(Photos of the camping trip of incredible mountains, trees, body of water. And on the right, I created a piece inspired by the view with watercolors and charcoal - I used the water from Lake Louise for the watercolor.)

[ Scroll to the bottom to watch the visual version of this post ]

In September 2016, I went on a 10 day camping trip with friends through Glacier National Park to Banff National Park…it was so epic. We pitched our tents at a new location every night. I remember waking up to the scent pine trees, forest dirt, and fresh rain. The smell was intoxicating. Love the rain, but it’s hard to set up camp during rainfall and it’s not really fun when you’re cold and wet. It was way colder than we expected, and I was unfortunately a little unprepared for that part. On top of that it was kinda rough to depend on park showers and bathrooms every single day. But it was so worth the adventure being amongst such awe-inducing nature.

(Photos of me making art in my apartment soon after that trip.)

Something I revisit weirdly often is the euphoric experience when I got back. The first 24 hours back in my studio apartment were out of this world. It was like I was high! The first hot shower in a clean bathroom. The first night in my fluffy warm bed. The first change into clean clothes. The first skincare routine not from travel bottles. The first day without having to talk to anyone. I was having an out of body experience. Pure bliss.

The novelty of my being at home was so visceral for me that I can almost feel it right now 10 years later.

In that same era, I learned about hedonic adaptation (or treadmill), which is the human phenomenon of always needing to “up” our experiences to get to our previous level of enjoyment.

For example: the first time going to the lake was so magical…I felt like I could do it every day and not get sick of it. So the next time, I brought my favorite chilled drink and loved it, but sitting there, I already knew that I wanted to bring a camping chair next time. So then, I do that…and then it would be cuter if I also had food. So suddenly, the magic of being by the lake without anything doesn’t exactly have the same shimmery feeling, because I need the other elements. There’s nothing wrong with bringing a drink or snack to the lake, but it demonstrates how fast our sense of awe or gratitude can evaporate.

Another way to see it is this chase for novelty, and by definition, novelty can’t really be experienced in repetition. The only way to combat it is to create a contrasting experience. In this example, to not go to the lake for a while, and enjoy level 1 again. Or go back to level 1 and intentionally invite the feeling of gratitude and awe.

Back to my camping trip, I felt euphoric in my apartment, because I was experiencing novelty. My norm for the past 10 days was setting camp in the rain, really cold uncomfortable nights, a hard sleeping mat, dirty bathrooms, cold showers, and constant socializing. So coming home of course felt like heaven. I moved my baseline.

I think our bodies, our nervous systems, our psyche, are always looking for a balance of safety through routine and novelty.

We want to feel settled in day to day life and not have to use our executive thinking all the time, because decision fatigue is so draining. AND we also want to feel like we are alive and can use our agency in experiencing new things.

For some of us, we might gravitate towards seeing the mundane as dangerous…like it’s a sign that we are getting complacent in life. The repetition of life could almost feel like our agency is taken from us. That is especially true under capitalism when most of us are forced to labor in order to have a roof over our heads. So much agency is stolen from us with that piece alone. It could feel so suffocating and depressing.

While for others, we might see novelty as threatening to our safety. Taking risks and experiencing the unknown could feel completely outside of our capacity. When life is already so unknown, it sometimes doesn’t feel worth shaking up everything without a certain outcome. This could play out with big life decisions, but it can also show up in small ways. Like saying yes to hanging out with a friend. Or finding a new hobby. This could induce feelings of anxiety and wanting to hide away.

Either way we are always doing the math on whether something is worth it or not (mostly subconsciously). If the balance is off, our bodies will feel off.

It’s so hard, because arguably for all of us we carry a physical and spiritual lineage of data…of what is safe versus dangerous. I carry what my maternal great-grandfather experienced when he was here on Turtle Island when the railroads were being built. I carry what my paternal grandmother experienced under my abusive grandfather in HK. I carry so many stories that are unsaid that it both haunts me and gives me unexplainable strength.

So as I’m figuring out how to live with integrity while also finding some equilibrium in my body, sometimes I feel lost. Intellectually, I know all the things…how important it is to take care of myself and to witness and grieve…and my body feels wobbly. Compared to a year ago, I have come really far in finding stability mentally and emotionally. And I never want to take that for granted. AND there are days like today when I’m bleeding heavily, I’m feeling tired, and my body feels shaky. This round I feel like crawling into my bed and not wanting to experience anything novel for a bit.

I came across this tiktok of the late Andrea Gibson reciting a few things on their bucket list:

To see through the lens of my spirit, and not the bruised and clouded eyes of my wounds.To wear my heart on my sleeve, and never grow out of that shirt.To be what Mary Oliver called a bride married to amazement, and to not file for divorce from amazement when my life is hard.To know exactly what parts of me are comforted by other people’s approval and comfort those parts myself instead.To know shame can’t live in the light, and let the light fall wherever I am hiding.To reckon with my trauma until it is a poem no longer written in blood.To love my body as if it were my soul’s silhouette.To break the vows I have made to my suffering.To interrupt my judgments, criticisms, blames knowing they are almost always trying to distract me from my own pain.To be guided by giving instead of getting.To live in a bungalow of kindness.To know every leaf, every river, every sunrise is a child saying, “Watch me! Watch me! Watch me!”To live like I’m kissing the universe on her temple.

That feels like the novelty I want to embody more.

There’s a sense of awe that is woven into the most profoundly simple things. There is novelty in the bravery it takes to truly meet myself. There is novelty in being soft enough to receive kindness. There is novelty in having my arms open for the possibility of deeper love.

Capitalism has instilled in our collective intuition that the easiest way to satisfy our novelty craving is to spend money. And oh baby am I sucker for retail therapy. The hit of buying things after a breakup feels healing lol! But the truth is…that kind of novelty is so cheap. A vacation, a fun night out, a splurge isn’t wrong.

But the question is: have we been intentional in carving out feelings of novelty? That helps us heal from capitalism. To help us be reminded we have agency. To give ourselves the jolt of excitement of what is possible. To provide the relief that we aren’t stuck.

(an image of a very cute wholesome breakfast spread from pinterest.)

I want to find novelty in having a slow abundant breakfast with coffee with my honey. Even if it’s every sunday morning.

(a gif of baby peter rabbit being tucked into bed by his mama after a sip of something warm.)

When it comes to finding safety in the familiar, we all need a base of predictability to feel safe in our bodies. When we can find patterns, it’s easier to know how to move. Even if the predictable is somewhat harmful, our systems eventually adapt. Like how our attraction could be based on undesirable traits of our parents, because it feels familiar and predictable (even if the behavior is toxic).

In this corner, surprises are a big no-no. Trauma is something that happens too fast and too big for our bodies to process and digest. It is a shock, a surprise, an unconsensual experience. It makes sense that sometimes we want to crawl into a hole and close off our senses. Everything feels like too much.

Where it goes wrong is when we accept that our window of tolerance is small…and don’t try to expand it with patience. It goes wrong when feeling safe all the time becomes the goal. For white people, I see this way too often, and it’s infuriating. Keeping their peace becomes very very dangerous for Black and Brown people. And any attempt to call out or in…white people’s tears, anger, guilt becomes the center. Their dysregulation becomes the center. It’s exhausting.

How we interpret our body’s signal for danger is KEEYYY! People like saying (aka I like saying) things like “trust your body” or “trust your intuition.” And truuuee our bodies do have alot of wisdom and we do have valuable intuition, but ONLY if we interpret the sensations accurately. Most of the time, our feelings of threat aren’t us physically being in danger. They probably come from the fear of betrayal, feeling shame, being isolated, or playing on a worst possible scenario, forgetting that there are a thousand steps for that to happen. And a tiny percentage of the time, our feeling of danger is right on.

Because I have a history of being serially cheated on, my partner could turn around to walk to the kitchen and my spidey senses would go up. And see it as a “sign.” My brain is so good at coming up with scenarios and predicting the future from one trigger. So then my wiser brain needs to turn on, and talk to my lizard brain…and say “ok you’re feeling activated. Let’s let this sensation pass. And then we can talk about it…between you and me. You know your history, and it makes sense you’re ultra sensitive. But keep it together for a few more minutes.” After that, the sensation passes and I keep on living my life.

Wanting to feel safe is so natural and human, but we get to choose how we relate to discomfort, threat, and danger both perceived and real. We deserve to allocate our energy with precision and not just by default. Life is unpredictable and change is inevitable. Danger is inevitable too, sadly. Allocating our energy intentionally so that we can build the world we want to see and arriving resourced when danger is at our doorstep…or at our neighbor’s doorstep is the goal.

Back to finding safety in the familiar, how I want to embody this is by checking my compass. Where am I going with my liberatory community? How can I strengthen my window of tolerance so that I can take big risks and do scary things that align with the world I want to see?

I went to Nat Vikistreth’s (@comebacktocare) book launch at Women and Children First bookstore the other evening. Raising Change Agents is written for guardians and caretakers of children, and it’s about how to raise young ones from an abolitionist and liberatory lens. I kept on tearing up, because it was so hopeful how Nat was talking about children and what they deserve. I’m tearing up right now thinking about how it filled me so much emotion thinking about how kids deserve to live in a liberated world. Nat talked about how they are our future, and it’s our responsibility to raise them to be able to resist empire and to build the world free of it.

She shared a framework that she uses with guardians with their kids, but I also think it is so applicable to us as adults. It’s getting down to the child’s level when they are about to make a choice…and ask whether it is liberation-smart or survival-smart. She explains how liberation-smarts is collaborative and finds ways where everyone can get their needs and desires met. That way is usually slower and needs negotiating. And survival-smarts are ways we have to behave to survive in the world as it is now. That could look like teaching a kid to be punctual with colonial time, because being on time to school or for their future job is important to survive.

Nat explained how both are important, but at home the goal is to lean more into liberation-smarts as often as possible. It isn’t usually the most convenient or quickest choice for everyone, but it upholds the values we want to instill in children and it positions them to be respected in all of their dignity.

I raised my hand during Q+A, and I asked Nat: How do you navigate the importance of routine (that provides the child with a felt sense of stability) when there might be resistance to keeping the routine (and not wanting to force them into compliance)?

She answered with the example of a bedtime routine that has 3 parts. She said that 2 of the parts should be steady and non-negotiable, but the third part can change based on the child’s preferences. So it’s giving them the agency of changing up the third part that can give them the safety of routine while also giving them some independence.

I loved her answer, because that question was for me. I sometimes go back and forth between being very rigid with myself and then letting it all go to feel free. But her answer reminded me that there is a way to be more thoughtful to give my system safe rhythms while also just enough novelty…so I can land on somewhat of an equilibrium.

I can’t wait to read the book! I’m sure I’ll be sharing more thoughts about it later.

What does Liberatory Imagination spark in me today?

We must find internal grounding so that we can do things that stretch outside of our comfort zone, because resisting empire is very uncomfortable, very dysregulating, and inevitably very dangerous. Coherence with our integrity and what we want to see in the world is the challenge. It is an honor to get closer to aligning it all.

I just read “The Hand That Will Testify” by Mohammad Mustafa:

(the image is a dusty hand of a martyred woman in Gaza, and on her finger is a prayer clicker.)

Look at this photograph. Look at it the way you would look at a mirror. A woman’s hand, gray with the dust of her own home, emerges from the wreckage. And between her fingers still warm with the rhythm of repetition and dhikr. You will see a tasbeeh. She was counting the names of God when they killed her.

Subhanallah. Subhanallah. Subhanallah.

I believe this as a description of how the world actually works. And I believe it not despite the photograph but because of it. Because the photograph contains, in a single frame, both the case for despair and the answer to it. The rubble is the case for despair. The tasbeeh is the answer. The rubble says look what they can do to you. But the tasbeeh says look what they cannot take from you.

Dhikr: Remembrance of Allah

In the face of such evil, Palestinians are steady in their devotion to God. That kind of faith confronts me with the call to never forget why I need to stay steady, work with my body, and work with aligned people so that we can show up for what actually matters.

We must be grounded in the repetitive act of remembering what this is all about. We must never forget our agency and our collective power. From our lives inside our home to global movement, it is our responsibility to never lose sight of what this is all about. Coherence. Some of our seasons will look very quiet (doing the low-to-the-ground work of gaining strength and relational endurance) and other seasons will be very much above ground and action-heavy. It takes faith to take a forward step every day fine-tuning our rhythms and our agency.

How to support me (thank you in advance):

* Buy me a cup of coffee. Every bit counts! You can venmo me at @tiffanywongart with note “From substack!”

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References:EnneagramBook: Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir by Akwaeke EmezeBook: Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-SamarasinhaTiktok about Portland Protestors

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Imagine a door, and behind the door there’s a simple dark room with nothing inside. Before you go into the room, you have to lay these things outside the door:

* All your achievements (school, career, creative projects, goals achieved, etc.)

* All the things you do that you’re proud of (being a loving partner/parent/sibling/child, spiritual growth, acts of service, generosity, studiousness, ways you’ve sacrificed etc.)

* What people love about your personality (humor, charm, boldness, etc.)

* Desirability (how you are perceived from a conventional standard)

And the inverse:

* All of the achievements you don’t have and the goals that aren’t realized

* All the things that you are not proud of (mistakes, betrayal towards yourself and others)

* What people don’t like about your personality

* Ways you don’t fit under desirability politics

Lay each item on the ground outside of the room. Stack them up. Unload it all.

And then I invite you to open the door and enter the room. Where all you’re met with is the stripped-down you.

As you sit with this version of you:

How do you feel?

Are they familiar to you?

What is it like to be in their presence?

What sensations do you feel in your body?

Observe and take note.

All the things outside the door aren’t necessarily you or not you, but in this room you are met with nothing to point to…no plus or minus points that indicate your value. There’s nothing that you can stack to make a case to prove to yourself that you’re a good person or bad person. There’s no math you can do.

So what does it feel to really sit with yourself? What does being in your own presence feel like?

Is it uncomfortable? Does every second feel tense? Do you feel like getting up and exiting the room?

Does it feel amazing to not have all the stuff distracting you from you?

Does it feel void?

Does it feel like a mix of comforting and confronting?

We all love talking about how it’s important to love ourselves. And how we can tell if other people love themselves or hate themselves. And how people’s partners reveal how much a person loves themselves.

But can we be honest with ourselves? Without all the evidence of our sainthood or depravity, do we actually love ourselves unconditionally?

Can we afford ourselves the nuance of being human, where we free ourselves from being net positive?

The energy of getting to net positive ruins the whole damn thing.

There’s nothing to net positive to! That comes from a deeply punitive Christian god (or at least that’s where it stems from for me) where it’s this constant proving or performance of being a righteous and dutiful human.

The thing about proving is that it cancels out the authenticity of a good deed. It nixes the chance of a soulful generosity. It robs us of acting from a deep root of liberation and love.

It’s like giving a gift expecting something back. It robs the giver of the pleasure of gifting from joyfulness, because there are strings attached…and resentment is around the corner if the other person doesn’t obey according to the unspoken rules.

Ironically, if we are going to do the math of our actions and hope to be net positive, the act of trying to be net positive is a negative!

I just came back from 3 weeks in Thailand, and it’s given me an opportunity to look at my life from a different angle. I’m taking inventory.

As I’m witnessing the horrendous attacks in Iran and the murder of so many children and adults, as I’m witnessing the violence against Black and brown people here in the belly of the beast, as I’m watching US/Israel commit mass murder through Palestine and Lebanon and Iran and the list goes on…it’s so clear. The path is totally unknown to me, but the clarity I feel in my body is unshakable. Imperialism and systemic greed is destroying everything physically and spiritually, and nothing is more important than opposing it and painstakingly carving out a new way.

As long as my eyes are fixed on the north star, my role in the broader movement towards liberation for all is fixed. All I have to do is get low to the ground, stay rooted, and make decisions from a place of deep love. (Ew I’m throwing up writing this, but I mean it!)

My true self love where I don’t exist to prove my worthiness or goodness, allows me to generously step into my part (even though it’s murky right now). It gives me permission to do it quietly or boldly or loudly or invisibly…it doesn’t matter, because I’m not doing the math from an internal or external level. What an honor to practice functioning from a place of possibility.

Those things outside of the room are really important. It IS important for us to try our best to be responsible for our time here on earth, to be accountable, to cause as little harm as possible, to do art that shifts perspectives…all those things are what makes up a life. AND where my motivation and drive come from will determine the texture of my path.

I always come back to this, but how are we supposed to have longevity in our communal effort for local and global liberation…if we can’t stand our own presence? The consequence needs to be held with weight. If we are leading from a place where we can’t be in the same room with ourselves, it means that the accountability, the boundaries, the wisdom, the care is off. We have the honor of doing things messily, and I’m not discounting that. There is no perfect moment where we are all healed enough to be in community. But we have to try to do our part.

Self accountability means that you have to go into that room even when no one is watching. No one will affirm you or shame you into it…

It takes drawing from our root to do practices in private so that when we are in relationship and community, there’s more possibility for true care and reciprocity. We need this more than ever right now.

A phrase that keeps on circulating my system after coming back from Thailand is “I’m exactly where I should be right now.” I am exactly in the right place both physically and spiritually.

When I go through that door after I slogged off all the stuff, I feel light. My presence is like sitting amongst a cute swirly airy cloud and my body is firmly rooted to the ground. I don’t always feel like this, but right now I do.

Feeling deep soul peace in the middle of such empire violence is bizarre. I hope to protect this rootedness with my life and for it to guide my every move.

I have so many other thoughts about how truly loving yourself will attract people who want to outsource their worthiness…and also how jealousy looks like love bombing at first. But that’s for another time!

What does Liberatory Imagination spark in me today?

A liberation that isn’t a far-off abstract idea. I want to see the full thing. The small ways it radiates in how I speak to myself, my chosen family, my community. In seeing strangers walking down my sidewalk and knowing they have everything they need. In witnessing the blooming of plant life in my neighborhood. I want to see it SO BIG! I want to know in a house across the oceans where kids are getting ready for school that they are generously afforded a vast future of creativity and discovery. I want to see systems that are put in place not to make the elites richer and more powerful, but truly for the people, where their health is prioritized and their future is abundant. I long to see it and right now I need to be attuned to what is asked of me.

How to support me (thank you in advance):

* Buy me a cup of coffee. Every bit counts! You can venmo me at @tiffanywongart with note “From substack!”

* Subscribe for free (all my posts will be available to the public), but set up a monthly or annual recurring payment with me directly on venmo - @tiffanywongart. Attach the note “Recurring substack subscription.”

LIBERATORY IMAGINATION is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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The thing about being able to see your own inner child and younger parts, is the ability to see other people’s. I can see when their inner children are scared, insecure, ashamed, and ultimately wanting to be seen and loved unconditionally.

LIBERATORY IMAGINATION is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

To be in relationship with other humans, whether it’s in friendship, partnership, or in shared spaces, is bizaaarrrre. It’s universes colliding together, bumping into sharp corners and finding soft landing spots. It’s touching atmospheres and seeing if it will blow up everything in a 10-foot radius or create the most spectacular connection. It’s constant rotation with gravity pulls from different sources.

It’s a miracle that any universe collision works. Especially over time.

I was born into universes. The universes had so many desires and dreams about the direction they wanted to go towards. And my mini universe was in instant orbit. So natural and so easy.

All I needed was physical care and the most infinite and expansive love.

Love that had no bounds.

Love that wasn’t transactional.

Love that transcends history.

Little did I know that colliding with universes isn’t as easy as that, even though every new universe deserves it.

One of my coping mechanisms is the collection of knowledge and escapism through reading.

IF I knew enough, I would be protected. IF I went far away into another world, I would be protected from this dimension. And for a second, it does!

That knowledge has helped me understand myself so much, and is such a great jumping-off point. And the worlds I escape into teach me to expand my imagination to what is possible. But when I close that book and click off the essay, I’m left with the present elements and what is in my orbit…and all the other universes I am in relationship with and the universes I am witnessing.

Right now one of the books I’m reading is What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo, which is about healing from complex PTSD. Reading it is almost spooky. It’s about Stephanie, who is a child of Chinese Malaysian immigrants in the Bay Area. The child abuse she survived feels so familiar…too familiar. Stephanie is brutally honest about how confusing it is to figure out what was real, how severe things actually were, what was normalized, and how much of it has been embedded into her personality.

In college, I went to therapy for the first time. I spent the first month or two recounting my childhood, which was in a haze. I barely remembered anything, and it slowly started coming back to me in bits and pieces. At one point, my therapist stopped me and said, “Do you realize you keep on saying, ‘but it wasn’t a big deal’ over and over again after you tell me an alarming story?”

I’ll never forget that moment, because I started to hear myself say that all the time. My nonchalance was embedded deep into my personality, and I still see it all the time to this day. One time I was having lunch with friends at college, and I mentioned something violating happening to me on the train - my friends stopped me in my tracks with concerned faces and asked why I was laughing while telling that story…I was just assaulted. It didn’t even occur to me that it was anything, because it wasn’t a big deal.

Just like it wasn’t a big deal, because I knew other immigrant kids having muuuuch much stricter and angrier parents.

I watched a tiktok recently that was so basic, but resonated deeply. They basically said that we can respect a person’s dignity and have compassion for all that they have experienced - AND choose to do it from afar relationally.

If you were conditioned as a woman, you were taught that love is self sacrifice. ESPECIALLY if you’re dealing with a man. We were taught that there is virtue in seeing the soul of a person beyond their defensive mechanisms. We were taught that our love can transform people (times 100 if you were a Christian…because you were also taught that God’s love through you can change people.) I CALL B******T.

We were groomed to be abused and to bear it. By men. By authority figures. By work. By empire.

Can I write a paper about how this and that happened to this person, and this is why they do this and that? YES. They are a universe! And that doesn’t entitle anyone to be in relationship with me. (Community is another thing, and I’ll elaborate on that another time.) I’m not only talking about abusers, but people who have poor boundaries and are energetic vampires.

This orientation applies not only to the people above, but also to the people I DO choose to be in close relationship with. The more I love and know my people, the more I see the landscape of their universes. And the more they see mine. It’s a scary thing to be known and loved and possibly rejected. Yet we try, because loving connection is one of the most fundamental human needs.

When I’m witnessing my boo in dysregulation, I see her inner child. I can SEE her. When the inner child makes her way out, I see the baby hairs and the bangs. I see the dark watery eyes. I want to scoop her in my arms and hold her. Tell her I’m here and everything will be ok. Give her sweet kisses on the cheek and ask her if she wants to play a game.

Sometimes I see her inner teen. I see the rage against injustice and wanting autonomy. I see the platform boots and torn black tees. I see through the stomping and can recognize her deep longing for tenderness and respect. I want to say F**K THIS S**T! Go slash those tires and burn the house down while you’re at it.

But I can’t and I shouldn’t.

I know what it’s like to want someone to come into my life and say, “I got it from here. All your healing. Just give it to me. You’re finally safe, and I’ll never leave.” That was a fantasy I was fed since I was a little girl about my future husband. EW. THE PROPOGANDA!!!

Even though I know that’s unrealistic from anyone, there’s truth that we actually do heal through relationships. The key is how we do it. It’s not fair to hand over my triggers and trauma over to someone and say, “LOVE ME FOREVER” without self-accountability. No one owes me unconditional love, but my parents and myself. Actually someone saying they unconditionally love me is a red flag…please have some boundaries.

So when I see my boo’s younger selves, I’m invited to ask myself: how can I love her - the present adult version of her - so that she can reparent her inner children well? My role is to support her to show up for the inner children by making mature adult decisions…not from reactivity of the younger parts. Reparenting means giving our inner children stability in the present and love while acknowledging their big feelings. It means respecting their boundaries and building trust.

Ultimately, my inclination of wanting to reparent other people’s inner children comes from conditioning and is also a mirror to myself.

It pulls me to ask myself: you care so much about other people’s inner children…what about your own? How have you let your younger parts run the show? How attuned are you to them?

It’s so much easier to see someone else’s universe and be like: I can solve all of your problems if you just do xyz. Haha! I love the audacity!

It’s so much harder to look within myself and hold myself accountable. Recently, I feel a bit neglectful of my inner children. I’ve been lethargic in my bed a lot…very reminiscent of depressive episodes my mom had when she was my age.

From just a couple of bits of what I know about my mom, it makes perfect sense how she behaved and coped. AND it was still wrong to treat children like she did. I can hold the complexity of her universe and feel compassion and condemn abuse.

Not all hurt people hurt people. Just because we are all traumatized doesn’t mean that we have the right to traumatize and abuse.

What does Liberatory Imagination spark in me today?

Deep honesty with ourselves. How can we build and invest in a liberated world if we don’t know our own internal landscape - our own universe? If we don’t heal intentionally and do the hard painful work it takes to deepen our love, how can we expect it to work out when our universes collide with other universes? Let me tell you, it doesn’t work! It might work short-term, but actually building people power takes interpersonal maturity and self-accountability. Without this, it’s just liberatory fantasy…a fictional image without any chance to

become reality.

How to support me (thank you in advance):

* Buy me a cup of coffee. Every bit counts! You can venmo me at @tiffanywongart with note “From substack!”

* Subscribe for free (all my posts will be available to the public), but set up a monthly or annual recurring payment with me directly on venmo - @tiffanywongart. Attach the note “Recurring substack subscription.”

LIBERATORY IMAGINATION is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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12.5.24 Journal entry

“I feel the lowest I have since starting my SSRI. It’s freaking me out. I feel so lost. I’m afraid of losing my resiliency, my boo, my sense of self and drive, my purpose. I feel like I’m just here floating. I hate it. I’m so lucky to have everything I need and more, but I’m struggling. Struggling.

My spiritual spark is gone. I don’t recognize myself anymore and I can’t believe it’s come to this place. I feel like people are just moving on and achieving things and I’m left behind.”

I felt this nagging in my spirit, and it didn’t make sense until I pulled out my journal from a year ago. It’s boring how we all say our bodies remember, but it suuuure does. At this point, it barely feels consensual! Every f*****g month my body remembers a trauma from 1, 2, 3, 5, 35 years ago. God damn being alive is exhausting.

As I read my journal entries from last december, my body involuntarily ached right behind my sternum and a sob rose up. I forgot. I forgot how deep in the grief and sadness hole I was. I forgot what it was like to look in the mirror and see a shell of a person. Not one ounce of motivation within a 100 mile radius.

Witnessing genocide in Palestine broke me in ways I had no idea were possible. The documentary-worthy betrayal and violation that my ex committed against me…who even knows how it has changed my DNA. It baffled me that anyone was able to get up in the morning and do work and take care of kids and have fun.

I surrendered to the waves washing me further into the sea. That was the only thing that made sense.

Underneath it all, I remember so vividly that I knew for sure that things would change. I knew change was constant. I couldn’t feel it, but I knew my purpose here on earth in this lifetime. I knew the cold fact that I (and I believe all of us) have the responsibility to do our part in demanding the dignity of all humans, where no one is left behind. While I was drowning, I knew where the water would lead me.

I’m about 2 or 3 here in this photo. The feeling of excitement at that age is like champagne bubbles traveling up to the surface so fast the container might not even make it in one piece! All I can do is jump up and down flapping my hands.

“I don’t remember the last time I was excited,” my mom said this right before a family trip, and it has crystallized into a core memory.

As a young kid, I learned that paying the cost of excitement towards something I was looking forward was too costly. Like clockwork, important dates like birthdays, holidays, and trips were high risk days. I could almost predict that something would set off my mom, and things would be canceled. Even if things weren’t canceled, the tone of the day was probably tense. In the miracle chance things weren’t canceled and she was in a good mood, I would hold a tense smile braced from it all falling to s**t at any moment.

Every day was a negotiation, a bartering, a betting if it was worth feeling excited about.

Being braced and then bored that things didn’t work out has been seared into my body. Every time the other shoe drops, it deepens the track.

Fast forward to now, my body remembers and is braced.

For the past 15 years, I’ve been slowly working on healing my nervous system to be open to the possibility that things could actually work out. I could actually experience safety within myself and in relationships.

Slowly working on my capacity to receive true care and love. Slowly working on showing up for myself first. Slowly working on separating things not working out from it being some kind of punishment.

Talking about punishment, one way christianity has really fucked with me is carrying the weight that everything bad that happens to me is some kind of lesson from the heavens. Somehow, if I were more obedient to God or more faithful to the bible, things would work out more often. That’s such a sad and twisted way to see things, being that the people don’t choose to be poor, unhoused, or have their land colonized. God is so much more expansive than being a bully waiting to teach me a lesson.

Sometimes after enjoying a few days with my boo, I look around as we are dozing off…astonished and terrified that things are working out. It’s a miracle. I mean, it is a miracle our souls found each other, but the fact that we both have chosen each other out of love for ourselves threatens so much of my wiring.

It’s an offront to my baby-me assumption that nothing is worth being excited for.

It’s offensive to this deep body wiring that I have rooted and safe friendships where I feel seen and known.

It erodes the assumption that being bored of things not working out is better than hoping.

My besties, my boo and I try to get out of town a few times a year, and EVERY TIME there’s a part of me that freezes. My inner child is like “you won’t get me this time…it won’t work out and I’m already over it.” And then when we are almost home after a cute time away…I’m confronted with how it turned out exactly how I dreamed. The first time, and then the second…the third time too.

This kind of love and connection with soul-aligned people stretches my imagination of what is possible.

When they say love heals, I had no idea how treacherous it would feel. The battles that I had and have to fight in order to feel at home and at ease in my body are dramatic…like a sword fight where you gasp at every movement because you can’t tell who will win. And sometimes I lose to the fear and the potential loss. But sometimes I win and I get the satisfaction of feeling settled in my body even if it’s for 30 mins.

I have been fighting for my life in order to feel safe within myself…let alone in the company of other people. What a wonder.

Free falling last year into not knowing when things will change was healing. I let things fade away trusting that change is constant. I let go of trying to smile my way through the crumbling. I let go of trying to hold onto the semblance of myself. In turn, I squeezed out of that version of me and revealed a translucent skin me that is more vulnerable to different possibilities. Things haven’t all worked out and they will continue to defy my wishes, but all I know is that it won’t be every time.

The next time I’m called to fall back into the water, I’m going to surrender quicker.

Not out of doom, but out of deep trust.

What does Liberatory Imagination spark in me today?

I wrote this in my substack “Today my Body Remembers,”

A future where we can be soft puddles. Where tenderness is abundant and afforded to everyone. Where vulnerability is respected and honored. Where ingenuity and creativity aren’t spent on how to survive, but on art. Where a leisurely pace is just the default. Where communion with the land is a common delight.

Yes! And where being braced converts to being alert for more possibilities.

One thing I have learned is that our nervous system reads stimuli in a very unbiased way, whether it is dangerous or not. The stress of running away from danger and the stress of running for fun read similarly to our bodies. The stress of confronting someone is similar to the stress of flirting with a crush.

Liberatory imagination sparks in me the ability to discover more possibilities. I don’t need to deny my body, my lived experience, or my defense mechanisms. I just need to get rooted in who I am and what life is about, and jump off tracks I’ve grown out of.

How to support me (thank you in advance):

* Buy me a cup of coffee. Every bit counts! You can venmo me at @tiffanywongart with note “From substack!”

* Subscribe for free (all my posts will be available to the public), but set up a monthly or annual recurring payment with me directly on venmo - @tiffanywongart. Attach the note “Recurring substack subscription.”

LIBERATORY IMAGINATION is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

/ To watch this substack via video recording - scroll to the bottom!/

Loneliness comes in so many shapes and textures. I remember sitting in my bedroom I shared with my sister when I was 7, and I was praying to God for help. The bedroom was (and still is) purple. My sister and I shared bunk beds - the top was mine and the bottom was hers. In the corner of the small room was a desk with one of those deep drawers people used to file papers. In that drawer, I hid my diary where I wrote out so many cries for help. My mom’s nervous system was as sensitive as a mouse trap. It took basically nothing to set her off, and then your day was over.

As I prayed, I felt a kind of loneliness that was suffocating me. There wasn’t anyone whom I could talk to or run to. There was no way out. The air in that room was so thick. The people who were supposed to protect me were the ones hurting me, and they told me it was my fault. That I was the problem.

Fast forward to a few years later, when I was 12 or so…I dreamed of a boyfriend coming into my life and saving me with tender kisses and soft tones. He would say, “Don’t worry about anything, I've got it from here.” How I daydreamed of that moment!

I spent most of my childhood daydreaming about scenes of other timelines. Daydreaming about being light as a feather, floating around without a worry. Daydreaming about relationships that were full of softness and passion. Daydreaming about conversations that were present and understanding.

Above is a screenshot of a video my parents sent me recently. I’m probably 4 years old in this photo. I’m in a daze…probably somewhere else in my head.

I just watched this tiktok, where the creator talked in a very honest way about loneliness. They share how they don’t have a best friend, and when they do try to make friends, it doesn’t feel reciprocal or the other person is mean to them. They go on about how it’s so hard to trust people when the track record is so bad. And then they see these toxic people have all these friends who have their back…in contrast, they have no one. The only times they felt seen were when they had romantic partners.

This video hit a nerve for me, because it felt so deeply human and familiar. The comments are all these people saying they feel like this too. So lonely. Trapped and suffocating from the human need for connection not being met.

It’s so ironic how there are so many humans around, and yet we can be so isolated and hungry for human presence.

It made me think about how the empire is grinning.

Loneliness is such a great way to disarm the collective.

If collectivism and people power threaten the empire structure, loneliness and isolation will strengthen empire.

Cults know this well. Isolation is one of the most effective ways to manipulate people. When you take away a human need, you can then use that need to lure them into behavior you deem fit. We all want belonging, to be seen, to be loved. And we should all have access to those things! That’s the juicy part about being alive.

White supremacy and capitalism are a cult. In the same way christian nationalism is a cult.

How does empire want lonely people to cope? Buy stuff. Spend money. Spend more money to dull the pain. Create parasocial relationships through social media. Be obsessed with getting married and having kids.

It is strategic for empire to block us from the necessary resources towards beautiful relationships. It is strategic that we were fed the message that romantic love is the purpose of life. It is strategic that we were taught that having kids is the only way to ensure that we will be taken care of in old age. It is strategic.

It’s a threat! Do you know how many times people have told me (especially in the christian church) that I should consider more angles of [fill in the blank] topic? Consider more people’s opinions and standpoints. I shouldn’t be so quick to write people off…WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? They are a homophobic/transphobic/bigoted a*****e/etc. WHY WOULD I WANT TO BE FRIENDS WITH THEM????

The threat is that if I keep being strong on my “stances”, I’ll have no one. My mom was advising me not to be so harsh, because I would have no one left. She told me friendships are so much harder to make and maintain when you’re older. I believe it, and in a way she’s not wrong that friendships are hard to maintain. But I resist being friends with certain people at the expense of other people’s dignity.

I’m doubling down.

From my lived experience, the clearer and stronger I am with my values and integrity, the stronger and more tender my relationships become. There are fewer of them for sure! But I’ve never had such resilient and beautiful relationships in my life as in this moment.

I’m not saying that when you’re confident in your values, you will automatically have loving people in your life. Nothing is a given. But what I am saying is not betraying ourselves and our integrity is worth betting on.

I don’t believe that people are disposable, but there are standards on who gets to have close proximity to me.

The standard isn’t perfection, it’s alignment.

I need to be strategic with my relational energy. With consistent low capacity, I need my inner circle to have the same emotional/spiritual maturity as I. And honestly, even outside of my inner circle, there are standards. This oppressive colonial world is pressing down on me so hard, and my energy needs to be used intentionally. No one can convince me that watering down my standards will protect me from being lonely.

I know how it feels to be surrounded by people who say they love you, but be completely alone and isolated.

In contrast, I also know the joy of being physically alone and so content in my relationships.

This past month, I read Love in a F*cked Up World by Dean Spade and Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay Gibson. It is so important that we figure out how to be in relationship with each other as the world is on fire. We need to learn how to be honest with ourselves and one another in tenderness. We need to learn how to keep OURSELVES accountable (thankful for teachers like Mia Mingus). We need to practice breaking relational cycles of fear and past resentment however unfair and unjust.

That’s the only way we can forge a new path towards the world we want to build. We cannot do it alone.

The tiktok made me think about how so many people do not have the tools or opportunities to have healthy relationships. We all have so much trauma both systemically and personally. Even in the examples the creator gives, I can hear that those people who mistreated them also want belonging, but they lack introspection and personal integrity.

In the organizing space, it’s no different. People usually come in with good intentions, but with the combo of little practice of introspection + self-accountability and weak personal integrity…it goes to s**t. It sets off a ping pong of reactions and other people’s triggers. The mission of the space is derailed once again.

We should have access to FREE support around relationships from a decolonial lens.

(Prayyyying that I could be instrumental in that in the future.)

I wish I could transport myself and materialize to little Tiffany and say: You have so many loving people in your future. Relationships you can’t even dream of. You will learn how to love and be loved in such a tender way. You will redefine family in a way that will be so freeing. God will always be with you and for you. You will always have me, and I will fight for a beautiful chosen family for you.

What does Liberatory Imagination spark in me today?

A world where belonging and being truly loved is as ordinary as air. Best friends are abundant. Working through conflict and tension is a given and even a little boring. A world where the responsibility of caring for children and the elderly is so shared that there are no definitions like “biological family.”

I pray that the Sumud Flotilla will safely arrive in Gaza and that the food will be delivered without any killings.

How to Support Me!

I’m going to try something new! For those who don’t know, I run a shop called More Liberation. I’ve been trying to experiment with more ways to figure out how to make rent. So here it is! I’m going to be posting a sticker here every time I write, and you can buy it from me directly.

The vinyl stickers are perfect for water bottles, laptops, notebooks, and light poles.

This Land Back sticker is aprox. 2.5x2”

Cost (shipping included): $5 - domestic. $6 - international.

If you want this sticker:

* Email me [ [email protected] ]:

* Your mailing info: Name + Address

* Design name: This one is “Land Back”

* Venmo me at @ tiffanywongart

(Also, feel free to buy me a cup of coffee through venmo (@ tiffanywongart)!)

Thanks for tuning in!

LIBERATORY IMAGINATION is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

/ To watch this substack via video recording (and also a fun sticker idea) - scroll to the bottom!/

Celebrating birthdays is such a cute ritual, where we gather once a year to say YAY another year around the sun! We eat cake, blow candles, make wishes and hope to do it again the next year.

LIBERATORY IMAGINATION is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This photo above makes me emotional. I’m squished between my mom and dad as they blow out my one-year-old candle on top of a chocolate cake…as I look at it mesmerized. To this day, my parents still wear those tops! The yellow collared shirt my dad is wearing is threadbare in his closet right now.

I feel something stir in me as I look at myself 12 months awake to the world, and I’m here 36 years later writing to make sense of that same world. I feel sad that the world she should have grown up in doesn’t exist. I feel angry for the pain and heartbreak she will experience. I feel thankful that she had parents who loved and cared for her the best they could. I feel relieved for her that she will find her way towards liberation for herself and others. I feel grief. Grief that transcends myself.

I was talking to my friend Chi Nwosu about how every month I think about wanting to come to more peace around my death from a holistic ancestral place. I want to feel connected to my death in the same way I want to feel connected to my life. Chi encouraged me to do just that! Dedicate some time once a month to explore Dignified Death from the Chinese perspective. So I’m doing it, starting with this piece.

I honestly don’t know that much about how my people positioned themselves in relation to death. My parents and my grandparents are/were Christians in the post-colonial era in Hong Kong, so most of my memories of talking about death are from a Christian perspective. Since leaving the Christian world, I’m really not that interested in carrying forward that perspective. I’m more curious about all the other generations before my grandparents.

One of the reasons I’ve put it off is because doing research about China is really hard. There is so much anti communism propaganda, and it’s exhausting to weed it out. But I’m going to try! Bite size pieces. (Also if you know of trusted sources, please let me know. I am not a seasoned researcher and I know alot of you are!)

Happy Funeral: Tearless Farewell By Majorie Chiew

DEATH is a sad, grim affair but when it comes at the ripe old age of 100, apparently it’s a different story altogether. The Chinese do not mourn when an elder who has lived for almost a century passes on. Instead, a quaint funeral rite or siew song (Cantonese for "happy funeral") is held in his honour.

"It is regarded as a happy funeral because the elder is considered lucky to have lived to such an old age. No mourning or crying takes place,” says Ong Seng Huat, vice-chairman of the Federation of Malaysian Taoist Organisations.

According to Chinese custom, three years will be added to a person’s age when he dies. So an elder who was 97 would be regarded as being 100 years old.

After clicking through 30+ links around the topic, I found this random article/pdf that’s mentioned above. It goes on to spell out how Chinese folks traditionally wear white to grieve the dead, but when it comes to “happy funerals,” friends and family wear red. If you’ve been to Chinese festivals or weddings, you know red is a color of celebration and good fortune. The article ends with this note:

"When a happy funeral takes place, the elder is assumed to have died happily for he has completed his mission in life with five generations to the family line. So he can leave this world in peace, "adds Ong.

That’s Dignified Death! Death that happens after a long purposeful life that followed their elders and ancestors, who also had long and purposeful lives.

Every day I’m witnessing unholy death. Undignified death. Death that is a result of killing, stealing, torture, and man-made inhumane conditions. Genocides. Lynchings. Every. Day. It’s as if empire doesn’t care to hide its true face anymore, and is training us to be numb to it all.

How can we wrap our minds around 380,000+ babies being slaughtered in Palestine? 300,000+++ parents, grandparents, aunties, teachers, doctors, journalists, artists…

Undignified Death.

Ever since I saw the footage of Gisma Ali Omer being lynched by the RSF in Sudan, it has been added to the collection of unimaginable horror that will live with me until the day I die. The things that come across our news feed and the things that don’t.

This is a poem by Sudanese poet + activist Emtithal Mahmoud:

Undignified Death.

Isn’t it so clear?? Nothing matters but building connections, networks, infrastructure, relationships, and ecosystems for Dignified Life and Death.

When I think about how so many people of the global majority are stripped of basic dignity, it makes me want to implode from rage!!! The way people are disregarded and thrown away without a shred of humanity is vile.

The truth is that the empire air we are breathing trains us to be ok with it: That it is inevitable. We gotta step on people’s necks to get to the top to feed our family. “War” has always been and will continue. Just accept it.

TFFFFF?!?!!! No f*****g way am I using this life to accept that. I uphold my own dignity too much for that!!

**DEEP BREATHS**

Look at baby Tiffany trying to eat a juicy orange. Dignity. She deserves a life full of dignity and purpose. She deserves a gentle death after a long life of dignity and purpose. She is no different from the toddlers in Palestine… doe-eyed long lashed angels. They deserved a long life of dignity and purpose. It’s so unjust to be here fighting for something so basic.

What does Liberatory Imagination spark in me today?

I dream of dignified death afforded to everyone. Grey hair softly lay on a fluffy pillow. Handcrafted quilts of greens, blues, and pinks. The sunshine illuminates floating particles in the air like any other day. The air is like velvet. Someone is cooking a savory soup on the stove in the kitchen. Soft murmurs and bursts of laughter fill the house. Cheek still warm from a kiss.

How to Support Me!

I’m going to try something new! For those who don’t know, I run a shop called More Liberation. I’ve been trying to experiment with more ways to figure out how to make rent. So here it is! I’m going to be posting a sticker here every time I write, and you can buy it from me directly (f**k etsy fees.)

The vinyl stickers are perfect for water bottles, laptops, notebooks, and light poles.

If you want one or more, follow these directions:

* Venmo me (@tiffanywongart) $5 for each sticker - that includes shipping

* For an international address, it will be $6 for each sticker

* In the Venmo Note, include:

* Mailing info: Name + Address

* Design name: This one is “People Over Profit”

* How many + what color(s)? (Orange, Pink, Green)

Example of Venmo Note:

The stickers will be on their way to you in 1-3 days after your venmo!

Feel free to email me [ [email protected] ] if you want to set up another form of payment.

LIBERATORY IMAGINATION is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I had the honor to have a conversation with my dear friend and faithful comrade peregrine about shame. Peregrine inspires me daily in the way they move with so much intention, playfulness, and wisdom. It was fun to record a snippet of how many of our conversations usually go! Listen to our podcast episode about our relationship with shame and real life examples of how we maneuver through it.

Connect with Peregrine:

* Website

* 1:1 Herbal consultations

* Patreon (subscribe for free to get on the email list)

* Instagram

During the podcast, we mention the “I Make Mistakes!” Virtual Intensive for BIPOC that is coming up on September 14. Registration is open!