I’ve been posting a lot of information from Jenny Wang’s page @asiansformentalhealth.  Jenny has a wealth of knowledge about how and where to start healing from racial trauma and also spreads awareness about the often invisible AAPI experience.  She’s amazing, and I highly recommend following her! 

I recommend watching her video discussing how Asian Americans can start talking to our children about race.

I promise I will return to posting about my photography eventually.  I did not ever intend for this to be a platform for social justice by any stretch of my imagination.

Quite honestly the breadth of my knowledge and ability to articulate thoughts around such a complex and changing landscape is limited, and I think so often we’re afraid of sounding stupid or not using the correct phraseology or not having the appropriate authority to speak on these issues.  At least that’s how I’ve felt.  It’s not easy to publicly process very painful memories, but I feel that it is necessary for people to put a name and a face on a community whose stories and experiences have largely been faceless and overlooked.

As much as I’d like to believe that my children will never face any discrimination or hardship in their lives, I know that it’s part of the reality growing up in an imperfect world with imperfect humans making imperfect decisions. 

I cannot control how the world will treat them, but I can prepare them to navigate their feelings without shame, without denying their identities, or worse, internalize the message that they are not good enough, or that they don’t belong. 

We as parents are intersecting our history and past of our own racial trauma with our children, and we need to reclaim our stories for them to own theirs.  As we heal, we empower our children.

This is how we can keep them safe: by empowering them.

We don’t want to talk about race only in highly emotionally charged situations or only after an attack happens, but in everyday life.

We can try to ignore or avoid the conversation of race, but it won’t protect them in the event they are racially attacked.  It is our role as parents to equip them with the skills to know when racism is happening, how it affects them, and how to give them the tools of how to be prepared the next time.

You are not going to teach it perfectly.  It’s complex even for adults.  Let go of needing to know how to present it in the perfect way.  They just need to know that they are safe, and that you are with them. 

Our children deserve better.  They deserve to grow up in a world that accepts them, and if not, to grow up knowing that their voice is valid, and that they may be afraid of speaking up, but that it’s the right thing to do, and that we are with them.  We see them.

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Tiffany Chi Photography is a Newborn, Maternity, Baby, Birth, and Family Lifestyle Photographer based out of Orange County and serving Southern California, taking dreamy, romantic and ethereal photographs.


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