Ep14 - The Sex Education We Didn’t Get—with guests Emily Munroe & Elise Schuster of App Okay So
We are thrilled to share this interview with Emily Munroe and Elise Schuster about healthy and inclusive sex education for children, teens, and people of all ages, and the app Okay So. OkaySo is a free, anonymous app for iOS and Android where you can ask any questions you have about sex, relationships, identity and more to teams of experts who provide personalized support and information. After this interview, Anne and Alison feel much more optimistic about kids these days growing into healthy adults.
Emily Munroe is a former Science and Comprehensive Sex Education Curriculum consultant in the Bay Area. Prior to Covid she taught Biology and CSE for middle and high schoolers for 10 years as well as advising students in their Genders and Sexualities Alliance. She also worked with BACHE (Bay Area Communities for Health Education) now known as CARDEA as a CSE curriculum consultant. She is on a temporary hiatus as a Sexpert on OkaySo.
Elise Schuster, MPH, is a sexuality educator with 15 years of experience in pleasure-based sex education and youth development. Elise has a masters in public health from Columbia University with a specialization in sexuality and health and spent many years working at Babeland and The Door - a major youth development agency in New York City. Elise is the co-founder and Executive Director of OkaySo, a free online platform that connects young adults with questions about sex and mental health to experts they can't reach any other way.
http://okayso.co, Instagram: @heyokayso
00:00 Anne and Alison catch-up
20:05 Research Corner with Alison: The Dutch Hunger Winter Studies
What The Dutch Hunger Winter data and studies taught us about how stress and trauma get passed down through generations.
23:40 Interview with Emily & Elise
Show Notes:
Intro:
The Creation of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner
Hannah Suzanna's period blood Instagram. "All genders menstruate; you don't have to menstruate to be a woman."
Science Research Corner: Dutch Hunger Winter
"The Famine Ended 70 Years Ago, but Dutch Genes Still Bear Scars" https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/science/dutch-famine-genes.html
"The Dutch Hunger Winter and the developmental origins of health and disease" https://www.pnas.org/content/107/39/16757
"Surprising Lessons From the Children Who Survived a Famine During the Deadliest War in History" https://jamesclear.com/hunger-winter-stress
"Transgenerational effects of prenatal exposure to the Dutch famine on neonatal adiposity and health in later life" https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18715409/
"Cohort profile: the Dutch famine birth cohort (DFBC)— a prospective birth cohort study in the Netherlands" https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/11/3/e042078
Interview:
Emily recommends checking out Peggy Orenstein and Lisa Wade
Come As you Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life by Emily Nagoski
Transcript
Alison Cebulla 0:04
All right. Welcome to another episode of latchkey urchins
Anne Sherry 0:07
and friends. The friends all the friends all are welcome, friends given this week, come to our table come to our all our welcome podcast. Yeah, all are welcome. Yes, yes.
Alison Cebulla 0:24
Was trying to covertly open a sparkling water here
Anne Sherry 0:27
was the standard I thought you farted
Alison Cebulla 0:30
which is welcome here, which is welcome here.
Anne Sherry 0:33
Okay. All the people all the bottles right your butthole it's up to our podcast.
Alison Cebulla 0:40
So all right, it's Thanksgiving. I've been noticing a trend online, which I think is great, which is like, why we need to reframe Thanksgiving, like the whole myth that it's built on of like Native American people. welcomed us and European settlers and helped us and gave us corn and we had such a great feast. I think being thankful is important. Yeah, but that whole myth is very toxic.
Anne Sherry 1:11
Yes, we have to create miss because we don't really we aren't really connected to anything. Right. But just that's why we're susceptible to I don't know, Miss A great. I remember watching Joseph Campbell's whole thing. Did you know that was probably I'm older than you
Alison Cebulla 1:27
listen to a lot of his audio. So
Anne Sherry 1:29
it was called power of myth. Hero's Journey. There is your whatever. Yeah, yeah. Yes. But gathering and I guess people are gathering. I don't know the COVID status entirely. Although with boosters out there. And I imagine people are. We're going to Pennsylvania and gathering with Tom's family for the first time in two years. What are you doing?
Alison Cebulla 1:56
We're going to Mexico? Oh, yeah. Nice. Yeah. We're going to via the Guadalupe. Um, so me and my boyfriend, Kevin and my brother. And his wife, his wife is from Mexico, actually. And then with my parents, and so Via de Guadalupe is just right south of San Diego. So it's a little wine region, and we love wine. So we're going to stay at a hotel and like a cute boutique hotel and go wine tasting, we're going to maybe go kayaking, and in Sanada, that kind of thing. So it's like just a fun trip. That's not too far away. And we're all we're all vaccinated. I don't you listeners think I'm not worried about the pandemic. But yeah, to just get on with our lives?
Anne Sherry 2:48
We do we do. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know what to say, you know, this holiday? I don't know. Well,
Alison Cebulla 2:55
so I think like, what I'm talking about what I am, and like, I'm really excited for this interview with my friend Yin, about the experience of being an immigrant in America, which is amazing people. Yes, yeah. Very,
Anne Sherry 3:11
very great interview,
Alison Cebulla 3:12
and we're all unless you're an indigenous person. We're all immigrants here. Yeah. So this Thanksgiving, I just want to personally keep in reverence. This idea that we're guests here. We need to work tirelessly at bettering human rights, especially for indigenous people, for black people, for new immigrants, for Mexican people, Latin American people, all the people that are a human I want to for everyone to become a
Anne Sherry 3:47
human let's let's make America human. I mean, that's what I continue to have curiosity of what we talked about sort of through the interview, today's interview, but just that curiosity of why so much why are we so separated from each other? We could be different, right? But just like this, again, that other ring we're probably other to ourselves in a lot of ways too, but that's what I just keep holding curiosity what makes us so afraid? Or why would we want to? Why would why wouldn't we want to come together? Why can't we live in to what our fucking words are? You know, like on the Statue of Liberty and
Alison Cebulla 4:32
yeah, are getting better.
Anne Sherry 4:34
I think I think they are. Yes, I do. Overall. So whatever is happening it's slow. Progress is so slow.
Alison Cebulla 4:43
I don't want it actually faster. I
Anne Sherry 4:46
worry. Yeah, what does it because there's real fucking suffering real fucking suffering, but when we speed it up. We just we don't control this timeline. We just don't control the timeline up here. Healing, I do understand there's the, you know, global issue, the earth issues, we do need to figure some shit out. But I have to believe in this the Great Awakening that I keep talking about reading Adrienne Marie Browns book, when are you got to read that American strategy
Alison Cebulla 5:20
plan and then you said you're the right one.
Anne Sherry 5:24
Read them in order, even though she's all about spirals and start wherever you are and okay, I'll read it first. Yeah, emergent strategy first and she's got a third book out that we put in the show notes. I totally just based on the name right now. Anyways, pleasure activism, that's a fine place to start.
Alison Cebulla 5:41
But I started it
Anne Sherry 5:45
as I will go back all the structural shit that we uncover here, and we don't laugh about that stuff. But we certainly laugh on our that's why we say butthole so much, because it's so it's devastating.
Alison Cebulla 5:59
I, we have to figure out how to heal somehow. So I'm going to include in the show notes, a couple of great blogs that were posted to my workplace this week, my birth pieces pieces connection, and one is a profile of a woman Lynette Grable that I got to interview a few weeks ago about her work for missing and murdered indigenous women. So I'm gonna put that in the show notes. And then another one is a profile of someone that I get to work with Dan press, and he is an activist for Native American populations. He's a white dude, a white man. And it's his whole story of how he was how he became an activist for Native American Rights. He's a lawyer. And it's very inspiring and amazing. So I'm going to put those two things in the show notes. And and just because I want to honor Native Americans this week, as we celebrate Thanksgiving and all the trauma that's there. And for us to really think about in this in this interview, about the immigrant experience in America, and how we're all immigrants, and we're all visitors and so that's we're just going to do a real short intro today. Yeah. So please enjoy our interview with yen
Anne Sherry 7:19
and enjoy your holidays. However they wherever you may be celebrating. Yeah, enjoy
Alison Cebulla 7:24
the game. Yeah, I'm like, you know, joy, but also
Anne Sherry 7:28
be aware. You were curious to Yeah, yeah. Okay. All right.
Alison Cebulla 7:35
Bye. But you know, damn well. All right. I am so excited to introduce you all to my friend yen and yen. Dang it. I didn't ask you ahead of time. How do you say your last name? Leon? Leon?
Yin Ling Leung 7:53
Oh. I think I have adapted to Liang.
Alison Cebulla 7:59
Liang. Okay, Yan, Liang. And, and we were joking just right before we went on that, that Yun did not send me her bio. Before so as punishment or worse.
Anne Sherry 8:12
Consequences
Alison Cebulla 8:14
are slipping into authoritarian style,
Yin Ling Leung 8:17
natural consequences.
Alison Cebulla 8:21
To introduce yourself to our listeners. Great.
Yin Ling Leung 8:25
I'm Yan, Liang, Liang and I am a CEO of a company that I run with my spouse called Applied Research works, which works on health, quality data, all day long. We do data integration. And then but my most of my life, I've been to community health organizing. And so I really like to bring the public health side and the kind of clinical health side together in my work and in my life.
Alison Cebulla 8:56
I love that. What sorts of community organizing have you done? But yeah, choose? Yeah, I
Yin Ling Leung 9:01
worked mostly with the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. I grew up in Hawaii. And I spent most of my growing up years in the San Francisco Bay Area in Oakland and Long Beach, Richmond and working with young women's organizations in the community to really develop the next generation of community organizers really, and awesome are working on labor issues and environmental justice, and women's reproductive health.
Anne Sherry 9:36
Oh, okay.
Goodness, you're alive. Doing this? Yes, more of that. Yeah. No, it was Yeah.
Yin Ling Leung 9:47
It's like it's the only work I could have thought of is in healing myself and healing the world. Right. And so why not?
Alison Cebulla 9:57
It's so it's so important. I was I've been listening to a lot of Noam Chomsky audio recordings lately. And he says like, Oh, listen, I know I love them. But yeah, but he was just talking about the importance of community organizers and like, the only way forward is like whoever's willing to step up and do the work, you know, you have to be able to rally people to issues like that's how we see change happen. You have someone has to do it. So that's amazing. And so the other
Anne Sherry 10:24
piece of a little bit that maybe we may veer down into this because what I noticed too, from the private practice therapist side is burn out, like people not being enough. So that
Alison Cebulla 10:37
sort of the community organizers burnout. Yeah, this radical act of
Anne Sherry 10:41
self care is actually a very, very radical activism act to say, there's enough there's enough people like so. So these practice, it's being able to engage in those practices. And I do think it's, if you think you're not enough, and you get your sense of self, you know, it can get unbalanced. Yeah, you know, so it's really pull back and and connect actually connected. Yeah. Did
Alison Cebulla 11:06
you burn out? Yeah.
Yin Ling Leung 11:09
But I would say I see a lot I see some of it. But I, I'm really impressed by a young, younger women in the field, who are so much smarter than my generation in terms of our smiley
Anne Sherry 11:22
recognize our
Yin Ling Leung 11:24
not only self care, but I would say like community care or the way they go about caring for themselves and the people they work around, so that it's not only on you to do the healthy things, but nudging each other to do the healthy things and supporting each other, including things like thinking about sustainable pay, in community organizing work, right? And how do we create retirement kind of scenarios for community activists so that we're not doing GoFundMe for each other when we get older? So I think there's movement internally in community organizing that I didn't see necessarily when I was a young organizer. So it's really hopeful. And so you're absolutely right. I was attracted to that work for that very reason. Right? You're you're trying to heal things on your inside you through the work, and you're not necessarily bringing the healthiest you to the workout. And that can
Anne Sherry 12:25
I would say 98.9, probably nine, probably 100% of therapists have some level of neglect. or something, something.
Alison Cebulla 12:37
That's what Alicia was saying. And
Anne Sherry 12:39
I know that not Well, yeah. So we keep coming to this. But I do think the younger generation, they probably a critical mass of them are probably more attached. Like in their families, I would say I think we're getting better. I mean, I hope and my kid like he's, we pay attention to them more we put effort into raising him you've noticed
Alison Cebulla 13:01
this? Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah.
Yin Ling Leung 13:04
I think and it's about community organizers, also really acknowledging the need for therapy. Yeah. So that even as we work on structural issues, we got to work on our individual healing or so it's that. Both that yeah, not either words. And right. Yes.
Anne Sherry 13:23
Yeah. For myself, I noticed I came to this sort of image from myself, and this is like an infinity circle. You know, it's like I, I became aware through personal therapy, I finally was like, Oh, I'm not the only person suffering in the world, you know, so there's, it's like this process. And then I went to do sort of activism work in Asheville, racial justice issues, and I wasn't joining every single thing because when I became aware of the pain, I was, like, terrifying, you know, it was traumatic to really let in a lot of that, and then you sign up for everything. And you don't realize that you don't have what's needed, which is like radical love, radical acceptance, radical, the ability to speak up or, and then you you sit there and you freeze in these meetings, and you're like, I need to be here. I have to be here. I gotta be here. But I don't know what to say. I'm gonna say something wrong, and you're just in a trauma free state, often when you're trying to do stuff, so it's like, you got to like take that in for what I found was take that information and go back to your private therapist and group I like
Alison Cebulla 14:33
the Infinity circle thing. That's really helpful. Yeah, like you got to learn from your community and then apply it to yourself and heal yourself and take that back to your community. Yeah, I really like that.
Anne Sherry 14:44
Yeah, well, I hope you know, this polarization and canceled culture and all of this stuff. It's not helpful when somebody's trying to like trying on some new skills a little bit. I think it's incumbent upon you know, people maybe that have more are a head that are more attached or understand we're all trying our best truly even people where it doesn't seem like they are, and to, like stand next to them and say with kindness rather than, like, Go do your work, you know? So things like that. Yeah, so I don't have the questions in front of me.
Alison Cebulla 15:24
So our first question
Anne Sherry 15:27
Allison, how do I, how do I stall and type back to you? Much more on the fly?
Alison Cebulla 15:37
Our first question is, like how you relate to the term latchkey? And, um, you know, we I really wanted to ask you based on our one on one conversations, you know about your particular experience having parents who immigrated to the US your parents immigrated to Hawaii from China. And, um, that is a very American experience. There's nothing more American than having immigrant parents. This is just This is the American story, but some of us are more removed from it, you know, in terms of when our ancestors immigrated. And so, um, yeah, I'm super curious. Like, were you a latchkey kid? What was the emotional environment of your childhood? You know, and then as much as you want to say about it, how immigration or have or like, Chinese culture mixing with Hawaiian mixing with US culture, you know, and, and how that impacted your childhood. Oh, yeah, I was absolutely a latchkey kid. Because, you know, like
Yin Ling Leung 16:36
the typical immigrant story, I've tried that. But so to where, you know, being in Hawaii, so to where most of my friends and even the middle middle class kids, so we were working class people, right? Yeah. Um, my family was my my parents were both from rice farming families. And so they weren't even urban Hong Kong people. They were like country bumpkins. It's got it got it got about it. So they had even less literacy in Chinese, the most migrants to the US. So they're learning English becomes even extra harder, right? It's too hard. And, but so last being election can seem normal on the surface. And, but my parents, like, you know, I think suffered from workaholism, and kind of economic violence, I call it where, you know, your only survival was your ability to work super, super hard, and hold many jobs down. And my dad, I don't think I ever saw him as a kid. I mean, he worked two or three jobs at any given time, you know, and I think there was a little bit of a desperation and preoccupation with, you know, just making ends meet because, you know, you don't get to take up any public services as a as an immigrant, right. But I, I realized that the other side of migration is what I call this emotional loss of your grandparents. I think in Chinese traditional culture, heartbreak, your parents are the harsh disciplinarian. They tell you, here's the path. We work hard. So you better work hard in school. Don't talk back, please. Oh, you know, they just do all these things. And sometimes really harsh discipline to you know, like, some, some pretty harsh stuff,
Alison Cebulla 18:31
like physical physical discipline to or just emotional. Yeah, no, both,
Yin Ling Leung 18:36
you know, and never praising your kid because, you know, that just be bad for their ego. And, but what I think is the greatest loss for many migrants is the loss of your grandparents, because your grandparents were the only kind of source of unconditional who are allowed to give you unconditional love. Yeah. So my parents were so busy surviving and, you know, keeping things together so, and we didn't have our grandparents, you know, and my grandparents didn't have that outlet in us. They were just back in the old country, right?
Alison Cebulla 19:12
Oh really breaks my heart.
Anne Sherry 19:15
Well, this is what we talked about all these this chopping up or divisions or splitting families or splitting traditions, you know, like, and in a private practice, that is, we sort of look for what is the protective factor and with that, is that one p, so like, a lovely old neighbor, or a grandparent or one place that, you know, that they when the parents are just wracked with trauma and poverty? Yes, you know, trying to survive because they are directly responsible for that child and their pair, but if they can, it really helps if we have that one protective factor of Yeah, sort of we do this insight work and people will imagine going back to their grandmother's house or, and I've done
Alison Cebulla 20:01
that I've had a therapy like that, where they're like, pick a protective person. And for me, it was my great grandmother, Helen. And she just was felt so safe and nurturing, because she's so far removed. Like you're saying, it's like, she's not directly responsible for my care. So it's all the care has an ease to it. You know, I've just like,
Yin Ling Leung 20:21
yeah, yeah, they give themselves permission to do that, I think because in my culture, or at least my family's culture, I can't speak for all Chinese people, but it was like, you could have your grandchildren. I mean, that was just not part of like, growing.
Anne Sherry 20:41
struck by the similarities of, you know, growing up in the 70s, or whatever came along to say, Don't Don't spoil your children, or don't pick them up when they're crying, or, you know, you know, you're gonna spoil them, they'll manipulate you or, you know, you need them tough for this world. And it's, it's just, it's so I get it, though. I mean, I have a lot of compassion for parents that aren't, you just said they didn't have social services, like, there is no safety net. So it is like we cannot fail is what I'm hearing. And so it's important, right, at the end, like has an impact, there's a way to care for them, and also care for the child that experience that impact, you know, yeah.
Yin Ling Leung 21:23
Yeah. And then so, part of all that experience really led me to the professional connection, I have to child emotional neglect, which is, in my work at at as a applied research works our little company, we do quality metrics all day long. And I often wonder, you know, in my work, and in my life, passion work is how to bring social determinants of health into,
Alison Cebulla 21:52
okay, this is a science corner moment
Anne Sherry 21:55
where I'm gonna step out,
Alison Cebulla 21:59
I'll be back. Okay, so let me Can We Do you want to take a stab in defining social determinants of health?
Yin Ling Leung 22:12
Yeah, I think he's just a fancy word for poverty, really. It's a public health, for poverty. And, you know, I think, although we all know, and now, you know, neglect can happen at all income levels. But for me, I think my untested hypothesis around this is that childhood emotional neglect, when it intersects with emotion, economic poverty, gray, that there's this multiplier for health outcomes. Yes, then, and I don't know the what the good measures are for child emotional neglect. And that's where I was, like, super excited to be a part of this podcast, because as much of it is about talking about my experience or understanding of it, I want to ask you all what, how you measure it, how do you screen for it? How does it stick with adverse childhood events, because, you know, the adverse childhood events thing is very much about these really kind of big trauma, trauma, like, you know, death of a parent, like physical abuse, or, you know, but, you know, childhood emotional neglect can be more nuanced and subtle. So how do you pick up on that, in terms of recognizing that it could have an impact on health? Right?
Alison Cebulla 23:29
Well, let me Yeah, I really want to define a couple of these terms. So I'll answer your question from a public health standpoint. And then and you know, from a therapist standpoint, in terms of what you're seeing in the therapy room, but just and I just want to do it kind of briefly, because we have so much to talk about, but according to health.gov, so our own government's health department, Social Determinants of Health have to do with economic stability. So there we go. Yeah, in education, access and quality, which is also poverty, you're you're totally right health care, access and quality neighborhood and built environment and social and community context. So social and community context could be that that loving grandparent, do you know what I mean? Like those are those protective factors? Yeah. And so they're, they're interpersonal, and like, they show up in therapy. But then they're also those protective factors are also in public health, that I can remember for grad school interviewing a former dean of a San Diego Community College, about different risk factors and protective factors for the mental health of students. And her saying that there were a lot of immigrants to San Diego from war torn areas of the Horn of Africa. And so they were coming in with a lot of trauma or related trauma, but since they had such a strong community there and a lot of community services and feeling like they were really connected to people from their home country, this was a very strong protective factor. So that's like a total public health factor is having this this community once you get here, so and then when it comes To aces This is stands for adverse childhood experiences for our listeners. And the original study was done in 1998. That's when it was published. And what happened was that it was these researchers that were actually trying to help people lose weight. And people would, in their study would take the weight off and put it back on. And they thought, well, what's happening, they started to interview their subjects and realize that the majority of their subjects had experienced sexual abuse as a child. And so then they thought, wait a minute, what's going on here, even though this is actually something that Freud found in his research, which was like, what, late 1800s or something, he found the same data, and it was not well received by his peers. So that's when he kind of reversed course, and made up a lot of bullshit. Because he just the world wasn't ready to look at trauma, it's still kind of not ready to look at it. But it was initially a weight loss study. And then they really thought, Well, why don't we interview subjects about these 10 and they just made a 10 items, and they were never meant to be the end all be all. And now they're really kind of being used in that way, which is kind of scary to me. You know, because it is just,
Anne Sherry 26:05
is that the 10 Aces questions that you score on? Or?
Alison Cebulla 26:09
Yeah, I mean, the thing is, like, they were, you know, they were doing this weight loss study, and then they're like, well, let's just ask people about these 10 questions, and there's been a ton of follow up research, but I tend to worry that just like you, you were just asking is, like, there's more nuance, or like, what if your parents didn't go to jail, but you still have trauma? Do you know what I mean? is like, to me, there's a lot of limits, to um, and let me just put, let me just try to pull them up. So I could read what the 10 Aces are,
Anne Sherry 26:38
I can speak a little bit then maybe from the therapy, I mean, I if, if people if I hear the words, or the like, I just don't know, I feel empty, or, you know, kind of depressed, or I'm having trouble in my relationship, pretty much anybody who's showing up to therapy usually is motivated. I rarely have somebody who's like, I'm just super curious. I'm really, you know, feel very connected in life. But what's this about? You know, and I'm, like, out make space first, you know, you just don't get that. So, what I find is I have a lot of, I'm excited about people coming to I think I'm a seventh on the Enneagram to which we've talked about at nauseam on or we've had that, but it's a very enthusiastic approach. So I have to really temper myself because I'm like, goody, you're here. So parts of me just know that if we, you know, if I kind of sit with them and provide some level of understanding, or just listen, you know, and have this like, radical acceptance of what they're experiencing, they have neglect. It's either, you know, from a I just have to ask a few questions. What does what how our emotions in your family? Do that we don't do. Right there. That is a huge neglect piece that our culture, I think American culture reinforces we love those messages of, wow, their, you know, their mom just died and they're back at work in two days. Yes, you know, we elevate like that the ability to tighten up and hold. And so, gosh, culturally, then it's like, Well, why would I work on this stuff?
Alison Cebulla 28:22
And I want to Yeah, yeah, I want to bring in an example to discuss with you and about economic violence and the consequences on American immigrant culture. But let me just read the text, just for our listeners. We're just practicing defining our terms here. And the 10. Aces adverse childhood experiences are physical abuse. And these are things that you would have seen or experienced in your household before the age of like 18, physical abuse, sexual abuse, verbal abuse, physical neglect, emotional neglect. A family member who is depressed or diagnosed with another mental illness, a family member who is addicted to alcohol, or another substance, a family member who is in prison, witnessing a mother being abused, although I would tend to say and witnessing any sort of abuse, and then losing a parent to separation divorce, or death, or the 10 Aces, but it really misses a lot like foster care. And then people people have trouble even knowing that what they may have experienced was emotional neglect, or verbal abuse, because you tend to normalize it. So you may come out going, it was fine. It was fine. Then you dig in there. And it turns out your parents had undiagnosed depression, and they were yelling at you all the time. And you just thought that was normal. So it's, yeah, there's a lot missing. You don't I mean, and it takes sitting in that therapy chair for someone to say no, no, that was definitely abuse or you know,
Anne Sherry 29:41
it can it truly you know, so I am the there is a Yeah, like, and again, we've said this physical and sexual abuse, awful, awful, awful, right? But it's like, okay, we can it is something that we could focus on this emotional abuse because It's so feels to me it's so reinforced by our culture of, you know, like, be the best industrial, you know, be industrious perfectionism when, when anybody feels like they have really extreme responses, but I'm, you know, I'm, I always did make great grades and but I'm just empty, then I'm like, there we've got emotional abuse and it's really delicate because being able to pull apart this respect, there's a lot of loyalty to parents who maybe worked really hard, or I can't just I would imagine culturally not being able to disrespect parents or, you know, Pete, that these were broadening getting much more sensitive to cultural pieces here. And not just saying like, well, your parents sobbed, you know, so you wait. Culturally, it's important, like, Well, God that's stopped, you know, then that's like, like you, there's this judgment piece that will come up so much more sensitivity around well, what is the person's experience? You know, in the present moment, as you speak about this experience, what's happening? Oh, my chest is really tight. I feel like I want to cry, or, you know, and it's just a lot of this, at some point, not autopsy in the past, like so much, you know, like, and get the person to say this is what's been helpful for me is to bring in this larger experience of America of America, that had a big impact. So just keep an eye on what's wrong with me what's wrong with me? And like, you know, we have to talk about this, this big piece, right? You know,
Yin Ling Leung 31:35
Allison, you're, you're, you're a photographer. So you know, about aperture. And yeah, and I feel like that's kind of what it was like, for, like, when you think about the aperture, you you're focusing on the individual and what they're struggling with, yeah, widen the aperture you and I think in in really good meditation and really understanding the larger context, you begin to see oh, what I my parents were just trying to survive, yes, larger picture. And look at all the factors that went into their trauma and their historical issues. That impacts not only me, my siblings, but my extended family. Yeah. And by understanding that larger context, you not that you take the blame off of, you know, what happened to you. It's just really understanding and there's a AHA to it, right? Yes. And then you will, like, you know, I need to heal individually, but my community needs to heal.
Alison Cebulla 32:30
Yes. And
Yin Ling Leung 32:33
the political structure needs healing and right. So that's what I love about your, your dialectic between the two of you seem together, those two kinds of healing. And I feel like that's my work to like, I tried to be really big picture on the data that every data point is somebody's life, that as a whole, we're looking at, look at all this uncontrolled diabetes, or look at all the folks who have really, you know, good coverage to insurance, but they're still having bad outcomes like, like, adverse childhood events.
Alison Cebulla 33:08
There's some historical trauma there. If you dig deep enough, why? Why are people getting the help they need and the care they need? And that's the needle stop moving. Look, and there's historical trauma in there somewhere, you know, and even j, the immigrant experience in general, which is the foundation of the whole United States is traumatizing, just like you're saying in leaving your home communities, leaving your grandparents leaving your extended family, and coming here where you know, no one that is a trauma experience. And that is the story of every American. Yeah.
Anne Sherry 33:41
and I were just so bad at saying welcome. We know, oh, my goodness. Liberty tries says something about it. All that? I don't know. It's all it all looks good. It's all you know, like, and I remember in the 70s with the Vietnam and Cambodia, we had a lot of refugees come to Spartanburg, South Carolina, you know, and they lived in this,
Alison Cebulla 34:09
like, My example is gonna be about Cambodia. So I want us to go back. Okay. Okay. But
Anne Sherry 34:14
I mean, it wasn't until I was in like, I don't know, I got a story, like in art and poetry, like so that was happening. And we used to be like, oh, you know, I hate to admit it, but I grew up in the 70s. And it was like, Oh, the, that neighborhood over there. That's where they, you know, we just had, and they would be in school together eating, we would just all these little bouquets of separated communities. And then there was a poetry thing and senior year or something, and I had a story published and then in that, that art teacher had written had done a section on those immigrant kids and what their experience was like, and they wrote it in their language there. It was, like, written out and then typed on the next page, and I was like, oh, Whoa, whoa, why did we not why I'm a senior? And that, you know, judging all of it, because that's all we need to do is judge and oh, yeah, cool now like, yeah. And then I was like, Oh, my goodness, we really could have used some social and emotional like, let's not know that none. There still isn't much. I know there's some coming, I do have a lot of hope. Yeah. And when you were speaking of the younger people, the younger activists you work with that they just have that naturally in their bones and just do it without like, of course, we take care of each other. You know, it's like, oh, well, we didn't you know, we didn't know how to do that. So, yeah, we bought
Yin Ling Leung 35:39
into the bootstrap ideas really our fault. We're not working Friday about
Anne Sherry 35:45
a multi level marketing messages. This country is built on yah, yah, yah. Yah, to measure this.
Alison Cebulla 35:55
So yeah, when I told you this example, a few weeks ago, when you and I were just talking about that film that I watched the Donut King. I want to see that Yeah. And this is what got us talking about economic violence because and like the vast web of global interconnected systems, because the film was made by an Asian American filmmaker, which is so great, and we need more of that. And I think it's on Hulu. And it documents this one guy who came over to the US from Cambodia and and learned how to do donut shops, and he that he learned how to do it really well. So he kept sponsoring visas for people to come over from Cambodia to open donut shops. And California has the most amazing doughnuts in the whole world. They are so good. They're way better than that Dunkin Donuts crap on the East Coast. And Dunkin Donuts tried many times to infiltrate California, they couldn't do it, the Cambodian donut shops one out, and they still exist today. And we have many in our community and they're amazing. Slow, DOKO is is this new hip one. And it's made by kids of immigrants. And so they're they're still Cambodian, but they're young. And they re energize the whole thing. And it's like a very modern experience. And so the filmmaker made sure to in the film to say this was this person winning the American dream, and and helping all these Cambodians win the American dream. But in my head, I was like, I want the full picture. So what was happening outside? Look into that you
Anne Sherry 37:22
don't take a platitude.
Alison Cebulla 37:24
Well, what was happening in Cambodia of why there were so many immigrants was the camera Rouge took over and when there was mass genocide, and then I thought, and they do touch on that in the film. And so but but it was portrayed in the film as though the American America came to the rescue. But when you look at the origins as to why the camera Rich was able to take over, it had a lot to do with American involvement in Vietnam. And, and so it really turns that story on its head of like, did we come to the rescue? Or did we create the situation whereby a dictatorship, and a genocide could happen there for displacing all these people who would have loved to stay at home, and instead making them have to flee and come to the United States, and really struggle? And just like you were saying, Yeah, and I've just working 24/7 putting their kids to work and the donut shops, that's why a lot of them were so profitable is because they didn't stop working ever. So anyway, yeah. And I was wondering if you wanted to speak to, you know, to any of those themes, yeah,
Yin Ling Leung 38:25
it goes back to this economic violence term, I learned from a community organizing friend. And I was like, wow, that's, that's a really good framework, to think about what happens to migrant communities. Right. And, and they're structurally they, they, what economic violence is, is is, you know, one group of people being exploited. You know, because they have some legal constraints as undocumented people, or they're here as immigrants. And so therefore, you have no safety net, and therefore you work in these horrific conditions in order to survive, right. And I think the the Cambodian situation and the story of the donut shops is kind of the the the Cambodian version of Chinese restaurants, right. It's a My family was a part of that Chinese restaurant story, and so many folks, you know, you'll hear it over and over again, about their children working, and I did too, right. You got
Alison Cebulla 39:30
to do your parents at a Chinese restaurant. Yeah. And the
Yin Ling Leung 39:33
only way I could bond with my parents was to become like them, which was work all the time, you know. And the American economy, capitalist economy, rewards overwork and baked workaholism. So in some ways, you can like Pat, you know, like Asian model minority crap.
Alison Cebulla 39:52
Yeah. So I guess we can we define that term for our listeners? What's Asian model minority? Yeah.
Yin Ling Leung 39:58
So you know, this whole thing of Oh, and it's used in that whole racial hierarchy in America right? Which is, well, if Asians can make it, why can't the brown and black people do it and, and look at their, you know, census data stuff, but you know, but Asians also have the highest widen widest disparities between the rich and the poor got it within a group and the underlying story of what went into that so called success story, right?
Alison Cebulla 40:35
Yeah. What Why didn't you? Uh, yeah.
Yin Ling Leung 40:39
Well, you know, I think one way to survive was you over certify yourself. So you see Asian folks with, like, loading up on their college degrees to do something that they, the majority white community doesn't have to have those kinds of degrees to do. Right. Or, or you have a degree from the old country, but then you you end up working in a restaurant? Because nobody will hire you.
Alison Cebulla 41:07
Yes, yes. Yeah. So you
Anne Sherry 41:10
talk about the multilevel marketing. Schemes, are they because we're coming with very high degrees or a lot of? Yeah, just a lot from a country. They're the country of their origin. And then they come here, and they're working nothing wrong with working and low wage jobs, but they're like, Oh, this isn't gonna get it. And they don't they can't work. Yes, that well, they're like, Okay, I'll sell doTERRA or whatever, right? That really sucks up a lot of immigrant.
Alison Cebulla 41:43
But it's all a scam. I think it's really, when it comes to MLMs. To know that 99.9%. And this has been studied and proven 99.9% of people who enter an MLM will lose money. Yes. So it's just a scam. I don't want I never want for us to think that it's to, to use language that would imply that this was a reasonable means of making money for anybody. Oh, it was like, yeah,
Anne Sherry 42:06
it's another it's another way that the American whatever, like, you have to succeed in a certain way. I have relatives scoops up that you do. Yeah.
Yin Ling Leung 42:15
And MLMs? Yeah, it's so sad. And I tried to dissuade them. But it's really hard. I think, mythology that goes into it for immigrants, like the bootstrapping thing, you know, yeah. And so that also leads on, you know, on that, if the good stuff is you're already a risk taker, so you by migrating and
Alison Cebulla 42:42
low, that's a great point, right? So
Anne Sherry 42:44
good point,
Yin Ling Leung 42:45
you are lucky you might get into a donut shop, and it has a real kind of there is some correspondence between your work effort and your outcome, right? Or do you get sucked into sucked into the MLMs? Right. So I think that's the hard. That's the hard stuff to talk about. Yeah. Like the gambling in Asian communities, the gambling, addictions that go on, and
Alison Cebulla 43:11
these are pretty that comes up and Donut King that comes up? Yeah, yeah. So tell us more about that. It's, it's pretty prevalent, right?
Yin Ling Leung 43:19
I mean, even my dad, I mean, luckily, he was a really great Magellan player. And so but the, you know, had he lived near a casino environment. Yeah. Or, you know, horse races or dog race lottery things I bet we would have. A lot of our family economics would have been getting gotten sucked out. But Hawaii doesn't have those things. So yeah, fortunately, but I know that in a lot of Chinatown communities, you know, lotteries, or horse races, just suck giant chunks of money out of the community. That's
Alison Cebulla 43:52
so interesting, right?
Anne Sherry 43:54
Yeah. So from a therapeutic standpoint, in this internal family systems that I practice, which you and I can maybe share offline, we linked to it all the time. But just briefly, there is this sort of, we come with these, like we get there's wounds, like I don't belong, I'm not enough. But that's too painful to feel. And so we have that what it looks at is this sort of constriction release. So the restriction would be the perfectionism the working hard, but you can't sustain that so much. So you really have it's really important to have for the system to rebalance. If it doesn't, is to have like these reactive, reactive things like gambling or drinking because it's exhausting to just go go go go go all the time and what it's designed to do, what we real healing is can we get this protective system that to relax itself a little bit and so the individual piece would be to say, Gosh, what happened? You know, well, I, I miss my grandparents. I'm alone, you know, To work with that material, and that takes some time. So you gotta respect some of this because there's a lot of judgment, you know, on the, the intensity of the negative behaviors, but really, it's like, I gotta balance. I like work a million hours a day. I need an outlet, you know, so
Alison Cebulla 45:19
So the mosh song was your dad's outlet? Yeah. And oh, yeah, yeah.
Anne Sherry 45:25
But yeah, you're right. If you mix that with communities where it's easy access to lottery tickets, or easy money or paycheck schemes, or you know, like that, it's just that the, whoever the people at the top, that tip top, that little eye on the pyramid on our dollar, whatever. They are ready to swoop in and be like, Oh, let me give you some money for that paycheck at you know, 30% or 80% or something. I'll get you your money early. So, so exploitative. Yeah,
Yin Ling Leung 46:00
yeah. Yeah. Like the hanging on to that little hope that things will get better.
Anne Sherry 46:07
I play lotto. I'm just gonna come out like I do get me a lottery ticket every once in a while. I do
Alison Cebulla 46:13
not like to gamble, end up gamble. I just I look at the odds. And I go, these are not in my favor. And that's not fun to me. But I fell
Anne Sherry 46:20
for it. You can't you can't win if you don't play. Yeah.
Yin Ling Leung 46:26
How I don't, because I think I saw the damage it did in my own community. Right. And I, I think I have a little bit of that anyway. I mean, that's what makes me an entrepreneur. And I, I like starting up nonprofits because I have that little bit of risk. I like that risk taking side of me. Okay, I try to write about, yeah, I tried to control it by, by that I, but I understand it, I really do. Well, I
Anne Sherry 46:54
say I'm gonna I'm gonna take the money and like, figure out a way to like, burn down the system, you know, or, or do like, you know, you're just
Alison Cebulla 47:03
gonna buy a bunch of chocolate and
Anne Sherry 47:05
chocolate paradise. I dream of like, you know, micro loans or I don't know, so anyways, it's I could just, like, forego all like, listen to that inspiration and then work in my local community for my good to set up a microloan whatnot. So I want to I want to help quickly and be a win all the money and then went all the money and yeah, and then help. Yeah.
Alison Cebulla 47:29
But, okay, this is exactly what we're talking about today, all of us is that mindset of let me win big, you know, that the immigrants like it's like a classic us story. And it's, it's, I think it's from different mythologies and that sort of thing. I just, I just read a book called jackpot, which I frickin love, I'd recommend looking at the the American mindset of wanting to win big. And what actually happens to people who do win big, it's usually actually really bad, usually ruins all their relationships, and they end up just as they were before, or a little bit worse. But, um,
Anne Sherry 48:07
there's even a show on HGTV lottery winner, like the dude takes the lottery winners and helps them buy a home. It's awful. I mean, we just so much HGTV all these shows are like Hoarders, you know, it is hoarding is a is an anxiety disorder, and they go in, and like, what I was talking to is some level of protection, even though we don't understand it, or we're like, oh, how could you live like that, but it is an extension of the person that's trying to make them feel safe, you know, and they go in and just rip out people's homes or like, we're helping you, you know, as the person is coming apart at the scenes in the front yard, you know? Yeah. And therapists going like, Clint, it's good. Look how clean it is. So good, you know? Like, why don't you trust the person or trust some experts to like, be with what's happening here? Could we get curious, we don't like things that look yucky. So we're like, just clean it up, you know? And then there'll be good and why aren't you good? Well, because you haven't addressed the depth of the trauma in the person this piece on you guys were just talking about the all these studies and like diabetes, and truly it's like we and I think we kind of covered this with Alicia but it's like, if you don't if you don't, if you don't look at sort of the fractal, I think inside the one individual and heal that and heal that. No amount of the big sort of let's word look how much the community loves you if they can't take it in. If there is a there's a core belief. I am not loved based on a set of experiences. Nothing's gonna take you know, nothing's gonna get mad at it. Why can't you take the help?
Alison Cebulla 49:55
Well, I did. That's a perfect segue to what I wanted to ask you next which is that in, in all, you know, measures like you would be considered a success story of the American dream. Your parents came over, you said they were working class, they owned a Chinese restaurant. But you have gone on to get a college degree. I mean, you had you have a kid at MIT. Like, this is the ultimate right? This is the American dream. Um, why do you think what were some of the factors that maybe led to? You kind of say, making it, you know, in a way? And then, you know, and then as a contrast, what maybe what were some of the consequences of that?
Anne Sherry 50:40
The personal healing pieces, too, if I might throw in there.
Yin Ling Leung 50:43
Yeah, you talked about those protective factors, I have to say they're two protective factors. One was my neighbor, Mrs. Dias, Portuguese Catholic woman, probably as different from my family, as I could imagine, in Hawaii in that way, right. We're Buddhist, and she's Catholic, but just one of the most loving people. And she was the person I talked to across the flower beds, while my family was going through this, you know, survival mode. Oh, my gosh. So, you know, one of the things I try to teach young activist is that your mentors or the people who can help you may not necessarily look like who you expect, and that they come in many forms, right. So. So that was Mrs. DS, but also I got really lucky. I also structurally, Hawaii was wonderful, because the union movement was really powerful. And so public schools, at least when I was growing up, were really strong. And my teachers and school were my refuge, and the library, the public library, that are free to all kids. So as a latchkey kid, I would go to library after school, and just read and speak into different worlds and imagined things that were possible lived by other people. Right? So that really opened up my sense of possibility, even as a working class kid, that oh, yeah, of course, I can go to college. Oh, a lot of people go to college and. And then I went to Oberlin College, which is like talk about aperture opening. Like, blew a lot of my sense of the world have much bigger and had wonderful teachers there. So all these unmet needs, I got MIT along the way. And I got really lucky. I got really lucky, I wouldn't say. And I would say lucky. Because structurally, Hawaii's more welcoming, I would say to immigrants than other other places.
Alison Cebulla 52:56
Interesting. Okay, that's interesting.
Yin Ling Leung 53:00
And so, I got lucky, I will say, you know, the RSA, like, I talked about, like, even a bigger aperture opening is really understanding the role of settler communities like Chinese and Asians and how we're used has really made me smarter about wanting to do things differently, because the typical thing would be go into one of those economically secure jobs, doctor, lawyer, engineer, yeah, you know, kinds of stuff. Or these days, it's going to tech and the, you know, get rich quick. Yep, stock options. Yeah. But overland may be like, well, like, what's it what is uh, what life well lived. And so that's how I became an underpaid community organizer. And really not to see the larger structural issues, I got to spend 15 years working with other people who are trying to improve the system. And that actually got me into thinking about the health care system that's that's what made me and my partner in life work on this this thing called American health care, and how can we improve the disaster?
Alison Cebulla 54:22
It's faster what we're doing. Episode Yeah, because that's a disaster. Yeah.
Yin Ling Leung 54:32
I think I got lucky and I had lots of individual help and then structural help. And I said, Well, how do we make How do we grow this because, you know, it shouldn't just be this narrow thing and by chance I happened to have these great people around into my life. We really should expand those great structures and people availability
Alison Cebulla 54:56
those be so but going to Overland sounds like a big piece. How'd you end up? I mean, Overland is like where all my Hippias friends went to college, you know, and one of your kids is no less. How did you end up there?
Yin Ling Leung 55:10
Okay, so confession time, please. I think growing up with my mom being kind of a just through disciplinarian types parent and okay, I needed a way to run away from home. Yes, but in a legitimate way. So I feel like that's the like, Chinese immigrant kid way of running away from home, like go to a college as far away that my parents
Alison Cebulla 55:37
ended this year. Yeah. And I
Yin Ling Leung 55:41
was, yeah, it was just college to her. And I said, um, so that was one one thing. Amazingly, my elementary school principal, who was a very progressive person, also went to Oberlin.
Alison Cebulla 55:59
See, there's just random chance sometimes really? Yeah. And I
Anne Sherry 56:04
think, did that person speak to you about overland as you were trying to, or just it was kind of a neat,
Yin Ling Leung 56:10
you know, I didn't know until later I'd it wasn't because something something
Alison Cebulla 56:16
because it would have to be on your radar. That's something you can apply if you don't know it exists so far away. And
Yin Ling Leung 56:22
most, it's what I grew up with didn't get to go to college, you know. So, high school graduation is a big celebration in my school, because that's a big marker, ya know? So, I seize that opportunity, because I wanted, I wanted more, but I also wanted to
Anne Sherry 56:45
and I don't think I similar I'm like, wow, some parallel stuff going on here. You know, I did that the whole piece. My I didn't, I didn't have grandparents. My My parents were youngest of seven and 10. They were gone. They were sort of in the very rural South, they grew up with no money, you know, outhouses, like, no electricity, like here. And so they were kind of felt sort of immigrants to modern culture, I guess they were the first ones to really go to college. But that piece that we were, and so I don't know, this, you're just kind of left out there to sort of what influences come to you. And I remember, for me, it was the the three panel brochure of a boulder, you know, university got so I grew up in South Carolina with 1500 miles to University of Colorado, you know, but I was like, I don't know, I'm looking, you know, as far
Alison Cebulla 57:40
as I was a little hippie spot, just like over last. Yes. Yeah. It's very, I
Anne Sherry 57:44
mean, it was like we had, you know, like, we had one guy in our town with long hair. And we were like, Jeff is girl, you know, that's how I know. And I hit boulder. And I'm like, Wow. You know, but I think to for myself, it was getting out of I didn't understand how challenging the racial segregation in the South was having. It didn't make sense to me, you know, and I needed I, what I now realize is I went to a lovely liberal white enclave, and I was like, Oh, this, it made sense to get away. But it also was like, I didn't have to face how horrible racial segregation was in the 70s and 80s. You know, the northern
Alison Cebulla 58:25
northern places in the US are often more racist than the South, we have been doing this series at work historical trauma. And this is a tangent. So I'm gonna be super quick. But like, yeah, like Wisconsin is has some of the most racial segregation and we just saw with the Kyle Rittenhouse thing, and that was Wisconsin, some of the worst education and health outcomes for black people like Midwest, you know, and other northern places are sometimes often more racist than the South and I just want to throw that out there. So just because you have this house,
Anne Sherry 58:56
I got it. I have to think that like just generations of not giving a shit about people, we're really starting to see that people are tight, like Reagan, really looking at Reagan dismantling all the social programs, you know, but like, we're seeing the generational impact of just people not feeling cared for it is dystopian, like, the US system to people like in Canada.
Alison Cebulla 59:22
I love yours. Love you say. But wherever the grandmas journey, I mean, it's like we're like a grandma LIS society. I mean, we're really cut away and
Anne Sherry 59:32
it has a huge impact to say you are on your own. Yeah. And
Alison Cebulla 59:37
what are you hopeful about? Yes.
Yin Ling Leung 59:40
You know, I really it is about what I mentioned earlier about young young people. I love working with young activists and younger people because they they teach me about how to be bigger. My own children teach me how to be bigger. You So your word is neglect. I, I think my I knew something was going right when my daughter was six or seven. She came up to me and she said, Mom, I don't want to be overcorrected. Because you know, I go, What do you mean? She goes, Well, I just want to be neglected. You know, I don't want to be neglected. But
Alison Cebulla 1:00:31
that can cutest thing I've ever heard. Can you define these terms for us? What is
Anne Sherry 1:00:37
your daughter? Oh,
Yin Ling Leung 1:00:39
because I think what it meant was, I was probably being a little bit of a helicopter parent to her worrying too much. Oh,
Alison Cebulla 1:00:44
did I get it? Yes, I love it.
Yin Ling Leung 1:00:49
neglected. To be neglected. Just gotta go. Oh, okay, that's good. She doesn't feel neglected.
Anne Sherry 1:01:01
Just right, mom. Did you quit? Can you heal yourself so that I can just go out into the world? Yeah. Yeah, that's funny.
Alison Cebulla 1:01:11
I love that good. I
Yin Ling Leung 1:01:11
hope that, you know, I that me and other folks if we can recognize where we were heard and then not pass it on. So that was really important to me that I not let my workaholic tendencies you know, and my worries and anxieties really affect how I parent that that my own children would grow up more whole. I'm by no means am I you know, a perfect parent. But that I I think they see me trying. And I
Anne Sherry 1:01:47
mean, if you just be authentic, I think that's what he's saying. Like, can we get into relationship without that our children and be honest and sort of speak for our stuff. My nine year old old he I've talked about what the ways that I you know, when he's really upset that I will get right in there because I was left alone to cry until I passed out at times. I mean, I was I was kind of wild but and so you get in
Alison Cebulla 1:02:12
his face and he wants you to back off. You're collecting him that time now. We're commandeering that term Yes.
Anne Sherry 1:02:22
Yeah. And it's ours tell you it was is trademarked and your family. Oh,
Alison Cebulla 1:02:27
what's your daughter's name? My my thank you my six or seven?
Anne Sherry 1:02:38
They know. Oh, we need we need a recipe don't we? Okay,
Alison Cebulla 1:02:42
yeah, we need we need a we need a latchkey recipe from you. So what did you use to make when you're little and then I want to just ask you like, you know, healing healing journey tips, or maybe like one thing that you had done for yourself that helped you heal your childhood? Those are the two things that I would love to ask you about.
Yin Ling Leung 1:03:04
You know, we didn't have much materially but I lived across the street from the Boys and Girls Club of Hilo. And there's a big expansive lawn out there with palm trees and I would say we would play with the palm the fronds that would fall these you know, so when mom and dad was off, we cross the street and just play there. And I think being in nature has been was healing things for me. It was quiet. It was green. And I think actually, that's what we need to to one of the structural things we need to give to all kids more outdoor time. Yeah. So that was my you know, that was my play thing or the little recipe for for having that and working on flowers with Mrs. DS across the across the border, you know? Yeah. Yeah. What did you
Anne Sherry 1:04:07
cook like?
Alison Cebulla 1:04:11
Food wise? Yeah.
Anne Sherry 1:04:12
I love that. I love what you shared.
Alison Cebulla 1:04:14
A recipe was amazing. Yeah, but heal your healing recipe. Yeah, no. Well, I wasn't allowed
Yin Ling Leung 1:04:21
to cook too much because it was a gas stove. A very old gas stove and so like you actually had the light it was
Anne Sherry 1:04:29
matches with yarn yard. Yeah, but I wouldn't
Yin Ling Leung 1:04:33
really weird sandwiches because because that's that's what we had. No, and put like, some Chinese spices that were probably not meant for sandwiches. That's America this can this thing called fried days, which is really You're working class kind of. It's a kind of fish, a salty fried fish that's canned. Okay. And you could open it and eat it straight from the can and
Anne Sherry 1:05:09
choke and not like them. Okay. Yeah, kind of like agile
Yin Ling Leung 1:05:13
but they were fried and then soaked in oil and yeah, just
Anne Sherry 1:05:19
some Chinese stuff. This is a fresh bread, right?
Alison Cebulla 1:05:24
What's your white bread? White? bread? White bread?
Yin Ling Leung 1:05:27
Bread in Hawaii was loves brand white bread.
Alison Cebulla 1:05:33
Do you guys just have to ask this? We
Anne Sherry 1:05:35
got a lot of parallels. So I meant like amazed that you're in Hawaii. We're I was probably in Columbia, South Carolina at that time,
Alison Cebulla 1:05:42
bread balls.
Anne Sherry 1:05:43
Did you ever do like, oh, you take the crusts off the white bread and mash it down into a ball like about us? Yes. Are you did you do that? And we would I could eat a whole loaf. Goodness or noon? Yeah.
Yin Ling Leung 1:05:55
No. And then I remember going to the you know, when you go to the grocery store, you squeeze the bread? Yes. The show was the softest loaf. Bring it home. It meant you could make those wonderful. puffy. Across the miles
Anne Sherry 1:06:11
Oh. There was there is see this is proof that there's consciousness. So if we start putting it into the into that field of you know, if we start healing that field, then that information goes into the those that don't have it. When I went to
Yin Ling Leung 1:06:31
college, Ohio the whole thing of these crusty hard bread. Like, like, I was like, this is supposed to be good bread. It's supposed to be off my class. I really reveal my class.
Anne Sherry 1:06:45
Oh, yeah. Yes. Yeah.
Yin Ling Leung 1:06:48
Bread they're serving, right?
Alison Cebulla 1:06:52
Yes, that's hilarious. I did not do the bread balls. I knew the kids that did those. And I thought it was gross. I was an OCD kid. And I was like, You can't touch. Don't touch your phone like that. Don't matter. Yeah. Oh, no, no, no.
Anne Sherry 1:07:06
They call it now is you buy probiotics, but we were doing probiotics.
Alison Cebulla 1:07:13
Right. It's a protective factor
Anne Sherry 1:07:15
it completely ringworm, like the worms that you get from running in the dirt. Yeah. That make your butt itch? At all? Yeah. Yeah. Hawaii. I
Yin Ling Leung 1:07:24
would say one more. Sandwich thing was spam sandwich.
Alison Cebulla 1:07:27
I was gonna ask. I was gonna ask if you did spam. Yeah.
Anne Sherry 1:07:31
The way the ken rolls off like exactly with a T. Yes. I was like
Yin Ling Leung 1:07:41
military dogs award time. Yeah.
Anne Sherry 1:07:44
Right. Yeah, yeah. Bam. Yeah, that was expensive stuff
Yin Ling Leung 1:07:49
for families. But it was there when you couldn't cook. Yep.
Alison Cebulla 1:07:54
So thank you so much, and for sharing your very particular and important perspective on immigration, the American dream or like, she said that with like, the American nightmare. I like what I love about your story is like, you felt there were nurturing places for you here. There was good education. There were good books. And you found your way. And you went into community organizing of like, how can I make an impact? And how can I how can I create and that's part of that's the good part of the American dream? How can I create something even better, you know, that's part of it. And so your story is very inspiring. And I'm just so grateful for you to be here today sharing this with our listeners, because yeah, I just yeah, I'm very inspired by how committed you are and how I can always feel how much love you have. For other people and building community. It's like something that I personally don't feel like I have a lot of access to I tend to be a lot more cynical and a lot more wanting to push people away. But you Your personality is like you want to bring people in and I just really admire that about you. Oh,
Yin Ling Leung 1:09:16
that's really sweet Ellis Thank you. I worked hard on that.
Alison Cebulla 1:09:19
So yes,
Anne Sherry 1:09:20
I'll work on you Alison. You're making me more aware of like the structure and I'll we'll work on your self love. Yeah. Are
Yin Ling Leung 1:09:28
you organizing quite a mess? lately? You are a center of gravity for a lot of things in your life.
Anne Sherry 1:09:35
emotional neglect talking. Yes. I believe part of you. I'm sensitive that part of you. But yeah, you say that to me all the time, too. I'm like, I don't know how to talk. To an accountability buddy with emotion. thunderclap, somebody who will who will honestly reflect back the ways that you're sort of criticizing yourself?
Alison Cebulla 1:10:06
Yes. So yeah, so um thank you,
Anne Sherry 1:10:10
Kellyanne. We have trouble ending we like find one more topic.
Alison Cebulla 1:10:14
I want to talk all day I want to I can talk to you and all day and luckily I get to talk to you a lot, which is such a blessing. So I'm so thank you so much. Yeah, and I'll see you soon and yeah, okay. Okay,
Anne Sherry 1:10:28
bye
Transcribed by https://otter.ai