Since the Lunar New Year, I have felt a shift in my soul. Something I’ve been praying for. Don’t get me wrong…I’m still sad and anxious and grieving. But the rage and energy is back baby!

I needed to sit in sorrow the past many months. Here are some of my reflections.

liberatory imagining is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

For my entire life, I’ve been a go-getter. As a child I was a disciplined classical pianist who practiced every day for at least an hour. In high school, I got into competitive piano and basically lived at my teacher’s house with a group of 6 other students. I won awards and got all the certificates. I was in multiple jazz bands and combos. Got my BA in performance arts. And then I crowdsourced and produced a folk album of my original music playing guitar and singing. I’m not going to get into my 20’s, because that’s a whole other story. But doing all those things trained my body and nervous system to behave under intense pressure. I knew how to perform.

[ID: me as a kid (maybe around 8 years old) wearing a nautical themed dress playing the piano in front of company.]

I learned how to push through the anxiety and excel. I learned how to push through all the fight/flight/freeze signals my body was sending me and please the audience. The cool part is that at a young age, I discovered agency and the joy of discipline. The not so cool part is that I also discovered how to shush messages from my body.

When I was around 10, I remember something clicking: if I repeated each measure (small section in the piano sheet music) until it was perfect and applied it to every measure of the piece, I could achieve perfection. It was just about putting in the time and practicing with good technique. From then on, I was in! It was an exhilarating feeling to be able to track my progress and mastery in a household where I felt so out of control. On top of that, my parents were really proud of me when I did well.

That was such a mixed bag of a beautiful opportunity of exercising my independence and also the deepening of capitalistic values.

Throughout my 20’s and now into my mid 30’s, I’ve been healing from and naming those capitalistic/colonial values that feel so embedded into my body. It all culminated to last year where I really tested where the boundaries of my love and faith lies.

The heartbreak of witnessing genocides, the abuse from my ex, the betrayal of community and friends, the nonstop onslaught of Black and brown people from every angle, childhood trauma…the grief stopped me. I let the heaviness wash over me. And I didn’t even fight it.

What a strange relief to allow myself to feel the depth of grief.

Everything that I’ve worked so hard on internally - to dispel lies of unworthiness, of supremacy, of competition, of always needing to prove something…led me to a place where I didn’t need to push through.

I sank into the sadness with faith.

Faith that change is constant. Faith that liberation is coming. Faith in my role. Faith in my community. Faith that the deeper I can experience grief, the higher my experience of joy and connection will be. Faith in God and my ancestors. Faith that my value is not determined by how I perform.

As I wrote numerous times last year, it is an honor to dedicate this lifetime in pursuit of collective liberation. It is an honor. It is an honor. It isn’t something that I do to prove that I’m worthy or valuable. I do it, because it is a privilege and a gift to do so.

In the darkness, I believed.

And I’m proud of myself, because I tested the bounds of my faith…of my love for myself and for the collective, and it was there in dark.

[ID: a painting I’m working on that expresses how I felt like floating in darkness]

I don’t mean to wrap it up neatly with a ribbon. One piece of the nuance is that there was shame popping up all over the place. I felt these bouts of shame that I wasn’t more productive and creative. I saw people living their lives and doing things that I felt was impossible for me. My internalized capitalism is very much still present. But as there were bouts of shame, there were more moments of gentleness and compassion. And both will continue to ebb and flow, because the journey still has a long way to go (God willing.)

It feels vulnerable to share this. Even though I feel like things have shifted for me energetically, I know that the ebb and flow of life will bring me back into a season of sadness again and again. I pray that it won’t come around that soon, but I’m thankful to know that the bounds of my love and faith are far reaching.

Every day as I’m watching evil ass trump doing exactly what he said he would do, I try to root down a little more in love and faith.

All empires fall. All empires fall.

It’s an honor to fight for the liberation of my siblings here on Turtle Island, Palestine, DRC, Sudan…for my trans siblings…disabled siblings…unhoused siblings…migrant siblings…and for my own.

[ID: a self portrait of me a Chinese femme with short bangs and long hair in the sunshine with a gentle smile]

Upcoming Events:

2.11 Liberatory Imagination: rooted in love - a virtual workshop

2.20-3.27 Finding Your Writing Voice with The Newberry Library - virtual class

liberatory imagining is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Get full access to LIBERATORY IMAGINATION at tiffanywongart.substack.com/subscribe