some things need to die...

so that what's yearning to be birthed can take root 🌱

a new iteration of this newsletter is on the way but first I must do a proper send off :)

It’s utterly insane to think that nearly 5 years ago, I began typing out my grievances with the state of the world through my eyes as a social media manager — an identity I held onto and cultivated as though it were my life’s purpose — and sending out these hilariously infrequent dispatches that would eventually land in over 50 inboxes (might seem like a small number to some but it’s big to me!!!). Life was different back then. I’ve shed an entire version of myself that was severely tethered to that career, working in an industry that could give two fucks about diversity unless it got them an award.

Overall, 2021 was a fucked up time. I know you know this because you lived it and I’m so sorry to bring it up again but as you’ll know from being alive today…the times are just as fucked up, if not more!!! 5 years ago, the role I wanted to play in making the world around me better was to devote what was left of my already dwindling capacity to stay alive to furthering diversity initiatives — at my job where I helped lead an affinity group, and in this newsletter where I hallmarked projects of as many creatives of color I could find, in an industry that was (and still is) deeply saturated with white voices. I was attempting to fill to the voids in my day-to-day life with the things I was yearning to see more of — things that felt really far away because of how narrowly my career, which felt like the epicenter of my life, was shaped.

At the time, I so desperately wanted to be at the forefront producing something versus being someone who’s role was to market and promote the final product. I didn’t yet know that I possessed the kind of expansion required of me to create the art I was always capable of making merely 3 years later. But that expansion also required the death of the self and identity I cultivated around my job.

It took me 10 months last year to get through Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, nearly every passage stopping me in my tracks to reflect on the choices I’ve made and the choices I want to make moving forward. Anyway, the book helped illuminate just how I’d suppressed my inner creative desires by believing the lies told to me by oppressive systems. As I read this passage, I noticed the entirety of my career flash before my eyes:

People are fulfilled only to the extent that they create their world, and create it with their transforming labor. The fulfillment of humankind as human beings lies, then, in the fulfillment of the world. If for a person to be in the world of work is to be totally dependent, insecure, and permanently threatened — if their world does not belong to them — the person cannot be fulfilled. Work that is not free ceases to be a fulfilling pursuit and becomes an effective means of dehumanization.

Your girl was not fulfilled. Being so deeply in the trenches of social media, I began to lose more of myself and my will to create outside of the parameters of me. In Freire’s words, an internal state of oppression happens when workers aren’t given the agency to create a world outside of what’s already given to them. For too long, I thought the only way I was able to achieve success was through my labor — the labor I devoted to the company I was working for. The concept of developing who I was as an individual, an artist, with her own desires and dreams became secondary. I had no idea who I truly was, because I had no concept of thinking about myself outside the systems of oppression (not just in the workplace but in social heteronormative settings) I’d become so entangled in.

To run it back, I was:

• straight (lol)

• a cog in the corporate machine

• nearly six months into starting therapy aka finally talking about my feelings after 30-something years #yikes

• miserable and numbing myself with content…endless content

I turned to this platform to channel my misery into what I knew best: curating the things I truly loved to remind myself that, as miserable as this world was/is, there is so much creativity and art to be experienced. But even so, I was drowning and I had no idea.

The ethos of working in the social media industry centers around the concept of being “always on.” That in order to know what to produce, what buzzwords to generate more traffic, what trends to hop on, you must always. be. online. So that’s what I was. For years. Of course, when you’re in it, it’s the greatest feeling ever to know that a post you helped brith into digital life generated thousands likes and followers and comments and shares and impressions and whateverthefuckelsemadeupmetricsoffakeachievementthesedumbassappscreated.

Constantly chasing that dopamine hit is literally an addiction that is bred daily within the walls of the corporate world and, like most forms of abuse, goes consistently unchecked. I’ve spoken with former colleagues about how unsustainable the social media industry is, many of us having already left and switched careers entirely. So for context, the me in 2021 was still heavily operating as a social media addict, working in the very field that fed her addiction and paid her to stay addicted. And because I was “always on,” I knew what was happening on all corners of the internet — the good, the bad, the fugly — and most likely, so did your chronically online ass! Because statistically speaking, pandemic times brought a significant increase in scroll time, thumbs moving through miles and miles of content daily. A study on online social interactions went so far as to describe our phones as “adult pacifiers,” which reduced negative emotions and stress. Funny how it’s now become the source of negative emotions and stress.

For me, the more time I spent on my phone or laptop consuming, the less I wanted to create. So instead, I shared. In 2021, I had grand plans to push out weekly emails, rounding up the best content created by people I admire and look up to…but as you’ll know from being a subscriber, that didn’t really happen! My heart was never truly in it.

Because what it really wanted to do was tell my own story, which at the time, I was too scared to do. I simply didn’t have the tools yet. So, that’s what I’ve been gathering: the time, the changes, the grief, the experiences for me finally have the capacity to start sharing my story in a way that felt real.

It’s now 2026, and I am:

• openly gay (surprise if you didn’t already know!)

• freed from the corporate burnout machine

• 5 years deep into therapy (who knew I’d love talking about my feelings?)

• ready to begin the process of revealing the truth surrounding my birth story

2020 was the first time I publicly spoke about growing up without knowing who my father is. It’s been the source of a lot of contention in my life and relationships, especially the one with myself. When you struggle with abandonment, you begin telling yourself stories about not being good enough — to be wanted, loved, or even alive. I lived nearly three decades with a narrative that was a lie.

There are reasons why we experience things the way we do and discover things the way they we were meant to. I remember telling my therapist in 2021 about an idea to begin making a documentary about finding my birth father because it felt like it was “the only way.” She assured me it wasn’t and I told her to fuck off. The thing is, I knew deep down she was right and what really wanted to be nurtured was my inherent need to create something for myself, not someone else and sure as hell not for another corporation.

5 years later, the idea is still so potent but has morphed into something much deeper than a search for a person that has nothing to do with me, other than providing me half of my DNA. 2021 was also the year I moved back to the Bay Area and since then, I’ve chosen to build a stronger relationship with my mother, asking her more questions about my origin story and confiding in her with so much of what was bubbling under the surface from years of secrecy and shame. What she’s shared opened my eyes to an entirely new layer of this story that I know needs to be told.

My mom was 37 when she had me. It’s the age I turned three months ago. It’s the age I always kept in the back corners of my mind, knowing that I always had exactly that much time to bring something to life. So, this is low key me planting a seed I’m going to promise myself and all of you who are currently reading this to nurture and breathe life into. Like I said earlier, I’ve needed to collect all the tools necessary to be able to carry out this undertaking. What I hope to share in this next iteration of this newsletter is everything I’ve been learning up until this point, with the goal of using this material to one day produce a documentary on it (or whatever it seeks to become instead! maybe it’s just this! who knows! who cares!). The point is, I’m starting. And this is just the beginning.

I’ve needed each and every experience across my career and personal life to be able to tell this story the way it deserves to be told: with honesty and authenticity. I wasn’t fully embodied in those things before *points to above list of who I was in 2021*. But I’m the closest now than I’ve ever been. Here’s what I hope to share with you all in the coming weeks, months, years:

• the process of where this journey of discovering my ancestry has led me (so far)

• the conversations with my mom (and what it took to start having them)

• the research that will lead me to more answers (not just within my heritage but the context of when and where I was born and why it all matters)

• the inspiration I’ve taken from media (you know how many stories surrounding fatherlessness is out there?)

• who knows what else!

This path ahead is the furthest from clear. But there’s clarity in that it’s the only way forward. I hope you’ll stick around.