Reflections Issue No. 1: EMBRACE

EMBRACE REFLECTIONS • ISSUE NO. 1

Our first issue of the University of Texas at Austin's AAJA zine, Reflections, is centered around the theme of EMBRACE. To accept, acknowledge and share ourselves in our full wholeness as Asian Americans, as creatives, and ultimately as humans. We are more than our singular experiences, but we share these stories in hopes of shining light on the nuances that make up our identity as individuals and as a community.

CONT ENTS

PAGE 1 A MISPLACED REVERIE

by Neelam Bohra My protection was my pride.

PAGE 7 A BEAUTY OF MY OWN

by Hillary Ma Almond shaped and single creased.

PAGE 13 ON A COMPLICATED RELATIONSHIP WITH DUMPLINGS

by Nathan Han I'm not a foreigner when I fold dumplings.

PAGE 21 MORE TIME

by Jennifer Xia How do we share the warmth without hurting one another?

PAGE 25 18 YEARS LOST

by Kevin Vu I lost 18 years of not knowing more about it.

PAGE 31 OCEANS APART

by Alishba Javid At the end of the day, our parents are not the perfect beings we believe them to be growing up.

A MISPLACED REVERIE

by NEELAM BOHRA

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he small boy stands in front of his mostly white school choir. His family’s bright-colored, traditional Indian clothing shimmers in the background of a mostly white audience. He begins singing the Indian national anthem, and his mother begins crying tears of joy as the London crowd jumps to its feet. Some even place their hands on their hearts.

I’ve seen the Bollywood movie Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham dozens of times, and that scene normally passes without an afterthought. It falls in line with the movie’s devotion to family, cultural norms, and India itself. But I’ve started to view the Indian national anthem differently When I was young, I did everything I could to avoid becoming that boy. The closest I ever approached to showing pride for my culture came only in urgent moments of defense; when one girl told me that the red dot on people’s foreheads came from cow’s blood, when another told me to go back to India to worship my cows. It became a cycle, automatic. My protection was my pride.

Then, the long, dramatic movies with songs and blood and yellow flowers wrapped me in their trance. I fell in love with the idea of India. I forced my friends to watch the movies, listen to the music, participate in my Hindu religious festivals that I had conflated with it. I competed in Indian dance competitions. I loudly discussed traditions with pride. And in an attempt to be exactly like that boy, I even performed the national anthem on the violin for a mostly white history class.

Over time, though, the movies dulled. A darkness has crept over the rose-colored idea in my mind. At first, my instincts remained defensive and I made excuses. But as I learn more and discover my passions for reading and writing people’s stories, my screen has become divided between those movies and the news. My love for journalism and telling stories has grown, but with it, so has my knowledge about what is actually happening in India.

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"My protection was my pride."

Indian Hindu lawmakers openly discriminate against Indian Muslims. I try to tell myself that the patriarchy, the Hindu hegemony, and the extreme nationalism I see on my screens weren’t originally stitched into the culture. I tell myself that the British manufactured all these conflicts. It is, at least, partially true.

But still, I can’t reconcile my pride for my culture with my disdain for its choices.

The current political party that controls India ran on a radical stance and had overwhelming support. During its reign, recorded hate crimes have only increased.

New laws proposed and passed explicitly take away citizenship from anyone without papers, and then give citizenship back to all minorities except Indian Muslims.

Looking back on these movies, I see the touches of propaganda. The conflation of Hinduism with India itself. Even the color of people’s clothing in many movies are divided by religion; main characters sport the saffron associated with Hinduism, while supporting or even token Muslim characters are donned in the deep green from Pakistan’s flag. The yellow flowers even seem to be territorial land markers.

Now, I can’t help but remember that scene with the boy and the Indian national anthem. Over the years, from behind the glittering cinematography and swelling music, the scene’s message has peeked out: India is the best. Its values and cultural norms are the best, including what it chooses to discriminate against. Don’t challenge them.

Just like that boy, though, I’m an English-speaking child of the diaspora. I don’t have to adhere to those values, just like I refuse to adhere to the Western values that would tell me to forget India altogether. India has joined in the growing cacophony of governments favoring an oppressive majority. I will hold it accountable like the rest of them, making sure to never fall into a reverie for a national anthem again.

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h my d i s d wit a i re

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I. find community

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II. connect

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A BEAUTY by HILLARY MA OF MY OWN

Almond shaped and single creased.

I grew up loving my eyes.

The masses were content in morphing their appearance as a symbol of ‘prestige’.

How far were they willing to go?

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Almond shaped and single creased.

The physique of my eyes are an indicator of my domestic lineage: a long and intertwined heritage of my Chinese influences. Crescents form upon my face with each smile. They hold the stars and twinkle when I laugh.They carry my tears which fall onto my pillow whenever I cry.

They filter through endless collections of stories I read and night skies I admire whilst deep in thought. They are beautiful.

I grew up loving my eyes. A unique shape only native to the Eastern hemisphere. They were a descending feature from my ancestors, uniting our lineage with one defining characteristic. Although not physically in Asia, my eyes still longed to travel, explore, and retrace the steps my ancestors took— I was filled with wanderlust.

Following high school graduation, I took the opportunity to revisit my homeland. The moment I landed, a wave of petrichor embraced me. The ethereal dusk that danced along the horizon painted infinite hues on an endless canvas of sky. Overwhelmed.

Mesmerized. No words could truly depict how in awe I was with the city.

The deeper I ventured into the city and away from the countryside, I noticed a commonality between all of the billboards and dominating models. Each one I passed by had the same face: tall noses, plump lips, glass fair skin, and double-creased eyelids.

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Everything screamed western features.

And I knew the truth. I knew the social culture too well. Girls being socially pressured to inject hyaluronic acid fillers in middle school. Children receiving incisions on their eyes as birthday presents to fit modern beauty standards. People filling their noses with plastic to boast about their jagged features.

The makeup wasn’t enough. Camera applications that erased the blemishes weren’t enough. Nothing was enough to satiate the public’s desperation.

The summer of my visit became a rude awakening to the truths I never wanted to acknowledge. I was in disbelief reading articles back in America about the extent people in the oriental world would go through to have face in society.

This could never happen.

This was an exaggeration.

The masses were content in morphing their appearance as a symbol of ‘prestige’.

I helplessly wondered...

how far were they willing to go?

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My trip to Asia confirmed all the doubts I ever had.

It proved to me that the rapid economic progression of these countries had plagued the minds of the new generation; promoting fallacies that the importance of material wealth was far greater than personal health. Fallacies that physical beauty outweighed virtue and self love.

Fallacies of positive normalization alongside the death of open descension.

At that moment, I was truly awake. It was only then that I realized that the countless documentaries, TV shows, and articles I had built my view of Asian society upon were severely lacking.

Would I still love my monolids if I lived in Asia?

To society, they are ugly, unfavorable, and outdated.

Regardless, I still love my eyes. I refuse to erase what sets me apart from my American peers. I am not a porcelain doll — my only mission in life is to maintain a soul of pure beauty, as everyone else’s should be.

There is still much to cover in today’s society. My travels and ventures out to learn more about Eastern culture doesn’t stop here. I am now filled with purpose, hoping that one day, just one day, my people can become filled with love and satisfaction for themselves.

My eyes will always be one of my defining facial features: almond shaped and single creased.

And they are beautiful.

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On A Complicated Relationship With Dumplings

by NATHAN HAN

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he other day, when I was driving down I-35 on one of my many trips between home in Dallas and college in Austin, I was listening to a podcast called “Recipe Club."

I listen to a ton of podcasts. They’re almost always about basketball, music, or comedy — my tastes are pretty basic in that way.

But “Recipe Club” wasn’t part of my normal listening habits. It’s a cooking podcast. More specifically, it’s a cooking podcast where the hosts, Momofuku founder David Chang and Lucky Peach editor Chris Ying, pick a particular dish and dissect it.

That particular afternoon, while driving down with my brother, the episode was about gyoza.

Gyoza, potstickers, dumplings, jiao zi — whatever name you prefer (I’m going with dumplings, and the only wrong way to say it is potstickers) —- I have a complicated relationship with them.

When I was little, I remember first being taught how to fold a dumpling. Not long after that, it would become a family tradition I dreaded. Every Sunday night, when I was dying to finish homework that I’d put off all weekend or watch the Cowboys lose disappointingly on Sunday Night Football, we would sit down and fold hundreds upon hundreds of dumplings for hours and hours.

When it was time for dinner, there would be a quick break to eat a few of the dumplings we’d painstakingly pleated. Then, it’d be back to dumpling folding, where nine-year-old Nathan would beg to be let go from the table to do literally anything less mind-numbing.

So, when I hit the typical traffic on I-35 in Waco (another “tradition” I dread), I was surprised to hear how YouTuber Priya Krishna (you might know her from her former time at Bon Appétit or her cookbook Indian-ish) described her experience folding dumplings.

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"It’s a shared experience that countless other second-generation ChineseAmericans are familiar with."

“I did not grow up pleating dumplings in large batches with family members,” Krishna said. “But I actually found it to be such a soothing activity. I did this the day after Biden was declared the winner of the election. That was such an intense day … I was so anxious, and this was like the most anxiety-decreasing activity.”

Unlike Krishna, I did grow up pleating dumplings in large batches with family members. It’s a shared experience that countless other secondgeneration Chinese-Americans are familiar with. I can relate to friends or to memes on Subtle Asian Traits because we’ve all gone through it.

But what surprises me about growing up making dumplings is just how many of my friends hold onto that experience once they leave home.

I remember how my brother, just as I did, made up excuses to try and get out of this Sunday chore. But, a few months after he left for college his freshman year, he sent a photo of him folding dumplings with friends.

I now see Instagram stories of friends folding dumplings, watch Snapchat stories of people showing off their pleating, and I wonder why this part of our Chinese culture resonates with us.

Before I left for my sophomore year of college to live in an apartment and cook on my own for the first time, my parents saddled me with a cooler full of dumplings to take with me.

The dumplings were a lifesaver in the middle of Zoom classes and late nights, and as my friends and roommates will attest, always available in my apartment. So, predictably, just as my brother before me and so many of my friends did, I made and folded dumplings with friends once my treasured stash from home ran out.

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My friends and I compared dumpling pleating styles (Chang’s verdict is that they taste the same once sealed, so pleating doesn’t really matter), taught other friends how to fold them, and traded stories from back home.

I shared about visiting extended family in China when I was 8 where my aunt told me I folded dumplings like an American.

Of course, she wasn’t wrong — I’m American, and my dumpling folding still isn’t the prettiest (but it is the fastest). In some ways, I think I’m still chasing that “Chinese” style of dumpling folding, because the reason I’ve come to love the tradition after hating it for so many years as a kid is because it connects me to my Chinese culture in a way that doesn’t feel like I’m an intruding foreigner.

Whether it’s at home with my brother, in China with a bustling room of extended family, or at college with a group of close friends, the experience is the same. The same smells, the same folds, and the same routine.

I’m not a foreigner when I fold dumplings because it’s a part of my culture that I’ve truly adopted and experienced.

And I’m not the only one who has gone back to childhood comforts.

Over the pandemic, Los Angeles chef Brandon Kida created a dumpling company called Go Go Gyoza.

“When things are going bad, people love comfort food," said Kida, a Japanese-American chef who grew up in L.A.’s Koreatown to Food&Wine’s Andy Wang. My comfort food was gyoza, dumplings. I remember sitting at the dinner table with my mom, and she would just show me how to make handmade gyoza: how to make the filling, how to fold the dumplings, how to cook the dumplings.”

"I'm not a foreigner when I fold dumplings because it’s a part of my culture that I’ve truly adopted and experienced."

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The same reasons dumplings from home were a lifesaver for me in college are the same reasons dumplings have become a lifeline for many Los Angeles chefs during the pandemic. They’re easily deliverable and quick to make in a hurry.

“It’s clearly time for chefs to bet bigger on comfort food,” Wang writes.

And for me, Kida, and thousands of other Asian-Americans, dumplings are that comfort food.

But, maybe, I’m overthinking it. Maybe dumplings aren’t symbolic of Asian culture that so many immigrants can identify with. Maybe there’s a simpler reason why I’ve come back to my family tradition of folding dumplings, why dumplings have become a lifeline to the AsianAmerican restaurant industry during the pandemic, and why the act of folding dumplings has resonated so deeply with so many people.

They’re just that delicious.

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"But what surprises me about growing up making dumplings is just how many of my friends hold onto that experience once they leave home."

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i me

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MORE TIME

by JENNIFER XIA

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hen I think about my dad, he is laughing. He laughs big, ringing to every corner and the next room over. And it always reaches his eyes.

That is where I see it first and this is how I will remember him.

I was scrolling through social media one night in December and came across the “Hedgehog dilemma,” which describes the challenges of intimacy and vulnerability.

Imagine a winter night where a group of hedgehogs are seeking shelter from the biting cold. If they don’t huddle together, they risk freezing. But if they get too close, they risk hurting themselves and others. So what is this perfect distance?

How do we share the warmth without hurting one another?

If you asked my dad, he would probably tell you to stay away from pretty much everyone besides family. “The world is full of bad people,” he said. He didn’t believe in sugar-coating things.

My dad is a private man, the self-proclaimed “most private person in the world.”

Growing up, I was always told I was naive about people and the world. I considered it being hopeful and believing that people could change. Yet, I couldn’t help but grow up distrustful as well.

My college months have largely revolved around finding the perfect distance between closeness and protection. I had actively worked a lot on my mental health since high school and didn’t experience my previous mercurial swings between laughter and needing to sneak out of the cafeteria to cry.

On lonelier college nights when even the moon I often found comfort in had nothing more to say than a laconic, “You’re on your own tonight,” I felt lost wondering who to turn to. There were people I knew I could trust, but why didn’t I? I wanted my own village, a huddle of warm bodies that wanted nothing more than getting each other through the winter. One night at a time.

In March when the pandemic hit Austin, I packed up my red suitcase stuffed with large coats from the winter prior and all the small mementos I had collected from my first semester at college. A business card from eclectic street artist “Washboard Tie Guy” I met at South Congress. A pamphlet from the art landmark The Color Inside I visited after exam week. And lots of photographs.

My dad drove the three hours from Dallas to Austin to pick me up a few days later. Little did I know that a boba shop in Dobe Mall would be the last place I would be a “normal” college student.

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"

warmth

HOW DO WE SHARE THE

WITHOUT HURTING ONE ANOTHER

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?"

As we drove back home, I was scared that all the growing I had been so determined to do would regress in the familiar comforts of my home in Plano.

But as life usually happens, I was met with an unexpected blessing.

More time.

As much as I mourned my college years being taken from me, I was being given back time to spend with my dad. We could take care of each other in a time when we needed a village most.

Our favorite thing to do is watch movies together. His favorite movies are ones with action and suspense, which oddly has resulted in watching a lot of movies with drug lords and violence I often have to peel my eyes away from. During the week, we find time to walk around our neighborhood park and rest on one of the many green park benches that circle the pond. We people watch and have debates that often get heated. I ask a lot of questions and he rattles on philosophically.

“What do you think we have in common?” I asked one day. My dad never answers immediately. With everything he does, he takes his time. “We’re both thinkers,” he finally said.

I couldn’t help but secretly feel proud. I had always been insecure about my intelligence, but I knew my dad revered people who asked “Why” and took time to reflect. So despite how universally terrible this year has been, I am so grateful for the time it has afforded me with my dad.

How can I break down walls of distrust with my own dad? How can we come together?

It’s a huge privilege to have space and time to worry about forming deeper connections, which for others might be taken up by a next meal or paycheck.

Although there are certainly painful moments from my upbringing that still color the way my dad and I see each other now, I still firmly believe that people can change.

So I ask questions and wait for answers. However long they take.

And if I don’t have the words, I wait for his laugh to come. This is how I will remember him.

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18 Years Lost

by KEVIN VU

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rowing up, I hated my slanted eyes. I hated being seen and picked on as a nerd, hated when my mom packed Vietnamese food in my lunchbox (even when I asked her to put

“normal” food in), I hated Asian traditions in general. I never spoke or learned Vietnamese because I never bothered to put in the effort.

I remember trying my hardest to fit in with the other kids in school, swapping my traditions for what everyone around me considered cool: sagging my pants, using profanity in every sentence. Anything to change my appearance from a small, quiet, teacher’s pet.

My elementary, intermediate, and middle schools were filled with kids, including me, living on the side of Houston where gunshots echoed through the night. Those kids saw past my efforts, though, hitting me with names like “chink”, “yellow fever”, and “gook.” They would mockingly tell me “ching chong” as I got off the school bus.

"I blamed and cursed the fact that I was born Asian because it made me an easy target."

Everything started to change when I got to my high school, which was 60% Asian American. At first, I dreaded going there. The only interactions I had with other Asian Americans were those at my middle school, who were hyper-focused on their grades and GPA. I had distanced myself from the pressures of schools and getting perfect grades because of my family’s idea that good grades equated success. As a part of this mindset, I decided to join the yearbook team because I heard it was a free class. I started hearing the stories and experiences of so many different people as a part of the class, though, and out of nowhere, I began to feel excitement at the thought of hearing more. I became more and more interested in journalism as I conducted interviews and listened to their stories.

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"Talking with my peers, I noticed how much they loved their cultures."

I learned more about other cultures through clubs, organizations and the school’s annual celebration of cultural holidays and events. At first, I was jealous and embarrassed of myself. They were a community of people engaging with their background, past, and culture and I couldn’t speak my own language. I wasn’t close to my family or culture. Slowly, I realized I was being close-minded throughout my life. I started reflecting on my experiences and the people around me.

I remembered the poor Vietnamese people who used to mill around my local Asian mall. It’s an odd group to remember, but when I was younger, I would accompany my family almost twice a week to the Hong Kong City Mall in Houston. There, I met many Vietnamese people who couldn’t afford their own homes that, thinking back, I shouldn’t have confronted at a young age. But seeing them and talking to them, hearing their stories of being former Vietnam war veterans, living in Vietnam, and what’s it like living in America, left an impression on me. And although I haven’t been to the mall nor seen those people I once talked to, their stories helped me realize the flaws and suffering that many Vietnamese people faced during the war and coming to America. Whether it’s pity or empathy that I felt toward them, it nevertheless gave me an understanding of what Vietnamese Americans, including my family, had to go through when coming to America at such a stressful time.

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I thought about my family—my parents and brother—and the way they raised me. They avoided being as strict as other Asian parents are, what one would deem as “Tiger Moms,” and never forced me to do something that I wouldn’t enjoy, such as playing an instrument or attending cram school. The summer before my freshman year of high school, they took me to Vietnam. I saw how they were raised, the house where my dad lived. His friends who still lived there worked at a street food vendor, and had forgotten him once he moved to America. Past the different cultures and foods, I saw the results of the Vietnam war and its effect on those in Vietnam. Seeing the photos of my parents when they were young, and the photos of them escaping the violence of the war, made me realize my own privilege. Now, they work the night shift in their minimum wage jobs, and I’ve realized how much I appreciate their endless hard work for both my brother and me to have a better future.

I grew more and more appreciative of my culture with time, but not without realizing I lost 18 years of not knowing more about it. When the pandemic hit, I took the time to learn more about the history of Vietnam that I always avoided learning, and the language I used to think I would never need. Yearbook inspired me to go into journalism as I learned more about my culture from others, and now, I hope one day as a journalist, I will be able to teach others what I didn’t know through stories. I want to write about Asian cultures, Asian Americans, hopefully inspiring and encouraging the younger generation of Asian Americans to embrace their culture, instead of being naive like my past-self and trying to break away from who they are.

"I grew more and more appreciative of my culture with time, but not without realizing I lost 18 years of not knowing more about it."

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SUPPORT

CARE

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Oceans Apart

by ALISHBA JAVAID

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ultiple times a day I am reminded how different of an environment my parents grew up than mine.

An ocean separates our childhood experiences and values. It is not simply a generational disconnect, but a cultural one.

Upon asking my parents how they adapted to the way they raised my brother and I or how their perspective changed after setting foot in the US from Pakistan, they could not give me a clear answer. For it was largely the same as their parents; not much had changed. Growing up, I had always applauded the way my parents had seemingly adapted so well as immigrants in the United States with their modest salaries and our overall standard of living. However, I realized most of it was external. Internally, their mindset or values were not as adapted as I initially thought. And tenuous relationships, resentment and overall contention can arise if one raises a child with an Eastern mindset in a Western world.

I remember having to explain to my friends during summers that I couldn’t go swimming with them unless it was at an indoor pool. Being forbidden from trying out for sports such as tennis or track due to its outdoor practices. Being rebuked when I refused to carry and use an umbrella on the 7-minute walk from the bus stop to my home. Or the 30-second walk from the parking lot to a clothing store. Or not covering my face when slices of light shined through the car window. The constant comparison to my lighter skinned cousins, the constant assessment of my skin every time I came back from somewhere, the screaming and guilt tripping that would ensue if I had disobeyed and had indulged in the sun — all the little things that were the constant reinforcement of the notion that dark skin was some sort of stain I should avoid at all costs. As if being in the sun was a sin, and I needed to protect my fair skin in order to be beautiful. I believed it for many years.

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It wasn’t until I grew into my late teens and explored social media that I came to realize this was a toxic yet common experience rooted in Eurocentric beauty standards. The relief I felt after not attaching my self worth to my skin tone is one I cannot describe. I resented my mother for a long time for these collective experiences.

But again, I came to slowly understand how normal a practice this was in Pakistan and South Asia in general. My mother grew up in an environment where Bollywood movies with their lead, fair-skinned actors and actresses reinforced it, while those looking to marry would specify wanting a spouse with fair skin. The Fair and Lovely skin lightening commercials always played in the background, reinforcing the standards, hanging over our heads and tricking my mother into thinking she was protecting me. My resentment slowly turned into sympathy, for this South Asian idealization can be a hard thing to unlearn when it is ingrained in your head even when one is physically in a different environment, a different country.

While my mother pushed me to be her version of beauty, my father pressured me to pursue his version of a success. I vividly remember my father's laughter after I finally managed to muster up the courage to tell him I wanted to major in journalism in college. Once he realized my unwillingness to budge, for months every conversation we had after that turned into an argument. “You don’t understand. This is a waste of time and money. You’re going to regret this nonsense. It’s a dying industry. If you want to make a mistake go ahead. You’re being so stubborn. What is so wrong with medicine? You’ll learn to love it, trust me. Passion? You won’t be happy when you’re not making any money. This is the typical stupid American mindset.” I remained confused more than I was hurt.

Growing up everywhere I looked, movies, TV shows, books, people were telling me to “follow my dreams” and do something I’m passionate about — a very erroneous Western and American mindset, I was told. Here I was doing just that, after finally choosing a major that made me feel excited, and I had somehow managed to offend my father. Ever since middle school I was told “pick whatever career you want, as long as it is in medicine.” It was a mindset very common for him as well. Success and doctor were and are still essentially synonymous in Pakistan. An environment where the running assumption is that you will pursue a career in medicine, provided your grades are high enough. As was allowing your parents to choose your career because they know what’s best for you, even better than you. Coming from a line of doctors, I was told to follow in their footsteps like he did and as my brother, a second year student in med school was already doing.

Suddenly tasked with choosing between making my father happy or making me happy, I chose the latter. I despised the fact that I even had to choose between doing what I love and disappointing him and resented him for guilting me when I refused to commit to a twelve year path just to meet their expectations.

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The resentment subsided when I came across a tweet by writer Bo Ren that explains it best. “My parents were tasked with the job of survival and I with self-actualization.

The immigrant generational gap is real. What a luxury it is to search for purpose, meaning, and fulfillment.” My father had explained to me that when he passes, he doesn't want me to financially struggle as he had experienced. For him, passion was not success. Stability was.

I can recount countless more incidences, big and small. The side comments my dad would make about his embarrassment due to my lack of cooking skills at the ripe age of 18. Or perhaps the lack of conversation and downright silence surrounding mental health. A part of me understands. That I too would have a disconnect with my child if I, being born and raised in the United States, were to move to a country halfway across the world like Pakistan, and tried raising my kids there. That my parents’ and I’s values clash due to our upbringings being a world apart. We are simply a product of our environment are we not?

Another part of me is cautious to give them the benefit of the doubt. I was able to unlearn certain old fashioned, even toxic mindsets, so why couldn't they? Why pass their cultural baggage onto their progeny? Do their struggles give them a free pass?

Perhaps the internet and social media have made it a lot easier to unlearn forcing us out of our own bubble? Ultimately, I have concluded that we do not have to choose between these two perspectives. We can believe in both at the same time. We can recognize that our parents enforced certain problematic values while also understanding why they did it and be grateful and appreciative of all the things they did do right.

At the end of the day, our parents are not the perfect beings we believe them to be growing up.

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They raised us the best with what they knew and from how they were raised. All I can do now is accept this cultural baggage and do better for my future children. For I am fortunate to be able to pick and choose the values and social ideologies I would like to adopt and pass on from my Asian culture and which ones to stop perpetuating. Such as allowing my child to choose whatever career makes their heart content or by reminding them of their beauty regardless of their skin tone. All of which I hope will create better relationships between my kids and I, one lacking resentment.

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EMBRACE