“He just told me something very interesting”. Here we go. Why was she even talking to him? Hadn’t she told me just last month that they would have nothing to discuss after the last car payment? I took a deep breath and sat on the passenger side.

“He said ‘ask your sister’ and hung up the phone. I called him back to ask what he’d meant by that, but then stopped answering my calls, can you believe it?” That he could say something cryptic and then disappear? Absolutely. I began filling a container with soapy water to get started on the dishes.

“And then it came to me– he said that because they must have slept together on their trip to Vegas. Why else would he insist on calling me yankhan?” she said triumphantly as if she’d solved the riddle of the century. I let the cool water run through my fingers. Had she forgotten that the only reason I even knew the word for whore in Mongolian was because he’d been the one to ransack our tiny studio apartment and scribble YANKHAN on the wall with my Crayola marker? Interestingly enough, way before her sister ever came to visit the States.

“It also explains why she kept saying that I’d been the one chasing after him all along. It’s all very clear to me, Enkuush, she wouldn’t have said that if she hadn’t slept with him,” she added matter-of-factly. Had she forgotten how she also ridiculed young women in love? I remembered clearly how ridiculous she thought the world’s obsession with the late Princess Diana was. “She’s the one who was chasing after him all along, then she got to marry him, so what else did she want? She’s an idiot,” she’d say whenever a documentary on her came on the TV. My brain hurt now. I kept on scrubbing, waiting for my cue.

“They went to Vegas together? Really?” Well, that was news to me. “Yes, they went together years ago when she told me that she needed a translator so I told him to go with her, but you see, I’m just so stupid and naive that it didn’t even cross my mind to worry about them.”

“So… this would have had to have been… 15 years ago or so?” “Yes, a very long time ago but, mark my words Enkuushee, the truth has a way of bubbling back up to the surface.” Yes, but with more solid evidence I hoped.

“What was he responding to when he said ‘ask my sister’?” It seemed like a sensible question to ask. She seemed pleased with my question.

“That my sister knows why we didn’t work out, can you believe that my sister would do something to split us up? It just all makes sense to me, I see it all so clearly,” she said. I felt myself wanting to cry, but I couldn’t miss my cue.

“Look, you know that I think your sister is a snake. She’s schemed behind our backs countless times, but if she did do anything on that trip, it seems more likely to me that she badmouthed you like she tends to do everyone. She probably just told him about your ex-boyfriends which only gave him the confidence to badmouth you more. It sucks and I hate that they would do that, but I don’t think it means that they slept together.”

“Plus,” I went on. “He’s always called you bad names and she’s always made other women feel like crap, but I don’t think she would do that to you…” I suddenly realized I’d been talking to no one. I called her back. No answer. Fuck. Did I fuck up by calling her a snake? Was that all she heard or did she hear more? If she’d crashed, would I have heard the impact? My heart began to sink.

The phone rang. Oh thank God. I took a deep breath, picked up the phone, and this time opened the door on the driver’s side and slid right in.

“Za tegeed,” she said as she settled in someplace comfortable, “it’s not him I am worried about. It’s her. I know what she’s capable of and I know what she is like when she drinks. She gets completely vulnerable and open. He would have known that and taken his chance. I know him.” My chest felt like cold iron. I turned off the faucet and took a deep breath. Had she just…?

“I just know it happened, I can feel it and you know how I’m right about things, but what I just don’t understand is why my own sister would betray me like this? Enkuush, darling, can you tell me why people don’t love me the way that I love them?” I forced myself to inhale slowly, then exhale even slower. Eyes on the road. Hands on the wheel.

“Could you speak to your sister and ask what he meant by it? Maybe she’ll just tell you what really happened because believing this horrible thing is just going to hurt you and your sister. Come on...” I pleaded with half a smile. The truth was that I hated her sister for all the foul things I’d actually seen her do, but recognizing monstrosity didn’t mean I’d add to it and partake in ruining a relationship, however tenuous it might be on its own. I pressed on the gas a little more to speed up the drive out of this Godforsaken place.

“Why should I? I know she did it and she’d deny it anyway,” she said.

“Okay, then how are you going to talk with her from now on? Isn’t it going to be strange to talk to someone you believe slept with your husband behind your back?” I asked. “No, no, I’ll speak to her as I always do. She doesn’t need to know that I know, but the important thing is that you know that I know. We both know.” My troubled breathing now turned into full-on nausea, but I couldn’t miss my cue.

“Do you realize what you’re saying? What do you mean you’ll talk to her like nothing? If you really do that, it’s going to be hard for me to talk to you, you know, because does this mean that you also talk to me like nothing but secretly think I did something horrible to betray you, huh?” I asked hoping that this would snap her out of it and she’d lead the conversation elsewhere herself. “No, of course not, you’re different,” she said. Am I, though? I started drying the dishes to put them back in the cupboards. Hands on 10-2. This dish is my amulet.

“I don’t disagree that she has done some horrible things because she’s done it to me, too, but if she was drunk and vulnerable, is it possible that she’s not the one to be mad at? If he said something mysterious and hung up, is it possible that maybe he’s the one to be mad at?” I said once more with a little more oomph, but not too much. Had she noticed my pushback? Fuck. She had.

“Why the hell are you protecting them?” Who the hell are you to be against me? You’re supposed to be on my side, period, but you can’t even do that! I call you to listen and you never listen!” she roared.

My jaw clenched, but this was a critical moment. Don’t flinch. Breathe in, breathe out. From having been on the road before, I knew there’d be two exits coming up. The first exit would be the easiest. It’d let loose the rabid dog I’d had on a tight leash during the whole call because how fucking dare she expect me to listen to paranoid drivel about a man I told her was no good when I was 12? How fucking dare she push me to speak up against— what are we talking about here? possible assault? — on a Tuesday night? The rabid dog was foaming at the mouth begging me to let him loose. How fucking dare she put this garbage in my head and never once help me take out the trash? My years of therapy seemed to erode exponentially during this drive, but no, none of this is real, either. The second exit would be less cathartic– I’d need to put the dog in quarantine and temper myself— but the second exit would lead us both out of the city smog. I knew better, so I switched gears and went for the latter.

“It’s because I love you that I don’t want you to allow buzar to fester in your head,” I began. “Call me whatever you like, disown me however you wish, spit on the day of my birth if you want, but loving you doesn’t mean agreeing with you every time, especially when it means that you’d isolate yourself more. If you’re right, you’ll arrive at the truth another way but not this way. Nevermind what I think of her, that’s not important, but you love her and she loves you and that’s more important than anything he could say to make you two fight” I said almost in one single breath. “And how dare you say I don’t listen to you and don’t love you. Please at least respect the fact I’m here giving you the most nandin thing I have, which is my time, precisely because I love you; so please don’t say things like that, I picked up the phone because I love you,” I concluded.

“What the fuck?!”

Oh no.

“Who the fuck are you to tell me you are giving me an appointment?! I am not your patient!” she shouted. The call was now a powder keg. I realized my mistake almost immediately. How dumb of me to take a popular saying in the English language and translate it almost word for word in Mongolian. My brain searched frantically for any similar phrase, but I drew a hard blank. Fuck it, I’ll go rogue.

“HEY HEY HEY! Wait a minute, how do you hear that and take it the wrong way? I’m telling you I love you and you take one word and come after me? I learned this language because I love you enough to want to get to know you in your mother tongue though we both know that it would have been easier for me to stick to English. Don’t forget I didn’t grow up with you in Mongolia and compared to you I am American. The fact we can have this call is a fucking miracle and I worked so hard to be able to meet you here because I love you. You’re not the only one doing her best.” I was yelling now. I suddenly realized that Richie had paused his episode of The Sopranos to rub my shoulders.

I stopped the car because the night was pitch black now, but I knew from the smell of grasslands in the cool night and the sound of the dirt beneath the wheels that we were no longer trapped in the city. There was silence. Then finally, a defeated breath. Oh thank God.

“Za minii okhin, I don’t know, I don’t know what’s true or not anymore, I will go to sleep I think…” Had the battle for her senses– for her saruul ukhaan– been won? Can I have her back, please? I asked the night.

“That’s good, eej, everything will be okay, I promise, things will seem clearer tomorrow and you’ll see that he’s just fucking with your head. Please just steer clear of him for a while,” I said. For a moment, I was 15, 18, 22 again. “Good night, saikhan amraarai.” Click.

“Are you okay?” Richie asked. Annoyed by his question but grateful for the twelve years of marriage at the same time, I stood in my kitchen trying to orient myself in time, space, and language. At least the kitchen was spotless, I guessed. I relaxed my jaw and began to squeeze my shoulders softly. I could feel myself breathing again. The tears, if they existed, seemed to be stuck in my quivering extremities and my jittery arms, itching to come oozing out like an infection. I wished I could cry. She didn’t disown me this time and I didn’t shrivel in the corner with crippling anxiety. It’s been a long time coming. It’s progress, I reassured him. Still, he watched me with sadness in his eyes.

Feeling like I’d ingested gasoline, I lay in bed as cold waves of sadness ebbed and flowed over my body. I lulled myself with memories of all the good she’s done and all the progress we’d made, bracing myself for the whiplash I’d feel in the next few days when she’d almost certainly call me to cheerfully tell me about her latest project with her sister or her latest venture with her ex-husband. She’d be going about her day as usual, nose buried deep in work with eyes as bright and lucid as ever. Where is it that we make it to when we’re done faking it? Still, I thanked the heavens for this language because I knew damn well that this conversation wouldn’t have worked in English.

Thanks to these sounds that my mouth was able to form, we were now out in the tal nutag away from the congestion and the smog. Out here, we could take a deep breath of tsever agaar and finally air out the laundry that had been molding back in the stuffy Soviet apartments. Out here, where nothing mattered as much as the murmur of the river and the whisper of the mountains, we would once again swear our loyalty to our saruul ukhaan.

Looking to soothe herself, she rubbed her hand onto itself with the cuff still firmly interlaced between her fingers. Luckily, she was traveling light. There wasn’t a backpack or coat or anything in her pockets weighing her down, so that she could run unbridled if need be. The pavement beneath her feet as she walked was the only other tangible thing in this world and it led her to the doors of what seemed to be an abandoned junkyard. She looked to her right to the well-worn chain link fence gates that were ever-so slightly ajar. The lock wasn’t even secured and hung diagonally on its side in an S-shape.

Unsure whether to go in or keep walking, she stuck her finger through a diamond in the chain link fence to take a good look inside in case she saw somewhere she could hide or spend the night. It didn’t look promising. All she saw were cars rusting alone and little mounts of debris made up of glass and car parts caked with dust. The sharp edges that glistened weren’t inviting, so she stood outside for a few more moments. Waiting. There were no street signs she could read and not a soul in sight. Unbeknownst to her, a large crater was forming in her chest that expanded glacially as she breathed. It was almost as if this hollow city was within her rather than without.

But before she had a chance for her whimper to morph into cries, something began to move from inside the junkyard. She wiped the tears that her bottom lashes had been struggling to hold away from her cheeks and dared to look a little closer. His slender body rose up slowly from the ground with the gravel rustling beneath its scales. His hood became more visible with every inch of height that he gained. Upright, domineering, and silent, he never blinked and never diverted his gaze from her. She didn’t feel like she should run, but she didn’t feel that she should approach him either. He hissed. He seemed to be speaking to her, but she didn’t understand his language.

Before she knew it, the others began to join him in his hypnotic hiss. With every moment that passed staring back at him, she felt that she could understand more but not through her ears. “Come in, come with us…”, they bid as their words reverberated in her bones. If she’d had the courage to speak, she would have asked where she was, who they were, how she could get out of there, but her fledgling desire to speak betrayed her. In the blink of an eye, she found herself face to face with his reptilian eyes. Her smallness became subsumed by the weight of the things she couldn’t yet know. Then in another flash, he catapulted her to another world.

In this new place, the sand shimmered like crystals and the water moved like velvet. Her hands finally unclenched and her cheeks let out a smile. The sight of her ivory horse approaching her was like a salve to her aching body. The sun was the only star in the sky and it kissed her hair, skin, and legs with warmth. Energized once again, she mounted her loyal steed and together galloped across the beach, picking up speed as they began to levitate. As the tangerine skies and cotton candy clouds became close enough to touch the horse’s wings began to emerge from her body boasting a wingspan of an angel. She laughed triumphantly. This was the place.

But the joy was short-lived. A maroon substance trickled from the Pegasus’s crest until eventually her whole body was hemorrhaging. Not knowing what to do, she embraced her steed tightly knowing that they were plummeting to certain death. Her panic turned into frantic sobs that couldn’t be cried mid-air. Suffocating in her own horror, she was now in the living room where she normally slept. The glossy beige-peace toned wallpaper glistened gingerly in the late morning daylight. The television set where she’d seen The Great Panda Adventure and Flipper was off and resting peacefully next to the family pictures. The blankets were warm and she was alive.

Her body began to recoil the more she looked around. Memories began to elbow in. I remember what happens here, she thought. Her body, now tense and impervious like a boulder, struggled to get out of bed afraid of who or what she would find because, yes, there was someone else or something else in there with her that she couldn’t see. Maybe it’s under the bed, she thought, and rolled over to check and to her horror was face to face with her. She screamed inwardly with terror. Her once beautiful white hide was covered in dry patches of blood. Her once majestic mane was mangled in crusty knots from the vicious manhandling. Her eyes were empty and soulless.

Clean and well-combed on the outside but always carrying the stench of asphalt and dried piss somewhere inside of her, she stayed in Moscow until she was politely passed on to the next relative. She didn’t yet know that this nightmare would be the blueprint to rest of her life: to find her way back to the junkyard so that this time she could defiantly ask him what he was trying to tell her or at least what he knew; to avenge the murder of her Pegasus; and to return to the coast where she had once soared, hopefully to arrive to her original Destination. Lamentably, she’d have to make it to her sixth birthday first.

📍 Paris, France: Reunions and bulots

“I think this is the first time I don’t find Paris so bad,” Andreas and I confided in each other as we walked around Montmartre one afternoon. True comrades deep down, we both share a distaste for people fawning over, well, anything. Paris included. This time was different though, perhaps it was the fact that his friends came together to show him love before his big day or that the sun was giving us tee-shirt weather, or both, but we enjoyed Paris those two days. “I think I like Paris now,” he quipped.

And as the true cosmopolitans Andreas and our kind [insert cheeky wink] really are, it was hard to admire Paris without remembering Shanghai, too, because our friend JB who we see each time we’re there is Paris incarnate and yet such a Shanghai ren. To see JB in Paris and to bunk with him is to experience the specter of Shanghai together as old friends who were up and down Wuding Lu more than five years ago already. Emotions allude to memories intersecting and overlapping in laughter.

So naturally we had a reunion with their old Shanghai crew Frenchies, some whom I’ve only ever met in Paris, and Andreas’s childhood friends from Nice who now live and work in Paris. To see them together was to see two different sides of Andreas’s worlds merge. It was beautiful to witness. As far as me, they all tried to be considerate by speaking English, but truth be told I was more than okay watching Andreas be the Andreas he was before his life in English and to see him be so loved by his friends.

But yes, I did get to practice my French. I don’t think it’s anywhere near perfect, but I got by on my own without Andreas holding my hand like he had to 5 years ago.

📍Lyon, France: Hospitals and flowers

From Paris, off we went to Gare de Lyon Part-Dieu where Andreas’s father and wife picked us up. I hadn’t seen them since 2020, so it was a cute reunion, too, but my mind was mostly on the upcoming surgery. We spent a day or so, I can’t remember, to have dinner and enjoy Lyon in family company before Andreas was admitted into the hospital. Shortly thereafter I checked into my Airbnb right around the corner from the hospital. His family offered me a place to stay, but I thought it better to closer.

Fortunately, the surgery was a success and as I write this Andreas is back at the gym, working out, and doing better than ever. It goes without saying that I understood something very important during this whole experience:

Nothing is as important as health and I mean health in all its forms be it physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional. Money doesn’t even come close. Speaking of which, I was impressed that Andreas didn’t pay a dime for his medical procedure, hospitalization, and subsequent rehabilitation. Sure, perhaps the French health care system is not perfect, but it is certainly not so bad. He did have to pay for cable TV, but it seems like a small price to pay all things considered. He was well fed, too.

Something else I understood is that a lot of the things that people bicker about in their relationships are dumb and insignificant. Having health issues come knocking on the door is one sure fire way to put things into perspective. Sitting in the waiting room, waiting to hear back about how the surgery went, and seeing my partner hooked up to machines after-the-fact made my usual concerns about dishes and things seem so trivial. Live and let live, as they say.

The way from the hospital to my Airbnb was a brisk 15 minute walk. I stayed till nightfall until my last day in Lyon. During one of those walks back home, I was twenty-five years old again in Melbourne, Australia, with a light scarf around my neck, the evening breeze on my face, hearing the trams pass me by. It was, again, like timelines and memories overlapping in me. It was as if life was telling me that I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

So basically, I would leave, Andreas would be discharged, then transferred to a rehabilitation center where he would do light physical therapy and they’d monitor his progress. I’d be back in Mexico by then, but first I spent a solo day in Paris before my flight to “recalibrate” before heading home. It was whirlwind of emotions, as you can imagine, that I decided a little tour of Paris would quickly remedy. I gave a kiss to Andreas, said goodbye to his family who would take care of him, and off I went again.

📍 Paris, France (on my own)

As soon as I arrived in Paris and checked into my hotel, I ran to meet my long time student, Jade, at a cute little coffee shop called Sevenly Heart Coffee in La Marais. We spoke mostly English, but it was also time the tables turned and I spoke a little French. This year must have been the year to meet my students since I’d met my other longtime student Kelly back in Massachusetts just 3 months prior. I don’t make a habit to meet students in IRL, but it was a pleasant surprise to be able to do so.

There were some others stops on my agenda: 20 Rue Monsieur le Prince, Pont St Michel, and then the Accor Arena in Paris formerly known as the Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy. If you know me, you know exactly why. The first two locations are a darker part of French history, but one that I recognize as an important part of French civil rights history. The last location, the Accor Arena, was my petit plaisir as that was where the legendary 1, 2, 3 Soleils concert took place.

I also was able to book a pole lesson at The Base Studio, which is a very well-known studio in the pole world. I was so excited to go and take a lesson with them after having seen all my favorite pole artists do guest classes there. Unfortunately, nobody was touring the day I was there, but I was still happy to take a class with French girls and, to my surprise, an American instructor who’d lived a better part of her life in Paris. To date, I’ve had pole lessons in Shanghai, Queretaro, and now, Paris.

You might be wondering at this point, why not go see one of the many stunning art museums in Paris? Well, firstly, my tight schedule. And second, I’ve done a lot of the touristy things in prior trips. I wanted this time to be about me and the things I like and not the typical tourist check list. I figured that I have the rest of my life to come back to Paris and check out more museums. This time needed to be more underground and more me. And so it was and I was happy.

Before I knew it, it was time to head home. It was strange to leave knowing that Andreas was still in recovery, but I also knew that he was in perfectly good hands. What better place to be than your homeland, with the best doctors, and surrounded by your family? I’d have him back in a month’s time while Drew and I held the fort down with the animals back home. I took a deep breath and hopped on the TGV to the airport like a big girl.

France was kinder to me this time around. Perhaps she knew why I was there, or perhaps it was because I was finally speaking French, or maybe, seven years with Andreas has made me a little more French. Who knows, but I’ve softened on her. This year has softened me all around, to be honest. I’d booked a direct flight home with Air France and words can’t explain the feeling of sitting down and hearing Daft Punk playing in the overhead speakers.

Au revoir, la France.

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My challenge here today is to write honestly and earnestly about my grandma on the 49th day of her passing— a day that’s significant due to Tibetan Buddhism, a religion which has greatly influenced Mongolian culture over the course of history. According to it, after passing on, the soul is in bardo, a place where the it is believed to review its life, release its attachments, and prepare for rebirth.

I won’t lie and say that I have observed the mourning period to the tee as a good Mongolian would. I haven’t. I’ve lived my life much like I would any other day, but not because I don’t care about my grandmother’s life. I care. She’s been in my mind these past seven weeks in ways I couldn’t imagine and today I wanted to honor our relationship, however fragmented it was, my reflections about life and death, and her.

As I imagine that it happens during the passing of a great matriarch, a lot of wealth was distributed from the inheritance. I know that grandma was thinking about these years prior to her passing. It makes me smile now to remember that she used to tell me she’d give me her apartment. I was only 7, so I didn’t know what that meant, but I realize now that she was telling me that I was legitimate despite my fatherlessness.

Over the years, it became clear that my fate was not in Mongolia, though. I did my best to learn the language and wrestle with my cultural identity for the sake of personal acceptance, their acceptance, and all that, but in the end, I only had to accept that I was a third culture kid, a cultural nomad, everywhere and nowhere was home, and inheriting anything from anyone was disjointed. Wrong, even.

I was Jon Snow. “I don’t want it” and “There are other family members more deserving by your side” were words I often told my grandmother in more ways than one, but out love or loyalty, or both, she still wanted to give me something. “Миний охин тэгээд юу захимаар байна вэ? Эмээ нь аваад өгъё,” So what do you want, dear child? Grandma will get it for you, she asked. I only dared to ask for two things:

1️⃣ Her travel toothbrush holder and its matching soap case.
2️⃣ And a piece of wood from the valley cabin that my grandfather built where grandma and I spent very few but mostly happy summers.

In the short time that I spent living with her in Ulaanbaatar in 1996, just me and her in the apartment in Tumur Zam, little me used to eye her travel kit. Since then, she had taken these in her suitcase in all her travels. I’ve seen it pop-up in Mexico when she visited us the 90s, in DC while I was in grade school in the 00s, and in Beijing when I went to see her during her medical trip while I was living in Shanghai in my 20s.

“Тэр хуучин юмаар яах гэсэн юм?” Why would you want this old thing?” she asked when I asked her to send these items back with mom to give to me during her next visit to Mexico. Grandma never quite understood my disinterest for fancy and expensive things, but my travels and checkered childhood across the globe fostered in me an unwavering loyalty for things with sentimental value, even if they were plastic.

I know my request made her feel loved.

The second thing I asked for was a piece of the house my grandfather built, which was torn down a few years back in order to be completely rebuilt and modernized by the powerhouse that is my aunt, my grandmother’s eldest. The valley house is now completely a deluxe place for my family to enjoy. Me? Well, I don’t know that I deserve to ever enjoy it, lowly cultural deserter that I am, but I’m happy for them.

At the same time, I do feel sad that the valley house was torn down, because with it so too were my precious memories— so as to make room for new memories. Is this what aging felt like? Was I beginning to feel a modicum of the emotions that the aging feel when the world inevitably moves on without them? I can’t fathom it. However strange she considered it, she gave these things to my mom at my behest.

These alone are my inheritance and I feel rich just to have them in my house in Mexico.

I won’t say that I was the best grandchild in any way. Mostly absent, the most I did was to call her every Monday at 7pm from Queretaro, Mexico, which was Tuesday morning at 8am for her in UB, for about a year after settling in Mexico post-covid. One day, I decided to stop the calls, in part out of indignance for injustices nobody but me dared to utter, but paradoxically, also in larger part out of cowardice.

Yes, I can only call it cowardice. I confess it. Having struggled to bear the weight of my clashing Mongolian and Mexican identities my entire life, one day in my 30s, I simply couldn’t bear it any longer. I didn’t want this yoke. The farm life in Nopalucan, Mexico and the UB city life in Mongolia that I yearned to belong to were like chasing waterfalls while splitting myself in two.

I could have been living in the present moment the whole time, but instead I spent near 3 decades trying to fit a cultural profile, chasing the memories, when I could have been living in the present moment of my American life. TCK grief, the books call it.

And it was so emotionally taxing to keep reaching to be part of their world, only to be misconstrued time and time again by cultural and linguistic standards set in place by our vastly different upbringings. I cowered. I failed. I let go. And grandma was a corollary of that. So I learned to love from afar which I tried to explain to no avail. I learned that to those who stay, it can only feel like abandonment….

…and for that I am deeply sorry, emee. These aren’t even words I can explain in our common tongue, Mongolian, and it’s hard enough as it is to express them in English. I fell short, emee.

We spoke a few times before her passing, but short chats, always between hospital visits and with the phone passing from person to person in the room. We all knew the time was approaching and braced for impact with a kind of solemn resignation. I saw from the periphery that aging is a terrifying thing. The once proud matriarchs and patriarchs of the family now having to depend on others.

On her 49th day, I recognize the darker emotions that my grandmother felt, that which felt so scary to me before and now feel mature enough to hold. By having been able to witness her darker emotions throughout my life, I am able to recognize some of my own today. What a gift to have witnessed the dark, the light, and everything in between that she had to offer.

Where would I be without the darker shades that she made us all privy to? Unable to empathize with other people’s suffering? Do such feelings only crystallize after death or am I so slow to only begin to comprehend it now? I realize now it was all a gift. And so, I come to my last reflection and perhaps the most important one: there does come a day in our lives that we say thank you for the things that once hurt us.

With her passing, I begin to grasp that there are things that bring us joy and that bring us harm, but that life isn’t life without the two. Whether the emotions we feel or the people we experience are bad or good, bitter or sweet, at the end of life we will be like an ensemble cast at final curtain call, simply grateful to have been part of the same show, together having given the audience something to reckon with.

And a force to be reckoned with she was. A stunning beauty in her youth and old age, my grandmother worked a better part of her life at a market stand where she was known and appreciated by her peers. She kept clear accounts and a clean space with near military precision. Never left the house disheveled for according to her, our appearance was the frame of our story.

She never owned too many things of one thing, hence her one toothbrush holder and soap case over the years. Actually, I think I’m realizing now as I am writing that this was my favorite quality of hers. At the same time, she loved to stay current with new beauty products, trending vitamins and supplements, and modern fashion. She wore her Mongolian deel with pride.

“Be proud to have a Mongolian mother,” she used to say.
I am, emee.

I’m proud to have had the opportunity to spend a childhood with you washing carpets by the stream under the sun, collecting water from the marshes with Sukhee, and folding plastic bags in the kitchen after wiping the dust and grime from them with a damp cloth. The smell of a fresh cup of black tea, the sight of aaruul softened in hot water, and the gentle aroma of Mongolian leather still moisten my eyes.

I’m sorry I was not present in the last years of your life. Please forgive me for my cowardice and my militant quest for the truth, which now feel like a fool’s errand I ran to assuage my own indignance. I love you. I’ll be seeing you.

Сайхан нойрсоорой эмээ… үргэлж таны сайн сайхан чанаруудыг ач нь дурсаж явах болно… Хоёулаа голын хажууд хэвс угааж байсан, лагерийн байшинд миний түүсэн гүзээлзгэнэ идэж байсан, надад авч өгч байсан тухайн үеийн үнэтэй компот, гал тогоонд сууна гялгар уут эвхэж байсан, таны харанхүй өрөөг хоёулаа ухаж өдөрөө өнгөрөөдөг, тэр бүх мөчүүд миний монгол дурсамжуудын хамгмйн нандин дурсамжууд байсан, бас үргэлж байх болно… монгол хэлээ мартахгүйгээр заавал сайжруулах гэсэн учирын нэгэн та байсан шүү. Таны хэлээр, бидний хэлээр, таны бодож байгаа санаж байгааг ойлгох миний (honor) байсан шүү…
— Ач охин нь, Мишээл

A year later, now in Queretaro, Mexico, where the infamous Covid travel restrictions of 2020 washed me and my partner up, I tried again but didn’t stick to it because I didn’t have steady income yet and couldn’t justify paying for classes. The interest remained put itself back to sleep for a few more years, 2023, until one random evening, 2 house moves and 2 cats later, my partner and I were watching Paul Verhoeven’s 1995 now cult classic “Showgirls” when he turned around and said “You should go back, you liked it” He even insisted on paying for the classes and so… I went back.

Fast forward to 2025 and I got a pole for my birthday so I could train at home, courtesy of my partner and my other boyfriend, as my partner sometimes jokes, and my progress has skyrocketed. When I used to take classes at studios, I only could spend 1 hour on a shared pole, of which 20-30 minutes were spent warming up. With the pole at home, I now take my time conditioning and then practicing which comes out to about 1.5-2 hours of training about 2-3 times a week which is a regime that my pocket wouldn’t have been able to afford at studios.

This isn’t to say that I never go to studios anymore. I still go back and take lessons at studios from time to time to polish up moves and learn new things with a team of girls with the reassurance that I can go home and keep practicing. To date, I’m tickled pink to realize that I have been to studios all around the world, namely Shanghai, Queretaro, and most recently, Paris, where I finally learned how to do a fan kick. I had tried to learn it through YouTube, but hey, sometimes we do need the experts in real life. Nine months since receiving my birthday gift, I’m only more excited to keep improving.

The following videos are three pole performances, out of the many that I have saved in a YouTube playlist, that inspire me to start my work out for the day.

Chloe Uchida is my first parasocial instructor. Her channel has been instrumental in my progress this year because she provides full-on instructional videos for beginners and intermediate level students for free. For example, her playlist for beginner moves is organized in order of what you should know how to do before you move on to the next move. I love that she starts with conditioning exercises for the move, shows you the move, goes over common mistakes, and then ends on a positive note related to mindset training.

The above performance is so beautiful. I love the theatrics involved in it and how she used her Japanese heritage as inspiration. This performance inspires me because it got my wheels turning on how I could, one day, possibly, use Mongolian folk music or folk metal to choreograph my own performance. Another noteworthy detail from Chloe’s performance is how hair and hands are very much part of the performance. If you watch closely, you can see how she flicks her hair or her hands at specific parts of the song for style and flair. I love it.

Now, this performance has me hollering every single time I watch it because Olga Baidyuk really brings back this bar dancer vibe (perhaps through her choice of song) which, when done well, is so sexy, then mixes it with phenomenal athleticism, perfectly timed hair flips, leg spreads, and heel clicks. It is absolutely no wonder that she won first place at this competition. Baidyuk’s perfect performance is single-handedly responsible for my newfound appreciation of blues rock, long hair, and red lipstick. The way she glides across that stage going from one pole to the other is simply art.

I think what pole has taught me more than anything is to do away with the internalized sexism I carried for so long via pick-me girl tendencies. The idea that no matter what a woman does for art or her sexual proclivities, that she should be judged by the content of her character and not what’s between her legs or how it is used or not used or how she happens to reproduce, is so deeply planted in me now. Yes, our legs spread, to dance, to do gymnastics, to have sex recreationally, to have sex “procreationally”, and that still does not warrant our culture’s insidious misogyny.

What it does warrant is acknowledgement that our bodies are just bodies, doing what bodies do— moving. Breathing. Contracting. Releasing. Athletically. Artistically.

This last performance I want to mention is from a studio in Brazil by a dancer named Roberta Martins. Her video is short, a mere 53 seconds, but she dazzles in it. What I love about her performance is her sweet sensuality which stands in complete contrast to the above two performance which are, more explicitly wild and sexy. Martins’s performance showcases implicit sensuality. It’s poetic, stripped bare, au naturale. I love how she looks at the camera, how the gentle strums in the song by Brazilian legend Maria Bethânia give way to Martins’s arabesque.

The last point I want to make is that pole dance has range. I love the polerina (ballet and pole dance merged) type style of pole dance, the blues-dancing-in-a-seedy-bar type of exotic dance, and the theatrical performances, too. They all show how beautiful women are and how strong our bodies can be at the same time. I am nowhere near this level of beauty, grace, and athleticism, but performances like the ones mentioned above let me dream that someday I could be even if for my own pleasure and/or the viewing pleasure of my friends and family.

Life’s short. Dance.
With love,
Mishell

🪩 Follow my progress on Instagram @mishkabones

Think of it this way, my partner Andreas has been out of Mexico three times now. Home twice and a vacation to Colombia. Me? Very happily holding down the fort, but this time I had to pack my bags and go. Lucky for me, there were a couple of stops that I could make while I was in the States: a long overdue high school reunion and a New England wedding more up North than I’ve ever been.

The former was to visit an old friend from high school and the latter to meet up with Drew, who lives with us in Mexico but was back Stateside for his friend’s wedding, to be his Plus One for said ceremony. And so, with Andreas’s blessing from France, I hopped on a bunch of planes to embark on my first little adventure in ages. (Of course, all the while sending him photos of all my meals, duh.)

📍 Sister’s Graduation - DAR Constitution Hall, Washington, DC

Yes, I felt old.

She was born when I was 16 and she’s 18 now, so you go ahead and do the math. I am what someone called a geriatric millennial, but at least we have our Reels as consolation. My sister made me privy to terms like “rage-baiting” and “the millennial pause”. You guys know the little walk that Iliza Schlesinger does in her stand-up comedy? I did that. My Gen Z just giggled and said:

”You’re such a millennial.” I mean, what would they think about my Substack, is that also very millennial? Hahaha, look at those geriatric millennials BLOGGING is probably what crosses their minds. Aging really is unforgiving and nothing alerts you to that more than teenagers rolling their eyes and giggling at you. Not just teenagers, but teenage girls.

The venue for the graduation was where I also graduated way back in 2009— DAR Constitution Hall. If you’ve never been, this Neoclassical structure is located at the heart of Washington, DC, and it’s every bit as beautiful as in the photos. Built in 1929 by the Daughters of the American Revolution (hence the DAR), it currently hosts high school graduations, concerts, and lectures. Jane Goodall signed books here!

Speaking of high schools, my own high school graduation was now sixteen years ago and more than sixteen years ago I met a boy named Alex who later became one of my best friends. We decided to see each other for the first time since the summer of 2010 since I would be passing through NYC on my way up to Worcester, Massachusetts anyway.

📍 Mini High School Reunion - Brighton Beach, Brooklyn NY

Then I felt young again.

My journey was HELLA hectic.

I basically went from Reagan National Airport in DC to Newark International Airport in NJ and then took the NJ Transit to Penn Station to meet my friend Alex to then make our way to Brighton Beach where some scenes of Anora (2024) were filmed. Due to our shared birthplace of Moscow, Russia, I thought it appropriately cheesy to munch on piroshki together and have a beer in Brighton Beach.

Alex, who is Ukrainian-Russian by the way and has undoubtedly (is!) suffered his share in this nasty war where his family on both sides have known the kind of stress that war can cause, indulged my desire for a trip to Brighton Beach though my flight from JFK to Logan International in Boston was only a couple of hours away. Sitting in the train with him reminded me of our adolescence spent in the DC Metro. It was sweet.

When we got off the train, we walked toward the beach as we passed all the shops with Russian signs and old ladies selling piroshkis, stuffed buns, outside. I admired the lettering, the signs, the sounds of people speaking Russian, and the old familiar faces of all the post-soviet people as Alex told me stories of childhoods spent in Brighton Beach visiting his grandpa. He hadn’t been back in a while. He got us two piroshkis.

In the mid 1970s, Brighton Beach became a popular place for Soviet immigrants who were mostly Jews from Russia and Ukraine (i.e. my friend and his kin). It was only after the seventies that Brighton Beach also became known as “Little Odessa”— after the Ukrainian city which had had a significant Jewish population in the first half of the 20th century— as well as “Little Russia”.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 (and the year of my birth and Alex’s), hordes of Soviet citizens immigrated to the United States, and this wasn’t limited to just Russians but also immigrants from countries like Georgia and Azerbaijan. My mother, who is from Mongolia, was one of the many students who grew up speaking Russian and later went to Moscow before finally leaving for the West after my birth.

We didn’t go to Tatiana’s though where scenes of Anora were shot because they wouldn’t let me charge my iPhone, so we went someplace else two doors down. I forget what beer I ordered, but Alex ordered an Aperol Spritz, and we talked about where life took us the past fifteen years since we last saw each other. He had his eye on the clock though to make sure I got to JFK on time which was useless because…

MY FLIGHT WAS DELAYED SEVEN HOURS FOR A 40 MINUTE TRIP.
Thanks JetBlue. Thanks Logan.

📍 An All-American Wedding - The Barn at Blackstone National, Worcester, Massachusetts / Van Gogh Exhibition at the MFA in Boston

After a grueling seven-hour delay at JFK International Airport, I finally did arrive at Logan in Boston. Drew, now unable to pick me up because he was at the wedding rehearsal dinner that I was supposed to attend with him, sent an Uber to pick me up. “Anything you need and that I can do for you once you arrive?” he asked. “Yes, please get me cigarettes and water,” I replied like that the geriatric millennial I felt I was now.

The wedding itself was splendid. I was thoroughly impressed that Drew’s friend, the groom, had planned the entire himself. There are still good men out there, y’all. The wedding playlist was very, ahem, absent of hip-hop, but I knew the words to all the Blink 182 and Fall Out Boy songs because I too went to school in Virginia with white kids. I just didn’t know the country jams at the beginning.

I would share more photos, but out of the respect for the bride and groom who asked their wedding to be unplugged, I won’t share the photos on my Substack. I did manage to take a couple of photos of me and Drew all dolled up and some shots of the ambience for myself, but that’s all, and even then, I feel a little guilty for the snaps I did get. (Sorry Craig!)

For those of you unaware, Worcester is not spelled like it looks. It’s a close cousin of the name Worcestershire and all its silent letters. Worcester sounds like “Wooster” and even then, I seemed to be pronouncing it wrong. It’s not close to Boston. It was an hour drive from Logan International to Worcester and an hour back to when Drew’s mother (very sweet lady!) drove us (well, mostly me) to the Museum of Fine Arts.

The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston was founded in 1870 and has since had three locations: first at the top floor of the Boston Athenaeum, then Copley Square, and now where it currently stands, Huntington Avenue. The MFA has been at its current location since 1909, so safe to say that this beautiful Beaux-arts style building that is home to French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists, among many more.

Entrance to the Van Gogh exhibition was 14 USD per person, I think, for members. The Van Gogh exhibition itself was a collection of his best works, notably the Roulin family portraits, and included the many eloquent letters he wrote to his brother Theo. Seeing his letters in the flesh gave me the motivation to keep studying French if only to read his words in their original language. For now, English will do.

Whenever I learn about Van Gogh, I am always touched by the sensitive nature that is apparent in his letters and his paintings. He was a man who felt deeply. His words describing why he moved to the South resonated with my own reasons for moving to Mexico and how I feel about my little house in Queretaro. I feel about it much the same way that Van Gogh felt about the Yellow House:

”My house here is painted outside in the yellow of fresh butter, with garish green shutters, and it’s in the full sun on the square, where there’s a green garden of plane trees, oleanders, acacias. And inside, it’s all whitewashed, and the floors of the red bricks. And the intense blue sky above. Inside, I can live and breathe and think and paint. I’m in really much better health here than in Paris.”

Of his portraits of the Roulin family, my favorite was the portrait of Armand Roulin. When I saw it, I immediately recognized the sullen face of a moody teenager, much the same expression I see in my siblings’ faces. Eyes screaming with boredom. A frown that aches with angst. A face that is surely holding a sigh of dissatisfaction for the day’s tasks. I bought the post card along with a book of Van Gogh’s letters.

I guess I have my adolescent sister to thank for this trip back Stateside that I would have never made had it not been for her.

Today I would like to discuss my journey from hoarding the toxic shame of SA to letting go of it and making room for health in not just the area of sexual development, but also mental, emotional, spiritual. My hope is that someone, somewhere on the Internet will find it useful. To do so, I have split the article into three lessons that I learned from my own personal experience, namely:
1️⃣ where toxic shame comes from and how it manifests in the misuse and abuse of sex;
2️⃣ why individuals should expel this toxic shame from themselves and what it makes room for when we do;
3️⃣ what good sex actually is and how it comes to be

I have simplified the lessons into actionable steps to take, but please remember that healing isn’t linear and that these steps are often happening at the same time almost like a symphony of healing. I’m also not a mental health professional and everything in this article is merely my lived experience. If you or someone you know is experiencing CPTSD after a traumatic event, please refer to a mental health professional.

When I was six years old, I was sexually molested by another underage person. He was violent and pushed me around every chance he got, doing mean things like stuffing me in a chest until I panicked, or stab me with a pen until I cried, or smear his feces on my body for his own entertainment. Later on, his rude introduction to parts of my body that I didn’t even know were sexual yet made sure that sex was always something steeped in shame. Unsurprisingly, I spent the next two decades engaging in dysfunctional behavior.

Step 1: Understand that the toxic shame isn’t yours to claim

The misuse of another human being (read: ab-use) is the act of unlawfully injecting or projecting one’s own shame into a vulnerable new host who is then forced to adopt the shame onto themselves causing almost immediate mental, spiritual, physical, and emotional disassociation (read: trauma) which later becomes dysfunction in the body/mind/spirit/heart’s feeble attempt to associate with each other once again.

*Of the many ways to misuse (abuse) another person, sex is a powerful tool. Sex itself is not shame. It’s tool that many often use to inflict shame for their own self-gratification, which is what all righteous belief systems religious or otherwise, can agree on.

What does misappropriated shame, or being shamed unfairly, feel like in the body? I have thought of this for the past three decades and have distilled it down to this: it’s cold and wet, with a gust of wind that exacerbates both, burning your skin softly with each blow. It lives in the abandoned corner of a basement. Who inhabited the space before it turned into a dungeon?

Toxic shame is cold and wet, with a gust of wind that exacerbates both, burning your skin softly with each blow.

This specific sensation would wash over me in different moments of my life, not always related to sex, but always reminding me of the first time I felt it in my bones.

So in adolescence, I had a hard task before me: to begin to set the ground for a healthy sexual existence. What I didn’t know back then that I know now is that I was set up to have a very troubled relationship with my body, sex, and men in general. It wasn’t until my self-esteem hit rock bottom that I realized that was utterly and completely wrong and that I needed a radical re-education.

As people do, I delved into Christianity as a way of exploring new ways of thinking, but their specific thoughts on sex led to their own brand of toxic shame. Nevertheless, my brief hiatus with the Christian community did teach me that sex itself is not a sin, but it’s our misuse (read: abuse) of it as a means of imposing power over others for non-mutual self-satisfaction that damages us so.

…sex itself is not a sin, but it’s our misuse (read: abuse) of it as a means of imposing power over others for non-mutual self-satisfaction that damages us so.

Isn’t that all sexual abuse of minors and other vulnerable people really is?

Christianity also taught me that a belief system’s original intent to restore and heal a broken spirit can also be perverted by extremism with axioms like sex before marriage is a sin, self-pleasuring is shameful, and sucks for you if you’re gay. Jesus was indeed my friend, but organized religion and his crazy fans weren’t, so I went off once again to find my own answers in a way that didn’t, once again, shame me unjustly.

Step 2: Expel the toxic shame to make sure for its opposite—tonic esteem"

To restore one’s self from any abuse that rendered them disassociated, the individual needs to expel the misappropriated shame from themselves, which will then leave room for taking back healthy esteem for one’s own body, mind, spirit, and heart where someone else did not have it. The kind of esteem that heals, a tonic, comes from being able to claim the right to one’s own agency and self-respect.

*In terms of sex and the physical body, this means that one must have healthy esteem for their sexual identity. In other words, to respect one’s self as a sexual being worthy of respect.

Learning to have healthy esteem for my own sexual functioning wasn’t easy at first. It meant that I had to clean up the areas of mind, body, spirit, and heart individually and find out which shame was mine and which wasn’t. As you may imagine, it takes a long fucking time and a lot of anger and resentment (rightfully so) bubbles up during this process because abuse first stuns you then robs you of our most precious thing, time.

It’s perhaps due to the sheer rage that bubbles up once you realize how much time and energy it’s going to take to recover and reclaim your life that many people struggle to stay in recovery or even seek recovery in the first place. Understanding the time that was robbed from you is enough to drive a person mad with despair and, so, for many it’s easier less painful to pretend it didn’t happen.

The opposite of being toxically shamed is to be tonically esteemed

Good and healthy sex came to mean to revel in all the wonderful things it could do when it wants, such as but not limited to fucking: to be (consensually) fucked and to fuck because it’s our God given right to enjoy sex in a way that doesn’t cut into your (or your counterpart’s) sense of agency and worth. In other words, in your and your counterpart’s sense of healthy esteem for themselves.

My partner and I have our own share of sexual injuries, so we went off our separate ways in this department ages ago. Lucky for me, he’s French, so my newfound interest in sex education and sex therapy wasn’t heretical to his imagination. So then, the question now became: What does sex look like when it’s used as a means to connect with the best parts of ourselves, the ones we cherish, and nature around us?

What does sex look like when it’s used as a means to connect with the best parts of ourselves, the ones we cherish, and nature around us?

If the abuse of sex on me in my childhood caused me shame, or rather shamed me toxically, then logic serves that the non-abuse of sex in my adulthood should cause the opposite of being toxically shamed, right? What, then, is the opposite of being toxically shamed by a dysfunctional other? To dare to esteem yourself where the dysfunctional other did not and could not. Once we can do that, we advance.

Step 3: Tend to mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, and sexual health one by one until they start to spontaneously reintegrate

Getting rid of shame that is not yours makes room for esteem that is yours. Then that esteem becomes the prerequisite to being able to finally integrate what was disintegrated during the trauma of abuse, namely your mind, body, soul, and heart. In other words, to connect your broken parts back to each other. Reintegrating broken parts then lays the groundwork for something we’re all entitled to: good sex.

When mind, body, spirit, and heart are all in agreement, the individual will have the kind of sex that reinforces positive self-regard, body image, mental clarity, and spiritual oneness with the world around them in themselves as well as in their sex partner. Put simply, good sex (which, unsurprisingly, is not often shown in pornography as pornography is devoid of all these different human nuances).

It’s only now in my 30s that I can regard sex as something positive and not shameful nor detrimental to my safety and self-esteem. Though sometimes I find myself grieving the years I lost to my miseducation, I’m happy to say that I seem to have figured a large chunk of it. I finally believe that sex is something that I have the right to enjoy in a responsible, honest, and consensual way.

What I have learned so far throughout this journey, and know for sure, is that our well-being, whether mental, physical, spiritual, emotional, and sexual, is something that we have the duty to maintain.

Having genuine conversations with friends might help clear mental and emotional cobwebs; going to the gym and taking care of our physical bodies may help us feel proud of our fit and able bodies regardless of age; praying or meditating may help us feel at peace'; having regular sex with someone who regards sex with the same respect may help keep our juices flowing and fortify all aforementioned things.

I no longer feel that gust of cold, wetness wash over my chest as I used to in my younger years. And when I do, I try to see from which direction its coming from, because more often than not I’m picking up someone else who was toxically shamed. I seek them out and try to see if I can be the genuine conversation they need. I no longer misappropriate others’ shame. I no longer live in a cold basement.

What I feel in its stead is the gentle warm of the sun on my skin. What was cold and wet now feels warm and toasty like a summer day at the beach. I feel safe inhabiting my body; I feel safe thinking my thoughts; I feel safe moving my body whether for exercise or sexual hygiene; I feel safe in the God I barely understand, and I feel safe with the emotions that my heart feels whether they are good or bad.

I have long forgiven* the person who abused me (and you are under no obligation to do so). In my case, I imagine that he too was toxically shamed and didn’t know what to do with it other than to pass it on me. I don’t wish him ill, nor do I wish him well. His punishment is none of my concern because I’ve done my part and I can only hope that he has done his. Then again, his redemption is not my concern either.

Many good years were lost to rehabilitating myself, but I also had some very good moments throughout the way. If the day that I die someone were to ask me whether I have had a good life or not, I would say yes, for no other reason that this is my life and I have a healthy esteem for it. I saw really bad things, but you know what? I’ve also witnesses some really cool things. Both are true.

My still aching heart always whispered: “We can have a ball together, just don’t profess yourself to me as my friend because I won’t believe you.”

2018
Fast forward a decade or so later, I found out he had asked about me when I was living in China and even then, I was still sour, and didn’t pay him any mind though I felt the tingle of love and nostalgia of those childhood years. I was still as bitter as a lemon. I had just gone on turbo mode of my healing and thinking about my old friend brought up emotions I was nowhere ready to deal with. I didn’t even entertain the thought of following up with him.

2023
Then some years later, about a year and a half ago, he was even more direct. He didn’t go through another person. He reached out directly via Instagram wanting to catch up. I don’t remember exactly the whirlwind of emotions I felt that day, at 32 years old, still faintly aching about something that happened damn near 17 years ago, but receiving his message was like the Past became human and looked me square in the eye. I was shocked.

By this time, I had finally reached the level of level-headedness and confidence that I had always aspired to have during my adolescence. Living in Queretaro often feels like my second chance at a well-adjusted adolescence that was robbed from me due to alcohol-fueled fights at home, police visits due to domestic disturbance complaints, and bruises and goose eggs that I was not allowed to report to school counselors much less acknowledge that they were there. I had a new life now.

I had finally reached enough maturity to give him, my past, and our friendship, the time of day. Now I was better and I could hear him out. I knew deep down that I had one last homework assignment to turn into the imaginary therapist that I had been seeing every day for the last few years (God). By 2023, the coals of bitterness I had carried all those years had more than served their purpose to stoke the fire necessary to want to fight for a healthier life.

It was time to make room for an old friend.

That first phone call was as matter-of-fact as it was bittersweet. At first, we talked for ages about his parents (whom I have always loved and had a lot of respect for even since childhood), his brother, our jobs, the state of the world. We talked about aging. Damn, are we really in our 30s now? Remember when we were prepubescent children in Mr Chisolm’s marching band? Remember when I memorized your schedule just to see you in the hallways?

Eventually the conversation got solemn. “Can we talk about what happened?” he said. I charged on without hesitation finally saying all I wanted to say but with the adult vocabulary I didn’t have back then. To his credit, he also listened with the adult capability to understand what I was expressing. I tried not to blame, but I suspect he felt the echoes of my bitterness in my words no matter how I tried to mask them with fairness. “I’m sorry”.

Suddenly everything was okay. The funny thing about receiving genuine apologies is that once it balms your heart, you soften enough to say that they had nothing to apologize for in the first place. “You were just a kid, too, it’s okay.” Is that forgiveness?

The funny thing about receiving genuine apologies is that once it balms your heart, you soften enough to say that they had nothing to apologize for in the first place.

I hung up the phone and wiped off the tears that I had been holding back during the call and went on about my day with what felt like a porous chest and heart made of putty. The sun seemed to shine brighter and softer. The sky seemed a little bluer. My homework assignment seemed to have been well-received. I felt a little older and wiser knowing that time really does heal all wounds.

Now in my 30s with my adult goggles on, I see that his behavior was normal for confused 17-year-olds unequipped to deal with what only a family psychologist could have dealt with. I was a kid dealing with a monster bigger than myself and so was he. Had I been raised with good parents and a relatively well-adjusted home, perhaps, I would have bolted, too. Who knows. We were just kids.

Merry Christmas to you, Alex and Mishell from yester-years.

1️⃣ Understand what Resistance (aka distractions) looks like for you and then wage a war against it everyday.

Our creative enemy has a name and the name is Resistance. The laggardly feeling in the morning, the fear, the anxiety, the hours spent doom-scrolling, watching Netflix, retail-therapy, self-medication, self-intoxication, even preoccupations about sex... all of it is a form of resistance, because they combine to keep us from creating that day, that moment.

To fight our own resistance every single day is akin to going to war. Therefore, we must behave with military precision and stealth about refining our daily habits which should ultimately enable us to create by any means possible. We must be committed to the craft. Speaking of which—

2️⃣ Truly love the craft, but don't base your entire identity on it.

On the one hand, you have to truly love what you do because that’s the heart of the motivation that will conquer Resistance every day. The fear of doing and resistance to creating will never go away, but it’s with the “love of the game” that you’ll overcome those obstacles.

At the same time, success doesn’t come without its failures and failures are guaranteed for anyone trying to achieve something great, therefore, you must also be sufficiently detached from your craft. We must love our craft enough to wake up every morning and work at it, but not take it so seriously that failing at it destroys our identity. Revel in the fear, revel in the failure, and keep going.

Perhaps my one critique is that these themes were somewhat repetitive. Some of it does sound "airy-fairy", especially when Pressfield gets into describing muses and magic. Nevertheless, I have to admit that the entire bit on the magic of creation balances out the military language he uses at the beginning of the book to convey the level of discipline a creator must have.

The first time that I ever heard the spellbinding voice of Mongolia’s pop icon, Sarantuya, was when I was just a kid living with my mother in Mexico City. The song was “Duuchin Chamdaa” (rough trans. Beloved Singer) and it had just been released. The year was 1998, I was seven, and the rest of my life had just begun.

Thousands of miles from her native country of Mongolia, her family, and anyone who looked like her, my mother would crank up Sarantuya’s cassette every Saturday morning while she cleaned. I understood enough Mongolian to understand requests and commands around the house, but understanding lyrics was beyond my seven year old self. Plus, my Spanish was just getting good again so the song might as well have been gibberish. Little did I know that this song was to become the anthem of the untainted love I had for my mother and the unspoken pain of the culture gap that always preceded it.

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In retrospect, I can only imagine that all those Saturdays ago, she was simply homesick. By 1998, she’d been living in Mexico for nearly four years—which doesn’t sound like a lot if you have a strong community (ie. Chinatown, Koreatown, Expat Town, etc) but back then mom was one of just a handful of Asians in Mexico City that didn’t even know each other. She did have a paisana, my friend Ricardo’s mother, in town and I like to imagine that they were each other’s consolation during periods of homesickness. In fact, I know they were. I was there. Save her friend, my mother immersed herself into Mexican culture as fully and completely as she could and only indulged in Mongolian food and music at home.

For perspective, as I type these words, I have already been living in Mexico for 4 years with little to no Mongolian friends and I have to admit that even I, who wasn’t born nor raised in Mongolia, find myself missing the melodically uvular sound of the language and the sharp wit so unique to its distinct fricative hisses. If this is how I feel as a half-Mexican, half-Mongolian who was raised in the US for most of her life, then of course my mother, who was born and raised in Mongolia for most of her life, missed the distinct sound of her native language. It sounds strange, but sometimes I wish I could go back in time and befriend my 28 year old mother as an adult and enjoy the cassette together over a cup of tea. I wasn’t so mature at 7, I guess.

Singing off key

Having been left under the care of several relatives both in Mexico and Mongolia up until 1997, I admit that finally living with my mother was a little disorienting if awkward. Even at my young age, I think I could sense her shame for leaving me those first years. Her penance was palpable even to me. (Now that I am older than she was back then, I understand that it must have been disorienting for her, too. She was a kid herself and her life as a full-time single mother had just begun.) Even though she’d only left me to get back on her feet, those precious years were lost and set us up for a relationship that was disjointed, cacophonous, and jarring… and we were about to play catch up for the foreseeable future. She remained an exotic enigma to me for years.

And these days, the more I listen to the song “Duuchin Chamdaa”, the more I find myself asking “How was my mother feeling at that/this age? Was she lonely? Was she happy?” Oftentimes these questions have surprised me during the most mundane moments of my days in Australia, China, France, and Mexico where I began to understand what it was like to be the “exotic enigma” myself.

And since I was growing up as a Mexican kid, and later an American kid, I confounded my mother as well. The “West”, Mexico and the US, was wholly different than the Communist Mongolia she’d grown up in. As the years wore on, we tried unsuccessfully to see eye to eye making worse with each attempt. We were both taunted by the fear that we were worlds apart, irreparably off-key. Growing ever more frustrated with our deteriorating relationship, I became resolute at learning Mongolian for the sole purpose of knowing the side of myself that made me hers and made her mine hoping that somehow I could made the gap between us less glaring, less gaping, less gory.

“Growing ever more frustrated with our deteriorating relationship, I became resolute at learning Mongolian for the sole purpose of knowing the side of myself that made me hers and made her mine hoping that somehow I could made the gap between us less glaring, less gaping, less gory.”

Чамд баярлаж явдгийг хэн ч мэдэхгүй
Chamd bayarlaj yavdgiig hen ch medehgui
No one knows that I cherish you

Чамаас олигтойг нь би мэдэхгүй ээ
Chamaaas oligtoig ni bi medehgui ee
I don’t know anyone better than you

Чин зүрхэндээ дуулдгийг чинь хэн ч мэдэхгүй
Chin zvrkhendee duuldgiig chin hen ch medehgui
No one knows that I sing for you deep in my heart

Чамайг яасныг чинь хэн ч мэдэхгүй
Chamaig yaasniig chin hen ch medehgui
No one knows where you’ve gone

About Mongolia and the Queen of Pop

Sandwiched between Russia and China, Mongolia was a satellite state of the USSR until 1991. My mother was one of the many generations of children to went to Russian school and grew up speaking Russian and Mongolian in tandem. I suppose it wasn’t so farfetched that the kids who went to Russian school would want to go to “Mother Russia” after graduating, which is exactly what my mother did. She met my father in Moscow in the late 80s and I was born in 1991 right at the dusk of Perestroika and Glasnost and the dawn of a new epoch that was exciting, scary, traumatizing, and full of promise for all those who got to experience it.

Language wise, the Mongolian language has its roots in Altaic languages, like Turkish, though linguists consider this debatable. To my ears, though, Mongolian is a language that sounds similar to German and Arabic but with the poetry of Mongolian skies and mountains embedded in it. I swear you can hear the whispers of Mongolian winds in the lispy Ls and its mountains’ indomitable spirits in the guttural Gs.

“The West has Celine Dion. Mongolia has Sarantuya.”

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Mongolia began a new era of reclaiming her cultural identity after nearly seven decades of foreign influence that barred any expression of Mongolian national identity. With the influx of foreign media that had also previously been banned during the communist era, Mongolia of the 90s was suddenly a bird that was caged no more with a newfound creative power to harness. With it, flourished with a new era of pop, hip-hop, rap, poetry, sub-cultures and countercultures, and… just art in general. Sarantuya was one such singer whose ravishing voice blended Mongolia’s folk classics with new modern pop sounds, captivating the hearts of a new Mongolia.

“Sarantuya’s music is deeply embedded in the collective consciousness of Mongolians precisely because her music held their hand at the dawn of this new age.”

Sarantuya’s music is deeply embedded in the collective consciousness of Mongolians precisely because her music held their hand at the dawn of this new age. Her spellbinding voice, her arresting beauty, and her longstanding career cements her as pop superstar. You’d be stumped to find a Mongolian who doesn’t know Sarantuya and her songs. The West has Celine Dion. Mongolia has Sarantuya.

Singing in harmony

Over the years, my Mongolian improved and by the time I was 20 I could carry a conversation without inserting English words after every sentence. Consequently, Sarantuya’s “Duuchin Chamdaa” was no longer gibberish as it was when I was 7. Not only could I understand the words, but I could feel them too, and suddenly, I could feel my mother’s heart when she was 27 cleaning our apartment all those Saturday mornings. And the more Mongolian I learned, the more I spoke, the more I heard, so the more entrenched this song became in my marrow. If like the song, my mother was once a foreign concept that I struggled to understand, then now I could trace her every emotion in Mongolian and go as far as to emote it myself to the point of retrospectively sobbing and rejoicing with her the way I couldn’t all those years ago.

Sometimes I wonder if our mercurial relationship ever had anything to do with culture, language, and ethnicity. Maybe it was just the specific flavor of our mother-daughter relationship, but a mother-daughter relationship like any other. What I have learned so far is that to love is to see; to communicate is to risk miscommunicating— but you keep trying anyway. Even if you fail, hopefully you see (read: love) the person as they are and simply accept them. Throughout it all, Sarantuya’s “Duuchin Chamdaa” has soften the rougher edges around our relationship like ebbing water eroding the rougher edges of a rock. Her evocative voice overwhelms my heart with the pride that comes from knowing how to speak Mongolian and being able to emote, sing, and cry in its specific shades and hues… and for that, I am eternally grateful to my mother.

“Sarantuya’s evocative voice overwhelms my heart with the pride that comes from knowing how to speak Mongolian and being able to emote, sing, and cry in its specific shades and hues… and for that, I am eternally grateful to my mother.”

Энэ дууг ганцхан чи дуулж чаднаа
Ene duug gantskhan chi duulj chadnaa
You’re the only one who can sing this song

Энэ дууг ганцхан чи амьдруулна
Ene duug gantskhan chi amidruulna
You’re the only one who can bring this song to life

Итгэж байна дуучин чамдаа
Itgej baina duuchin chamdaa
I believe in you, beloved singer

Эхнээс нь дуулъя хоёулаа
Ehnees ni duuliya hoyulaa
Let’s sing it together from the top

When it clicked, I let out an emphatic sigh of relief because “Hey, I might be a freak, but I am not alone!” Just like how discovering the concept of third culture kid affirmed all the ambivalence I grew up feeling about my liminal cultural identities, the term polyamory affirmed the tensions and anxieties that I felt throughout my monogamous relationships since age 15. I wasn’t (just?) a harlot, I was blessed with a buffet of choice where most people only get a PB and J sandwich. Not only was I multicultural, but being multicultural afforded me the privilege to love, kiss, fuck, and whisper sweet nothings in several cultural contexts and languages (ethically and without bulldozing over lovers, of course, I’m not heartless). Could I ever manage it in one lifetime and come out of it without the world’s stoning real or imagined?

The grief in cultural identity turned into grief in sexual identity

The fact that I never fit neatly into the box of "Mexican” or “Mongolian” or “American” insofar as cultural identity goes, also primed me to feel like I had some weird multiple personality thing going on that very in line with the theory that we’re different versions of ourselves in every language we speak. I mean, it was cool that I could be so multicultural and multinational: I was a cosmopolitan princess and who doesn’t wanna be that? But I suffered because I desperately longed for something that couldn’t be or could no longer be. In short, grief. I would fantasize to no avail for a family reunion in a perfect Mongola-Mex-American utopia where all the people I loved in every language could share the same space. It was never possible, because they were not only culturally different, but economically different. My families have never met. One world remains completely severed from the other.

But much like fantasizing about a one family reunion, I also fantasized about a guy who would be able to speak to me in Mongolian, Spanish, and English with the same fluency as me. Except my mom, I have met one other woman in my life who could speak all three seamlessly. She was an American woman who grew up in Mexico and married a Mongolian man. Meeting her was an experience that I might never be able to put into words, I’m afraid. But a man? Never. I’ve never met a man who could speak Mongolian, Spanish, and English with ease, who was single and available. I’d always been left in want of this because who wouldn’t want to be spoken to and be seen in their entirety by their beloved, come on. It’s a desire I’ve learned to kill, though. I’ve learned to be content with what people reflect back to me of myself: a fragment. I collect them all to create the mosaic of who I am.

This here is the unspoken grief that Ruth Van Reken and David Pollock talk about in their book “Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds”.

Basically, TCKs have this conundrum: we know what it’s like to be in your world and therefore you know us in your terms, but nobody truly knows us in all of our terms. The people who can grasp you as the sum of all your parts are very few, and so to feed the human part of you to needs to be related to, you start to accept whatever morsel of validation and affirmation you can get. Letting other people’s reflections define who I am, though, was part of the reason that my growing pains were extra dicey, because with all that that I just said, plus the added fact nobody at school or in my family could validate or affirm my very unique brand of teenage angst, plus my absent father and my single mother who was never home, plus the jingoists coming after me to dismantle my already fragile idea of who I was... let’s just say my circumstances coagulated to make a potent and deadly cocktail of codependency.

Celine Song’s debut film “Past Lives” (2023) explores this idea of love suspended between cultures and identities. In the film, Nora is a Korean American who marries Arthur, a Canadian, but is then conflicted when her old flame pays her a visit from Korea years later. Her husband in turn is very understanding about his wife’s internal conflict. he knows he would never understand it and respects it, even despite his jealousy. In this scene, Arthur expresses what I suppose all mono-cultural partners who truly love their poly-cultural partners have felt before.

Arthur to Nora: Sometimes I guess I get scared. You dream in a language that I can’t understand. It’s like there’s this whole place inside of you where I can’t go.

And so, in my teens and most of my 20s, I often gravitated toward boys whose parents were immigrants and who knew how to speak their native language at home, but it somehow bored me. I would get curious about dating Mongolians or Mexicans, too, because I just knew that the love would feel different in Mongolian and/or Spanish the way my mother’s nagging felt different in each language. And it did. I took my 20s to date them all and I found out that: “Aiñ mi amor, es que no sabes cuanto te amo” feels very different from “Wonyanya minii hair hamgiin vzegselentei ni shd, bi chamd yamar ih hairtaig gej sananaa” even though it’s essentially the same words of “Doh, my baby love, how I love you so”. To love and be loved in the different languages that make you you is to understand that words of love spoken in each language have a different hue, density, and even taste different.

It’s a beautiful thing, but it also made me a love addict— because then, I wanted to know love in all of its forms, in all of its hues and flavors even though I was overstimulated and exhausted by all the code-switching. I lost myself in the addiction, sotospeak. My codependency (and the toxic jealousy that often accompanies it) came to a screeching halt about six years ago. I still struggle with its remnants here and there, sure, but thankfully it’s never to the degree that it was back then. But since then, I have also had to unlearn everything I thought I knew about love and how I showed up in it in order to teach myself brand new rules. With that kind of reconditioning, suddenly the girl whose identity depended on her boyfriend’s became the girl very open to be herself, ruffle her own feathers, and read about polyamory.

My break-up humbled me to no end, and I figured: since I got this one so wrong, what else could I have totally wrong about relationships, how I see myself, other women, how I see my male partner, other men, etc..?

Little by little, I began to see that I was riddled with super dangerous codependent beliefs rooted in toxic monogamy about love, women, and men, such as but not limited to (clear throat):

⛔ If the guy invades my personal space and insists on pushing my limits, and vice versa, it’s love. If he doesn’t, then he’s not interested enough.

⛔ If he’s not crazy jealous, or vice versa, it’s not love. Crazy jealousy also has to be passionate and unreasonable, because that’s what love and passion is.

⛔ Respecting boundaries and communicating clearly is boring.

⛔ If he loves me, he has to drop everything he’s doing to prove it to me (and vice versa).

⛔ We have to share every private, personal thought and if it doesn’t include me as the center of his universe, then the relationship is vulnerable to threats (and vice versa).

⛔ He wants to sleep with every woman in his life or the women in his life secretly want him and/or I can’t speak to men because spending any amount of time with the opposite sex will lead to sex, lies, and heartbreak.

But wait, wait, I don’t mean that monogamy itself is toxic. It’s not. Monogamy is beautiful and it has its merits. I just mean that there is a toxic version of monogamy out there and that the way my life was set up since childhood didn’t really afford me the privilege to know what healthy monogamy is. And just like there is healthy monogamy and toxic monogamy, I believe that there is healthy polyamory and toxic polyamory. Lucky for me, I got a chance to explore healthy non-monogamy which, in my humble opinion, promotes interdependency rather than codependency:

✅ If the guy respects my personal space and doesn’t insist on pushing my limits, and vice versa, it means it is love rooted in respect. It has nothing to do with how interested he is or not.

✅ Crazy jealousy is not romantic. Crazy jealousy is disrespectful and destructive, but with tenderness, respect, and willingness to communicate, crazy jealousy can be used to learn more about each other and delve into true intimacy.

✅ Respecting boundaries and communicating clearly fosters intimacy and harmony.

✅ Nobody has to drop everything for you and you don’t have to drop everything for anyone, save if there is a burning building or a vulnerable person in immediate danger.

✅ Every lover is entitled to their personal and intimate thoughts and their own safe haven. The fact they want to share their thoughts with you by inviting you into their weird little world is what makes love special. Once we’re in the weird little world, we’re there to observe and appreciate, not control and subvert. Nothing is under threat.

✅ He may or may not want to sleep with some of the women in his life. You may or may not want to sleep with some of the men in your life. So what? It doesn’t mean it will happen. If it does, may it be under respectful conditions. Sex and betrayal are not synonymous and don’t have to be heartbreaking if we don’t make it so.

So where does this leave me and my lovers and friends? Is polyamory a gift that I have the privilege to explore? Or is polyamory just evidence of how damaged I am? Is the glass half full or half empty? Well, the truth is, it doesn’t matter to me because whatever its packaging, I think it boils down to a love that exudes peace.

I’d rather drink the whole glass, which to me means living my life, loving the best as I can, learning from my mistakes where I falter, and being grateful that I’m lucky enough to meet people who have similar attitudes toward love and sex. And in the days when doubt inevitably creeps in, I’m soothed with the kindness of my peers. Moreover, I feel like being in a relationship is more than just coupledom. Being in any relationship, romantic or otherwise, has to be about supporting one another through different facets of life. Helping each other pick up new hobbies. Eat/cook/clean together when life is tough and we need extra hands. Understanding and appreciating our parents. Getting through grief and loss. Providing new perspectives. Just supporting each other and knowing that though everything is in flux and nothing is permanent that we can still count on camaraderie.

And if the polyamory structure doesn’t work for me anymore, I suppose I can adjust it. I hope I do. If that doesn’t work, then I’ll adjust it again. Life is about little adjustments, right? Sometimes gentle, sometimes harsh, but movement, nonetheless. A life devoid of movement is slow death. And what about kids? What would I do when it’s time to have children and build a family? Will it be blended or traditionally monogamous? Well, beats me! (This question reminds me a lot about when the jingoists would ask me what language I would teach my children. Would it be English, Mongolian, Spanish? I was 10!) My answer to both is this: I’ll cross that bridge when I get there… and before anyone says that children need a two parent household: I want to point to the generations of broken children raised from exactly that, but I digress.

“What polyamory has done for me is to show me a fresh way to love, like a cool balm on old wounds caused by a lot of absence during my most crucial formative years.”

But I’m not writing monogamy off forever because my childhood was dicey. Whose wasn’t? This is just what feels right for me right now for my specific reasons. I’m happy I even made it to 33 and I’m grateful. What polyamory has done for me is to show me a fresh way to love, like a cool balm on old wounds caused by a lot of absence during my most crucial formative years. I can only be grateful for the grace that my boyfriend(s) show me when they tuck me into bed or kiss my forehead or show me, for the first time in my life, that two people can work together to take care of me, that I am not a point of contention, pain, or shame, that my nationalities and whom or which one I choose or what language I speak or how I love doesn’t make me any less or more loveable. My only hope is that they feel as fulfilled and that they have the courage tell me if they are not.

Maybe one day, after all this, my life will take me someplace where I can also enjoy healthy monogamy. Who knows? Only God knows.

I initially started to draft this post after my French lesson with my Moroccan teacher and then went about the day cleaning and tidying the house (as one does on a Friday, I suppose) and now, finally back at my desk, see that I never wrote a single word.

So in the attempt to fulfill the promise to myself that I shall write no matter the circumstance, here I am, trying to knock out some words about my French language learning experience.

The brief background is that I started French in 7th grade back in middle school in DC. I abandoned it the moment I graduated from middle school and entered high school where I started Latin. Latin was excruciatingly boring, so I switched to Italian (as my Zero Assoluto post mentions, Lizzie McGuire might have had something to do with it).

No, I promise I’m not drunk typing.

Then I never really took French ever again until meeting my French partner from Nice. I mean, I speak Spanish since childhood so with the basic two year education I got in middle school I could certainly understand plenty of French, but if you asked me to speak the most you’d get was “oui”.

Well, fast forward to Mexico post-pandemic and post-Shanghai in 2020, I decided to take French more seriously by which I mean look at the books and watch more movies, but four years after, I still understood more than I spoke. Long story short: what I had been doing wrong was to not speak consistently, and for me to speak, I need genuine connections, which outside of my partner with whom I speak English 99% of the time, I didn’t have. (All multicultural couples know that having your partner teach you their language is a no-go. It can be done, but it’s not for the faint of heart.)

Le YAY!

Which brings me to today where I have finally broken through with my French: le YAY! What do I mean by “broken through”? Well, I mean that I can finally turn on the camera and simply speak with my teachers (Philippe from Lyon and Sanae from Morocco) rather freely. Even when I don’t know the phrase or the word, I am able to ask them which is something I could never do before 🥳

How did I get here you ask? The thing is: learning a language is not a linear experience. I’ve had a lot of ups and downs with French. I think anyone who has tried very hard to learn a language will tell you that it’s like developing a toxic love-hate relationship with a person, except it’s a concept. Nay, a language.

In the game of learning languages, we (the learners) are the non-committal toxic fuckboys.

It’s like, you break up, you make up, you fall in love again, then you ignore each other for a while, then you find something about it that you like again and decide to casually pick it up again. In the game of learning languages, we (the learners) are the non-committal fuckboys who, hopefully, eventually commit.

The Best Learning Method Ever

Oh yeah, back to how I got to the breakthrough moment. Well, I was inspired by one of my ESL students who takes 25 minute lessons with me every single day or at least 4 times a week. In the three months that she has been my student, her English has skyrocketed. I was impressed, not even with my own teaching, but with her.

The secret? Good old consistency. BUT NO! It doesn’t have to be an hour a day or something crazy like that. The girl is doing 20-30 speaking minutes a day which means that’s all your brain needs to keep the language in the forefront of your mind whilst you are busy living your life in a non-English speaking country (in my case, non-French speaking country).

So I decided to give her method a go. I think it has been a month or so if doing French every day with a French human being who is not my partner? I’ve just recently added another teacher to the mix to help me understand the grammar and she’s also fantastic. Today we had a whole conversation about feminism, men’s rights, sexism in different cultures, and I think I managed okay 🥳

Of course I have TONS of polishing up to do. Like my masculine and feminine articles, expressions, the stupid conditionnel and nightmarish subjonctif. But after 4 years of dilly-dallying with French, I finally feel like it’s getting somewhere and it makes me so happy. It’s a private little happiness, the kind of giddy wiggle you do in the bathroom when you’re brushing your teeth 🥰

There was a turning point though, beyond that of my student’s learning method: vendetta. Well, I’m not at liberty to say what for because it’s not really my vendetta, but basically there’s something I want to argue for and against in French. A very specific thing, for a very specific reason, one tied to something very personal to me. I don’t know if I will ever actually get to argue for it. Defend it. I don’t know. What I do know is that since I have become privy to this injustice, I only replay sentences in my head of what I could say… even if I may never get to say them. I’ve always been deeply motivated by the balancing of the scales, I suppose, even if the violence is just in my head and might always stay in my head. One can dream, right?

I swear I’m not drunk typing. I’m just impassioned.

Well, maybe not “violence” perse, but I have always been motivated by a good debate. Now I will explain why. Veering away a bit from French, but still on topic about learning languages: the only reason I ever chose to get better in Mongolian was so I could defend myself against the bloody Nationalists that used to get in my face about me being mixed blood. Now at my 33 years of age I finally got the chip off my shoulder about Mongols and I know that most of them couldn’t give two shits about mixed race children and that the Nationalist weirdos are a small percentage of the population, but when I was a kid it felt like every time I tried to introduce myself as the daughter of a Mexican man, I would get some kind of well-meaning pressure to abandon my Mexican side for the Mongolian side or just outright displeasure at my globalized identity that threatened their national identity.

🔉 Listen to the podcast episode with my friend Tim where we talk about our shared Asian identities while growing up as diaspora in the United States

I don’t bother about this stuff anymore, but when I was growing up it was a hell of a chip on my shoulder and something, perhaps a fire in my belly that us Mongols refer to as shar was ignited in me to show them that I was not a mutt with no identity, that I could learn to speak Mongolian like a native and that I would argue, passionately so, for my right to be as Mongolian or Mexican or multicultural as I damn well pleased, all while they wouldn’t be able to string a sentence together in English (yes, I was a very bitter kid).

The day I left someone speechless and verbally disemboweled them in Mongolian was the day I told myself my Mongolian was good enough.

In my 20s, I succeeded at getting into heated debates with Mongolians who didn’t quite understand my point, but damn, I gave a heck of an effort to learn every turn of the phrase I could to get my point across. The day I left someone speechless and verbally disemboweled them in Mongolian was the day I told myself that my Mongolian was good enough. I was finally pleased with myself and no matter what anyone said about my lack of Mongolianness, I could reply “I could have just as well forgotten this language, but here I am to hear your grievance and respond to it”.

Graduation day was the day I could set my eyes upon something else: enjoy life and have regular conversations with my beloved Mongols. The ones I liked and whose company I really enjoyed. (Hint: they were the ones who didn’t give a hoot about my identity, we just talked music, poetry, and recipes).

So there you have it. Getting my point across, one that I am vehemently determined to get across, is my motivation to learn any language. Or any skill, for that matter. It stimulates me to no end. Gets me going. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, I’d even go as far as to say that it makes me feel alive.

Getting back to the French: Now I see that “learning to speak French because my partner was French” was never a good enough reason for me to give a damn. What I needed was a cause. An injustice. A vendetta. Someone or something to advocate for. The question now is, when will I be able to say that my French is good enough? When will that glorious moment when I can set my vendetta to rest finally come? Probably not for a few seasons of my life, but at least it feels like finally, this fuckboy language learner has decided to commit to this language.

May be all you need to finally push the gas on your learning language journey is a fucking argument. A cause.

What do you care about and how can you advocate for it in your target language?

Thanks for reading this craziness of a post.

Love,
Mishell

Once upon a time I was a fifteen year old, naive and headstrong, wide-eyed and full of dreams. Forever interested in foreign languages and fascinated by the foreign exchange students at my high school, I sought them out, asked them questions, and eventually got invited to their exclusive parties. I felt chosen, different, cultured, truly international. I was younger than most, but I kept up. I could understand bits and pieces of Italian and French and watched intently at what they read, knew, and talked about. I spent time laughing with the Latin American students from Peru, learning slang from different countries, smuggling bottles of pisco to school, kissing boys who spoke Italian, and listening to music that I translated by hand with nothing but the lyrics on Yahoo Music, a dictionary, and a pen and paper, and of course, Zero Assoluto.

The first time I stumbled upon Zero Assoluto’s music was while I surfed Yahoo Music and its music videos from all over the world. Just by clicking around, I figured out that if you scrolled all the way down to the footer, you could choose a country and it would send you to the local Yahoo Music page of that country. I chose Italy because somewhere between my mother’s love for old Sanremo classics and the Lizzie McGuire Movie, I fell in love with everything Italian. I would let the video player play music video after music video, understanding whatever my knowledge of Spanish would allow me to grasp. Some I liked, some I didn’t, but then one night a song came on that took my breath away. In the video, a dances in slow motion as the lead singers express a longing for loved ones not yet met and a life full of love not yet lived.

Ora che mi sento bene
Now that I'm feeling good

Spengo la luce
I turn off the lights

Spero di riuscire a dimostrare
I hope I can prove

Che così va bene
That things are alright

The gentle guitar picking reached out and pulled me in. Then Matteo’s voice assuaged the teenage angst that brewed within before Thomas’s gentle rapping took the lead and enveloped me in its melodic cadence like a warm embrace. How could music be so beautiful? Or a language so enchanting? Or a song so opportune? My eyes watered, my chest swelled, my breath took its time. Looking back, what I was feeling could only be understood as the pure unadulterated joy one feels when gifted serendipitously with a brand new way to see the world. Since that momentous night, my iPod Nano had “Semplicemente” (Simply), “Sverliarsi la Mattina” (Waking up in the Morning), “Mezz’Ora” (Half Hour), and “Appena prima de partire” (Just Before Departing) on constant repeat. I even managed their first fan club on Facebook for a time.

Childhood friends Thomas De Gasperi and Matteo Maffucci began making music together in the 90s in Rome. In 2004, they released their debut album “Scendi” and have since released six albums, performed at the 56th Annual Sanremo Festival, and have collabed with our girl Nelly Furtado. To me, their music is autotuned pop sprinkled with melodic rap that contemplates the complexity of love, the simplicity of daily life, and the uncertainty of the future. Their biggest hits from the early 2000s almost feel like a breath suspended in air, words left unsaid, a desire left unexpressed, a defeated acceptance of cannot be, and what must be, in both life and love. Their lyrics also zero in on the mundane scenes of our every day lives, like our fingers that hold our school books, or the messy wardrobe and the waft of our waffles and coffee, so as to say, this is beautiful, too.

Love often hides on the edges of coffee stained cups, the dog-eared pages of well-worn books, and in the folds of our messy wardrobe.

Being a teenager is notoriously painful, and it was even more so with an absent father, a brand new stepfather, a mother who was too preoccupied with keeping her own life together, a new baby on the way, moving away from friends, changing schools, and trying to make sense of one’s own sense of identity with the added complexity of speaking three languages and juggling the specific nuances of each language in my mind. To shut off from it all, I drew, I wrote poetry, and I listened to music in Italian religiously, and diligently translated the lyrics into English, giggling with glee at 2am when I began to understand and simply enjoy the song. I would take coloring pencils and outline each letter as the music resonated in my ears as my secret love affair with Zero Assoluto made my adolescence bearable.

Ma tu davvero credi
But do you really believe

Sia stato un piano studiato per farti del male
That it was a calculated plan to hurt you?

The end of my adolescence was marked by leaving the house at eighteen. Though it broke my mother’s heart and mine, my mother’s tumultuous marriage with her husband only alienated me more. I felt myself slowly disappearing into the walls, so I left, nay fled, the morning of my birthday. My mother said nothing. Neither did I. As I saw it, she’d made her choice and there was no room in it for me without contorting myself into an impossible shape for them. When I left, it was Matteo and Thomas’s voices that kept me dreaming for loved ones that I hadn’t had the privilege to meet yet and the countries I was yet to explore. Ah, but a few adventures later, I learned that their songs were right: love often hides on the edges of coffee stained cups, the dog-eared pages of well-worn books, and in the folds of our messy wardrobe… and even amidst the chaos, it’s beautiful, too.

It was a hot and humid night in July when my classmates and I scurried off to do our thing in the gargantuan city of Shanghai. We’d spent day in and day out the whole week for our intensive course at Fudan University and we were more than ready to decompress on our own at least once. I didn’t have any must-sees in Shanghai, so in an effort to find something to do I thought back to the conversation I had on the plane with an amateur stand up comic from Switzerland and decided to check out the comedy club he had mentioned. With a VPN, Google Maps, and no idea that the entire course of my life would change that evening, a sweaty, lost, American student from Melbourne headed toward the Former French Concession and shortly arrived at the 4 story building where the comedy club was located.

“Sorry, you’re late, the show is over,” the guy behind the bar said.

He looked as hot and over his day as I was. I could sense that he was annoyed by my arrival. Who wouldn’t be when they’re closing up? But maybe it was the neon signage that was still buzzing or the sepia toned lighting that changed his mind because he let me stay a bit longer. “Would you like a drink? On the house” he asked, still rinsing the beer glasses and wiping down the bar. “Yes!” After walking around in what felt like a sauna, I was happy to not leave right away and take a breather. It turned into more than a breather though, because M and I ended up talking for longer than either of us expected. We talked about the similarities between Arabic and Mongolian. He told me what it was like to be part of the Egyptian Revolution in 2011. We talked about my Mongolian-Mexican-Russian background. We talked about music. Each topic peaked more interest still. Time simply disappeared.

“Hey, do you know Altan Urag?” he said once we got our backgrounds out the way. I almost choked on my drink. I was often having to educate people about Mongolia as a country with its own language, unique cultural identity, and musical styles, but here was a guy who could already name a very cool Mongolian folk rock band. “No way, how do you know them?” I asked. “Of course I know them, but do you know any music in Arabic?” he quizzed. Feeling challenged, I bust out my iPhone and showed him the only Arabic language band I had on there — Mashrou Leila. Check mate. He was surprised and something happened at that moment. A recognition of the other in a world that deemed us both invisible. He promptly played “Fasateen” (Dresses) from the club speakers and Hamed Sinno’s undulating voice slowly etched our future into our hands. It was, in a way, the perfect first date and one I would come to regret.

Note: Unlike many artists in the Middle East that sing in Egyptian dialect, Mashrou Leila sings in Lebanese Arabic to add to their commitment to authentic representation of themselves and what they stand for. Despite the difference in dialect, the band’s irreverence resonated with the younger general across the MENA region and varying Arabic dialects, including young and avant-garde Egyptians.

Meaning “The Night Project”, Mashrou Leila was founded in 2008 by a group of students at the American University of Beirut who enjoyed jamming late into the night. Members included vocalist Hamed Sinno, violinist Haig Papazian, drummer Carl Gerges, bass guitarist Ibrahim Badr, and keyboard and guitarist Firas Abou Fakher. Together, they composed an indie rock reminiscent of OneRepublic albeit with the richness of Arabic expression. Their lyrics are daring, using male pronouns to talk about homosexual love and heartbreak, but also the political issues that surround them. For example, in “Maghawir” (Commando) they sing about the shooting of two lovers at a Beirut nightclub, addressing the lax gun laws in Lebanon and the overall culture’s issue with male aggression. In “Shim El Yasmine” (Scent of Jasmine), they sing about leaving a homosexual lover for a heterosexual marriage. Let’s just say they certainly got under the skin of many conservative groups across the Middle East.

During their 14 years together before disbanding in September 2022, Mashrou Leila released 4 studio albums and an EP. Early in their career they won awards at the Radio Liban Modern Music Contest and continued to win international awards up until their dissolution. With regional and international fame inevitably came the backlash from fanatical conservative groups that often came in forms of harassment, censorship, and banning their concerts. In Egypt, for example, fans raised a rainbow flag during a concert in 2017 which triggered several arrests and a ban on future concerts. The same happened in Jordan. In Lebanon, Christian groups protested against the lyrics they considered “blasphemous” and against traditional values. In 2014, they were featured on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine becoming the first Middle Eastern ban to be featured. While Mashrou Leila has long disbanded, lead singer Hamed Sinno continues to advocate for LGBT rights in the Middle East and beyond.

اذا لمستك بحلاوة رقصك قربي علي شوي / If your touch is as sweet as your dance come a little closer
في جحيم تحت جلدي وانتي ايديك باردين / There’s hell under my skin and your hands are cold

And as for me, this band remains inextricably linked to a personal revolution of my own. I no longer regret that evening. It was makhtub, written in the stars. It’s obviously not my intention to misappropriate the larger significance of what this band stands for with my heterosexual story of love and rebirth. It goes without saying that Mashrou Leila means way more than that. Nevertheless I also can’t deny that this band pinpoints the exact moment that the course of my life changed forever. Not only did I pick up and leave everything I had in Australia in what seemed to be the romantic gesture of the century, but the relationship that ensued was as passionate as the sustained vocal maqams in “Fasateen” (Dresses) and as forlorn in its lows as the cry of the violin in “Kalam” (Words). I don’t know that the same sparks would have flied had the maqam infused melodies not reverberated that night.

What I do know is that Mashrou Leila became the soundtrack of a love that set me ablaze and forced me to rise from its ashes. With the lessons I had learned from M, both sweet and bitter, I was able to slowly but surely usher in a new era of my life with a brand new heart and pair of eyes, and for that, shukran ya’habibi.

يا الياسمينه / My jasmine

انساني / Forget me

يا الياسمينه / My jasmine

وشم الياسمينه / And smell the jasmine

واتذكر تنساني / And remember to forget me

Homemaking and fixing up the house
First order of business is making sure my house is not a complete disaster. Believe it or not I have been cleaning for about a week now, or trying to, with no avail. It’s not even about mopping, but cleaning out old broken things and reorganizing drawers and stuff. To purge, if you will. This time I want to focus on the feng shui. DearModern on YouTube is my favorite for that.

Earlier this year, my mother gifted me her old sewing machine, which instead of turning off, surprisingly really filled me with a curious wonder for the world of sewing. It all started with wanting to make homemade scarves for the dogs’ 1st birthday later this year and then I decided it wouldn’t be so bad to learn how to tailor my own clothes. I have the NECCHI 3205FA model and started this Skillshare course.

Well, I started the Skillshare course and never quite finished it but that’s what this month is for. Speaking of Skillshare, I was also inspired by a zero waste course that I took on there and would like to continue making my home more environmentally friendly. My goal is to have some kind of zero waste, Mexican rustic, colorful vibe for the apartment. As a TCK, “home” is complex, but it’s time to make it mine.

Trying to get back to get back to podcasting
This project realllllllly fell of the wagon, but this month I am committing to getting back to it even if I don’t publish right away. My goal with writing and podcasting was always to get know people better and enjoy the editing process anyway so I think this time around I will take it easy and remember why I ever started it in the first place. I’m excited to keep learning about interviewing skills and digital storytelling techniques.

These past few months that I haven’t been working on episodes, I’ve taken time to listen to podcast episodes and there are few that I just really enjoy. The MUBI Podcast’s Rico Gagliano is just a master storyteller and his episode on Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless actually left me breathless. His episode on In the Mood for Love is still my favorite, but man, the Breathless episode really inspired me to learn more.

Another favorite podcaster of mine is Katy Beauvais from The French Instinct. Katy never fails to make me fall in love with French. She makes French beautiful and gentle with her soothing voice, lovely choice of topics that inspire the courage to not give up on learning. One of the most recent episodes that I enjoyed was on “Ratiboisées : je suis une meurtrière”. If I can learn to speak like her, I will die happy.

Becoming a better teacher-preneur
Finally, teaching. I’ve been teaching all along but I decided to bring my website back to life and to have a real think about what I can package for my students to help them study. I have a very specific niche of students whom I love and they have very specific needs that a weekly class just doesn’t meet. In the past I made workbooks, tried out SuperPeer for teachers, made handouts, tried TikTok, but it was not… it.

Making something useful for someone is not the easiest task. Much less charging for it. The thing is though that I have 4 years worth of notes of all the speaking quirks my ESL students have and what skills they need to train to speak English “like a native”. Now I realize the answer is simple. I don’t need to reinvent the wheel. What I need to do is keep teaching and make something with someone in mind and see if others like them are interested. Yes, I finally understand customer avatars.

And in an attempt to understand her upbringing (and maybe even understand my own by extension), I made a trip to Mongolia in the 2010s during which I got to explore the old and new UB. To the dismay of my nouveau riche family who, to their credit, did very well for themselves in the 90s, I used to spend more time exploring the older, smellier parts of the city than taking up invitations for fancy shopping sprees.

It was during a lot of those humble strolls that I would bump into old mom and pop shops that sold “Russian” snacks such as, but not limited to, potato piroshki. Despite having fancier options, I always felt more comfortable eating at those places because I wanted to experience the city from below, not above. (Don’t ask me where and why I have this conviction, but I refuse to believe that it’s because I have a poor spirit, but I digress).

So then, what are piroshki? Firstly, the word is in plural and refer to what are basically meat buns that are very popular in Eastern Europe and, for those of you who know your history, even some areas of Afghanistan and Iran. A single pirozhok can be filled with everything and anything your heart desires such as potatoes, meat, mushrooms, or sweets such as apple or cherry jam. It was, my mother tells, a typical snack during her childhood.

I like piroshki because it reminds of its Mongolian cousin, khuushuur, and what I like about food like that is its total lack of pretentiousness. It shows up exactly as it is. It fits in your hand and it nourishes you with the basic ingredients that civilization was build on: flour, meat, potatoes, whatever. Did finally having some piroshki in the streets of UB help me bridge our culture gap? No, it did not. Neither did it bring piroshki to our dinner table, but I did feel closer to the little girl for just a moment.

My mother and I have always stood at opposite ends of everything right down to our palates, but I think the only time we meet in the middle is when we share the simple dishes of her youth that to me are not memories of a poor, un-American, non-Western life, but rather memories of my mother before she was a mother, before she traveled to Mexico, before she became the mother of two more American children. That girl, that woman, is a mystery to me, but I catch of a glimpse of her sometimes.

Here I share with you guys one of my favorite chefs on YouTube. Helen Rennie has a very precise and organized way of explaining her recipes, which I like, and she gives book recommendations and history lessons while she is at it, so I enjoy that too.

Some other media about Eastern European cuisine that I enjoyed
Mamushka: Recipes from Ukraine and Beyond by Olia Hercules: This is a book recommended by Helen Rennie which I now also own. The book is a recipe book that is deeply personal and beautifully illustrated with photographs of simple, village life in Ukraine which made up a part of the author’s upbringing. Perhaps what I like most about this book is that it gives Eastern European cuisine the respect it deserves.

According to Olia Hercules’s own website, the book features everything “from the Moldovan giant cheese twist and Ukrainian buns with potatoes & shallots to Garlicky Georgian poussins with spicy plum chutney and Armenian pickled wet garlic; to Napoleon cake, Wasp nest buns and Apricot & sour cherry pie”. I can’t wait to expand my knowledge of Eastern European cuisine. Borscht, pirogi, and piroshki can’t be all.

Alissa Timoshkina’s Borsch by Recipes from diaspo(ra: This article talks about Alissa and her experience growing up in Soviet Russia and introduce the reader to the gastronomic elements that make her childhood memories so vivid during the backdrop of a radical shift to a free-market economy which impacted all these. Below is one of many favorite passages:

What I have grasped about old adages such as true love is letting go is that most of them have a sentence missing that only reveals itself to you if you live long enough to work it out for yourself. I’m 32 now and I’m only now beginning to give this particular adage a second chance, and still I suspect that I haven’t even scratched the surface. Nevertheless, here is what I have deciphered so far about the nature of true love, the act of letting go, and what it says about being human.

1️⃣ “True love is charitable”
Nowadays, I don’t think the saying was really ever about romantic love. Maybe the phrase was actually about the very rare pearl that is charitable love which can pertain to romantic love but isn’t necessarily limited to it. But why would I want love to be a charity? I’m not here to beg for anyone’s love. No no no, not that kind of “charity”. I mean charity as in “freely gifted” with no strings attached, gifted when it was not mandatory to do so, and gifted when there was little if nothing to gain from doing so.

How do we know if the love we feel for others, or that others profess to us, is the charitable kind of love? I don’t know if there is a way to really know. My only guess for evaluating your own heart is when the mere thought of their absence, or their actual absence, creeps up in the dead of night and makes it hard breathe. If they’re still in your life, you think of ways to make them feel loved, and if they’re no longer with you, you hope that wherever they are, they are well.

2️⃣ ”Letting go is inevitable”
But aren’t we supposed to keep the love that we think is true? Well, yes and no. I’m not sure that anything or anyone we have is to keep. Even the ones we love are only around for a little while whether the little while is five years or five decades. But that’s so depressing. Is it, though? Doesn’t the thought of having to let go of, nay, lose them someday make you love them more charitably (patiently, generously…) precisely because the time is finite?

Maybe the reason that human beings contemplate the death or loss of our loved ones isn’t to drive ourselves to anxiety and paranoia, but rather to drive ourselves to appreciate them while we are lucky enough to have them. And maybe there’s more to the word “appreciate”, too. In this case, “appreciate” wouldn’t mean to say you appreciate them, but to intentionally do things that increase the value of your relationship in both your lives even at the risk of saying goodbye.

3️⃣ ”Love, then, really is pain”
To love at all is to risk losing them or having to let them go (and thus feeling pain either way). But as I grow older, this pain feels less like a punishment and more like a seed that can germinate new life… if only I don’t disrupt the flow of life with resentment, self-pity, and lack of charity. In other words, let go. I’m learning now that charity keeps love vulnerable and sweet; that charity is a gift and not an insult; and that the pain that comes with goodbye is only constructive if we let go bravely.

Maybe “true love is letting go” carries more meaning than at first meets the eye. Maybe it means that: To love or having loved at all is to feel charitably and thus fearlessly even at the risk of saying goodbye someday. Despite this risk, you love anyway because the joy of having had the privilege to love them at all far outweighs the sadness you’ll feel when they’re gone… and you know deep down that the pain that comes from such goodness can only sprout the most beautiful beginnings.

The thing presented itself to me in the form of a dog. If you had asked me at age 25 what I would be doing by 32, I probably would have told you some generic bs like “working a company, making x amount of money, and living in some cosmopolitan city”. In fact, I was in Melbourne when I was 25 and I went to Shanghai chasing exactly this generic dream albeit in Mandarin, which I never got the hang of but that’s besides the point. That life wasn’t for me. Then Covid happened and all of that left me washed up in Mexico as another expat teaching English online. Groundbreaking, I know.

Since arriving to Mexico, I have been able to close a lot of chapters in my life and have had the gall to start entirely new stories. Through those new stories, I’ve discovered new dimensions to my personality and character that I didn’t know existed. Some that I don’t like, such as my arrogance, and some that I do like, like my courage. Mostly though, Mexico (or this period my life which happens to be in Mexico) continues to teach me that whether it be mere luck or God’s grace, we are fortunate to experience that harrowing, but often joyous, experience that is to be alive.

My life is rather unremarkable. I am unremarkable, but I would like to do just one remarkable thing before I die. I don’t know what it will be, but if Penny and the Jets have taught me anything is that sometimes life chooses for you and you just go with it and do your best. Surely, I’ll end up washed up on another shore with another mission that wouldn’t have been possible without Penny. I’m exhausted, but hopeful and excited. My 30s has come with a hard reset, indeed. Purple haired Mishell with a nose ring would hardly recognize me.

Don’t get me wrong, I am still very much interested in my ivory tower of philosophy, psychology, and even, sexology, I just have to manage my time properly to make time for them. Now that I have a sewing machine, I also have to make time to sew. Can you believe that I want to make dog scarfs? I certainly can’t. Does having less time to do the things you love somehow make you want to make more time for them? Perhaps those of us that don’t ever finish writing that book or finishing that painting have too much time on our hands.

Seth Godin said it best in a podcast episode hosted by Don’s Table. He goes (I’m paraphrasing here) “I write everyday because it was a decision that I only had to make once. After that, the only decision I have to make is what I’m gonna write about rather than if I wanna write or not.” He likened it to breakfast. You already decided that you’re gonna eat, now you just have to figure out what to eat. So now I’m a junkie with a project looking at a menu. What shall I write about tomorrow? I have no idea, but I’ll see you there (maybe).

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And yet, as sentimental as I can get about the places I have inhabited, I then nosedive into ice cold apathy because the fact is that from the bird's eye view of an airplane window— they're just spaces. Voids made up of walls and trinkets. Albeit spaces that I have loved, hated, sometimes even feared, but define me they did. As you can tell, space and every iteration of it (home, birth country, etc) is a supremely complicated concept for TCKs. At the same time, I became addicted to starting over and my relationship to space became profoundly modified/skewed with the mobile lifestyle. Something as normal and, arguably, fun as decorating the home was, and is, makes me groan. If anything, I developed a sick sense of satisfaction from squeezing my belongings into 1 or 2 boxes. It was almost as if amidst constant change, I learned to avoid the focused attention and, frankly, the patience and grit that innovation requires. I learned to contract rather than expand. And what I’ve learned is that regret beings to creep in to spaces devoid of creativity and expansion. In other words, where there is no creativity, there will be all manner of ugly.

Now coming up 4 years in Queretaro, Mexico, I have been learning to stay still. No longer lightning on my feet in the brightest cities of the world, I am, indeed, molasses in the booming city of Queretaro that has kindly given me repose. I'm stupidly fascinated by stillness of everything, even myself. Even home is some kind of a novelty. Not only do I have the physical and psychic space that I never had when flying economy class from small apartment to small apartment, but I also have longevity. I relish in it. As I feel the warmth of the morning sun ushering in a new day, I also realize that it’s time to get that paint job done. So there you have it… space is personal, emotional, and as recent news has shows, political. We assign meaning to a space and will go as far as go to war to protect the territory that we claim as ours. What's protecting a home, a castle, or a country if not protecting a space? What's protecting yourself if not the space that your physical body inhabits and the right for your mind's thoughts and opinions to take the space it needs to breathe?

...this kind of interconnectedness with those spaces, really makes me hopeful, for someone who grew up with very little or almost no community in Switzerland. It gives me hope that there is more possibility in that sense for people to find a place where they belong. And I for a really long time did not feel like I belonged anywhere and places like LockChuck in China and Hercules makes me feel welcome.

New hours: Wed to Fri. 4 - 8pm.
Address: Calle Ignacio Allende 44, Centro Historico, Santiago de Queretaro, 76000

Amy’s Top Picks

• The Monocle Guide to Better Living

• Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara

This is the same steamer I use at every Global Food Garden*. Thanks to my cats who knocked over my steamer and broke the lid knob, I now need to use a chopstick to lift the lid. I could just buy another lid but something about having to use the chopstick to lift the lid reminds me of my mother having to use an empty glass bottle to roll the dumpling wrappers in 80s USSR… Having to “make do” is somewhat romantic in my head and it keeps me humble about my dumplings by reminding me of their very simple origins.

Global Good Garden is a gastronomic event that takes place in Queretaro, Mexico that I was a part of during its nascent stages.

You see, this steamer is the same steamer my mother bought in Mexico City back in the 90s when she and I were living together in colonia Cuauhtemoc. Back then, living in Mexico City with my mom who's originally from Mongolia were special years for me because it was the first time I’d tasted stability in my life. No more airports, no more packing and unpacking. No more hellos and goodbyes. Since my birth, I’d been pingponged from Russia, to Mongolia, to Mexico and finally, just finally, in 1996 I was able to just be a kid who went to school and actually keep her friends.

Part 2: Loss

Alas, it was short-lived because in 1999 we immigrated to the US for better opportunities and the Mexico of my childhood remained crystallized in my memory just as I had lived it at 7 years old: full of love and with room to breathe... devoid of all the actual issues that plague this country. It wasn’t until I was older that I had to accept the dark shades of Mexico, but I digress. The Mexico of my heart is the one I spent living with my mom from 1996-1999 and one of the many reasons I came back here during the pandemic.

Well, when we moved to the US in 1999, mom sold most of our things and a lot of our kitchen utensils and gadgets went to my grandparents’ house in Puebla. INCLUDING THIS STEAMER which was unbeknownst to me until I arrived here mid-pandemic! Wanting to make dumplings for my family one day, I bemoaned not having a steamer. My aunt’s eyes suddenly lit up and she said “¿Sabes que hija? Tu mamá nos dejó una vaporera hace muchos años ¿Será esa la que necesitas?” So together we went on a little expedition to the back of the house. Lo and behold, it was there.

Of course I washed it, polished it, and took it home to Queretaro.

Part 3: Abundance

Perhaps it’s because my life was oversaturated with hellos, goodbyes, and not enough time to say I love you or to live out experiences together with the people I loved that I still get so sentimental about old pots and pans. Leaving (fleeing?) Shanghai while rushing against a rapidly spreading virus to sell my hard-earned things and pack as quickly as possible left me more tired and spent than I ever imagined. To give you an idea, it took me about 2 years before I could commit to purchasing furniture here in Queretaro. My nomadic life left me feeling really weird about material belongings.

So that steamer really and truly was a sight for sore eyes. I felt like it was an old friend I’d lost in 1999, right here in Mexico, who was ready to be back in my life once I was sure I’d be living here again. It sounds strange, right? It’s amazing how the human mind assigns meaning to stuff, but this is the stuff that gives my dumplings meaning. It’s a love letter to family, heritage, and the courage it takes to build a new family away from home... and that’s what you’re eating every Global Food Garden when I sit down to make these dumplings and steam them in my dinky, but precious, little steamer-that-could.

𝑯𝒐𝒘 𝒕𝒐 𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒂𝒎 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒅𝒖𝒎𝒑𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔

If you’re looking for a steamer, a vegetable steamer or a bamboo steamer are all fine all available at your favorite supermarkets and Amazon. Here’s how to cook ‘em:

1. Set the water to boil at high heat.

2. Once the water is boiling, oil the bottom half of your dumplings (lol) with whatever oil you have (vegetable, olive, sesame seed oil are all okay). I like to pour a little oil in a cup and just dip the dumpling halfway.

3. Arrange them nicely in your steamer. Make sure there’s enough room between them because they will poof up a bit.

4. Wait 15 minutes. Keep it at high heat!

5. If your dumplings came frozen, keep them boiling for 20 minutes instead of fifteen.

6. Enjoy with pickles, potato salad, sriracha sauce, and even your favorite Mexican salsa. And of course, don't forget to put a happy little garnish on top as a final touch.

With love,
Mishell

Never heard what the Mongolian language sounds like? Here’s one of my favorite albums by alternative rock band The Lemons. Rumor has it one of the members is my second or third cousin, but I can’t be sure. This album has a special place in my heart because it reminds me of my Mongolian-Australian summers in Melbourne. That’s a story for another day. Enjoy the music.