Episodes
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Am I the villain?
Growing up in a conservative Christian immigrant household, I know the bliss of having someone or something to blame. It’s satan’s fault! It’s unbelievers’ fault! Not enough faith! It’s the world’s fault! If only they knew that Jesus was the way! Ironically the bliss of knowing all the answers…
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Millennial girlboss + love island
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Shaping my internal landscape
References: Making Mistakes with peregrine and tiffany I Make Mistakes with peregrine and tiffany Owdah Awawdah Naya al-Tanani Get full access to LIBERATORY IMAGINATION at tiffanywongart.substack.com/subscribe
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You can't always trust your body
(Photos of the camping trip of incredible mountains, trees, body of water. And on the right, I created a piece inspired by the view with watercolors and charcoal - I used the water from Lake Louise for the watercolor.) [ Scroll to the bottom to watch the visual version of this post ] In September...
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The fear of being misunderstood
References:EnneagramBook: Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir by Akwaeke EmezeBook: Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-SamarasinhaTiktok about Portland Protestors Get full access to LIBERATORY IMAGINATION at tiffanywongart.substack.com/subscribe
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Have your dreams grown with you?
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Jealous much?
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This is a test to see how much you actually love yourself
/ To watch this post via video, scroll to the bottom! And more adlib commentary / Imagine a door, and behind the door there’s a simple dark room with nothing inside. Before you go into the room, you have to lay these things outside the door: * All your achievements (school, career, creative...
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I want to reparent your inner child but I can’t
/ To watch this post via video - scroll to the bottom!/ The thing about being able to see your own inner child and younger parts, is the ability to see other people’s. I can see when their inner children are scared, insecure, ashamed, and ultimately wanting to be seen and loved unconditionally....
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My Inner Child is Braced
/ To watch this post via video - scroll to the bottom!/ 12.5.24 Journal entry “I feel the lowest I have since starting my SSRI. It’s freaking me out. I feel so lost. I’m afraid of losing my resiliency, my boo, my sense of self and drive, my purpose. I feel like I’m just here floating. I hate it....
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Loneliness Disarms the Collective
/ To watch this substack via video recording - scroll to the bottom!/ Loneliness comes in so many shapes and textures. I remember sitting in my bedroom I shared with my sister when I was 7, and I was praying to God for help. The bedroom was (and still is) purple. My sister and I shared bunk beds…
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Dignified Death is Worth Living For
/ To watch this substack via video recording (and also a fun sticker idea) - scroll to the bottom!/ Celebrating birthdays is such a cute ritual, where we gather once a year to say YAY another year around the sun! We eat cake, blow candles, make wishes and hope to do it again the next year....
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Processing Shame Medicine with Peregrine Bermas
I had the honor to have a conversation with my dear friend and faithful comrade peregrine about shame. Peregrine inspires me daily in the way they move with so much intention, playfulness, and wisdom. It was fun to record a snippet of how many of our conversations usually go! Listen to our…
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Music Competition + Internalized Supremacy
/ To watch this substack via video recording - scroll to the bottom! / Look at me there! I was probably around 16 in the early 2000’s right at the start of an iconic era both personally and contextually. It’s such an interesting experience looking at photos of my high school days, because I spend...
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Proving people wrong doesn’t motivate me
/ To watch this substack via video recording - scroll to the bottom! / This is so embarrassing to say out loud. When I was in conservative christian college, I took a class that required the students to do street evangelism. For those who aren’t familiar, it’s when you go up to strangers on the...
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Trickster Mobility
\ To watch this substack via video recording - scroll to the bottom! \ Paper Daughter Tiffany Wong 1882 Chinese exclusion act The first explicit immigration law To ban people solely based on race or nationality To entering the “land of opportunity” 1906 San Francisco rose up in flames Burning it...
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On being too much
\ To watch this substack via video recording - scroll to the bottom! \ “Like that thing where you show someone just a little bit and they run, and then you think, wow, if just this terrified you—the tip of a feather—how am I supposed to open up entire wings? If I’m already so alone with this...
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Why I’m choosing not to have kids
\ To watch this substack via video recording - scroll to the bottom! \ Up to just 2 years ago, I thought it was my destiny to have children…like birth them from my literal body or through adoption. Being a future mother felt synonymous with me since I was little. I’ve always been really good with...
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I started living with more integrity the moment I left christianity
\\ To watch this substack via video recording - scroll to the bottom! \\ It’s maddening and laughable, because I was taught that if I focused my whole life on god (or at least who I was told god was) then I would live a righteous life. In bible school (yes I went to a private christian collage)…
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What about the mom?
I’m half way into Abolish the Family by Sophia Lewis and have been digesting a few pages per day. Here’s an excerpt from it on page 2: I will hazard a definition of love: to love a person is to struggle for their autonomy as well as for their immersion of care, insofar such abundance is possible…
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Everyone wants a village
There’s this tiktok (not endorsing the creator - have no idea who she is) that came across my FYP that was about how everyone wants a village but no one wants to be a villager. Oof. She goes on about how her mom has always had a huge village around her and the creator shares her observations of...
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Today my body remembers
This substack has been a live journal of the waning and waxing…of feeling so lost and then feeling so clear and then having them overlap. Today my body remembers what it felt like a year ago. Five months into live streaming the Palestinian genocide. I just re-read a few substacks from last March,...
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Looking my shadow in the eye
I really believe that self honesty is the hardest kind of honesty. So much stems from that place. I can’t hold myself accountable if I’m not honest and brave enough to face truth. I can’t be held accountable by my loved ones if I’m not honest with myself first. Because how can I be honest with...
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I resent christianity
My resentment towards Christianity has reared its familiar head once again. I just started season 3 of Blowback the podcast (recommended by my friend Emma) about the Korean War, and wow. Just when you think you’ve heard the worst of imperialism, it never ceases to shock me what humans are capable...
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When to say no to organizing
Let’s be honest… Most of the people who are reactively signing up to organize will not be there in a month - 2 months tops. I went to a mutual aid meeting a few days ago, and there were a lot of people (white people mainly) that were enthusiastic about being helpful. It was their first time at…
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In the darkness, I believed
Since the Lunar New Year, I have felt a shift in my soul. Something I’ve been praying for. Don’t get me wrong…I’m still sad and anxious and grieving. But the rage and energy is back baby! I needed to sit in sorrow the past many months. Here are some of my reflections. liberatory imagining is a...
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The illusion of choice
It’s been more than a year since I’ve quit my full time job. Ever since that day I haven’t been able to access motivation to give a s**t to having a career or achieving anything. Honestly, I barely had it in me when I had a full time job. As I’m coming closer and closer to being in a financially...
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I used to be glittery fairy girl
In the past seven days, I feel more grounded compared to the previous two weeks that felt like I was a gaping wound exposed to the open air. Per usual, I’m picking apart and analyzing the f**k out of it. Why and how and what does it mean… Being a recovering feelings intellectualizer, I can’t help...
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Hurting spiritually & physically
This past tuesday, my neck and shoulder flared up. The first time I consciously noticed the correlation of my body pain and spiritual pain was when my boss of that time said something that empathized with the pig that shot Laquan McDonald. Something like how hard it must be for him and his…
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Holding nuance in a world of binaries
It’s too easy to simplify the things that asks us to see as multidimensional, and it’s too easy to over complicate the things that are pretty simple. How I define truth has been swirling around in my system for the past few weeks. Idealistically, truth is what lines up best with reality and...
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Reflections on turning 35
I feel weepy from deep sadness and gratefulness. This year feels very different. I usually spend the few days leading up to my birthday reflecting on the past 12 months - I would read through my journal entries and sit with it. And then I will set up intentions for the next year. It’s been a good...
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I don’t want every day to feel like a battle
Today is August 8, 2024. Yesterday I was looking at mia mingus’ instagram and saw that her last post was in 2023, and for a long minute I was completely confused at what year it is. The disorientation hasn’t let up. I started writing through substack earlier this spring and I keep writing about…
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My Responsibility as an Artist
Since 2013 I’ve been painting and making visual art alongside my writing. I haven’t picked up a paintbrush since last year besides for a few collaged pieces I made for a market. Recently, I’ve been exploring what’s in the way besides for being depressed and overwhelmed. It feels like the medium…
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I don't feel well
Simple tasks aren’t simple anymore. Emails, texts, groceries, cleaning, relaxing, resting, socializing, cooking, eating, catching up with friends…rarely comes with ease anymore. I was remembering what last summer was like. It sounds ridiculous, but I felt happy(?). It was post breakup from a...
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The Cost of Truth Telling (and Believing)
Over the span of my lifetime, I have been invited little by little to question. Question if what I’m taught is true. Question the facts. Question the source of the facts. Question authority. Question assumptions. Thanks to my parents (and maybe to their dismay) I’ve double guessed almost...
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Innerchild Work + Activism
Last December, I watched a clip of a podcast interview featuring Michelle Kim, a fellow Asian activist based in the Bay, talking about her childhood wounds when it comes to being triggered by people who don’t stand up against injustice. She put into language something that felt too familiar and...
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I don't want to be a girlboss
I’ve been putting off writing these thoughts out, because there’s this layer of shame…or maybe fear of judgement. In the past decade, I’ve heard myself say many times that part of the way to get free is to build my own businesses and support other Black/brown businesses. I don’t think that it’s…
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Performance of Consistency
I have this thing where if I let a practice of mine whether it’s writing or posting on instagram sit for a bit too long, it takes much longer for me to approach it again. That’s what happened here on substack! But I’m here and proud that I inched myself over the hump. As usual, my challenge for...
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How do I determine who's Trustworthy?
My friend and fellow comrade Emma shared with me a journal prompt they used recently, and one of those prompts were “How do I decide who’s trustworthy?” In a time where I’m building new relationships with folks I think are aligned with my values, that question resonated in a confronting way. It...
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Relationships + Change
On the waves of Liberatory Mania, I’m on the down slope. Processing, digesting, feeling, and processing some more. This is a note to self: liberatory literature is a powerful support in grounding - try to be more consistent! After every non-fiction book I read, I go through my underlined portions...
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Processing Encampment
In this moment, I feel 80% human and 20% alien, which is a HUGE improvement! I’ve been resting for the past 3 days. Physical energy-wise, I’m almost caught up. There was a moment after coming home from the encampment where something was triggered in me, and my neck trauma response was kicked on.…
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Processing Moments of Stillness
Transcript: Hello, it's Tiffany. It is Saturday night. It's around 9:15 p. m. and I kind of want to try a new thing. So usually I write on Substack and then I basically read it aloud. But I'm going to try tonight to just speak out my stream of consciousness and then maybe annotate it back. I'm…
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Liberatory Mania
When it’s so clear about what matters, everything comes into focus. Every emotion and interaction is heightened from that lens. Leaning into that clarity in my body has driven me to a place of Liberatory Mania, which is inspired by ismatu gwendolyn’s iconic essay There is No Revolution without...
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Crushing in a Liberatory Movement
This has been top of mind recently! Where to start…for me, everything is seen through the question: How can I integrate what I want to believe into my real human life? I say that I want to dismantle supremacy and deeply conditioned + internalized colonialism - so how do I practice that every day…
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Nothing Matters (Except for what Matters)
I’ve been saying to myself “nothing matters except for what matters” over and over again to myself. It feels so true in my body. The drive I used to have for stuff and career and achievements that were present not too long ago have vanished. I don’t even mean it in a depressive way (which is also...
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I Can't Seem to Get Into a Rhythm
Historically, I’ve been a pretty consistent morning routine person. After the usual (brush my teeth, skin routine, coffee, making the bed), I would sit down on my couch and pull out my bullet journal, normal journal, and two books. First, I would list out all my to-do’s in my bullet journal and...
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Fiction as Liberatory Imagination
I just read the chapter titled “Tending the Acre” by Shawn Taylor from the book “Practicing New Worlds” by Andrea J. Ritchie. When I started reading the chapter, I didn’t realize it was a fictional piece. The way my heart jolted when I read “The tide was too big and too powerful. Prison abolition...
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Sometimes When I Feel OK, I Get Worried
Let’s do a quick recap of the past month and a half. I got back from my rest “break” mid February - took two full weeks to acclimate back. Top of March, I jumped right into my “manic” state of doing EVERYTHING. I said yes to it all. It was an incredible high. This past week I felt the energy…
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Consent and Capacity
Under capitalism, I’ve lived most of my life out of consent with myself and certainly in relationship with other people. The conditioning of being raised as a good Christian girl who is the first born daughter of immigrants is intense. Don’t get me wrong - I was a smart mouth and subtly defiant...
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My Capacity is Expanding
I just attended this webinar featuring Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes, and I’m still buzzing from feeling so heart full from it. It was exactly what I needed tonight. So many juicy things that came up! But first, I want to report about coming down from my 2-3 weeks of non stop direct actions,...