Hi, I’m Sas!

My Own Travels

I’m a former Asian high school teacher (former teacher, not former Asian). I forget I’m not in my 20s or 30s until I happen upon a mirror, at which point I realize anew just how quickly time passes.

I was born in East Los Angeles in California but moved to the suburbs at the age of six. I met amazing people and went to fantastic schools during those formative years, however, I’ve always been a city girl at heart. I felt like a fish-out-of-water in the suburbs, but I like to think that’s when I became a mermaid.

As I child, I really loved music and art but abandoned those very short-lived passions to chase someone else’s dreams in a corporate job. After donning a business suit (which felt more to me like a Halloween costume) for several years and attempting to climb that particular ladder of success, I realized though a perfect passion pursuit for some, economics was an extremely inauthentic profession for me.

In the 90s, I traded my conservative neutral-colored high heels for some Steve Madden platforms (loved the 90s fashion) and dove into a new career teaching high school and coaching soccer. It was the greatest privilege to spend my days sharing space, time and ideas with those teenagers.

I was then totally sidelined by a litany of diseases and symptoms which heartbreakingly catalyzed my resignation from teaching.

During the darkest periods of my illnesses, I saw my life hang in the balance more than once. The beauty and the brevity of life were never so clear.

With a new resolve to squeeze every ounce out of life, I have been determined to unsilence the parts of me I hushed due to criticism and pursue the passions that other people told me I couldn’t because I wasn’t “good enough.”

I’ve also recently begun to realize how being continually teased or excluded for being Japanese had subtly impacted my view of myself as a second-class citizen. 

I would say that a lot of this inferiority complex was on a sub-conscious level (hence why it was established for years without my recognizing it), but it was powerful enough for me to develop patterns of sometimes staying silent, accommodating other people’s needs without balancing my own and absorbing the criticism as truth without further investigation.

It also made me think I “wasn’t allowed” to participate in certain things. I felt like my voice mattered a little bit less than other people’s.

Just writing all of this now illustrates the ridiculousness of it. I hope you’re seeing it also. Maybe in our shared vulnerability, you can relate to some of it?

There are so many factors that can influence us negatively, by holding us back or causing us to feel off or out of sync. Even something as seemingly minor as one casual comment spoken to us years ago can affect our present selves in numerous ways. 

For years now, I’ve been bent on discovering, expressing and reclaiming passions, dreams and personality traits that were authentically mine but put away needlessly for one reason or another.

It’s been so enlivening, fulfilling and healing to do so.

I’m now learning to sing, play guitar and dabble on the keyboard, and am so thankful that I finally found my way back to these early loves.

To be quite honest though, there have been troughs as well as crests of the emotional waves accompanying me throughout this journey. At various moments, I’ve had to process regret, grief and anger. It’s been an evolutionary process with therapy as a solid co-companion. But it has absolutely been worth it. And funnily enough, the freedom to express these emotions has been its own form of catharsis, self-preservation and reclamation.

There is something indescribably empowering and freeing to live a life that is expansive and true to who I am.

Will you join me?