Maybe you can tell by now that 'dreamy nostalgia' is a core element of our therapy practice's identity. Lately, I've been exploring playfulness and cuteness not just as a look or an aesthetic, but as forms of resistance, rebellion, love, and radicalism.

Below are some reflections I put together!

The power of cute has not been explored enough.

In my search, I found it to be so odd that most articles that researched on cuteness were critiques of cuteness: infantilization, magical thinking, fetishization, being in denial as an adult, or packaged as simpler times.

Note: to be fair, I only searched the internet in the english language...

When I think about cuteness, it aligns with the most resilient parts of my current adult self and the purest parts of the younger versions of myself.

Cuteness is a point where I get to come closer to my personal interests without shame and embarrassment, liberating parts of me without oppressive restrictions like age-limit, how to dress or act or what’s appropriate or legit/professional.

Here are 4 thoughts on cuteness as resistance that can light us up:

1. cuteness as camoflauge:

when talking about serious topics like historical trauma, racism, or transphobia...

cuteness aids in politicizing conversations and reflections in a digestable, resonating and nostalgic way.

Cuteness helps us critique, question, reflect how we've been socialized, while mixing in elements of play.

2. cuteness is kitsch:

Kitsch is a German word for ‘worthless trashy art’, critiquing the quality of the art

Cuteness is our mark on decolonizing what art can be instead of art ‘should be’. It challenges the traditional ‘fine’ arts, dismantle and unarm systemic rules.

Cuteness helps folks tap in the power of making ‘bad art’.

Who knew that a sense of playfulness and absurdity can help realign my creative practice for pleasure and expression as a fundamental human right.

3. in postmodernism:

Cuteness helps me dream of a reality that makes sense.

Because a world that’s a dumpster fire isn’t cute and not going to cut it.

It helps me sustain optimism and conduct small acts of resistance through orienting to the playful parts of life and imagination.

4. Cuteness as relief

Cuteness charges our energy in the realm of healing.

Cuteness inspires us to connect with the softness, gentleness, kindness, loveliness which embodies safe moments so we don’t disconnect from the heaviness of everyday struggles.

It's probably why corporate workers love cute animal videos and memes to get through the day.

Resources that inspired my research:

• Cute affectivism: radical uses of the cuteness affect among activists and artists by Ingeborg Hasselgren

• @umeboi's tiktoks and reflections on kitsch in contemporary art and cuteness

Instead of accepting the status quo, the intergenerational trauma and oppression that society normalizes, you are more interested in what we need to change, and ways to break the cycle.

You have probably been developing and fine-tuning your critical awareness.

When we find ourselves questioning everything around us and don’t take anything at face value, we begin to see where change is needed.

“Knowing who I am informs what I want to change.”

When we embrace our identities and declare our positionality, it adds depth, richness and meaning to everything we do.
 

Knowing yourself is arguably the first step it took for me to build critical awareness.

So what is critical awareness/consciousness?

As we are navigating in this dystopian world, our levels of consciousness can shift in and out as responses to overwhelm. Paul Freire's (1973) work outlined 3 levels of consciousness: 

Here's a hot take…

I am convinced that we have all been in magical consciousness at some point or another!

Whether it's about climate change, racism, ableism, stigma or divisiveness around gender orientations, social classes, types of education… we live under multiply oppressive systems and I am pretty sure we experience these 3 levels of consciousness all the time.

You probably have a loved one, or friend group or acquaintances who do not perceive our actions as capable of changing conditions… and, I want to remind you that hope isn’t an emotion or optimism, hope is a discipline (as quoted by Mariame Kaba).

If you are dreaming of better and brighter futures for yourself and us all on a certain area, what informs you of this hope for liberation?

Why would this be showing up for you so strongly?

・₊✧

Perhaps there is a soul wound…

Soul wound: 

the psycho-spiritual damage peoples suffer from historical trauma, intergenerational trauma and colonization. Another interpretation I found of the 'soul wound' is the moral injury that pierces a person's identity, sense of morality, and relationship to society.

Here are some ways to sustain our soul:
 

Soul care is caring for each other. When the soul or culture of certain groups are oppressed, we need to find each other who are radicalizing from the wounding so we can liberate from such oppression in small communities at a time.

Tending to our bodyminds. For example, healthy ways to release rage if you have been feeling this could be to seek community, bring in movement and singing (activates our vagus nerve), or join creative workshops. Choosing to support our bodyminds are small and mighty ways to live authentically, so we have room to take care of each other.

Community and belonging. We navigate repression effectively in community. Hope in our ability to get through hardships together makes us resilient and powerful. As Decipher is approaching year 4 as a therapy practice, I have been brainstorming ways to foster more third space elements: spaces outside of work and home that bring a sense of belonging, collaboration and community.

Committing to lifelong learning. It is incredibly humbling when critical consciousness builds within us: when it continues to witness, call out, and awaken parts of us that have been laying dormant due to internalized -isms from living in an oppressive world.

If you are needing to play, rest and fuel your creative spirit to continue showing up for collective liberation, I am collaborating with my friend, Monica from Level V Bakery to bring you 4 workshops this Summer! Save your spot in the link below and share with your friends 🫶

Have you ever heard of the saying, 'work to live’, instead of ‘live to work’ and wondered… how the heck do I do that?

…Perhaps there's something gnawing inside of you when you hear that you have a choice to “live” fully/presently.

…Perhaps you are seeking for self-actualization or a spiritual awakening of some sort, to transform and do some healing.

…Perhaps you are similar to myself, in which they call a ‘cyclebreaker’.

…Then maybe you're in the right place 💗

In these past few years, I found myself exploring rest as resistance and strategizing ways to escape capitalism (which is a system that uses humans as commodities) with the intention of living wholly as a liberation practice.

I sense in my body, that when I verbalize these words above, it's still fresh. Kind of like discovering a treasure chest that’s been locked up under the sea for a very long time.

Sometimes I wonder if an ancestor from my lineage has called out unjust systems before and the wisdom got lost along the way.

Or if they were punished for questioning it.

Or that no one has ever cared to be critical of it until little old me.

In this journey, I am discovering just how deep intergenerational wounds can be, especially when it comes to my relationship with work for survival…

 ₊˚ ☁️・₊✧ 

Healing justice is when we reflect, observe and recognize how systems we seek to change outside of our bodies are also carried within our bodies.

To feel worthy of rest is not easy for me and my lineage!

In fact, it's an arduous feat for someone like me to find exits out of stifling spaces and experiences. I find myself crisis managing, keeping up with thoughts of what is expected of me in moments when I need to listen to myself and need rest the most.

(Below is me rambling so you can choose to skip past this)

I heard stories that each of my parents took on multiple jobs to save up for a one-way ticket to come from their motherland to a new continent, leaving the rest of their families physically behind and sending back the fruits of their labor to support them financially. Growing up, it was normalized to not take weekends off. With barely any time for relational building and quality time, this never-ending hamster wheel has played like a broken record.

(Okay, I would LOVE for you to read this ↓)

Breaking the cycle means unwinding intergenerational wounds of up to 14 generations!

Please note that it is NOT about breaking the entire 14 generations of burdens, and that if you still struggle with the cycle showing up, you are no longer a cycle breaker. The focus is more about building awareness of personal responses, of family's history and ancestors' stories, as well as cultural woundings. Being a cycle breaker is about building critical consciousness (will write more about this in the next newsletter) of what is the wound that your lineage and yourself have been carrying. 

In the therapy room, I have been practicing remembering that when clients/folks are in session with me, I may be witnessing up to 500 years of ancestral wisdom, cultural and historical stuff showing up.

Hey, I recognize that this practice sounds intimidating. However, it serves as a reminder that we are incredible humans who can carry some pretty heavy stuff.

We are on this journey of liberating ourselves, future generations and organizing with community for a better world. That’s some superhero typa power 💪

・₊✧  Take a deep breath here   ☁️・₊

Some gentle reminders I tell myself:

"I will notice more presence, tend to my body and mind, and feel my heart space soften.

There will be many more moments where I catch myself in labor when I could have chosen to relax. That is because these systems are designed for me to sense risk if I were to choose to rest (ahem… due to capitalism, patriarchy, intergenerational wounds… ahem).

There will be many more moments where choices to rest will become closer within reach. When I am no longer defined by the disconnection, violence, betrayal and disregard of my healing."

꩜   𖦹   ꩜   𖦹   ꩜

Here's a journalling/art prompt for you, or a conversation you may choose to have with your community:

What is it that you are hoping to break in this lifetime?

-Linda

There's what it is. 

Then there's what it seems.

Recently most of my concerns shows up as what it seems like initially.

It's as if my actions seem futile.

It seems like like I'm losing it. 

My body, my business and my life seems like they're in their flop era.

Witnessing the age of the neocolonial internet where those who hold power actively outrightly censor untold stories of the oppressed and when allies share their activism, how shadow banned their accounts can become.

Here's what they don't want you to know!

How to access what it is and has always been:

In my community, folks whom I've been reaching out to are helping me to be able to call out all the ridiculous moments it has been seeming like to get to what it actually is.

Oppressive systems are built to prime and gaslight us to feel ‘what it seems’ like. Like we are fraud, or that nothing we do will help and we should just look away…
 

…when it is actually a healthy sign of your humanity if you have been feeling dysregulated, feeling the rage from the grief of witnessing.

Your felt sense of discomfort, grief and rage is living proof of the practice of unlearning and decolonizing. Indigenous teachings tell us that our bodies carry the knowledge, wisdom, pain and wounds from 7+ generations. Rage is our embodied wisdom. 

 If you feel like you are in the smack middle of your ‘flop era’, 
you are in the right place.

The place where there is:

• collective healing towards liberation

• unlearning and resistance from oppressive systems and practices

• access to what it is and to your lineage's wisdom

• emotional healing instead of spiritual bypassing

• creative ways to validate your experiences

• bravery to share wisdom, advocate and call up reps because you're a badass human who cares.

“We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians” 

- Nelson Mandela

The essence of our shared humanity and collective healing is to build a container for one another until all of us are free.

Bearing the weight of the thousands of lost dreams and the lifetimes of deep sorrow that will follow won't be possible if we don't come together, continue to call and email reps for a ceasefire NOW.