029: Tiffany & Ko
In this episode, we’re joined by award-winning storyteller Ko Im to discuss her powerful Newsweek opinion piece “I'm an Asian Woman and I'm Not OK”, published in the wake of the Atlanta spa attacks that killed 8 people (including 6 Asian women) and rising hate crimes against Asian Americans.
We discussed:
Ko’s opinion piece in Newsweek “I'm an Asian Woman and I'm Not OK”
How the Atlanta shooting impacted Asian women
Being gentle with yourself
Healing strategies for the Asian community
Trust, safety, and grief
Allies and checking in
Show notes:
“I'm an Asian Woman and I'm Not OK”: https://www.newsweek.com/im-asian-woman-im-not-ok-opinion-1576942
Michelle Kim’s tweet: https://www.instagram.com/p/CMgZxDTh0Fl/
Elder Chinese woman attacked in San Francisco: https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2021/03/17/elderly-asian-woman-beats-up-man-attacking-her-in-san-francisco/
Asians for Mental Health: https://linktr.ee/asiansformentalhealth
Asian Mental Health Collective: https://linktr.ee/asianmentalhealthcollective
People of color expected to be majority in 2050: https://www.cnn.com/2008/US/08/13/census.minorities/
About Ko Im
Ko is a 1.5-generation Asian Pacific American. She is a wellness advocate, mindfulness guide and an award-winning storyteller.
Follow Ko Im
Website: https://konakafe.com/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@konakafe
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/konakafe
Twitter: https://twitter.com/koimtv
Transcript
Tiffany Yu: Hi everyone. And you're listening to this episode of Tiffany & Yu. Tiffany & Yu is a podcast about things that matter. And more specifically, I'm chatting with friends who are using their voices and platforms to cultivate creativity, change, and compassion. Today I have with me Ko Im. She's a 1.5 generation Asian Pacific American. She's a wellness advocate, a mindfulness guide, and an award-winning storyteller. Hi Ko.
Ko Im: Hi, Tiffany. And I would add that I'm one of your best quarantine friends.
Tiffany Yu: Yes. I always like starting my podcast by sharing how I know my guest. And so you and I met through Dreamers & Doers. Ko and I were joking that we felt like this podcast episode might be like one of our telephone conversations because over the past year Ko has become one of my virtual quarantine buddies. I figured we'll just get right into it. You published a piece about a week ago called "I'm an Asian woman and I'm not OK." If you wanted to share about where did that piece come from?
Ko Im: And I know a lot of your guests probably say this, but you are also an inspiration as well as a friend to me. So thank you for your continued advocacy. I was publishing a lot of opinion pieces, for my work, for my nine to five. I've started formulating my own opinion as a journalist and as an Asian American, culturally, professionally, we've been taught not to speak up and to stay objective, and not to start chaos. But I've noticed that in my work as a writer, as a personal essayist that sharing stories is, not only empowering for the individual and reclaiming their narrative but also, it resonates with a lot more people just with the raw emotions and thoughts and hopefully the healing that comes from it. So as I was watching all this happen, during last summer, during the peak of the Black Lives Matter movement. I was angry, but I didn't quite know what to do with that anger. And, we stood in solidarity with our brothers and sisters of color, but also, it was bringing up other things for me and I needed time to process that and heal through that, talk to my therapist, go through alternate modes of healing, as I am somebody who is into self-care, but also I'm open to changing what's working for me and what's not depending on the time and the intensity. And it's been a very, very intense year. I was going to opt-out of a meeting that I have weekly with some other older, mostly white, women writers. And they said, no, we want to hold space for you. And they've been inspiring to me because they are very vocal about everything from the latest Netflix show to Trump, to motherhood, to New York, whether or not it's alive or dead in the pandemic. And, so right before that, I was like, you know what? I haven't journaled in a while. And journaling is a way for me to get my words and my thoughts and my feelings on paper, immediately. So I started doing that and I noticed it was becoming more actionable in the way that I was writing. Like, Hey, I want other people to know this. And I want as many people to know this. And I know that a lot of people are exhausted, too exhausted to speak up, and, maybe afraid to speak up because there are trolls and haters out there. And within two or three hours, I had shared this with my group, sent it to Newsweek, which is a mainstream media publication, and gotten it accepted and published. And it's been shared with so many people and a lot of people have reached out and done the, how are you? I know you've gotten this too or hope you're okay. No need to respond. But I've also gotten a lot of messages that said, I shared this with my corporate team or I'm sending you a Starbucks card and all of that has opened the flood gates for me because I've been holding back, I think, purposefully. And now I reached out to a friend who has been a very vocal, continual advocate in the recent weeks. Eric Toda at Facebook, and I said, Hey, if you need to step away from a media appearance, like I'm willing to step up. Now I feel empowered and supported and seen and heard to speak up. I don't need to be out there, but I think if I can speak for somebody or for somebody who's family member or anything like that. And I can use my words, then absolutely "Put me in coach" kind of situation.
Tiffany Yu: That's so powerful. Thanks for sharing that. I didn't even open by providing context, but when this episode goes live, it will have been a week since the killings in the Atlanta area of eight people, six of whom were Asian American women. I also want to mention to our listeners that it's only been a week. And I feel like I'm still very raw and I feel so excited to have Ko stepping into her power and wanting to see how she can continue to move this conversation forward because I don't know if I have the right words yet. So on this topic of opting out, especially with what happened last week. I almost feel like we couldn't opt-out as Asian women. I'm curious if you can talk about this desire to want to opt-out, but you just know that you can't.
Ko Im: So, I mean, this comes from being a fellow trauma thriver and someone who's continuing on her healing journey. Opting out, not seen as a cop-out, seen as my own boundaries, like, what do I need right now? Cause it's like, if I'm not taking care of myself, I can't help advocate for other people. So before what happened in Atlanta, there were the elderly attacks. You and I both were triggered by some of those videos of people, really vulnerable people around the country becoming victims of hate crime. And I felt saddened and the part of grief processes is shock. And when you're in shock, obviously you're going to opt-out. But when you can consciously opt-out, then that's I think a positive thing of boundaries too, not saying that. Whatever you're going through, by the way, listener, wherever you are today is fine. It's perfect. It's where you need to be right now. And you'll know, you'll listen to your intuition and your gut of like, no, I can't, I can't handle this anymore. I can't stomach this anymore. And I do feel myself getting emotional after having had a very neutral a couple of days. So when I think what really hit with the recent spree was that these were Asian women working in situations that they probably would not want. And I brought this up in the piece and I'll bring it up again. But this not only does it lean into the objectification of women but also the fetishization of Asian women that has had a long history in that stems from wartime comfort woman to continued portrayals in modern society. I read somewhere, it was just reminded of like even Austin Powers, the two twins that are like, look at me, I'm so cute. Let me service you. And long have been thought of as, even less than a joke, just like quiet, selfless, almost humanless, like the humanity had been stripped. So I think for this, it hit harder to home as an Asian American woman that that could have been me. And then you hear that they were moms. It could have been any of our moms. And so I think that was a tipping point for many of us and for the allies who stand with us to kind of say, wow, this is it. And in the same way that maybe Breonna Taylor was an unfortunate catalyst, these six women and the two people that worked with them were also. They should be honored.
Tiffany Yu: I feel like I had some moments of clarity in the past week. You mentioned the hyper-sexualization, the fetishization, the dehumanization, objectification of the Asian woman. I had never really connected all the dots before. And I just wanted to read a tweet from Michelle Kim. She wrote this immediately after we had gotten the news of the killing and she wrote, "I'm far too traumatized to put together an eloquent thread right now, but I need everyone to understand that Asian women have been unsafe in this country and overseas for a long time." We're going to take a break and then when we come back, we'll continue chatting with Ko.
And we're back from the break. You're listening to this episode of Tiffany & Yu. We have Ko Im with us. She is an award-winning storyteller, wrote an incredible op-ed in Newsweek last week in response to the shootings that happened in the Atlanta area where eight people were killed. You had mentioned, you've had a couple of neutral days and now we're coming back into this recording. I'd love if you wouldn't mind sharing what you're noticing right now, after having a couple of days of having been able to be gentle with yourself.
Ko Im: Absolutely. Be gentle with yourself. And, I'll use this as a teaching moment as somebody who tries to facilitate healing and advocate for mindfulness in all areas of our lives. So, it's really just being able to sit down and stop the going in your head with your thoughts and your feelings and just observing and holding yourself, holding emotions, allowing them to come up, allowing them to come up so you can process them and move them through. So what I'm noticing in the levity of this conversation is, I feel, for example, a lump in my throat. And what does that mean? Is it in the woo woo world, you can say, Oh, her throat chakra is getting blocked, but it's actually because I think I'm opening up and I'm speaking for myself. I'm speaking on behalf of the community and perhaps I feel a little bit of burdening for it. Again, it's just immediate observation and it'll crystallize in terms of what it means for symbolism for me later, but grief, healing is not linear. I mean, it's going to come up. Somebody had actually said to me, I know this is a time of grieving for you. I was like, Oh yeah, I didn't even think about it that way. And then eventually I said, you know what? You're right. People are actually dead. This is a funeral in my mind. You're going to think about, I'm going to think about these women at random times. I can also set up intentional times to honor them. And the horrifying thing is that these horrific headlines and images, and for somebody who is so visceral and visual, they'll stick with you. But the opportunity then is to get out of this cycle. And as you said, be gentle with yourself, right? It's like, Oh, I noticed I'm thinking about it and it's not helping me right now. Let me go take a walk or let me call a friend or let me make an appointment with my therapist. Or let me share the GoFundMe link for one of these children of these victims. So I think just taking the time. And even while we were on the break, I was just taking deep belly breaths because I feel like I'm talking on run-on sentences. And I want to come back into the depth of my soul, the seat of my power, so to speak, and make sure that we can do what we want with this time and the space that we have with each other, which is really loving and beautiful. And I'm always going to come back to practice of gratitude, what I'm grateful for, right. I've been so blessed to have you as a friend in all the good times and bad times. I mean, the funny thing is like, people might look at my social media and be like, wait, now, why is she dancing on TikTok when all this stuff is happening? That's an outlet for me. That's something I turned to regularly. So that's okay too. Like I can still try to celebrate what is life and also observe and condemn what are the horrors of life. So that's kind of the duality I think that exists and albeit like peacefully for me.
Tiffany Yu: I wanted to touch on a couple of things you said there. The first is when images and videos are shared. There was an incident that happened on Wednesday, right here in San Francisco, where one of our Asian elders, a Chinese woman was attacked, assaulted in the face. And, I can't unhear her wails. There was a follow-up video that was done. She was with her family, I'm grateful that she had that support system, but still wailing. I can see it from both sides of saying, we need people to see these videos to see what's happening to our community. But every single time I see it and I hear, I hear the quiver in my voice. It's just, it's just horrifying. The other thing I wanted to say is, you're a journalist, you're a writer. You are a champion of wellness and mindfulness. Oftentimes people look to us to be brave for our communities. And I came across a video of another Asian American activist and she was crying and I responded on her post. And I said, thank you for showing us that bravery looks like this too. And I think that being able to sit in those soft moments allows us to be this catalyst where you said to your friend Toda, I'm willing to step up now. I'm stepping into my power and into my space. So I wanted to transition this conversation into talking about, for those who are listening to this episode, who are very heavily impacted by the news. For many of us who are children of immigrants, many of us were taught not to feel our feelings. And I was curious if you could share any strategies with our listeners who are deeply affected by some things that have been helpful for you that maybe they can try. And I know you mentioned journaling actually became the catalyst for the piece that came out that was so powerful. I'd love if you could share for some of our listeners how to feel what they need to feel right now.
Ko Im: Yeah, absolutely. If you are listening to this and you have a piece of paper around, get that or use your iPhone notes, write things like five things that bring you joy. So, it could be anything from watching kids play at the playground to getting ice cream. And those are things that you know, so your brain already has that pathway of a reward system. And that's why something like journaling, I know works for me. It's worked for me as a writer. It's worked for me on a personal standpoint. And then I would encourage you to do something new. Our mutual friend, Erwin Valencia, he is also known as E, he reminded me that science says that if you do something new, like those people who engage in something new are happier. And I think it's because it gets us out of our normal every day, it fires new neurons in our brain. You just have to almost have like an out-of-body experience. I will say that trauma is stored in the body, as researchers will tell you, especially PTSD and war vets and whatnot. And so one way that they try to work through that is with meditation or with yoga, which I both got certified in because it helped me. And I wanted to share that healing modality with other people. Go outside for nature, like listen to science and then listen to yourself. Vitamin D is great for you. And you also know what's good for you. Or you can ask your friends like, Hey, when have you seen me happy? Or like the last time I had a breakup with somebody, what worked for me? And then in the context of the pandemic, like, can you have an ice cream and movie night over Zoom with your friends? I don't know. But like, feel free to get even creative, like make this an exercise for you. I think there are so many possibilities and people try to follow a formula and it's kind of like diets. Don't need to follow a formula. Everybody is different. We all have different lived experiences. But I will say that if you are having an especially hard time, please get professional help. If these triggers are too much for you, there is absolutely no shame in that. I love that our culture is trying to break the stigma of getting mental health to become a top priority. It's the same thing as physical health. To me, they're all intertwined. The mind and the body talk to each other all the time.
Tiffany Yu: I love that. After everything happened, I reached out to my therapist. I said, Hey, I'm noticing. I think a big part of mindfulness is noticing. I'm noticing that I'm feeling elevated levels of anxiety. This could potentially be a trigger for my PTSD. What options are available? And so, we have our appointment. What I've been told by friends. Sometimes it is hard to get immediate access to a mental health practitioner. And so being able to know what those coping strategies are, one of my friends said she puts her face in a bowl of cold water, which I haven't done, but that sounds interesting to me. And I think the other thing I'll say is Ko you and I caught up over the weekend and I was really angry. And I remember getting onto this call. You called me to check-in and you let me have my space. Journaling helps for you. And talking it out helps for me. And I remember at the end of our conversation, I was like, Oh, and I'm on a journey to go find a bicycle. So again, as you mentioned, it's this duality. Something you did mention earlier about grief, your friend mentioning, you're grieving right now. I think grief for me is a feeling of a sense of a loss of safety. Even though I knew it was always there. Before the break, I was talking about how I feel like I had a little bit of clarity over the last week or so because I was always curious why I felt unsafe, and why I felt like I had my coach calls it like a broken safety system. And then I was like, is it because I live in San Francisco? Anyway, I don't really know how to enter that conversation.
Ko Im: And it's okay that you're like, my brain doesn't think straight all the time, but it's like, what I wanted to say about that was, first of all, the week prior, you had gone through a very different emotion when we talked when you had an incident in Muir Woods. If I can bring this up, is it okay if I bring this up?
Tiffany Yu: Yeah.
Ko Im: And here's the other thing, when you're talking to your friends, just ask them what's okay. Cause we have different capacities at different levels of our day. So when you were a victim of a verbalized hate crime. I dunno if you if even bringing up the word victim is triggering for you. So in that case, you didn't have like an immediate coping strategy cause you were in shock. But I wanted to first acknowledge that you had to go through that and I think in relation to your broken safety system, with all of these incidents, it's because our trust has been violated. Our sense of trust in that we're going to be safe when we walk outside. Now I never walk the same again. I never walk freely out on the streets. And then our sense that the system of police will protect us, the system that educates people will protect us. All of this is being shattered. So we're grieving what we thought we knew in the same way that all of us in the pandemic are grieving our old routines. And even like going into a shared office space, there's grief in that too. So, we can all relate and it's all relative. You mentioned how we're told that we're brave. This is the only way that I know how to be. When people say that I'm like, well, this is just who I am like I have to do this. And a part of that is living with more than the dualities, living with all these alternate dimensions and people and viewpoints and TikToks. There's a lot to process, I think.
Tiffany Yu: Final part of our conversation is about allies. I was peppered with many text messages from friends, both Asian and non-Asian who just wanted to check in if I was okay, quote, no need to respond. So then all of a sudden, the quote, no need to respond, I became like annoyed by it. And I caught up with a friend on Friday and she told me who's Asian is when me no one had checked in with her. And when you and I caught up over the weekend, I was actually hesitant to reach out to any of my Asian friends, because I was nervous that they had been as overwhelmed and inundated with these messages. Because I remember telling you, like, I'm so annoyed by it people saying no need to respond. Like why are you reaching out to me in the first place? And then you were like, well, actually I'll have you finish the well actually.
Ko Im: Well, actually, Tiffany, they might have read somewhere. Someone may have given them this specific advice, and this is why I say every person is different. Somebody may have written an article or been quoted as saying, Hey, one thing that you can do is not burden us with the need to respond, because we're just taking so much in right now. Like why do I have to respond to you when I'm trying to respond to my own grief? So I think the intention is important to see, but you can also speak back out and say actually, the no need to respond doesn't work for me. I actually would prefer to just talk to you, because you like talking through things. Or you could get creative and be like, Hey, all you people who said, no need to respond, I'm doing a group call and you can Saturday at noon. There were some days where I didn't respond and I barely put up a thumbs-up reaction on social. Other times where like yesterday this one guy messaged me and he said, Hey man. I said, Hey man, while you're into stocks and you have a newsletter, why not highlight Asian Americans in tech or buy a stock for somebody? I don't know, like do your own thing. I appreciate you reaching out, but like to your point, there are a lot of people reaching out to me. I'm worried about the people who don't get the reach out. I joined a healing circle the day after. And there was a woman who was working through the healing circle. And I could just tell that she was probably the only Asian American, like the token one in her company. And probably no one was reaching out to her because they didn't know what to say. Somebody I've worked with from a consultant standpoint said, I don't know what to say, but I wanted to let you know, I've learned so much from you. I really value our friendship. There were people who wrote letters, essentially. And I was so touched. I was so touched by just the Instagram DM of thinking about you. And I know you are, I know you are, but eventually, we'll get to a point where it's like, let's do a little bit more than that.
Tiffany Yu: I think as we talk about allyship, I thought that you had an incredible capacity to create space for me. As we continue to move through our healing, I love the way you said that it's not linear. Do you have an expectation or a hope from your non-Asian allies as to what type of action they'll take?
Ko Im: So I want to say that I'm hopeful but I want to be careful about expectations because, so expectations leads to attachment to those expectations, leads to feelings. We have to communicate our specific needs. And almost like set ourselves up for emotional success by not having such high expectations, but realistic ones. So, which is why in the Newsweek piece I said, I have hope, but I still have doubts because we've had systemic racism for decades in America, hundreds of years. I mean, it's like, think about what America is built on. So I might communicate specific expectations to people, and I hate this cause it's so, almost cliche from the pandemic, but we cannot foresee what's coming down the pipeline and the results might be even more beautiful than we ever imagined. Dr. Martin Luther King had his own vision. There have been glimpses of that. I'm hoping that a longstanding image stays here. This is a statistic that I'm gonna share on my TikTok and it's not new, but we have to remember it by 2050, people of color will be the majority. So there is some grappling with that in the minority side. That'll come over time. We're not going to see a change tomorrow, that's too black and white. There's going to be all this grayscale matter in between, even in your own journey, just because something happened today, that doesn't mean that tomorrow my life has been turned around. It's all these steps that we have to take and stumbles and steps back and getting back up and getting back up and getting back up. And it might take years, but I have a hope.
Tiffany Yu: I have been doing some reflecting on what came up for me over the past week. And I think part of it was continued erasure of my experience, which doesn't feel good. Ultimately we all want to be seen. Because I often talk about how can we act in ways where we are in alignment with ourselves and in integrity with ourselves and speaking our truth without putting expectation on the response. And that's a journey for me. It's something that I'd like to continue to practice more and remind myself of. Because I let myself feel all the feels and sit in this really angry place, now I'm starting to think about, okay, what does forgiveness look like? What does it look like to let go? I think Oprah said that she said forgiveness is letting go of the expectation that the past could have been any different. So we know what happened a week ago happened. Many of us still grieving, healing non-linear but now how can we move forward together? How can we move forward without people feeling unsafe or people feeling like they're erased?
Ko Im: If you've made it this far in the podcast, thank you for listening. Walk with us symbolically actually. And just keep walking, so keep your heads down some days. And then when your head's up, like, damn like be proud of that. Like you're doing it. You're having a human experience.
Tiffany Yu: I always close with the same question, which is asking my guests what you're grateful for today.
Ko Im: Ah, yes. Mm. I already said that I'm grateful for you. I am grateful for the person sitting on the other side of this wall because we both know that we're not perfect, but he has been a rock, a new rock for me to land my wings on for a moment and flap like the crazy person that I am sometimes like crazy in a good way. It's lovely to have new people in your life that, again, you just wouldn't have imagined it turning out any other way. So be open to new people. I'm really grateful for this time that we have had in the last year, because I couldn't have made it better without you, Tiffany. So thank you.
Tiffany Yu: I forgot to mention that we are also TikTok buddies, and that helps solidify our friendship. In times of uncertainty and instability and moments of insecurity, we do look for those rocks. We do look for those people who can be that sign of stability and you have been that for me too. So with that, if people want to follow you if they want to support you, where is the best place to do that?
Ko Im: Yes. So, if you Google or type out K O N A K A F E konakafe, there's the blog konakafe.com. I'm on TikTok @konakafe as well as Instagram, also on Twitter. If you want I'm on LinkedIn. I love hearing from people and I love connecting with people and depending on how I am, I might respond differently, but know that every thought is noted. And I'm grateful for that.
Tiffany Yu: Thank you. This is this episode of Tiffany & Yu. Thanks, Ko!
Ko Im: Woohoo!