AFFIRMATIONS I WISH I TOLD MYSELF WHEN I WAS YOUNGER

tl;dr When we were kids we had this book called “Letters From Felix.” It’s about a toy bunny that gets left on an airplane. He travels the world and sends letters back home and each page has a different letter you get to open. A few years ago, I made my sister a little book inspired by it for her 30th birthday called “all the letters I wish I sent you.”

That birthday card inspired this affirmation series about naming and grieving some of the fundamental truths I established in my childhood that no longer serve me. An exercise in growing up, forgiveness, and letting go.

If you could go back to your younger self and give them a message, what you would say?

Prequel: You’ll have to break yourself open to set yourself free.

9x12”, ink on bristol

This portrait took me almost a year to make.

my body has no gender and Adonis is pan.

9x12”, ink on bristol

it’s ok to dance your little heart out. it can feel a lot like flying when u let go.

9x12”, ink on bristol

if you fully accept yourself you’ll start to see everything in full bloom…even you.

9x12”, ink on bristol

tl;dr lately I feel like my creativity is seeping out of me… in my clothes and my home and my drawings… in how I see myself and in where I find peace… I feel like I’m my own luck dragon and I feel very grateful. I guess the affirmation is “if you fully accept yourself you’ll start to see everything in full bloom…even you” This is also a drawing about my chronic hand pain and how much it’s taken and given to me over the last 9 yrs.

It’s okay to ask to be taken care of.

9x12”, ink on bristol

You’re in control.

9x12”, ink on bristol

tl;dr one of my earliest memories is moving into our new house in Australia - I got to have my own bedroom and I had just learned how to draw the letter m… the McDonald’s version: big arches, big birds. I thought it was beautiful. I drew m’s with a grey lead pencil all over my bedroom walls to celebrate. I just remember how fully in control I felt, sure of where I was going before I had arrived there, and after, standing, staring at my masterpiece and thinking, I can’t believe I made this 🥺 i was so proud!!! This is a drawing about both sides of the autopilot feeling - the void one and the full one, and how both are still you.

Don’t worry, you’ll feel at home some day. And the love will be worth the loss.

9x12”, ink on bristol

tl;dr I moved a lot growing up so I never felt like I was really from anywhere or like I had a place to call home like other kids seemed to. I made a drawing at the end of college inspired by Alice in Wonderland about feeling stuck and searching for a place to call home - both in an actual city and in my physical body, which I’d struggled to feel was mine on a frequency that I couldn’t explain.

When I moved to California there was something about the wilderness - the endlessness of the water and the trees and the sand. The soft palette of the city and the way the sun would greet me. Its forgiveness and its tenderness. The same in the people. Peculiar, boundless, and loving. And so was I!

My formative years. My formative loves. My family, blood and chosen. And all the lives I lived and all the futures I imagined for myself. It didn’t happen overnight but California became my home.

This is a drawing about that complicated homesick feeling. Of loving a place and staying for years to build a home and having to leave it and falling in love every time you come back to visit and feeling so grateful and so sad and so right in leaving. Because you had to.

The doors we walk through shape who we are. We carry them. And then they become us. And then we must set them out to sea. Thank you. I love you. I have to go now.

Gripping something tighter won’t always keep you from losing it. You can’t carry everything in your hands, and you shouldn’t. Let it go. Because you must!

9x12”, ink on bristol

My junior year of college my hands stopped working and I had an identity crisis. For my whole life drawing had been this safe space and security blanket I could take with me everywhere. It didn’t matter where we moved to, drawing kept me from fidgeting in class, it gave me a language to express my emotions before I had words or confidence, and it acted as this crazy loop hole that put me back in my body and made my mind feel both clear and boundless in a way only tactile art forms can. To dream it and to make it with my hands! To always belong here! When I lost it, I lost myself for a while and my solace and had to come back through other means.

It’s been 9 years now and anyone with chronic pain will tell you: the body keeps score. Physical pain can be caused by both physical and psychological (emotional) factors. It can take a toll in both ways, and it must be healed through both means. I didn’t really talk about it with my friends or family until recently. I think maybe I was… too afraid to name this loss, to grieve what it’s taken from me, to forgive it and to let it go.

Starting acupuncture last year changed my life - a physical loop hole to surface and to shed those big things. It also let me maintain the pain so I could still draw sometimes and helped inspired this affirmation series.

My acupuncturist suggested the pain was beyond physical and recommended I try hypnosis. 20 yr old me would neverrrrr but we’re pretty desperado these days. Before I went I watched a video of a 70yr old who healed her bad hip in 2 mins. You meet your spirit guides (in my case, Rock Monster and Luck Dragon from my favorite childhood movie the Neverending Story and my mum’s Mr Snowman toy from the same era), you see your past lives, and you have a “spiritual surgery” to heal the physical pain. (Continued in comments)

This is a drawing of what I saw during my “surgery.” I was floating naked in a warm body of water (heaven to me) and these bird and fish and flower like creatures were pulling black gunk and tar out of my arms and my hands with all their might. The water was filling with black ink, and these little soot creatures (the chronic pain personified - I’ll tell the story of the first time I dreamed them when I finally face and make that piece) kept being pulled out along with the tar. After a few minutes in the water, they would transform into fish or flowers and become helpers too. I knew the hypnosis wasn’t going to take away the pain but I also got the message.

The hypnotist told me after that she’d never had such a long surgery in her 500 patients or seen someone so unwilling to let go of what they were holding. Pretty tough feedback to receive after being so vulnerable but hey! This is a drawing about what it felt like to hold all those things at once.

Just because you’re punished, doesn’t mean you’re to blame. The loss doesn’t have to be anyone’s fault. Guilt and shame will actually be the thing that kills you, if you let it.

9x12”, ink on bristol

tl;dr I moved a lot growing up so I never felt like I was really from anywhere or like I had a place to call home like other kids seemed to. I made a drawing at the end of college inspired by Alice in Wonderland about feeling stuck and searching for a place to call home - both in an actual city and in my physical body, which I’d struggled to feel was mine on a frequency that I couldn’t explain.

When I moved to California there was something about the wilderness - the endlessness of the water and the trees and the sand. The soft palette of the city and the way the sun would greet me. Its forgiveness and its tenderness. The same in the people. Peculiar, boundless, and loving. And so was I!

My formative years. My formative loves. My family, blood and chosen. And all the lives I lived and all the futures I imagined for myself. It didn’t happen overnight but California became my home.

This is a drawing about that complicated homesick feeling. Of loving a place and staying for years to build a home and having to leave it and falling in love every time you come back to visit and feeling so grateful and so sad and so right in leaving. Because you had to.

The doors we walk through shape who we are. We carry them. And then they become us. And then we must set them out to sea. Thank you. I love you. I have to go now.

I went to a hypnotist for my chronic hand pain. I felt very ambivalent about the experience and waited a long time to draw it (see last drawing for context). Whether you believe in past lives or hypnotherapy or nothing at all, it’s still a magic trick and a vessel for your subconscious to tell you something in language you can hear. This is the past life story my subconscious dreamed up… time travel with me:

I’m an Asian man living in an unnamed Asian country in the 1600s. I’m a painter of extravagant portraits. My hands are my livelihood. I broke a rule I wasn’t supposed to. My hands are cut off as punishment. The crime did not justify the consequence.

When I lost my hands, I lost myself. And worse, I blamed myself. I knew I would be punished and I broke the rule anyway. It was my fault. I blamed myself and hated myself and gave up on myself and stopped using my body completely. I sunk into the sadness and over the years I became very bitter and frail and lost use of all my limbs.

In this story, Rock Monster (my spirit guide, courtesy of The NeverEnding Story, one of my favorite childhood films) was my best friend before and after my hands were cut off. He stayed by my side through all those years. Loving me and forgiving me and trying to help me grieve and let go. But I couldn’t. I was gone a long time before I died.

They say past life trauma can bleed into your next lives… until you finally learn the cosmic lesson or whatever. His hands are my hands, or so the story goes.

It was an amazing process to draw this one but we are happy to lay it to rest 🪦

you won’t wet the bed forever and you don’t have to hold everything you feel inside either. you can let go and still wake up tomorrow.

9x12”, ink on bristol

tl;dr I was a childhood bedwetter. My mum says I never communicated my stress or showed it on my face but it would always show up physically… too much eczema to take christening photos 🥴, wetting the bed, shitting down her arm when we were about to board our flight moving from Australia to America (sorry mum, love u - we did make the flight in the end and yes I was deadpan the whole time). I stopped wetting the bed as a preteen but I always had and kept having really vivid dreams. You should’ve heard me after I saw Jumanji at my sister’s birthday party. I can still see the alligator from that dream so clearly in my mind. I must’ve been 5 years old.

I used to not really be able to sleep as a kid but now it’s one of the main ways I take care of myself 🦥 When I’m awake I can see and imagine anything but when I’m asleep my dreams are hyper-realistic - only things that can actually happen happen in my dreams 🥸

When we moved to Pennsylvania half way through third grade I met my new dentist Dr Grisbiki. She had white blonde hair and a GameCube in the waiting room and told me that if I ate any candy or sticky things all my teeth would dissolve by the time I was 18. This is the same year I steal Gushers from the lunchroom bc I’ve never had an American treasure so fuckn sweet, the packaging was literal gold… Gushers and a chocolate milk baby 😮‍💨 I have a fear of dentists like little Nemo and have been lucky enough to be crowned three times 👑🗡️ and root canal’ed twice 🫚⛲️ since that convo. When I moved to New York I bought gushers from Mr Lemon or the 12 yr old at the corner store by the park everyday for 8 months. Still have all my teeth tho 🤡

I didn't realize I was grinding my teeth at night until I chipped my front teeth from the inside out, five years ago I think. I have this recurring dream where all my teeth fall out. Usually it's bc I'm pressing my back teeth so hard against my front teeth that they snap in half. In my control, and yet...

When I lived in Oakland in 2022 my parents gave me their leftover Halloween candy and a jolly rancher got stuck on my crown. When I tried to unstick it the crown fell out and I almost fainted. I thought I was dying. Living my nightmare. I crawled to the bathroom and propped myself up so I wouldn't faint. I got my crown put back in a few days later.

This piece is technically the first in the affirmation series. I have a lot to thank it for. I booked a week alone at an Ayurvedic retreat in Kerala, India last August for chronic pain and burnout and intentional inner child work. I brought my diary from high school and college and drew this portrait of me in bed with all my nightmares after reading it. I colored it with only the markers in my suitcase. I drew the "my body has no gender" piece right after. I put this one down for almost a year and knew I would come back to it when the time was right.

A few weeks ago I was at one of my best friend's weddings - a new friend asked me what it was like to move a lot as a kid (the dreaded "where r u from? i'm not really from anywhere" exchange bc there's not really a better FAQ response) and I had another conversation about mouth guards and nightmares and I confessed that my new dentist in Williamsburg did a bite pressure test and I scored the highest score possible for literally every tooth. Funny the way our bodies work. Keeping score and all that shit. The funny thing I keep thinking about is how to unclench is to let go. Wetting the bed is a form of letting go too so, maybe I knew something better than I gotta get back to. For now when u see me please pressure me into wearing my mouth coffin at night so I can keep my alien teeth thank you 👽🦷

I know no one cares about other people's dreams but here is what the sleep foundation says about dreams where you lose your teeth: "Many people have posited that teeth-loss dreams indicate a person is experiencing major life changes. many people lose their teeth twice as part of a major transition: once from early childhood into older childhood and again in older adulthood. Such transitions often feel jarring, which is why some people think teeth loss dreams are more likely to occur around transitions. Another popular interpretation is that they represent a sense that a person is losing control."

11 months later this one poured right out of me and it is everything I hoped it would be, good night ty for reading 🛌 ⚰️

Sometimes you'll feel sad, like the world is ending. It's okay. You'll learn how and when to swim and to fly. Life will be beautiful and devastating and that is the point. You'll be okay. You'll always be okay. The only way out is through.

9x12”, ink on bristol

tl;dr I returned to my body this weekend after a month of being... somewhere else. I live there. I also live here.

When I’m overwhelmed or grieving there are a few things I like to do: Go to the ocean and look at the sparkles on the water. Stand with my arms out in the wind so it ripples through my big shirt and I feel like I’m flying. Draw.

In my younger years, all my drawings were about the sunken place or flying. I didn’t know how to describe what I was feeling. I was somewhere else. Not in my body. Swallowed, trapped, sunken, hollow, ocean, waves take me under. The stars, the other place. The part of you that believes the world is ending and can’t be here to tell you the news.

Drawing was (is) a beautiful escape I could take with me anywhere. I could build worlds and stay there. I could fly. I could sink. I could start again. I was limitless. There I was not the new kid or a freak or lonely and undeserving, or whatever I heard or told myself. There I was not the quiet solace friend you tell your secrets to and treat differently in public. I wasn't held to uneven standards. I wasn't helpless. I could just be.

I've always been a sentimental kid. A lucid narrator at every age. Kind of ancient. A little out of place or ahead of my time.

I've started getting acupuncture where I get my massages: from the strongest guys I know in Chinatown, NYC. Ling gets to the root of the chronic pain every time. It's excruciating. But it also feels like he's installing my wings. They've been really helping me get my hands back. Saving my life, really.

I've been thinking about the difference between flying and falling. Two sides of the same face. One boundless, one burdened. Both enormous and sprawling. All me.

I've had this James Jean print on my wall for two years. First as a free newspaper and then the real deal. I am the bird. I am the body. I am the water and the wind. I am everything and nothing, all at once.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, if you're in the sunken place right now, I see you. I love you. Tell someone you trust so they can pour love on you. Focus on the small and quiet ways you can take care of yourself and put yourself back in your body. Come out when you're ready. We'll be here.

A friend told me it’s a community practice in the Philippines to care for your neighbor’s garden when they’re away. I think intergenerational healing is a lot like tending to a garden. It takes a lot of quiet, consistent work and love to see it bloom.

9x12”, ink on bristol

tl;dr oday is my grandma’s 84th birthday. In 1958, when she was 18, Carmen Calong left the Philippines and became one of the first Filipinos to immigrate to Australia after the Migration Act. She had seen an application for nursing visas in the newspaper.

This spring I got to spend a week with my grandma in Australia, just the two of us, for the very first time. We spent our afternoons and evenings eating Light and Easy meals in front of the TV and sharing stories. Her clothes and furniture looked and felt like mine but of another era. It was kind of bizarre. We had the same sense of humor. We both insisted the play koi pond for the fish tank would make a better key bowl. Some days we’d accidentally match outfits. We laughed and we danced and we cried and we really knew each other. Like I was from her and had always been. I could see her and my mum and I could see me too.

I found out that my grandma was a bit of an outsider, a tomboy, the outspoken one that didn’t need to be taken care of – playing with the boys, climbing the coconut tree (no branches), biting back. Traits I’d only associated with my mum (and me).

This drawing is a love letter to my mum and my grandma. It’s a story about intergenerational healing and what it means to be of someone or some place, what it means to tend to each other’s gardens so love can grow, to grieve and let go of what has been in pursuit of what you believe is possible (to resow the garden)… what it means to leave the place you’re from in search of something greater beyond and to carry it with you... to love and to show up and to care for each other when you can’t walk down the street and be there for dinner...

For a long time, my mum and my grandma weren’t very close. In my teenage years, my mum and I weren’t close either. We had family, but because we moved a lot, we didn’t grow up with family around. It was hard to feel connected to where we were “from” or feel like we belonged anywhere.

My mum says when she turned 60 she felt a greater sense of urgency to fulfill a lifelong dream of having a strong loving relationship with her mother. The truth is, I felt the same urgency when I graduated from college. We were raised in a pretty intense and strict environment by parents who did the best with what they had. When it came to our little family, all I wanted at that age was for all of us to feel loved and claimed.

I started going to therapy and set the ritual to call my mum for an hour or two every Sunday. Our family went through a lot over the years and those calls helped hold us together. They also helped us grow. As I got better, she got better. As she got better, I got better too. I’ve called every weekend for eight years.

My American therapist told me I wasn’t emotionally responsible for my mum and I shouldn’t call so often or engage so deeply – I’m so happy I didn’t listen to her. The truth is, for many families, healing happens together. I really believe that. My mum is a different person now. So am I.

My grandma says my mum has changed. She’s softer, kinder, less stubborn, more open. She says the way my mum sees the world and the way she communicates and helps them understand each other has helped heal their family.

I love my mum and I am endlessly proud of her. She makes me believe anything is possible if you’re brave enough and are willing to put in the effort. I’ve watched our family heal twice over.

Give your loved ones the benefit of the doubt. Meet them where they are and pour love on them until they hear you. Help them take care of themselves when they can’t and ask that they do the same for you. Remember it is never too late to show up and tell someone how much you love them. To ask to be claimed and to be cared for. To say sorry and to love unconditionally. To forgive and let go, to decide to change and do it.

My face is beautiful when I am understood

9x12”, ink on bristol

I think that everyone you meet is kind of like a mirror. They pull out different parts of you, make different parts of you feel seen. You get to decide who lives in your fun house 🎪

I think it’s kind of romantic that no one ever gets to see their own face, only their reflection. I was always dreaming about being known in all my ways. Can you see me? I can see you 👀 I think I know what I look like though

I love mirrors 🪞 For me, they represent the “in between place.” The line between the real and the unreal, the all and the nothing, thinking and believing, here and there. Mirrors represent how you see yourself and how others see you. They bounce light and expand space. They create illusions and rainbows. They’re portrayed as a symbol for truth or a portal into another dimension. Mirrors are analog magic: the idea that we can be many things at once 👽🌷🌊🧠❤️‍🔥🪩🌈✨

I think it’s pretty magical that you can meet someone and just know in your bones that they’ll be significant to you… that a piece of clothing or art or space can articulate this unnameable thing and somehow make you feel more like yourself… that a stranger can mirror something fundamental back to you that your long-term partner couldn’t… that your loved ones from your formative years will always know you in that way… that a friend can see your mask and take it off and still love you after…

This is a drawing about the pursuit of feeling understood, and how good it feels when it happens.

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Liminal Faces (Quarantine)