by yourself back inthe eighties and nineties, who do you
go to. Now I can callmy friends and be like, girl,
Jia is driving me, Please helpme calm down, you know, like,
and they will because they're doing ittoo. And so just understand having
an understanding that does not excuse anyof the abusive behaviors that we all like
(36:52):
experience, the harm and the toxicity. Just have any understanding of things is
not excuse them. What it doesdo is help humanize people. Because in
order for me to have empathy formyself, I have to have empathy for
other people. So I have empathyfor my mom and what she had to
go through as a single parent ofthree girls by herself, living under this
(37:13):
oppression with the childhood that she had, not having any money. I have
empathy for that struggle. She stillharmed me, you know, there were
still the real times where she wasabusive towards me, And that's a hard
pill to swallow for some people.And that again is we can't live in
binaries, because if we do,it's like either or it's like no,
it's both. And I can bothrecognize that she was struggling and that the
(37:37):
way that she PopEd was abusive,Right, Yeah, I think that's something
really difficult for sometimes like folks whoare who are doing the work to really
be able to to move with.And let's be real, you know,
like sometimes I am in that placeof being able to hold those things,
and then sometimes it tips the scaleand like sometimes I'm just like, Nope,
(37:57):
today they're just harming me. Todayis today, that's what's showing up,
you know what I mean. Andthen there are other days where I'm
like, today, Mama, I'mhere for you, like in entirety,
like I'm here to listen to what'sgoing on. But I feel like what
our generations is really contending with themost is like finding the balances of the
(38:19):
ways in which we're figuring it outso that we have more rituals to really
move with how to address those thingswhen it comes up with our own children
as they're being raised. Because Ithink very often and even just even relationship
with me and my partner, youknow, like he and I we have
check ins. I mean we've beendoing this since we were in relationship before,
(38:40):
but we used to have relationship checkins just for us, but now
it's like these parenthood check ins andjust like really talking to each other about
the way in which we're being affected, like our relationships being affected by having
our first child with one another,And what are the things that are working?
What things are not working in relationshipto our different parenting styles, because
we do have them, as muchas we like to believe that we have
(39:02):
the same exact like end goal,which is true, I believe we are
values are extremely aligned, and likeour ideas are the ways in which we
want to raise our child in thoselarger picture ways, like they're clear the
way to get there, which isalways a thing when we're talking about liberation,
walks away, like it's not alwaysthe same, Like he wants to
(39:23):
do things this certain way, Iwant to do it this way. We
bump heads with one another. Wedon't want to be in a position where
one person's seeming to step on theother person's toes and relationship to her,
like there's all kinds of things goingon. But I think it's those types
of conversations that maybe weren't able tobe had between even like the people who
are caregiving for us, like Iheard you saying too, Like it wasn't
(39:45):
just my mother and my father.There were multiple hands at play in raising
me. But sometimes I don't knowif they were always in agreeance with one
another. Something that's real for meis that like anyone who's taking care of
my child knows what what it is. I'm like listening to build up in
this world. You know, ifyou're not if you don't know, and
(40:05):
if you don't fall in line,you can't be around your period exactly.
That's just there's there's absolutely no that'sI'm very there's no willow woman there right.
If it's like, well, youknow we should come over here,
these are the rules over here thatyou won't be coming over there, like,
it's very simple for me. Butthat's also my part of me having
privilege. And I like to talkabout that because folks want to be like
(40:25):
a no privilege digital parenting and that'sjust not true. Um and conscious parenting.
If I have a support system,and this appears because I was like,
I can't have you around my kidanymore. Well, I work from
home, you know, I workfor myself. I have a very loose
schedule, so it won't hurt meas hard as as much to say,
okay, well we just want tobe coming around anymore. But that parent,
(40:49):
that working parent who depends on theirextended family um and their extended families
basically like well, either my wayor the highway, they have to make
some sacrifices that, you know,we have to recognize the different privileges that
we have. And I feel likefor you know, bipop folks, we
we only see privilege as like aracial construct, and there's so many privileges,
(41:10):
you know, time ability, youknow, like being partnered or not.
Like, there's all so many differenttypes of privilege that we have to
recognize as we go down this journeyto being more intentional conscious parents and be
colonizing in order to be able toshow up for people in in a more
authentic way. Yeah, And Ithink that's like, you know, as
(41:30):
you continue to just kind of bringin the truth about being in relation to
other folks and being able to dependon other folks and in different capacities to
raise our kids. I think thatthat's one of the biggest things that I've
also been when I think about thiswhole idea of being a good ancestor that
was kind of like they were talkingabout before, you know, is that
(41:51):
one of the things that I hopefor is to have good relationships with people,
Yes, to build good community,to build good family, not just
with the folks who I'm supposed tobuild good family with, but the people
who truly are meaning to and intentionallystepping into building good family with me,
whether or not they are blood relatedto me. And the truth is that
(42:13):
a lot of folks in my bloodrelation aren't folks who want to be in
good family with me. They wantto step into the idea of family being
a duty, which it is.There's a responsibility to that. And also
I think that we're really contending withhow and which ways we build good relationships
that then model the way that ourchild will be in relationship to us and
(42:35):
to other people in the world.And you know, like as they grow
grow bigger and they build family withothers, you know, like what that
looks like. I'm totally conscious oftenabout the ways in which I tell people
like, listen, my life nowit's very inclusive of this little person,
(42:57):
and like they are, they're cocreating my life with me. Now it's
not just from my viewpoint anymore.I mean, it is still there,
but I always am thinking about theways in which what she's doing in the
world is shifting, impacting, renegotiating, the ways in which I'm gonna decide
to do things. And the moreand more she becomes fully in herself and
(43:22):
she has her own ideas and she'scommunicating them and building her own relationships.
Like these little ones are co creatives, and they're co creating this existence in
ways that we may not even beable to imagine at this point. So
if there's anything that I hope tobe a good ancestor with, it's the
(43:43):
types of things that I feel thatI want to be generative, that it's
good, and that there's some foundationthere that feels like in its integrity,
that feels is coming from a lovingplace, but that more than anything else,
has room to be grown through relationalcare and understanding. Yeah, particularly
(44:07):
with her. But like if Iam moving in a certain way with anyone
who's helping to raise or it's becausenot just because like this is exactly how
I want things to be, thatI also trust that the people who are
coming through that if they were toquestion me about my parenting, it likely
is because they have something loving toadd to the equation. And I'm hoping
(44:28):
for that for all the relationships thatcome into our lives. You know,
as we move forward and raising thislittle one that that will exist, you
know, I mean being a goodancestor. We you know, when we
talk about being good a good ancestor, we really are thinking futuristically about what
(44:49):
we want the world to look like. That's at least for me. I'm
not going to speak for everybody else. For me, when I think about
being a good ancestor, it's reallyabout thing futuristically about how I want this
world to look and fill in soundfor my daughter. And so with that
in mind, are there any tipsfor people who are going to may have
(45:12):
heard it's just like, oh mygod, I'm struggling with the same thing
with my family, with boundaries withmy family, with uncoupling my family's sense
of duty from my own liberation walklike, do you have any tips for
some people who might be struggling withthat? M I mean, I feel
like you've spoke about it a littlebit earlier. The biggest thing that I
(45:35):
offered to myself every single day isto be patient and have compassion for the
complexities in any given moment. Andyou were saying that earlier, like,
in any given moment, everyone's tryingto do the best that they can.
Yes, And I feel like thatthere's something to that, you know,
like there's something to folks who canhold complication and folks who can't. And
usually when people don't hold complication,they run straight into conflict and stay there
(46:00):
for a really, really, reallyreally long time. And so my biggest
thing that I try to do formyself when I'm finding myself in conflict with
my family in particular, is I'lltake a deep breath and I'm like,
all right, what are you notseeing right now? What is it that
you are not seeing? Like whatare you simplifying? That is always going
(46:22):
to be way more complicated than what'shappening in this moment, And do you
have the capacity to hold that andbeing in the complication and the patience with
yourself when you can't, but thenalso celebrating yourself and like stepping fully into
the moments when you have the courageto do that. So I think that's
(46:43):
my biggest advice to folks is thatlike be complicated. And then I think
that also another thing that I'm youknow, just kind of like sitting with
with myself with my own family inthis point, is it's like it's just
the boundary conversation again, you know, Yeah, it's like, what like
(47:07):
just having a question with yourself aboutwhat those boundaries really not just look like,
but they also feel like, becauselike, yeah, you know,
just like being able to be embodiedin your boundaries, not just like theater
theoretically or like being able to justspeak it to folks, but like,
what does it really feel like toto have that distance? There's actually,
(47:30):
um a question that I like havefor myself. You know, quite often
when I when I'm um at homeand with my mother and my father,
is like, um, what isit gonna be like, you know,
when we're apart again? You know? Is that the only time when I
feel like I can have a goodrelation with my parents is when I'm like
(47:53):
physically distanced from them. And Idon't really have a complete answer for that
yet, But what I do knowis that the distance does does do something
to my body and allows me tofeel, you know, regulated to use
some words you know, um islike oh it's safe here. Yeah.
And so I wonder what that isfor a lot of different other folks,
(48:14):
And if we can feel into thatmore for ourselves, like and be really
honest about that, um and andbe able to communicate that with ourselves first
and foremost before even trying to communicateit with others. But I really appreciate
this conversation, even having a momentto reflect that there returning from a trip
back home. You know, Iknow if you know, these are great
(48:35):
journal props. Also if y'all arelistening to sort of reflect back on after
you listen to this, Because thisis the work, like in it's constant,
it's never ending. I don't thinkanyone will ever be fully healed from
trans generational trauma. But what wecan do is just continue to acquire ask
why it always I like to addin everything that I do, ask myself,
(49:01):
like how am I upholding or gatekeeping for and investing in these systems
of oppression? And you can dothat even when it comes to like these
familial like relationships, are they servingthe point of liberation for you and your
children? And if they're not,how can you? How can you be
(49:22):
a part of that? You can'tcontrol nobody else. But what you can't
do is put up because you can't, oh what you did. What you
can do is put up some boundariesaround that. And that will not be
easy. We know this, especiallyfor immigrant families, for black families.
We know that you get guilt,tripped, shamed, like all these things,
all these feelings start to come up. But if it serves to only
(49:44):
reinforced oppression and colonization, how isit certain liberations? It can't. You
can't have both. So just reflect. It's a constant reflection. And what
that said, can you let folksknow how to find you. The easiest
way is to go onto Instagram.That's like one of my mainstays, and
you can just find me there JLcreator. I'm not really traversing to many
(50:07):
of the other platforms these days.It's just like really easy to just be
in one place. Yes, sowe can connect there if y'all feel good
about it, well, I appreciateyou having to coming on here. And
you know, can you tell thefolks what does the colonize the parenty mean
to you? It means having roomto hold the compassion for yourself and who
(50:28):
you are growing into alongside your child, as well as holding compassion for others
that help to co raise your children, and building in those conversations of those
relations generative ways to grow our futuredescendants and to be better ancestors in the
future. I love it. Thankyou so much for joining me today.
(50:51):
I really appreciate you. I'll makesure to put all your information to the
show notes. Y'all. Please goand follow Jail on Instagram and you know,
make sure you leave a writing reviewlet me know if you thought about
this conversation and us always keep itconscious. Thank you,
Welcome to the Parenting Decolonized Podcast.I'm your host, Elanda Williams, entrepreneur,
conscious parenting coach, and single momto want Amazing Tyler. I'm on
a mission to help shine the lighton how colonization has impacted the black family
structure. If you're a parent thatwants to learn how decolonize, you're a
parenting You're in the right place.Let's do this, Okay, fam Before
(00:38):
we hop intoe, I just wantto let you know that this mama home
speaking to j L. Her baby'sin the room. And if you know
anything about me, I am asingle parent. She is not, but
I am. And sometimes we justdon't have We just there's there's nowhere to
go where the babies aren't. Soyou will hear the baby in the background
crying and speaking and talking. Ifthat's something you're not able to handle,
(01:00):
I completely understand. But I justwant to put that out there that that
will be part of this episode,So enjoy. Welcome back to the Parents
Decolonized Podcast. I'm your host,Gelanda Williams, and today I have with
me Jenna Lynn Umi Pig. Thankyou so much for joining me. How
are you. I'm blessed. Thankyou so much for having me. It's
(01:23):
really great to be in conversation withyou day. Yes, I'm so excited
to talk to you about this subject, which is being a good ancestor.
We are going to get into that, but before we get down and dirty,
I want you to tell the folksall about yourself. Yeah. I
usually want to introduce myself in yourspace as I do, name where I'm
from, ancestral and alish name,the names of my immediate ancestors who will
(01:47):
whose names will also come up,and that's my daughter Callelia. Y'all will
be hearing her in the a coupleof times over we are Mama's. Just
to reiterate, my name is Jennalyncalled it terrib me big. I also
go by j L. So alot of folks know me by that name
that was offered to me by someof the young people that I worked with
here in New York when I firstlanded here thirteen years ago. But my
(02:09):
family comes from the northern part ofthe Philippines and a part of the island
of Lucon called Ilocos. My mother'sfrom a Locas Norte in a place called
a good food and my father's froma loco Sore and a place called Santa
Maria. And my mother's name isRose Marie called a tero me pick.
My father is good, a friendof world to me, pig. And
another living ancestor in my life whohelped to raise me is my grandmother on
(02:34):
my maternal side. And then Icalled the terra. So I name them
first and foremost just to kind ofbe in relationship to the truth that I
actually can only name maybe up tomy great grandparents on either side and then
like can't really reach any further.But something that allowed myself to be very
true too is that you know,even if I don't know the names of
(02:59):
my ancestors beyond me, I knowmy name really well, yes, And
so I make sure to say thatreally strong, so that my daughter and
their children and their children after willbe able to say my name if someone
were to ask them to call intheir ancestors in any space in the future.
So those are some things to share. I'm educator at kind of the
(03:22):
forefront of my work, working withyoung folks fifteen sixteen years now working in
education, but also working as anartist, primarily doing arts that speaks to
social justice and has its own formof activism and the ways in which it
speaks to and responds to the culturalshifts in the world and the ways in
(03:45):
which I live through them as aperson, as a human being. And
I also do healing work in thediaspora, some ancestral practices, but also
some practices that have been adopted fromteachers in the diasport who teach from other
land origins. And I'm also adeath dueler, So that's like something that
(04:05):
I've been standing firmly on, particularlyin the past two years now, necessarily
you know, in relationship to theworld. So those are some things about
me. Yes, I'm so happyto have you on. And you know,
I don't know if my audience isspeaking to y'all directly, if you
all understand how colonization has impacted somany people, with especially Filipino people as
(04:30):
well. It was Spain that colonizedFilipino and so there's actually a lot of
Spanish words and even in the Cuisinesyou can you can taste it um and
it has till this day, samewith you know, with indigenous people of
the America's Turtle Island, African Americansand beyond that impact is extremely felt throughout
(04:55):
the generation. So we're going tobe discussing like general intergenerational like trauma and
how to be a good ancestor aswe decolonize, right, because a lot
of us were basically indoctrinated into thinkingthat we needed to only really care about
a generations behind us. You know, when we get a little bit of
(05:16):
money, you you buy you bymy house. You don't put your money
up for your child. You buyyou by my house. That kind of
stuff. So how does that comeup in your in your culture? Oh,
that's it, you know, it'slike the deepest of deep conversations.
Um. You know, like myfamily was one that we have three generations
(05:36):
here in the United States. Mygreat grandmother on my maternal side was the
first that I know had migrated umhere, particularly to Hawaii. So that's
actually where I was born and raised, isn't I know? Huw to Lulu
Hawaiian. My great grandmother was thereand then she brought over her children little
by little on not all of themdecided to come to the United States.
(05:57):
But another thing that some folks maynot know is that like Philippines was actually
a commonwealth of the United States fora really long time, and there was
a point where they were trying tomake us into a state. We kind
of had the same, actually almostthe exact same relationship to the United States
that Puerto Rico had, So wehave very similar histories about colonization. But
the difference was that there was rightafter World War Two, the Philippines gained
(06:18):
their independence after fighting beside the Americansoldiers for the freedoms of the United States.
My grandfather and my mother's side wasactually also a soldier during that time.
But there are a lot of differentinjustices that take place in having this
type of like colonial imperial type ofrelationship to the United States with the Philippines.
(06:44):
One of the things is that likethere's a glorification of the way that
the United States is in the Philippines, which I'm sure is very common for
a lot of folks in the diasapurand the ways in which they've seen a
lot of their elders, their parents, their grandparents, like really relate to
culture. We were in a positionvery often when we were growing up in
(07:04):
my generation, so just learning focuson I'm an eighties, so like when
I was growing up, we werein a time where you know, my
parents were really in a place wherethey didn't even want to teach us to
speak the language of our family becausethey were in a position of believing that
we wouldn't be able to thrive ina capitalist existence if we didn't speak English
(07:26):
properly. So yeah, like wewere in a position of learning the language
of our people. And my familyactually speaks a particular language, not dialect,
called Ilocano that's very specific to ourregion. There's like a thousand languages
in the Philippines, so it's it'ssomething to just kind of be said for
us to be in relationship too.There were certain cultural things that my parents
(07:48):
were just like, you're not goingto do that. You're going to be
American. You know, you're goingto be raised to be an American first
and foremost. And I know thatthat's very true for a lot of difficult
you know that is it's like Ihave to assimilate to be accepted, and
the closer and proximity I am towhiteness, the safer I feel like I
(08:09):
will be. And then you know, you get hit with the reality like
I'm not safe, but you youknow, I feel like as a parent
that had to that has to besuch a difficult thing because they know what
it felt like, you know,very outward and overt white supremacy in their
face. So it's like, howdo I protect my kid? Right?
(08:30):
And I feel like a lot ofblack folks do that in a different way.
We do it by let's move towhat we feel like it's the safest
part, which is usually the whitestpart. Let's get our kids out of
this school system that seems to be, you know, that doesn't have really
good education, and then put themin this predominantly white space where they're now
(08:50):
racially targeted every single day. Soit's like the lesser of two evils are
trying to figure out how to keepyou safe. But even then it works
because at the end of the day, it's not about us. We can't
keep our seat. We can doall that we can, and the delusion
of white supremacy that folks want tohold on to is what keeps us unsafe.
(09:11):
I also just feel like those negotiationslike did a number my ability to
even just accept like the trueness oflike who I was, or I felt
like I was contending with that veryoften, and what it turned into was
me being the rebellious child, orbeing the child that was defiant or the
one that like you know, questiontoo much or you know, even still
(09:33):
to this day, like my motherand my father have a very difficult time
understanding what it is that I doand I who I am in the world.
So it's like it's a really it'sa really trying thing. And as
I start to grow my own childand be in relationship to her becoming in
(09:54):
the world, I'm always in questionof like how much I'm imposing on to
her because of my ideas of whatI believe is her stepping into her greatness
and her wholeness and me actually listeningand being true to like who it is
that she lets us know she is, which is something that most definitely was
(10:15):
not, like, you know,the way my parents raised me. When
I when I graduated from from highschool and college, it was like,
no, that's my degree, likemy mom's like those are high degrees,
you know, Like it's not they'renot yours. I did the work to
fank you so that you could behere, which there was. There is
a level of truth to that,and also there's something there, right because
(10:37):
like the prescribing to all of allof it and like wanting me to be
shaped and formed in that in thesereally elitest ways. So you know,
my degrees were in theater and thenalso in cultural studies, both in my
underground and then my master's I wentinto like a deeper form of education related
to social justice. But my mother, you know, her idea of that
(11:00):
would always be like, well,the ultimate goal, right, is for
you to go to Broadway, orthe ultimate goal for you and education is
to become a professor. Right,You're going to go back to your get
your PhD. Like it. Itwas always like ray and never enough,
and that's it was. If that'sa function of capitalism and white supremacy culture,
we know that that elitism is timeand the transactional nature of parenting.
(11:22):
In that way, it's like weowe our parents a debt because of the
sacrifices they had to make under whitesupremacy, and we are always we're never
going to be able to pay thatdebt. So they have to always remind
us of it, but we won'tever be able to repay them for that.
It doesn't matter if you became adoctor or you became a professor or
(11:43):
danced on Broadway or saying on Broadwayit would have been then just been like
okay, well now are you thelead? Are you the producer? Now?
Like It's never enough, and that'sthat's a function of capitalism where you
can never be satisfied. It's more, more, more, do better,
be better? And that pressure,I don't even know what the hell kind
(12:05):
of pressure A lot and I didn'tfeel that kind of pressure, but I
know a lot of first generations,like generation people whose parents immigrated here still
feel that immense pressure, and theyalso feel immense pressure to take care of
their parents, like Okay, Igot this degree, I got this money,
and now I have to I'm theprovider in the household, and I'm
(12:26):
just like, when do you getto just live your life. That's actually
a conversation me and my sister havebeen having pretty deep her and I.
I feel like I have a verydifferent relationship than what we experienced from our
elders with their relationships to their siblings. And it's on purpose because the two
of us are really working hard tobreak a lot of the different toxicities that
(12:48):
we we understand us embodying in ourdaily but she's the eldest, I'm the
youngest, and we also were theonly two girls growing up amid like fourteen
grandchildren for a really long time,so we had a lot of responsibilities.
Is the you know, female bornfolks a part of the path. There
(13:11):
was a really big thing about well, when you were talking about the idea
of like having a debt, wehave a word in the Philippines or a
phrase in the Philippines called utagnal,which basically means like your sole debt that
you have to those who provide foryou, who help help you along the
way in your path in your life, and it causes a lot of shame.
(13:33):
That is a keyword that I feelis something that we contend with often
for ourselves. Is like being shamedby our elders for not doing or for
not being the people that they wantus to be, or like being in
a position of doing the things thatthey want us to do in the world.
And my sister being the eldest,she often is put in that position
(13:54):
now as like this matriarch, right, like she needs to step into into
the role. Now that my eldersare getting older, they have this expectation
for themselves that they're gonna that mysister's gonna take on everything, and she's
just feeling all this pressure, andthen it creates resentment toward me because I'm
not being to the same thing.Not that I wouldn't step into some of
(14:16):
the stuff, but I do distancemyself and I tell her, like,
there's very many moments where I'm tellingmy sister, like, don't get involved,
just don't do it. So becausewhat I'm hearing too, because I
you know some of that, Ido feel that pressure to be like the
family matriarch at forty two years old, and my mom is like not trying
to hear that. She's like,I'm still the mom. She still wants
that authority over me. But thething is, it's the boundaries. Right
(14:41):
like you start thinking, you startdigging through, they're really just underlying sort
of issues that come up when yousort of parent in this traditional way.
Are you're living in this traditional waythat is shaped by colonization, and you
dig into how it should use astrips you of agency, strips you of
(15:03):
autonomy, tramples on your boundaries.Again, these are all functions of colonization,
of white supremacy, delusion of capitalism, and a patriarch, So not
feeling like you can ever say noto your family. Your family asks you
to do something, they expect youto do it. There is no negotiations,
there is no no, and that'sthat's not that's not, that's not
(15:26):
okay. I should be able tosay no and you can feel wherever you
want, but it shouldn't be likea whole last family drama around it,
you know. Yeah, And it'sso easy to just get caught up like
it. You can like have suchsolid boundaries when you're not present to a
too. So one of the thingsfor me is that my family lives on
(15:46):
the West Coast, mostly in Hawaiiand in California, and I live here
in New York, and so I'mdistanced. And that was a very conscious
choice and also maybe a subconscious choiceat one point to not be drawn like
taken in by a lot of thethings that you know, I feel like
(16:07):
we're hindering me from just stepping intomy life and fullness based on what my
family wanted from me. But Iwent back home recently and I was there
for a whole month because it's beena really long time. My babies in
the world. She's got to havea relationship to my family as much as
my partners here on the East Coast, and so I wanted to be intentional.
(16:29):
And my sister was like, yo, come and stay with me for
a month. And I was like, all right, I work remote,
we can make this happen. Andslowly but surely the threads were pulled and
I was really coming to an understanding, like about how much the boundaries really
have to do also with physical distance, like, because it's hard not to
(16:52):
get coiled up in all of thefamilial tensions and all the stuff that's going
on when it's right there in theroom next door, Like how do you
ignore that and be in a positionof not feeling responsible in some way like
what you were saying, you know, like to not be brought into it
in some way. And it's somethingthat we're still dealing with it, and
me and my sister had a lotof conversations about the ways in which we
(17:15):
want to do better for each other. But yeah, a lot of it,
just like for me, is likewe just have to not feel like
we have that responsibility. This islike a tricky one, right because the
elder conversation that the elder conversation istricky. Yeah, and it's because we
as a collective, right, we'renot so part of you know, indigenous
(17:41):
cultures, most cultures in the globalmajority is we function as communal societies,
as collectives. So there is stillthat sense of I need to kind of
honor my elders and take care ofthem if that's necessary, you know,
as they age. And I don'tthink that's any I don't think there's a
(18:03):
problem with that. My issue iswhen the needs of the elders become more
important than my needs and my andmy child's needs, because that's not gonna
happen, right because I still havea life and I still have a life
to live, and I don't subscribeto the same line of thinking that I
need to give up everything in orderand that's called honoring. I don't think
(18:26):
that's honor because I don't think that'sare like you know, when I think
about, you know, my ancestorswho were enslaved, I don't think that
they would want to listen. Idon't know y'all like that, but I
don't think you know, liberation includesautonomy, it includes agency, it includes
boundaries, and to love someone ityou know, in the Bell Hooks definition
(18:49):
of love, which is basically yougot to give up ownership of that person.
There's still ownership and love, there'syeah and so, and when they
ask us basically to be like thisperson or these people for the family,
and basically you have to make allthese sacrifices because they're elders and are asking
you. It does get tricky.But it's also like it's privaty colonizing because
(19:12):
you're going to have to Unfortunately wealways have to give stuff up, but
we may be ostracized buy our familyfor saying, listen, this is no
longer the way I want to Iwant to do things. I want to
start a different family tradition where wehonor each other, everybody honoring each other,
Like I deserve honor too, Ideserve protection and safety. Yeah,
(19:34):
yeah, I feel it. Youknow what's coming up for me as you're
saying all of this is also likethe boundaries that have to do like one,
yes, you know, like there'sa very real aspect of it of
like oh, like you need totake care of me like physically until like
the ending of my life in theseparticular ways, and this is what it
(19:55):
looks like. But there's this otherlevel of that has been coming up pretty
often and since I was a kidtoo, of like making us aware and
making it known, like how muchwas sacrificed and like the guilt of all
the things that yes, that dead. That's like I struggled my whole Like
all of this trauma that I carriedis because like I wanted you to have
(20:18):
a better future, and so youowe me that. And my sister and
I had this conversation because there wasa point where I was talking about boundaries
in a really particular way, andshe did have a moment of just kind
of being like, you know,it's gonna be real with you, like
sometimes when you talk about this wayabout particularly our mother. She's just like,
(20:38):
I'm just like, why do youhate mom so much? Like she
asked me that, and I wasjust like, oh, you're you're getting
it twisted, right, You're gettingit twisted. Like I don't need to
forego and sacrifice my love for myselfand my care for myself just because I
have compassion for what's going on withmom. Absolutely do have compassion. I've
(21:02):
done so much work to be anunderstanding of what types of traumas it is
that our mother may be holding thatmaybe she hasn't even contended with. But
that doesn't mean that because I understandthat I'm supposed to forego my understanding of
the trauma that was placed on meand that has come also through her because
a lot of the times for us, right and if maybe not just a
(21:25):
lot of times, the trueness ofmany of us who grew up in immigrant
households is that the first colonizers thatwe experience were our own parents or the
elders. That there's the guys ofprotection, unders of protection, and I'm
trying to give you this better life. I'm going to colonize and impress you
exactly and take away your agency andtravel on your boundaries because this is how
(21:45):
the world is and I have toprepare you for it. And it's the
same song, just a different melodyfor the black community as well, And
it's all a function of colonization.And I think as you do this unpacking
of like general like intergenerational trauma andtrying to figure out like how do we
(22:06):
as the cycle breakers move now?Right, because we know that our family
is gonna be like listen, whowho are you? What do you mean?
You're not gonna what are you talkingabout? Like our family is gonna
be mad at this period. Wewill be the black sheep. We will
be the folks who may not getinvited to things, or if we are
invited, it's still like, well, this is my house, do this,
(22:29):
that and the other, and thatwould be the first person to leave
too. So it's like it's hardto be decolonizing when there's so many people
are in your life that are notthere yet. Yeah, and then this
is one like a distance, youknow, and that's just like the real
thing. And I think that maybeeven my way of survival at this moment.
(22:53):
Sometimes I think about this in relationshipto my daughter, you know,
and I know that they're gonna bemoments like we're going to be contending with
one another as she grows into herway of being and like her generations are
gonna have a lot different experiences ofthe world. And I wonder for myself
where my lines are gonna be,you know, because I wonder often like
(23:18):
did my mother and my father knowthey would have these lines with me?
Did they just think that I wasjust going to be this person that they
imagined in their own form of whatliberation looked like in under the guise of
colonization, look like I hope thatwe have some alignment, you know,
like I'd be like sometimes I'm like, I think that my liberation is a
clear one. I hope that itis, you know. I hope that
(23:41):
there's some integrity in the ways inwhich I'm trying to raise this young one
to be held and honored in theirwholeness. But I also know, just
kind of in human nature and humanway of being, in just the complications
of a life, that there aregoing to be moments for her and I
contend with one another. And anotherthing that I'm hoping for is that we
(24:03):
have the types of protocols and relationalcare developed between the two of us that
between us as a family with alsoher father that will allow us to have
the conversations around those conflicts that won'tdamage us further, but that maybe the
openings for us to all grow intobetter beings as we continue to be in
(24:26):
relationship with another. I don't wanther to feel like she needs to distance
herself from me when there's conflict,you know what I'm saying. But I
think like as we parent them,like when you colonize in our parenting.
I'm you know, conscious parenting.We're conscious of that. We're conscious.
I feel like a lot of thepeople who are not doing this work intentionally.
(24:47):
It really is just kind of likeI was taught this, so I'm
doing this, and it really isthat binary. It's really that binary.
It's like, this is what happenedto me. I turned out fine,
So this is what I'm gonna doto you. And it is not until
somebody comes like us, come acrossand we're just like, uh, actually,
I'm not fine, and I wantto do something different where we start
(25:07):
to question everything and we learn differentways of being with our children, of
honoring them, of showing them thatthey matter, all that stuff, and
in doing that we form a relationship. So when they are when when your
baby is like I don't agree withyou, it's not gonna be where you're
just giving her a silent treatment andyou're pissed off and you're cussing around.
(25:30):
It's gonna be like, all right, well, what's your what's your position
on this? Like it's gonna bea discussion. That's what I hope,
at least for over here, youknow, where I hope that she when
I'm talking to her, she'd belike, actually, no, that's I
don't agree with that, and wedidn't have a discussion about it. The
problem that I always come across isI feel like I can't have a discussion.
(25:51):
I feel like I am shut downand I feel like my feelings don't
matter. And it's the same feelingI have when I was a child.
So I'm not going to even tryanymore. I'm even gonna try anymore.
I'm gonna distance myself in certain ways, either emotionally and physically, and I'm
just gonna go about doing the workto prepare the harm that was caused to
make sure I'm not causing the sametype of harm of my kid. So
(26:11):
I feel like, you know,you can. Those sort of wonderings are
how we get free. I don'tknow that's not the word, but that's
how we are free by like askingourselves those questions and not just saying like,
well let me just leave up achance, like no, will I
be the person? What will ittake? And that's why I say for
people, if you want to bethis type of parent, you want to
(26:33):
be a conscious parent, the bestthing you can do is think about your
why why do you want to dothis? And my big wise, I
want G and I to be friendswhen she's an a dope, I want
her to call me. I wanther to think of me as someone she
can trust. Let's go, youknow, call me up and be like
what you're doing, Let's get abeer and we out, you know,
sitting together at a restaurant, andwe're having an actual conversation, not one
(26:55):
that's forced, not We're having agreat conversation like friends. So then I
have to work backwards there. Whodo I have to be in order to
have to make that relationship happen?And that's exactly what you're doing by asking
yourself those questions. You know.Yeah, I think about my wives pretty
often also, and I really appreciatelike just posing that to our community in
(27:15):
that way, because you know,I think a lot of my wives or
because the things that I want withme and her are like didn't exist with
me and my mother or me andmy father. But you know where it
kind of did exist was with meand my grandmother, Me and my grandmother.
And this is like the funny partabout like ancestry and just like lineage,
(27:38):
you know, like where I haveso much at tension with like my
direct parents, my grandmother was theone that like continue to instill in me
some of the things that feel likemy core values and the way that I
move in the world. And asI continue to have that relationship with her,
I'm like, I have to breathereally deep, because, like I
see how much my mother steps intothe role as a grandmother right now with
(28:03):
my daughter, and she's treating herin ways that I'm like, you know,
that's what I oh, what I'vealways wanted. Like one of the
things, you know, one ofthe things that was held the real for
me was that when I was akid, I was called a cry baby.
Like that was a big thing becauseI was very and I still am
to this day. I'm very ledby my emotions, Like it's very,
very present. I've learned to communicatethem better and I've learned how to be
(28:27):
in a relationship to them in waysthat I understand are a part of the
ways that I navigate and have acompass for justice, a compass for care
and compassion of others, a compassof like safety endangerment, you know,
And when I see it with her, because she's definitely an emotional creature as
well, and will let us knowhow she's feeling, which both me and
(28:49):
my partner as we reflect on ourchildhoods and being similar, we're understanding,
all right, this is where weget tested, you know, as to
power which ways we're able to contendwith that because our parents couldn't, Like
I would get locked in a room, like they literally throw me in a
room to go and cry and screamand and deal with my emotions in there,
(29:11):
and then when I would come out, they would make it seem like
nothing and happen, you know.And I want for Kaliliya to be in
a place where as she gets older, that she can feel like she can
be in her emotions and it's notgonna make me distance myself from her,
and vice versa, that if I'min my fields, it's not gonna make
her feel like she's gonna distance herselffrom me, but instead that we can
(29:34):
see each other as human beings.Like I really like pray for that because
my mother for all of the reasons, like anytime my emotions start to show
up, there's an immediate like,oh, we're not having this conversation anymore,
Like I'm not talking to you evenas an adult, you know,
as a child that was like I'mgonna lock you in the room. I
can do that as an adult.Now it's hanging up on the phone with
(29:57):
me. It's like going like stonewallwhile I'm in a space in the same
room with her, Like it's thesethese types of things that I hope to
move beyond in this past. Butthen I see her with Collie and she's
fade up, like Collie's crying.I'm here like just kind of trying to
be with her, and my mom'sjust like give her whatever she wants.
(30:18):
She like, you're making differences,Like I mean, I'm gonna be honest
with you, Like, you know, one of the things I can't say
is how I look at how differentthe grandparent and grandchild relationship is to the
parent child relationship. And my motheris a great grandparent. She's really she
loves my daughter. She wants tobe around her all the time. She
(30:41):
has respected that. I don't wantto you know that I'm a non violent
parent, and I love to seebecause I you know, I see them
together. It really does help hillthat part of me where I felt like
something was wrong with me. Thereason why I couldn't get that, Like,
you know, I felt like shejust didn't like me. And it
wasn't until I became an adult thatI realized I had nothing to do with
(31:03):
me that was that was all her. But she just didn't know how to
like talk about it and be h, you know, having all that stress
and and be apparent she's hard.Now that I'm going through it, I
completely understand. I'm just learning howto deal with it differently. So when
I see how different I mean whenI say night and day, how different,
how different it is. I remembera time where I walked in and
(31:25):
my mom is like talking mess aboutsomebody, and like she held that she
was holding that baby. That babyis spoiled and that's why she did this
at the other Meanwhile, she's literallyrocking my daughter to sleep in her arms.
Jia's legs are almost to the ground. She's so long. I'm just
like, you're sitting up here talkingmess. You've walked g in asleep.
Every time it's over this girl,I walk in, my mom is like
(31:47):
on her chair. They're both sleepand the girl is on her chest.
Like she completely went against everything shewould say about what it takes to raise
a child, and it's doing thingsI'd love to see. So you know,
for some people that's hard. Forsome people just like why couldn't you
do this with me? And forme, I'm just like, well,
they couldn't at that time. Andthis is why I always say people hate
(32:09):
it. People are always doing thebest that they can at any given moment,
and sometimes that best is harmful.Sometimes that best is toxic and abusive.
Sometimes it is really just unfriendly andharsh. And other times their best
is letting their grandchild. You know, I'm going to sleep on their chests
(32:30):
because they have that space now,they have that it's a different energy.
Their best is different now and understandingthat we are always at any single moment
doing the best that we can withwhat we have in under these oppressive systems,
and that's a hard pool people toswallow because they hear best and they
(32:50):
think they should have tried harder.I'm just telling you right now, people
they are and sometimes they just can'tand it has nothing to do with you,
and that's shitty and I'm sorry,but it has nothing to do with
you. And especially when it comesup with like black and indigenous people of
color, I just have to remindthem like our parents were once children.
So your mom probably did all thatright with the emotions right because her mom
(33:14):
probably told her to stop crying exactly. You know, she probably was never
allowed to show her emotions when shewas Yeah, it's just generational trauma.
Yeah, this is like the imaginingand a meditation that I've like traversed a
lot of different times with different communitynumbers and relationship to what it means for
us to you know, be doingthis tending and reparenting of ourselves and our
(33:35):
inner children, and don't know whatit might have looked like for us to
also be in relationship to our parentsinner children, Like if our inner children
for ourselves were in relationship to theinner children of our parents, Like how
on which ways would they marry eachother? And how on which ways would
they be able to inform one another? Like what it means to be held
(33:58):
in wholeness? You know, Ithink that like one of the things that
I have come to deeply understand andbe really in like deep um inhales and
exhales around, is that we haveway more tools people like we're are you
right now talking about this on apodcast? I'm saying like that that just
(34:19):
is not something that was allotted toto like my family, And I'm sure
like this is very true in yourown community, but like the stigmatization of
like um, mental health work ofany sort. And that's not even what
they would call it back in theday, right, like we would we
call it like you're going to seelike a cuckoo doctor, which is what
my mom would say. It's calledyou know, like um when we would
(34:40):
tell her that we were going tofair what's with It's like, you know,
yeah, I'm just like why areyou going there? Yeah, you're
you're not crazy, like you know, I'm like, well, but the
world makes us crazy. So Ithink we all need spaces in which we're
being held to really contend with thethings that are happening to our mentalities because
of the stress is that you alsohave faith that have caused some tension in
(35:02):
our relationships. But like yeah,like I know that my mother and my
father and my grandmother just were notallotted those those types of relational I don't
know what that like the resources wereall the books and it just wasn't and
(35:22):
the time, right because when youare spending most of your time just surviving
it's very hard to learn, it'svery hard to um really be able to
come out. And that's that,again, is the function of capitalism.
And this is why even today todaywas in July fourteen, twenty twenty two,
they released the footage of the UvaldiI think that's how you say the
(35:45):
school shooting. They released the campfootage, and I'm not watching that ship.
We have been sobody sensitized by seeingall of these, you know,
black trauma kids being killed. Andwhat that does to us is inexhausted.
It makes us hopeless. It makesus tired. And when you are hopeless
and tired and exhausted, you don'thave space to go and to figure out
(36:08):
how do I I'm gonna go figureout how to learn now about about this,
that and the other. It's veryhard, I must say. We're
doing it. But we have acircle, we have more resources, we
have more people around us. Thereis not one person that I don't think
my mom knew one person that wasn'twhooping the whipping their kids growing up.
So who do you go to,like, you're doing this thing that nobody
(36:30):
else is doing by yourself back inthe eighties and nineties, who do you
go to. Now I can callmy friends and be like, girl,
Jia is driving me, Please helpme calm down, you know, like,
and they will because they're doing ittoo. And so just understand having
an understanding that does not excuse anyof the abusive behaviors that we all like
(36:52):
experience, the harm and the toxicity. Just have any understanding of things is
not excuse them. What it doesdo is help humanize people. Because in
order for me to have empathy formyself, I have to have empathy for
other people. So I have empathyfor my mom and what she had to
go through as a single parent ofthree girls by herself, living under this
(37:13):
oppression with the childhood that she had, not having any money. I have
empathy for that struggle. She stillharmed me, you know, there were
still the real times where she wasabusive towards me, And that's a hard
pill to swallow for some people.And that again is we can't live in
binaries, because if we do,it's like either or it's like no,
it's both. And I can bothrecognize that she was struggling and that the
(37:37):
way that she PopEd was abusive,Right, Yeah, I think that's something
really difficult for sometimes like folks whoare who are doing the work to really
be able to to move with.And let's be real, you know,
like sometimes I am in that placeof being able to hold those things,
and then sometimes it tips the scaleand like sometimes I'm just like, Nope,
(37:57):
today they're just harming me. Todayis today, that's what's showing up,
you know what I mean. Andthen there are other days where I'm
like, today, Mama, I'mhere for you, like in entirety,
like I'm here to listen to what'sgoing on. But I feel like what
our generations is really contending with themost is like finding the balances of the
(38:19):
ways in which we're figuring it outso that we have more rituals to really
move with how to address those thingswhen it comes up with our own children
as they're being raised. Because Ithink very often and even just even relationship
with me and my partner, youknow, like he and I we have
check ins. I mean we've beendoing this since we were in relationship before,
(38:40):
but we used to have relationship checkins just for us, but now
it's like these parenthood check ins andjust like really talking to each other about
the way in which we're being affected, like our relationships being affected by having
our first child with one another,And what are the things that are working?
What things are not working in relationshipto our different parenting styles, because
we do have them, as muchas we like to believe that we have
(39:02):
the same exact like end goal,which is true, I believe we are
values are extremely aligned, and likeour ideas are the ways in which we
want to raise our child in thoselarger picture ways, like they're clear the
way to get there, which isalways a thing when we're talking about liberation,
walks away, like it's not alwaysthe same, Like he wants to
(39:23):
do things this certain way, Iwant to do it this way. We
bump heads with one another. Wedon't want to be in a position where
one person's seeming to step on theother person's toes and relationship to her,
like there's all kinds of things goingon. But I think it's those types
of conversations that maybe weren't able tobe had between even like the people who
are caregiving for us, like Iheard you saying too, Like it wasn't
(39:45):
just my mother and my father.There were multiple hands at play in raising
me. But sometimes I don't knowif they were always in agreeance with one
another. Something that's real for meis that like anyone who's taking care of
my child knows what what it is. I'm like listening to build up in
this world. You know, ifyou're not if you don't know, and
(40:05):
if you don't fall in line,you can't be around your period exactly.
That's just there's there's absolutely no that'sI'm very there's no willow woman there right.
If it's like, well, youknow we should come over here,
these are the rules over here thatyou won't be coming over there, like,
it's very simple for me. Butthat's also my part of me having
privilege. And I like to talkabout that because folks want to be like
(40:25):
a no privilege digital parenting and that'sjust not true. Um and conscious parenting.
If I have a support system,and this appears because I was like,
I can't have you around my kidanymore. Well, I work from
home, you know, I workfor myself. I have a very loose
schedule, so it won't hurt meas hard as as much to say,
okay, well we just want tobe coming around anymore. But that parent,
(40:49):
that working parent who depends on theirextended family um and their extended families
basically like well, either my wayor the highway, they have to make
some sacrifices that, you know,we have to recognize the different privileges that
we have. And I feel likefor you know, bipop folks, we
we only see privilege as like aracial construct, and there's so many privileges,
(41:10):
you know, time ability, youknow, like being partnered or not.
Like, there's all so many differenttypes of privilege that we have to
recognize as we go down this journeyto being more intentional conscious parents and be
colonizing in order to be able toshow up for people in in a more
authentic way. Yeah, And Ithink that's like, you know, as
(41:30):
you continue to just kind of bringin the truth about being in relation to
other folks and being able to dependon other folks and in different capacities to
raise our kids. I think thatthat's one of the biggest things that I've
also been when I think about thiswhole idea of being a good ancestor that
was kind of like they were talkingabout before, you know, is that
(41:51):
one of the things that I hopefor is to have good relationships with people,
Yes, to build good community,to build good family, not just
with the folks who I'm supposed tobuild good family with, but the people
who truly are meaning to and intentionallystepping into building good family with me,
whether or not they are blood relatedto me. And the truth is that
(42:13):
a lot of folks in my bloodrelation aren't folks who want to be in
good family with me. They wantto step into the idea of family being
a duty, which it is.There's a responsibility to that. And also
I think that we're really contending withhow and which ways we build good relationships
that then model the way that ourchild will be in relationship to us and
(42:35):
to other people in the world.And you know, like as they grow
grow bigger and they build family withothers, you know, like what that
looks like. I'm totally conscious oftenabout the ways in which I tell people
like, listen, my life nowit's very inclusive of this little person,
(42:57):
and like they are, they're cocreating my life with me. Now it's
not just from my viewpoint anymore.I mean, it is still there,
but I always am thinking about theways in which what she's doing in the
world is shifting, impacting, renegotiating, the ways in which I'm gonna decide
to do things. And the moreand more she becomes fully in herself and
(43:22):
she has her own ideas and she'scommunicating them and building her own relationships.
Like these little ones are co creatives, and they're co creating this existence in
ways that we may not even beable to imagine at this point. So
if there's anything that I hope tobe a good ancestor with, it's the
(43:43):
types of things that I feel thatI want to be generative, that it's
good, and that there's some foundationthere that feels like in its integrity,
that feels is coming from a lovingplace, but that more than anything else,
has room to be grown through relationalcare and understanding. Yeah, particularly
(44:07):
with her. But like if Iam moving in a certain way with anyone
who's helping to raise or it's becausenot just because like this is exactly how
I want things to be, thatI also trust that the people who are
coming through that if they were toquestion me about my parenting, it likely
is because they have something loving toadd to the equation. And I'm hoping
(44:28):
for that for all the relationships thatcome into our lives. You know,
as we move forward and raising thislittle one that that will exist, you
know, I mean being a goodancestor. We you know, when we
talk about being good a good ancestor, we really are thinking futuristically about what
(44:49):
we want the world to look like. That's at least for me. I'm
not going to speak for everybody else. For me, when I think about
being a good ancestor, it's reallyabout thing futuristically about how I want this
world to look and fill in soundfor my daughter. And so with that
in mind, are there any tipsfor people who are going to may have
(45:12):
heard it's just like, oh mygod, I'm struggling with the same thing
with my family, with boundaries withmy family, with uncoupling my family's sense
of duty from my own liberation walklike, do you have any tips for
some people who might be struggling withthat? M I mean, I feel
like you've spoke about it a littlebit earlier. The biggest thing that I
(45:35):
offered to myself every single day isto be patient and have compassion for the
complexities in any given moment. Andyou were saying that earlier, like,
in any given moment, everyone's tryingto do the best that they can.
Yes, And I feel like thatthere's something to that, you know,
like there's something to folks who canhold complication and folks who can't. And
usually when people don't hold complication,they run straight into conflict and stay there
(46:00):
for a really, really, reallyreally long time. And so my biggest
thing that I try to do formyself when I'm finding myself in conflict with
my family in particular, is I'lltake a deep breath and I'm like,
all right, what are you notseeing right now? What is it that
you are not seeing? Like whatare you simplifying? That is always going
(46:22):
to be way more complicated than what'shappening in this moment, And do you
have the capacity to hold that andbeing in the complication and the patience with
yourself when you can't, but thenalso celebrating yourself and like stepping fully into
the moments when you have the courageto do that. So I think that's
(46:43):
my biggest advice to folks is thatlike be complicated. And then I think
that also another thing that I'm youknow, just kind of like sitting with
with myself with my own family inthis point, is it's like it's just
the boundary conversation again, you know, Yeah, it's like, what like
(47:07):
just having a question with yourself aboutwhat those boundaries really not just look like,
but they also feel like, becauselike, yeah, you know,
just like being able to be embodiedin your boundaries, not just like theater
theoretically or like being able to justspeak it to folks, but like,
what does it really feel like toto have that distance? There's actually,
(47:30):
um a question that I like havefor myself. You know, quite often
when I when I'm um at homeand with my mother and my father,
is like, um, what isit gonna be like, you know,
when we're apart again? You know? Is that the only time when I
feel like I can have a goodrelation with my parents is when I'm like
(47:53):
physically distanced from them. And Idon't really have a complete answer for that
yet, But what I do knowis that the distance does does do something
to my body and allows me tofeel, you know, regulated to use
some words you know, um islike oh it's safe here. Yeah.
And so I wonder what that isfor a lot of different other folks,
(48:14):
And if we can feel into thatmore for ourselves, like and be really
honest about that, um and andbe able to communicate that with ourselves first
and foremost before even trying to communicateit with others. But I really appreciate
this conversation, even having a momentto reflect that there returning from a trip
back home. You know, Iknow if you know, these are great
(48:35):
journal props. Also if y'all arelistening to sort of reflect back on after
you listen to this, Because thisis the work, like in it's constant,
it's never ending. I don't thinkanyone will ever be fully healed from
trans generational trauma. But what wecan do is just continue to acquire ask
why it always I like to addin everything that I do, ask myself,
(49:01):
like how am I upholding or gatekeeping for and investing in these systems
of oppression? And you can dothat even when it comes to like these
familial like relationships, are they servingthe point of liberation for you and your
children? And if they're not,how can you? How can you be
(49:22):
a part of that? You can'tcontrol nobody else. But what you can't
do is put up because you can't, oh what you did. What you
can do is put up some boundariesaround that. And that will not be
easy. We know this, especiallyfor immigrant families, for black families.
We know that you get guilt,tripped, shamed, like all these things,
all these feelings start to come up. But if it serves to only
(49:44):
reinforced oppression and colonization, how isit certain liberations? It can't. You
can't have both. So just reflect. It's a constant reflection. And what
that said, can you let folksknow how to find you. The easiest
way is to go onto Instagram.That's like one of my mainstays, and
you can just find me there JLcreator. I'm not really traversing to many
(50:07):
of the other platforms these days.It's just like really easy to just be
in one place. Yes, sowe can connect there if y'all feel good
about it, well, I appreciateyou having to coming on here. And
you know, can you tell thefolks what does the colonize the parenty mean
to you? It means having roomto hold the compassion for yourself and who
(50:28):
you are growing into alongside your child, as well as holding compassion for others
that help to co raise your children, and building in those conversations of those
relations generative ways to grow our futuredescendants and to be better ancestors in the
future. I love it. Thankyou so much for joining me today.
(50:51):
I really appreciate you. I'll makesure to put all your information to the
show notes. Y'all. Please goand follow Jail on Instagram and you know,
make sure you leave a writing reviewlet me know if you thought about
this conversation and us always keep itconscious. Thank you,
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