I found myself at the Vancouver airport early in the morning on June 15, 2017. As I hustled through security, waited at the boarding gate, and tried to sleep on the flight, I kept my sunglasses on to hide my tears. I made it back to my apartment in Calgary by noon. It was messy and cluttered with half-packed moving boxes, and standing in the middle of the chaos, a new wave of emotions washed over me, causing overwhelm on top of the heavy grief my heart felt. My father had passed away the night before from cancer and I had been in Vancouver to spend time with him and be with my family in his very last days. Now, I was here, by myself, my life feeling like it was all out of sorts.
The timing was not great; it hadn’t even been 24 hours since my father had officially been pronounced no longer alive, and I had already left my family behind so I could finish packing my things and move to Edmonton for a new job that started in a few days. Onward to a new job in a new city that was fairly unfamiliar to me – I had done this ordeal before. But this was the first time I was packing, moving, and starting fresh without my father’s help or without him being just a phone call away when I eventually ran into a minor hiccup. I wasn’t ready to do this endeavour without him; I wasn’t ready to embrace that the rest of my life was going to unfold and continue without him there. To make matters worse, I didn’t even have my family to console me in person; they were an entire province away. I was about to start the next chapter of my life in an unfamiliar place, and I had never felt so alone.
In his 2017 article titled Researching Grief: Cultural, Relational, and Individual Possibilities, Paul Rosenblatt discusses how “family members are not good at providing grief support for one another”, going on to explain the limited capacity a family might have to support one another after losing a loved one. In just a few weeks after my father had passed, it was evident that my mother and I had different ways of processing our grief and emotions. She seemed less sentimental and more focused on next steps, and I wondered if maybe it was because she had spent so much time in the hospital with my father and therefore felt more prepared for this new reality than I was. The only other family my father and I shared aside from my mom were my half-brother and half-sister, neither of whom I had a close enough relationship to find comfort in. While feeling excruciatingly separated from my family, I found myself in a position where it felt necessary to make good impressions with my new colleagues and potential new friends, while also enjoying the beginning of summer in Alberta. I did my best to suppress any signs that I was sad and have the best time possible as I found myself in the presence of so many people who had never met my dad. The grief felt increasingly substantial for me in almost every moment, but simultaneously didn’t seem applicable in my everyday life. So often, I felt as though I had no other choice but to brave the world and live my life as though everything was fine, waiting until I returned to my apartment alone to grieve.
My strategy of grieving aligned with a theory of bereavement coping methods known as the dual process model. Proposed by psychologists Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut, the model explains that the way an individual experiences or copes with their grief can ebb and flow between loss-oriented stressors and restoration-oriented stressors; loss-oriented stressors focus on the pain and anguish, while restoration-oriented stressors act as a distraction from the grief and inspiration to restore normality in one’s life despite the loss of a loved one. According to Stroebe and Schut, the restoration-oriented experience is necessary to ensuring people are productively taking care of themselves as life goes on, and that oscillating between the two can help an individual confront the reality of life without their loved one there anymore.
This dual process model is the primary component engaged in designing Good Grief, a program that aims to provide support and coping mechanisms for grieving young people who lost a family member to cancer. Within this program, people move between different activities aligned with the bereavement coping model that also focus on other frameworks including constructivism, self-compassion, and continuing bonds. One of the activities is the Life Imprint session, which is an exercise that encourages grieving participants to learn and remember facets of their loved one through letters written by other family members or friends. Along with reading about their loved one, participants engage in a group session where they reflect on their loss, the connection they shared with their loved one, and recognize opportunities to maintain that connection moving forward. A 2019 evaluation of Life Imprint reported that young people who participated in Good Grief found the program enjoyable and meaningful. Participant testimonials included individuals who said they felt reassured in the relationship they had had with the person who passed away and felt confident in being able to honour their loved one’s legacy while also moving on with their own life.
It was August when we finally decided to host my father’s Celebration of Life. Not knowing who exactly to invite, my mother and I invited everyone we could think of, including my father’s old friends and colleagues from before I was even born and a lot of people who had been my friends throughout grade school. Unexpectedly, many people replied that they would be there, eager to share their condolences in person and their own memories of my father’s kind, friendly, and sometimes oddly funny demeanour. In a small recreational room, catered with small finger sandwiches and sugary cupcakes, all sorts of people young and old exchanged both tales as old as time about a man I’ve never known and classic recollections of the father I had grown up admiring. A man introduced himself as the best man of my parent’s wedding and shared his fondest memories of my father from way back before I was born. Former classmates of mine from elementary school took the time to express how instrumental my father was in helping them learn and understand English, finish their homework, or even just feel valuable and seen as young students when he volunteered as a teacher’s aide in the 90’s. With other lifelong friends and cousins, I reminisced about my father’s seemingly strict parenting styles or his preference for encouraging us to use our imagination for playtime instead of watching TV all day. The entire event was an afternoon spent connecting with friends, family members, former neighbours, and strangers who had loved, valued, and respected my father for so many reasons. They had freed up time in their schedule to attend this event, to honour my father, and to share all the ways he was special. Most importantly, they went out of their way to remind me of all the ways I was an extension of who he was, because of the way I looked, behaved, and moved through the world.
On that day, for the first time since my father had passed away, I finally felt like I could comprehend the heaviness of my loss and the grief with it; the excruciating heartache I had been experiencing felt validated. Up until this point, I had spent so much of my time with people who weren’t able to speak to how significant my loss felt because they didn’t know my father, and I had really started to question the validity of my grief. Learning more, sharing stories, and reflecting on who my father was, instilled confidence in knowing that the loss I felt was big and hard. I also felt reassured that I was not the only one who felt the grand impact of my father’s passing.
Published in the New York Times, a letter titled “My Father Died Young, His Sisters Kept Me from Losing Him Entirely” by Kristen Martin talks about how her aunts have reinforced the existence of Martin’s father through their own stories of him. Martin writes, “One of the hardest parts of my grief has been never getting to have an adult relationship with my parents, that the memories I have of them are finite. But by teaching me new things about him — even silly things like his obsession, toward the end, with fried ham sandwiches — my father’s sisters can open doors to rooms I didn’t know existed. They keep him alive for me.”
I relate to Martin’s experience of qualifying the existence of her parent(s). I was fortunate to have built a relationship with my father up until I was 30 years old, but my experience with him feels limited. There was so much I didn’t know and wanted to learn about him. I’m sure there were stories that we didn’t get a chance to share or bond over. My entire adult life awaits, and I no longer have the patient guidance and advice I had lovingly relied on my father for. In so many moments, I’ve found myself stuck between feeling as though I couldn’t possibly live my life without him and wondering how I could possibly move forward without being afraid of leaving him behind. My biggest fear, even now, continues to be that I and everyone will keep moving on with life and unintentionally forget how my father had somehow influenced the journey to wherever we end up.
It has been six years since my father passed away. I am still living in Edmonton with a circle of friends who never had the pleasure of meeting my father. Often, I continue to grieve alone in my apartment, surrounded by physical reminders of my father including his favourite shirts, a pair of his glasses, his books, and a giant portrait of him hanging in my hallway. On some days, as life propels forward in a myriad of ways, I wonder if I’m the only who is thinking of my father and what life would be like if he was still alive. As I grow and my live evolves, I regularly wish that he could still be a part of it all and catch myself ready to call him, only to remember he won’t be there to pick up the phone and cheer me on.
Writing this has been a reminder that he is a part of my life, still. Validated by my own friends and family, as well as other people who considered my father to be their friend and chosen family, I am a valuable extension of so many of my father’s great qualities; I am kind, unpretentious, and a great writer because my father showed and encouraged me to be so. I also know that I am not the only person who was positively impacted by my father’s personality and behaviours, because I’ve shared sentimental memories and the incredible impression my father had with so many other people.
In what I imagined would be the darkest time of my life, I found a beacon of light through other people; most importantly, my father. Through him, both because he passed away and because of who he was, I connected to a community of people who miss him too and who will help me in keeping his spirit alive. While the grief continues to weave through moments of my life, even very recently, it no longer feels impossible. I may have lost someone I couldn’t imagine my life without, but one day with a group of people reminded that I am not alone in acknowledging his absence and I no longer feel on my own as I navigate the world without him physically here.
It’s usually the first question anyone asks me when I tell them I am Filipino. This time it was my Uber driver; a man from Punjab probably in his early 60s, who had relocated to Canada 17 years prior. I gave him the same answer I give everyone – which is the truth: I can pick up pieces of conversation when I eavesdrop on conversations and I know a handful of words (hello, thank you, bathroom, coconut, armpit, gross – all the important ones, obviously), but I have never learned how to hold entire conversations and properly express myself using the native language of my Filipino family.
The Uber driver responded with an intense sense of disappointment. To him, it was disrespectful to my Filipino family that I wasn’t familiar with (one of) the traditional languages of the Philippines; it was insensitive of me to be so unfamiliar with such a distinguishable and foundational component of my heritage. His reaction was unexpected to me mostly because I wasn’t expecting him to really care that much; he was just my Uber driver after all and the chances of us ever conversing beyond this car ride was extremely, highly, absolutely unlikely. Before this moment, I can’t remember a time when I was encouraged to feel bad for not speaking Tagalog fluently. People always seemed to accept the fact that English is my first (and only) language. I was born and raised in Canada after all.
But I am biracial. So, maybe I was doing something wrong?
I am Filipino, but I’m also Scottish-Canadian. My mother immigrated to Canada from the Philippines when she was 31 and met my father – a born and raised Canadian with Scottish roots – shortly after she arrived. My mom knew how to speak English upon her arrival since she learned it in school as a child. As she worked towards goals of settling down in Canada, she familiarized herself in new settings and situations where everyone involved spoke English. Her boyfriend, her coworkers, new friends – everyone she knew aside from a few close family members and friends who had also immigrated from the Philippines – used English to communicate and she wanted to wholly submerge and share in those experiences. When I eventually arrived, she wanted me to be able to participate in all the experiences that I would eventually face as well – ones where I would more than likely succeed if I communicated well in English. My mom moved to Canada and married a Canadian, she was determined to get her Canadian citizenship, and she gave birth to a daughter who would also be a Canadian citizen. It only made sense that we, and more specifically I, focus on speaking English primarily.
I present as a white person with exotic features. Those aren’t just my words – I’ve based that description off my own personal opinion and a few reviews from others. My mother often points out that she can see my dad when she looks at me; I have his height, face structure, and nose. But she’s quick to remind me that I should be thankful for the genes she passed along that include a caramel skin tone, youthful complexion, beautiful dark eyes and hair. Someone once said I’m a perfect combination of both of them and I agree. Before I really started to grow into my body, I didn’t look that different from all the other kids. I just looked different enough for them to ask questions.
I was on the playground at school with friends around the age of 7 or 8, trying to answer their inquiries about why my skin wasn’t as white as theirs was and why my hair was practically black. “I’m Filipino. My mom is from the Philippines”, I would say as the other kids stared at me with wide eyes. “What is the Phil-pines?” my friends asked back. They had never heard of this foreign place and I had no idea how to explain where it was at the time, except to say: “well, it’s like… China. Like China, but not the exactly same”. Everyone on the playground that day had heard about China before (that’s where everything is made!); they knew China was a real country. But did this Philippines place really exist? Or was I just making it up?
As young as I was, I still felt that overwhelming sense of being an ‘other’. It felt like I was unidentifiable outside my own family, an alien. I even felt different within my own extended family. Up until I was in my teens, I was the only half-Caucasian individual in my mom’s extended family and the only not-full-Caucasian in my dad’s extended family.
Luckily, the tinted colour of my skin seemed to matter less in elementary school once I developed a solid circle of friends and we learned more things about one another beyond the colour of our skin. In fact, it hardly came up unless I specifically referenced my Filipino heritage in show-and-tell or had to include it in a family tree project. When I eventually transitioned into high school though, now being lumped in with various pools of potential new friends from an entire district of other elementary schools, the tone of my skin colour was a noticeable difference and a regular topic of conversation again.
I found myself in a clique of 6 other friends. I was the token Southeast Asian. Everyone in the group knew that the rice cooker in our kitchen was always full of a recently cooked sticky white rice; this was a big selling point for my friends to come over after school. They’d kick off their shoes seconds after walking through the front door and race upstairs to help themselves to bowls of rice topped with butter and soy sauce (deliciously simple!), while poking fun at the fact that it was such a stereotypical appliance for our house to have. My mom often volunteered to leave work early in order to chauffeur my group of friends around town for our volleyball games and tournaments, giving my friends exposure to her English that was highly influenced by a lingering Filipino accent. They used this opportunity to tease my mom for incorrect grammar or unfamiliarity with common slang and her unawareness of western societal connotations. I would occasionally join the ridicule, if only to feel like I was part of something instead of on the other side of it. Luckily, my mom has always had a easy-going attitude and was willing to learn a little bit about being ‘hip and cool’ like her teenage daughter and friends, so she laughed along with us.
The poking fun and laughs was all well and fine, until the word “chink” was brought into the conversation. Within my friends circle, we had earned ourselves nicknames along the way – and somehow that crude slur defaulted as being my moniker. It’s likely that we picked it up in the media somewhere (probably some dumb show like South Park or something – which, I was actually never allowed to watch). Even though it was likely implied somehow that using it wasn’t actually okay, we were dumb teenagers influenced by the toxic information we absorbed and we were completely naïve to the serious implications of throwing that word around or directly using it towards someone. Foolishly, we were probably far more concerned about practically anything else that was actually unimportant – boys, tomorrow’s outfit, whether we were going to get asked to the dance. We really undermined how bad it was to include that word in our vocabulary and to call me – or anyone – that.
Like normal teenagers do, us girls would eventually get in a frivolous argument over some sort of gossip. At least one time that I can remember, in the middle of a heated moment, that slur was used with full intention to hurt my feelings and to imply that I was somehow ‘less than’ because of my Mom’s ethnicity and accent, the colour of my skin, the food we had in our home. Again, it wasn’t okay. Not at all. There were so many other words my friends should have used to channel their aggression instead. But still, they were trying to imply something so poignant.
For some reason, I was wrong. For some reason, I was unacceptable. And the basis of that reason seemed to have something to do with the fact that I was Asian.
My father wasn’t just a white man; he was seemingly translucent, his skin so pale and fragile that it transformed from ivory to pink to fiery red within seconds of being under the sun. By the time I was born, he was already 47 years old with a fairly sufficient life in the book. He’d gotten himself accidentally stranded in Australia once, owned (and sold) a sailboat that he adventured throughout the Gulf Islands in, been married, had two children, gotten divorced, held multiple jobs in various lines of his career in chemical testing and been married again. There were so many times in my life when he talked my ear off with all the details of his lifetime, but I’d be lying to you if I said I paid attention to all of it. I was a little kid and to me – he was an old man. His stories of the ‘olden days’ before technology was invented bored me to death sometimes. Yawn… who cares, I’d often think. BUT, from what I do remember, his life – like most of ours – was okay; a roller coaster of highs and lows. His father died when he was young, his mom worked at Woodwards. They didn’t have a lot of money, but his mom, his sister, and himself managed to get by and live a decent life. And by the time my dad was an adult, he was a kind, well-liked, smart white man. Then, just before I started kindergarten, he was laid off. My mom has gone on the record to say it was because he was too good at his job and his salary was too much for the company to afford.
My dad was in his early 50s when he was laid off and felt discouraged in attempts to look for a new job, so he made the decision to collect an early pension instead. It wasn’t ideal, but it did offer up the opportunity for him to take care of me which saved the family from having to find suitable after-school care. He became a stay-at-home dad, who was able to get me ready for school, walk me to school, pick me up and be available for any unexpected needs in between. He volunteered for almost all the school field trips and events, and eventually spent most of his free time at my school helping kids in the younger grades learn to read and assisting ESL students learning English. My dad didn’t spend his retirement lolly-gagging around. He was taking care of me – a dramatic kid – while also offering his time to stressed out and underpaid teachers. But he wasn’t getting paid himself. And I’m not sure how much his pension was, but with the minimal financial knowledge I do have, I know that there’s no way it was enough to take care of a growing family.
Our family expenses relied solely on the income of my mother, who was an environmental lab technician. All three of us depended mostly on the income of a woman of colour working in a field dominated by men in the early to mid 90s. She was making approximately $24,000 a year. You can go ahead and do the math to calculate that against the cost of living at the time – but I already know that it wasn’t enough for us.
I didn’t get new school supplies at the start of every year; only what was absolutely necessary. I didn’t get a new backpack unless mine was unusable and even then, my father would regularly try to convince me to use his 30 year old (uncool then but totally vintage and cool now) backpack. I could see the stress in my mom’s eyes while she paid for the back-to-school outfits I insisted upon. My lunches weren’t full of the much anticipated Lunchables, fruit snacks, brand name granola bars, or even juice boxes; we couldn’t afford any of it. My dad would pack my homemade soup in an ancient Thermos he had probably saved from decades prior and a peanut butter-butter-banana sandwich wrapped in an empty bread bag (the long, clear type that a regular loaf of bread comes in). We couldn’t fit fancy Thermoses designed with the latest Disney characters or disposable brown paper bags into our limited family budget. I was forced to make do with what we had available.
My parents lived their lives in clothes that had existed in their wardrobe long before I was even a thought in their mind. Every time I wanted some new, overpriced t-shirt, they’d tell me about how they’d owned the shirt they were wearing since before I was born and all the stories that came with the adventures they had while wearing it. (I still have a couple of them in my closet now, because what’s old is cool again). We only ever went on one family vacation, and I think it was before my dad lost his job. I would spend a majority of my life in and with a lot of hand-me-downs from clothes, toys, bikes, video game systems and more.
It was very evident to me that we didn’t have a lot of money. Of course, my mom constantly reminded me of this fact every time I tried to sneak something into her shopping cart at the grocery store or when I begged her to buy me something new from the mall. But I also saw it every time I went to friends’ houses, where they had two parents who were both white and employed.
Our family lived a life very different from theirs and I knew a big part of it was because only one of my parents had a job, while the other one stayed home or volunteered. In our family dynamic, my white father stayed home while my Filipino mother went to work everyday. She would come home and complain about being overworked, about being looked over by management or being undermined by those above her. When I met her coworkers at holiday events or summer barbecues, most of them were white men and women, and it was noticeable that all the people of colour formed their own sub-group and stuck together. Whenever I was upset at my mother for not buying me whatever fancy, expensive thing I demanded, my grandma (her mother) would often sit me down and gently explain to me that my mother worked so hard to give me all that I already had; she would tell me that my mom was was doing her best despite the circumstances and I that I should be more understanding and grateful. Without having it explicitly said at any point, it seemed as though my mom didn’t have the same opportunity or advantages as many white people we crossed paths with. That the income she made to provide our family just wasn’t as much as the other families had, but it was definitely better than what we’d have if we were in the Philippines.
I didn’t have all the details and I was still too young to completely understand, but I had a hunch that the different shade of her skin and my own were reasons we didn’t seem as fortunate as other people we knew.
I was too young to remember my first trip to the Philippines, but I went back a second time during Spring Break of grade 11. My family welcomed me with open arms after not seeing me for a decade (or more), but they – and many strangers – also adored and admired me, continuously commenting on my ‘idyllic’ skin tone, features, and beauty. They favoured my lighter skin tone and the prominent features I had inherited from my father. They repeatedly told me how lucky I was and I was often told I was the ideal candidate for a modelling career in their country.
In the Philippines, fairer skin is a sign of upper class and wealth. People with the privilege of working in an office, using their own vehicle for regular transportation across the city, the luxury of affording whitening lotions and skin creams tend to have fairer skin because their lifestyle doesn’t require them to be in the sun all day. Those who live in poverty – as much of the Philippines’ population does – are stuck spending their days underneath the powerful sunbeams. They walk, work, live, without shade or protection from endless UV rays and their skin shows so. The deep, rich, dark tone of their skin is their brand that represents their lower status, lack of income, inability to find shelter from the sun.
Many people who live in the Philippines idolise the life associated with having white skin. They want to be white too, if only to experience the wealth and freedom that porcelain skin colour affords instead of the struggle they face in their country stricken with poverty and ruled by dictatorship. They see whiteness as a symbol of power and opportunity, a better life.
My blended skin tone was a picture perfect vision for so many Filipinos in my immediate family. Sure, I represented who they were, but I also represented what they so desperately longed for.
My mother grew up in Manila with 7 brothers and sisters. Her father was an administrator for the Red Cross while her mother stayed at home to take care of the family, occasionally offering sewing and catering services for locals to help with finances. Money was tight. I’ve been told stories about how all the siblings shared one mattress for sleeping, how their house flooded because of typhoons, how my aunt and uncle scavenged for extra pesos by selling random trinkets. All 8 children went to college at the insistence of my grandparents, but in order for them to all afford finishing with their degrees, they all contributed to one another’s tuition. Once one sibling graduated with their degree and found a job, they would help out with helping to pay for the next sibling to graduate, and so on. Eventually, they all graduated and strived to live up to the expectations my grandparents had suggested. They all wanted to build a better future for themselves and their eventual familie; to excel and fare much better than the life they had lived so far.
And that’s why my mom moved to Canada.
She finished her chemistry degree and ventured across the Pacific Ocean to greener pastures. Canada was going to offer her opportunities and a life that just weren’t possible in the developing country she had spent her whole life in. She came here to achieve more, to live a life different than anything she had known so far.
She had big plans: she was going to get married, start a family, and flourish. And when she did have a child, she wanted to make sure that child didn’t have the same life she had growing up.
English is a component of the Filipino curriculum. It’s also regularly integrated into conversation alongside Tagalog; they frequently incorporate English words among convoluted Tagalog sentences. My Lola (my Filipino grandmother) was also an avid reader, learning English through the books she so often read, and passed that along to her children. So when my mom arrived in Canada in 1982, she was well versed in English but also still spoke Tagalog regularly.
When she crossed paths with my father, he was a 40-ish year old man who had no ambition to learn a new language. Fair enough. Eventually, they brought me into the world and I was undoubtedly going to grow up surrounded by English speaking peers, friends, and teachers. It really only made sense for us to speak English at home and in our everyday lives. There was one small moment when my parents considered enrolling me into a French-immersion elementary school (because, Canada), but quickly decided that neither of them had the energy to learn fluent French with me.
At family gatherings, my mom would revert to speaking Tagalog while she interacted with family friends and her siblings. In these scenarios, when I was desperately trying to grow up faster by sitting at the adult table, I would learn a handful of words through exposure and curiosity. But most of the time, no one was concerned that I didn’t have the ability to converse fluidly with Tagalog.
I was a Canadian. My mom was now a Canadian. It was important to her that both of us live in a way that aligned with the life she had moved here to live. Speaking English was a necessity to get by where we lived, so that’s what we spoke.
After being called a ‘chink’ in high school, I can’t remember a time when the subject of my race felt like a significant issue; no one seems to address the colour of my skin these days with much concern, so I don’t really think about it unless they want an explanation.
If I’m being honest, I see myself as a passable caucasian more than a Filipino. When I look at myself in the mirror, I see my dad’s nose, facial structure, and his height. I do have my mom’s cheekbones and smile, but my skin is nowhere near being as dark as hers or her other family members. My hair isn’t as dark either, my nose is different, my eyes are different. I look different from my Filipino family in so many ways and it’s difficult for me to associate myself with them. Even when I meet Filipinos out in public – grocery store clerks, nurses, neighbours – they all react with astonishment when I tell them I’m Filipino, too. In so many of my experiences with other Filipinos, I don’t feel the same as them; I don’t feel like one of them. I’m this anomaly, this unexpected but pleasant surprise. I am an other.
But I am Filipino.
But also, I’m Scottish.
I’ve told that story about my Punjabi Uber driver seeming frustrated and saddened by my inability to converse in Tagalog because it’s one that really hit home for me. When I exited the vehicle, I was left wondering if in fact I’d let down an entire half of my existence and the family behind it. I started questioning who I was and whether or not I might actually be a disappointment to my Filipino family.
Had I picked one side over the other? Was I also guilty of treating Filipinos like a minority, the same way so much of society still does? Am I a horrible person?
More than ever before I felt, and continue to feel, challenged by my existence.
I am a woman of colour, who grew up feeling out of place and unfortunate. I was called out for the colour of my skin and the weird food my extended family ate and the obviously counterfeit Nike apparel my grandparents would gift me from their trips to the Philippines. I was designated as Asian representation within my friend groups and called racial slurs. No, it’s not to the same extent and severity as so many other persons of colour, but I have experienced the racial stigma.
Simultaneously, I’ve managed to blend in with the crowd and fortunately bypass a lot of the misfortune associated with minority race. My skin isn’t translucent like my father’s, but I have been perceived as someone who has possibly just spent a little too much time in the sun. I’ve been told that it’s usually just a passing thought in people’s minds that I look like someone whose heritage lies in the poorest parts of a developing country.
I know that the Uber driver wanted to make sure I was proud of being Filipino and that I fully embrace that part of who I am. I do. I don’t speak Tagalog, but I want to speak up about who I am and what it means to be someone who’s experienced the racial inequalities.
I want to share my story, especially about who my mother is and why she raised me as she did; why we live here and why it wasn’t a priority to teach me Tagalog. I want people to know that I do appreciate and respect my Filipino background in so many ways because it is something my family continues to speak proudly about. But those same family members and others also taught me to appreciate the advantages I have of being born and raised in Canada.
Tagalog is used frequently in my family for many reasons – to emphasise important context, to properly explain serious situations, to keep secrets. In situations that allow me to, I try to incorporate myself into Tagalog conversations and identify key words or phrases to at least understand what’s going on. I ask questions and learn new words when I can. Where I lack linguistic abilities, I make an effort to recognize the influence of my heritage and the lives before me that were lived in a way that was so much more difficult than anything I could imagine. I appreciate the sacrifices my mother made to give me the life I have now. I’ve listened to endless stories from her, my grandparents, my aunts and uncles, and cousins who often share how different life was for them back in the Philippines and how much life has changed since they arrived in Canada.
My mom moved to Canada to give herself the opportunity to thrive. Through broken English, she advocated for herself in a male-dominated industry and work environments, and worked hard to provide for her family despite uncontrollable odds that worked against her. And that’s exactly why it was never pushed on me to fluently express myself in Filipino. She wanted me to express myself in a way that those around me would recognize and understand, that would be appreciated by the masses. She didn’t want me to face the racial stigma she did as I moved through the world. She wanted me to fit in, to feel like I belonged. She wanted me to feel like the white person so many Filipinos want to feel like.
In so many other ways – through favourite meals and family recipes, via regular vacations to different islands in the Philippines, by encouraging me to maintain strong relationships with my Filipino family and constantly sharing stories of life ‘back home’ – my mom instilled my passion for the Filipino culture that makes up a portion of my existence. I don’t have Tagalog, but have favourite family recipes and memories associated with my Filipino side. And you can see Filipino in my physical features; those who pay attention to finite details can see it.
I also want people to know that I recognize my advantage of being born here and more importantly, the privileges that my father’s genetics afford me in comparison to the lives lived by family members who were born in a developing country and immigrated here later. I know that many consider me lucky to have a father with Scottish roots.
I have a unique experience, where I’ve seen both sides of the story. I am a mixture of cultures with a blended experience because of my mom’s ethnicity and the colour of my dad’s skin. It’s a combination that has taught me a lot over many years about the realities of minority race and the privileges of whiter skin. I’ve faced the hardships of growing up with a mom with an accent and brown skin and of looking different than my friends. I have also lived with advantages that certain family members dream of – lighter skin, the presentation of familiarity, the ability to blend in.
I don’t speak Tagalog, but that doesn’t mean I don’t embrace or recognize what it means to be Filipino. I’ve lived it.
I know what it means to be a person of colour because I am one.
I also happen to be Caucasian, with Scottish ancestors. Because I speak English, that’s the language I use to tell a story about knowing there’s parts of me that are different from all the white people around me.
I was not raised to be one or the other. One isn’t better than the other.
In an effort not to panic about Covid-19 and social distancing, I panicked.
And while I didn’t overstock on toilet paper (although, as someone who admittedly goes through a lot of toilet paper, I was tempted), I made sure my fridge, freezer, and pantry were fully stocked just in case I wouldn’t be able to get back to the grocery store anytime soon. Which, in theory, doesn’t seem like a bad idea…
Unless you have a history with an eating disorder.
photo credit: Jeff Woodward
Even though I’m the type of person who would rather stay home in sweatpants than stress over getting my makeup just right and putting on tight jeans, I still like having the option of leaving my home and spending my time elsewhere if I want to. Sometimes I like working from bar tops while I people watch or in the airport lounge before a flight or even in the office just because I need human interaction with cool people. And sometimes, I just want to get out of the house and wander the aisles at the bookstore, or my favourite clothing store, or catch up with friends over a cocktail.
But there’s a difference between choosing to stay home and being forced into the confinements of your home.
Before, I was busy enough with work that I’d eat while also simultaneously responding to emails or only be able to step away from my computer long enough to put together a meal before feeling the pull back to my inbox. Before, there was motivation to get work done immediately so I didn’t have to work a second longer than my 8 hour commitment, and I could rush off to run errands or meet up with friends for drinks and possibly a better dinner than I could ever cook myself. Life wasn’t this repetitive routine of waking up and wondering if I should choose the couch, the kitchen counter, or even the bed as my workspace that day. There was a greater sense of purpose, a sense of urgency, distractions.
But now? There’s nothing but space for a eating disorder to flourish.
photo credit: Jeff Woodward
The worst and best place for an eating disorder is isolation.
It’s when I’m all alone that my eating disorder finds it’s strength, because there’s no judgement from anyone else to put a stop to it’s ravenous destruction in times of discomfort. No one’s going to see me shoveling an entire bag of chips, followed by half a bag of jelly beans and a bowl of ice cream into my mouth with an uncertain and slightly concerned “ummm… maybe that’s enough?” look. I only have to face my own shame when I immediately feel bloated and ill afterwards, which is easily fixed by sleeping it off and pretending that what just happened, didn’t. And when I get so desperate that I want to purge it from my system, no one has to witness it – and well, that means that it pretty much didn’t even happen.
All the times my eating disorder has peaked, it’s been when I was all alone with nowhere to turn for comfort, except my kitchen. I was living in cities where I had no close friends or family and the only thing that brought me a moment of familiar joy in moments of stress was eating the things I loved. Everything, from handfuls of sugared gummy candies, to handfuls of ripple chips, to multiple servings of my favourite meals – even though I was already close to full. And right now – even though I do live in a city with close friends, chosen family, and my partner – it’s not much different. We’re not allowed to be close to the people who bring real happiness to our hearts, and my partner’s been sent out of town for work most of the week. All the while, the world seems to be falling apart and we’re losing our sense of freedom and our jobs and we’re worried about what the future holds, and there’s really nowhere to go to release that stress, except to walk around the block for the umpteenth time while waiting two more weeks for an opening in my therapist’s schedule.
And so, I head to the kitchen.
Food has been a source of comfort for me since I was a kid.
Almost every day when my mom would arrive home from work, I’d run down the stairs to greet her knowing she’d likely have a ‘treat’ of some sort to offer me that she’d picked up on the way. When I visited homes of extended families, it meant that there’d be available junk food that we didn’t keep in our own home or eating out at restaurants we normally wouldn’t go to. My ‘Lola’ – my sweet Filipino grandmother – was famous for serving up rich, traditional soul food and the occasions where our massive extended family would gather around were something to look forward to. Plus, there were always guaranteed leftovers to take home and enjoy when the celebrations were over.
I associated eating with good experiences, mostly. And now when life feels hard, I default to food to bring back those distant moments of innocent happiness; to being a kid again who looked forward to another bowl of Froot Loops and only really worried about “what are we going to have for lunch / snack / dinner today?“.
I’m no longer a kid, but I still find solace in eating food that tastes good, when everything else doesn’t feel good. And nothing feels good right now, so I’m eating… more than usual.
And that’s just the beginning of my problems.
What’s a girl, who didn’t love her body for a majority of her life and did everything possible – from waist shrinking corsets to spending 8 hours a day just sucking in her stomach to crash diets to juice diets to working-out twice a day to restrictive diets to bingeing and purging for years – just to love herself even a little bit, supposed to do when life feels unusual and stressful and the rest of the world (and the voice inside her head) is still screaming “but you can’t let this take you down! you’ve got to survive, thrive, and come out untouched!”??
I don’t know the actual answer to that question, but I can tell you what I have done.
PANIC.
photo credit: Jeff Woodward
It wasn’t that long ago that I actually started to enjoy food again. It didn’t scare me as much; I didn’t worry excessively about what would happen if I ate a little more of something delicious because… well that’s what you should do when something is fucking delicious. I looked forward to going out for dinners, I even started teaching myself to cook new recipes. Actually, my favourite part about getting drunk was the fact that I would likely find a way to devour an excessive amount of salty carbohydrates (possibly covered or paired with cheese) in the process! I barely recognized myself, but I liked it. Life was so much easier not hating myself for indulging every once in awhile and eating food for goodness – and not just because it was good for me in terms of fueling my body and keeping me alive.
And then, the pandemic exploded. All of the sudden, the gyms are closed and I can no longer take 2 hours of my morning to myself to drown all my stresses (food related or not) in sweat and the good feels that come with tough challenges and body movements. On top of that, I really have nowhere to go and I’m moving less. I sleep in. I stay up longer and sit on the couch and binge-watch TV shows or binge-read books. I take naps, even though I slept in.
I’m burning less energy, and yet – I’m putting more calories into my mouth out of boredom, because of stress, for no other reason than it tastes good and it brings me joy in a time when anything remotely exciting feels out of reach.
And that frightens me.
Because, while I’m not the greatest at math, I do know that if you put more calories into your mouth than you’re burning off throughout the day, those calories stick to your body and are interpreted by a few extra pounds on the scale and a tighter fit inside the clasps of your bra, your jeans, your favourite t-shirts. When I indulge in more sugar, more fat, more simple carbohydrates – my face, my stomach, my thighs, my butt – they all expand. And despite them only expanding ever so slightly in a small amount of time, that little monster inside my brain digs out it’s little magnifying glass and convinces me that all those body parts have expanded in monumental amounts from the extra bits of goodness I’ve shoved into my mouth.
“Jen. How did you let this happen?!” – the monster inside my head, and then me to myself after staring and dissecting myself in the mirror.
Food has become scary again. Despite it being a necessary ingredient to my survival, food is my enemy. I am afraid to eat it, to satiate my hunger and give my body energy to function. I am afraid to enjoy it, to allow myself to find delight and comfort within it.
I need to eat, but I don’t want to out of fear. And my home is overloaded with food because of a pandemic, and I cannot escape it. The two experiences cause me stress, and food is one of the ways I cope with my stress.
Do you follow the unbearable cycle?
—
I wish this story had some uplifting, happy ending that would maybe inspire you. It’s still in progress, and I don’t yet have the ability to predict the future. Who knows, it might not end well!
What I can tell you is that not every day is a nightmare of me staring at myself in the mirror with sad eyes. Also, I don’t fight myself every day on eating chips for a meal or having ice cream for dessert. But there a lot more days than there used to be of worrying about those kinds of things, and it’s incredibly annoying. It makes me sad, angry, frustrated, overwhelmed – especially with everything else going on.
To relapse after finding safety and freedom, to fall prey to demons that dwell from the darkest corners of my soul in a time of vulnerability and anxiety, to feel like I’m being pulled backwards when I’ve worked so hard to move myself away from the worst moments of my eating disorder is depressing. It sucks and even trying to just find a way to stay on top of it still preemptively exhausting.
The only really slightly solid piece of comfort I find in it all (aside from the taste of my favourite foods) – is that I am not the only one. We’re all feeling burdened in this unexpected turn of events where we’ve lost the ability to throw ourselves into the multiple experiences that can distract us from our deepest fears. For some, those fears include gaining weight or losing muscle. For others, it’s having to indefinitely give up the career they’re so passionate it about or relinquish their position, and possibly their role as a bread-winning caregiver for themselves, their household, their entire extended family even. Parents aren’t just parents anymore; they’re daycare, elementary, and high school teachers too – while possibly still trying to get their own actual work done as well.
So many of us were on our ways to living our best, fulfilled lives – and now, we’re stuck just trying to keep our heads above water and soften the rumblings of the fears we’d been suffocating for so long, as they find their way to the surface where we’re trying to stay afloat. And maybe one of the worst parts: we don’t have an end date. We’re already growing tired, and there’s no light at the end of the tunnel.
So… what the fuck do we do now?
Some days are better than others. On the good days, I float on without a thought of pulling open the snack drawer. Or, I open it without guilt to satisfy whatever the craving of that moment is. Sometimes those manageable days are followed by harder ones, where I hesitate to reach into the cookie jar one. more. time (again) to find the slightest bit of joy amidst my suffering. That’s the way… well, that’s the way the cookie crumbles, so they say. Good days, bad days — they all happen completely out of our control. And on some of those days, both good or bad, all I want is a damn chocolate chip cookie. *because, hello. there’s really no substitute for the sweet, familiar childhood flavour of a chocolate chip cookie!
In times like this, it’s one day at a time, one foot in front of the other – even if they’re just baby steps.
The process of navigating life through a pandemic is hard enough without extra shame or self-punishment, so I’m trying really fucking hard not to incorporate those into the mix and practice being real with myself.
It’s okay for me to eat. Actually, I have to eat to survive, especially now as I navigate unprecedented times without my familiar distractions, while my worst demons are creeping out from the shadows. Life’s changed, which can only mean other changes are bound to happen – and maybe that means I eat a little more, move a little less, and my body changes.
But the one thing those changes don’t affect are who I am or my value.
Food is not the enemy. My body is not my enemy.
I am my own worst enemy. We are our own worst enemies.
This world is not trying to ruin you or me; it’s those villains somewhere in our brains telling us that we’re just not enough as we simply try to find our way through an immediately new, completely unexpected ‘normal’. As everything changes and feels way out of our control, the first instinct is to panic and send ourselves into a spiral of absolute self-destruction.
This is me telling myself (and you): Don’t do that. It’s not a good idea.
But, even I know that that’s way easier said, than done.
