www.mswliu.blogspot.com

New Blogspot

Hey folks,

I decided to simplify my life in order to maintain sanity.
I'm starting fresh with a new blog so go to www.mswliu.blogspot.com
for the latest.

Thanks y'all!

Family: Past, Present and Future

Since the beginning of 2013, and the start of this semester, I have never felt more the gift and power of family. My partner's mother was diagnosed with stage IV cancer. We planned a wedding for two weeks out. Then my brother-in-law lost his father (Don), brother (Philip) and nephew (Izzy) to a tragic car accident.

It would have been Don's anniversary on February 1st.
The funeral for all three was on February 2nd.
My wedding was on February 3rd.


The loss of these lives is truly tragic but mostly it is not real yet. I keep thinking I will see Don soon.

On the other hand, my own mother-in-law's cancer is very real. Yesterday she began losing her hair. She has had fevers the last two days. The family is trying to stay one step ahead of cancer and the treatments but really we are all scrambling to catch up and clipping each others' heels.

To end everything, my wedding was beautiful. I have never been more surrounded by gratitude for life, family and friends. This is all I have to share as it has consumed my days and thoughts for the past few weeks.

I appreciate the support and patience from the program, my work & internship during all of this. Although I do not enjoy relishing in the grief, I do view each of these events as a part of life. I wonder, how will this make me a better sister, daughter, wife, mother, friend and social worker in the world...   

iTHINK

It's not just about what we think, but how we communicate what we are thinking. Blogging can be very personal but it can also be very manicured. Our thoughts are not always manicured.



This week we are reflecting on patterns of thinking but these patterns are often shaped by our language. For example in the Chinese language, everything is contextual. Each word has meaning based on the words it is combined with. This shapes the way people relate to the world and the way they relate to one another. In the Chinese culture, life is circular and everything is connected. You cannot have light without dark and one compliments the other.




In the English language, things seem to be more linear, more direct. How does this shape how we interact with one another? We interact head-on. Assertive. We also have a culture of where freedom of speech is honored. Because I was born speaking Chinese, I think this has shaped the foundation of how I see the world. I recently took a personality strengths test at work and found how important connectedness is to me. On the other hand, I have lost much of my Chinese language skills and have grown up in American cultures, speaking the English language. My relationship with these two languages has truly made me adaptable to many different ways of thinking, being and connecting with others. This is one of my most valuable skills in my Social Work.

In reflecting on which hat I wear, I would have to say it depends on where I am at physically and mentally. In one day, I can wear all of them! Because connectedness with others and the world is something which is super important to me,  it is also important for me to understand how I am easily affected by these connections. My most valuable skill in Social Work is also my Kryptonite.


         

                                                                     Kermit gets it...

Balanced Brain

balance

One of the things I love about studying social work is the amount of self-reflection I am assigned. In this week's reflection, I found that I am as just as rational as I am emotional. As much as I like to organize things (even my checkbook), I also love to be an artist (and create mixed-media art from my garbage). 

I personally feel like I am fairly balanced between my right and left brain. This is something that I have noticed since I was a young adolescent. While I am not 100% ambidextrous, I am able to write with both hands pretty well. I also was introduced to this activity while I was an AmeriCorps volunteer which is able to determine and exercise each side of your brain. Which way does the ballerina turn for you and can you get her to turn the other way?

While the ballerina turns right for me upon first glance, I am able to see her from my left brain and switch back and forth. Sometimes it takes me longer than other times but it just means that I must change my focus (literally). I am happy to say that currently in my life I feel like I have a lot of balance. My ballerina spins every which way with a hot pink tutu. I think this has been due to a conscious effort to find balance after experiencing major imbalance at my last job. One year ago, I felt ungrounded and completely right-brained and emotional. Because this job consumed most of my time, I was constantly in a world where everything was abstract. 

Now that I have a job where the hours do not consume my whole life, my job is straightforward and the mission of the work is something that I am proud to stand by, I feel balance again.

Now my world has a foreground, a horizon and identifiable objects.

This is also pretty much what my view is on the other side of my driveway now!

Obstacles

What do your obstacles look like?

Well, right now one of my biggest obstacles is figuring out my last year's internship. I have an opportunity for this upcoming year's internship with my work but I am really concerned with the following year's internship which must be different. It seems as though one of my goals is turning out to be an obstacle to full-time paid work at a place which I really enjoy working at. 

Another obstacle is how I view time. I am often a person who is willing to work really hard but I easily succumb to living in the present moment. In the present moment, it seems best to take full-time work but in the long run, it will be unmanageable and still be able to finish my MSW.

I would have to say though that my biggest obstacles often look like...me.

I guess it just depends on how I view things. For the most part, I'm a glass is half-full kind of gal. I often go by "Lucky Liu" because I really do feel like a have a lot of luck and success because of my optimism. Where I become my own obstacle is when I either am indecisive about something or when my optimism is overkill and I plan on doing too much at once.

I once had a friend/landlord say that you should never regret a decision because at one point, that is what you wanted. I like to think of this advice whenever I change my mind about something :)

How do I plan for the future when I can't see the future?

I don't have an answer for that...

"He said it's all just in your head and I said, 'so is everything' but he didn't get it." -Fiona Apple

***Apparently I have been updating the wrong blog link...here are the last few entries.

CONVERSATION ON FREE-WRITE EXERCISE:

When and where did you decide to do a free-write exercise?

     Well, I just moved into a new place and while things have been hectic for a little bit, I decided to take care of this class assignment sitting on the deck of my new barn-house loft overlooking the trees and vineyards in Sebastopol, CA. My mind has been racing with things to do, plans for the future, schoolwork to catch up on, etc. and my new serene space seemed like the perfect place to purge these thoughts outside of my brain.

What did you write about?

     Wedding planning...and how I have not enjoyed a single moment of it. I wrote about how I don't really care about the whole wedding part, I care about what happens after the wedding. I want to focus on mine and my partner's every day life, not this one day out of our lives. I wrote that I either want to elope or just have a super casual wedding. I wrote about how other people's expectations or requests have played a big part in confusion about what both my guy and I want. I ranted and raved about how I say that I don't care but I must care if I'm so hesitant to make decisions and so resistant to many ideas that have come up. I realized in my writing, that I am concerning myself with what other people expect and want. I also realized that my own expectations of my wedding day are conflicting.

Can you give examples of your conflicting thoughts/ideas?

    Yes. For example, I want the event to be easy, simple, pretty & stress-free. I want to be able to spend quality time with every person that comes. I want it to be small and intimate but I don't want to exclude any of my favorite people. I want it to be inexpensive and find a venue for free-cheap without having to hide that it's a wedding. (I called around to places and I have been quoted prices that have jumped from $300 a day to $2500 day just because I said the "W" word. 

How did you feel before, during and after the free-write exercise?

     At first, I had to kind of pump myself up to feel uninhibited. I had to remind myself to let the mistakes happen. It was almost involuntary that I would hit the delete button when I knew I typed the wrong letter. It took me a minute into the free-write (or more like free-type) to stop correcting punctuation and spelling. After that, my thoughts weren't interrupted with "oops, I messed up" followed by "oops I corrected my mess up". I really was able to dive deeper into my feelings as opposed to these individual thoughts that were strung together. After the free-write I had a clearer understanding about my wedding day hangups. My hangups are that I do  care, so much so that I don't want it to be dictated by other people's expectations or traditions. My other hangup is that I don't know what I truly want. This is something for me to think about next and maybe meditate or practice a free-write which begins thinking about what I want, uninterrupted with outside opinions.

Was this a positive or negative experience?

     I would have to say that it was a very positive thing to do. I probably wouldn't have done this without the prompt. Instead, I would kept this all in my head (like I have been). I hide it to not seem like a "Bridezilla" or get tired of hearing my own thoughts out loud. I'm usually one to keep things in my head until I have found a solution. The problem with that is that sometimes I don't have the answers and I can only get them by enlisting the help of others. So, while on one hand I have to go deep within myself to figure out what I want, I am also open to taking any wedding day advice from those who have been there or dream of their wedding day. 

Why this video?

     The title of this post comes from this song. I like the lyric, "He says it's all in my head. I said so is everything but he didn't get it." It reminded me of all the things that were in my head before the free-write. While this song is not representative of how I am really feeling about anything, I just love the song and the video is cool.

Silence is Golden Golden...

Paulo Freire always reminded us of complexity, even in language. The word 'silence' stretches way beyond oppression. It also describe something we seek and treasure. It's in silence that we gather our thoughts, center out energy, fell the love and understanding we need for taking action. Quakers, Buddhist meditators and many others use silence to connect with forces larger than ourselves. Freire also valued the reflective possibilities of silence. In 1985, I heard him speak about what he called the "tensions between silence and voice." Silence, which we often see as empty, can represent great activity. "I can spend one hour silent but totally alive. I can speak a lot in silence" he told a crowd at Harvard University. Freire warned teachers not to "emphasize our own voice so much that we impose silence on students" but to "feel out how to get voice from the other side... how to, little by little, go into silence." When we truly choose it, silence is a powerful ally to speech (Dunlap,15)" 

What is "good silence" to me? 

The first thing I think of is music. What would music be like without silence between the notes, the beats, the melody? Silence makes it deeper and makes it move you. 

How does this apply to social work?

Well, when it comes to counseling, I have been taught that a counselor does not give advice but listens and asks questions. In my own experiences or with friends, being able to talk out one's problems or situation, leads to one's own answers. 

Why are good things hard?

Just as eating healthy is difficult (in our culture)...so is staying in silence. 

In my opinion, one of the most difficult parts to silence is the vulnerability. Many people feel uncomfortable in silence (almost like they are naked). Maybe this is why elevators are so awkward, but how do you start and end a one minute conversation with strangers?

 I think it is with silence that we can really hear our own thoughts. How does one truly know one's self without taking the time to listen? Just today, I listened to a TED talk which was incredibly inspiring about the power of listening to other people's stories, the power of vulnerability and the power of self-acceptance. Here is the link to a social worker/researcher/storyteller's lesson through her work...

Brene Brown: The Power of Vulnerability