Many of the faces in the field of therapy aren’t like mine. I am afforded the privilege of a college education, but as a child of Vietnamese refugees and part of the queer community, I face unique obstacles in the pursuit of my dreams. Intergenerational trauma has established my dysfunctional household and these learned behaviors have followed me in adulthood. My mother is a narcissist and my father encouraged her emotional abuse. I was the role model, the third parent, the mediator, the pleasure to have in class, the burnt out gifted child because that’s all I knew how to be. I was coping with an environment deficit in resources. Yet, I am not defined by my trauma and it did not make me stronger. My chosen family makes me stronger. My insight makes me stronger. The work I put into therapy makes me stronger. I choose to be kinder. I choose to advocate for my communities and serve as a bridge between them. An interdisciplinary and intersectional background helps me better support alienated populations. This is why I choose to major in psychology, as well as poetry, and minor in gender, sexuality, and women’s studies. In my culture, happiness is tied to the collective. Marginalized communities experience overlapping oppressions which exacerbate emotional burdens. People of color, especially immigrant households, are less likely to seek mental health services due to social stigma and mistrust of culturally incompetent professionals. It is a significant act of rebellion to acknowledge that mental health does not rely solely on affected individuals to seek help but the systems that affect them. My contribution to the mental health field is bringing a nuanced perspective to the table and advocating for holistic evaluations. Being part of minority underrepresented populations, I have insight into how to approach situations that cannot be covered in a textbook. I work to find practical solutions to conflicts in my communities and use my platforms to advocate for them. There is no neutrality for people like me. My story is not political, it is personal. In examining the brain as separate from a holistic human experience, the field becomes clinical and removed from these communities. I’m interested in supporting refugee and immigrant youth and queer kids of color with a focus on adolescents dealing with adverse childhood experiences. Through an internship, I facilitated group therapy with varying age groups. I’ve had the opportunity to uplift my communities through my position on two club executive boards, working with PRYSE academy (a camp for refugee and immigrant youth), and interacting with mentors in my fields. My identity impacts how I interact with the world and I plan to use my education, both academic and lived experience, to make a good impact. There is a difference between dreaming big and living in delusion and many people can’t afford delusion. I cannot singlehandedly reduce the price of therapy and treatments. I cannot rebuild the trust between cautious communities and healthcare that doesn’t care for them. However, I can provide support through validation. I can assure people that they are not alone and there is no instant fix to their problems but help them work towards an improved quality of life. I can center community support, a collectivist method of healing. I can be a familiar face and scaffold complex language. We make our own paths because it is our only choice if we want to survive and survival requires innovation.

The desire for justice lives in all of us and we expect leaders to give voice to our demands. Followers are voices that must be listened to, the message. Leaders are simply the medium of change. My goal is to empower the collective. As a child of Vietnamese refugees and a member of the queer community, I have insight into how to approach situations that cannot be covered in a textbook, but I face unique obstacles in the pursuit of my dreams. Attending predominantly white institutions, I have to fight to take up space while doing the work of educating my white counterparts at the risk of invalidation and burnout. I had to work to voice my anger and then I had to work to get over it because model minority students can’t make a big deal. There is no neutrality for people like me. I’m a leader because my story is not political—it is personal. In my culture, happiness is tied to the collective. Our experiences are defined by our systems and the way we defy those systems. Marginalized communities experience overlapping oppressions which exacerbate emotional burdens. We are taught an edited history that prioritizes supremacist ideologies. I have gained the confidence to navigate the complex power dynamics in institutions through my run-ins with censorship by administrators and lawyers. I lead by bringing a nuanced perspective to the mental health field and advocating in any environment I’m in. My leadership is aided by not only my intersectionality but interdisciplinary interests. People of color, especially immigrant households, are less likely to seek mental health services due to social stigma and mistrust of culturally incompetent professionals. I’m interested in supporting refugee and immigrant youth and queer kids of color with a focus on adolescents dealing with adverse childhood experiences. This is why I am majoring in psychology and poetry, minoring in gender, sexuality, and women’s studies. Through poetry, I have found my voice. Through an internship, I facilitated group therapy with varying age groups. I’ve had the opportunity to uplift my communities through my position on two college club executive boards. I was the advocacy chair for the Vietnamese Student Association and head of the committee. I was vice president for AQUARIUS, a queer Asian affinity group. Additionally, I’ve worked as a counselor for PRYSE Academy, a camp for refugee and immigrant youth. My team and I executed a curriculum we curated and assisted with workshops. This is no American Dream, no bootstrap or model minority myth. I am no different from all the people who have persisted before me or the ones who continue to persist every day in different ways. Leadership is a lived trial and error. It is not an identity; it’s a process. In a world where every decision has a myriad of consequences, people will be flawed. To be a leader isn’t to be perfect, it is using the tools you have to try to be better. My biggest resource is other people. I’ve grown through interacting with mentors, student leaders, organization collaborations, community members, and my personal support system. Leadership involves grief and healing is hard. Yet, it is not insignificant to address joy. I want to celebrate our ability to exist as we are in a world where that is not guaranteed. My identities aren’t isolated. I am all of these things all of the time, and I am going to fight for all of these things all of the time. We make our own paths because it is our only choice if we want to survive and survival requires innovation.

As a child of Vietnamese immigrants, I was adjusted to a culture of living to eat. Meals are a sacred communal activity. Living off campus, I am responsible for cooking while juggling finding the time and money, socioeconomic privileges. I lost sight of the value of food. My days were spent in a hangry brain fog, and although coffee is a college student’s best friend, it suppressed my hunger cues and made me more anxious. During quarantine, social media was how we connected but also how we critiqued and compared. The Chloe Ting challenge took over our social media feeds, proclaiming instant results. When we focus on false facts and posed or edited pictures, we develop body dysmorphia. I got stuck in an endless cycle of diets and watching ‘what I eat’ and ‘that girl’ videos. You look for it because you want the impossible and because the algorithm is DJ Khaled, you see one green juice video, another one, then another one. I thought “I just need to get to my ideal body then I will focus on my relationship with food” but my ideal body is the one that has a healthy relationship with food. Eating was a chore until I approached it with mindfulness. When I began weight lifting, I started eating three meals a day and focused on proper hydration and protein intake. Eating healthy doesn’t have to mean bland foods and salads. I adapted it to be more culturally appropriate. I don’t restrict foods I love that might be low in nutritional value because it feeds the soul. Diet culture is eating disorder culture in disguise. I said I wanted to be healthy when I wanted a body that would appeal to the male gaze, one that takes up as little space as possible. The rapidly changing beauty standard is reflected in our volatile perception of health and how keeping up can hurt us. Our habits are a product of our systems. The gym community introduced me to change but perpetuates these systems through the normalization of pre-workout (caffeine) and unhealthily tracking calories when “cutting” (after bulking which is putting on a lot of weight to get bigger, cutting is lowering fat percentage by following a strict diet in order to show the muscles). Phrases like cheat day and junk food place morality on foods and encourage binging and shame around food. Food groups like carbs are demonized. You convince yourself that you need to work to deserve food, therefore exercise becomes a form of punishment and eating healthy is an exercise in self control. It is important to consume vegetables. It is also important to remember carbs give us energy and keep us full. Social media shows mostly the successes, the personal records and the “after” pictures of dream bodies. Healthy is only healthy if it’s sustainable. So I cut out caffeine but I still eat my favorite ice creams. I eat more vegetables but sometimes it is served with a dip. I eat chicken but Vietnamese style. I feel better when I add things to my life instead of removing them. Healthy eating is important when it’s personal to us as individuals. Some people have milestones that they want to hit or aesthetic goals, both of which are valid, but I just focus on how strong working out and eating healthy makes me feel (physically and mentally). For me, it’s important to have healthy eating habits, not to appease diet culture, but to ambrace my cultural values and to love my body enough to take care of it.

As a child of Vietnamese immigrants, I was adjusted to a culture of living to eat. Meals are a sacred communal activity. Living off campus, I am responsible for cooking while juggling finding the time and money, socioeconomic privileges. I lost sight of the value of food. My days were spent in a hangry brain fog, and although coffee is a college student’s best friend, it suppressed my hunger cues and made me more anxious. During quarantine, social media was how we connected but also how we critiqued and compared. The Chloe Ting challenge took over our social media feeds, proclaiming instant results. When we focus on false facts and posed or edited pictures, we develop body dysmorphia. I got stuck in an endless cycle of diets and watching ‘what I eat’ and ‘that girl’ videos. You look for it because you want the impossible and because the algorithm is DJ Khaled, you see one green juice video, another one, then another one. I thought “I just need to get to my ideal body then I will focus on my relationship with food” but my ideal body is the one that has a healthy relationship with food. Eating was a chore until I approached it with mindfulness. When I began weight lifting, I started eating three meals a day and focused on proper hydration and protein intake. Eating healthy doesn’t have to mean bland foods and salads. I adapted it to be more culturally appropriate. I don’t restrict foods I love that might be low in nutritional value because it feeds the soul. Diet culture is eating disorder culture in disguise. I said I wanted to be healthy when I wanted a body that would appeal to the male gaze, one that takes up as little space as possible. The rapidly changing beauty standard is reflected in our volatile perception of health and how keeping up can hurt us. Our habits are a product of our systems. The gym community introduced me to change but perpetuates these systems through the normalization of pre-workout (caffeine) and unhealthily tracking calories when “cutting” (after bulking which is putting on a lot of weight to get bigger, cutting is lowering fat percentage by following a strict diet in order to show the muscles). Phrases like cheat day and junk food place morality on foods and encourage binging and shame around food. Food groups like carbs are demonized. You convince yourself that you need to work to deserve food, therefore exercise becomes a form of punishment and eating healthy is an exercise in self control. It is important to consume vegetables. It is also important to remember carbs give us energy and keep us full. Social media shows mostly the successes, the personal records and the “after” pictures of dream bodies. Healthy is only healthy if it’s sustainable. So I cut out caffeine but I still eat my favorite ice creams. I eat more vegetables but sometimes it is served with a dip. I eat chicken but Vietnamese style. I feel better when I add things to my life instead of removing them. Healthy eating is important when it’s personal to us as individuals. Some people have milestones that they want to hit or aesthetic goals, both of which are valid, but I just focus on how strong working out and eating healthy makes me feel (physically and mentally). For me, it’s important to have healthy eating habits, not to appease diet culture, but to ambrace my cultural values and to love my body enough to take care of it.

The appeal of college is its offer of freedom and flexibility in my learning and growth. Often, as a child of Vietnamese immigrants, I am not afforded this privilege. I learned to prioritize sacrifice at the cost of my mind, body, and soul. College comes with its own challenges but the journey is one of prioritizing care and coping in healthy ways. Freshman year taught me the joy of creating my own schedule, adapting it to my inability of being a morning person. Yet, without someone dictating my actions, I had to learn accountability. Although incompatible with morning classes, I felt my best when I started my day with movement. I took advantage of my university’s gym facilities and found a love for weight lifting. This helped me maintain a stable sleep schedule, and not only did I get stronger, but I felt significantly less brain fog. I wanted to carve out a space for myself in a male-dominated environment while defying the pressure of wanting to be skinnier and take up less space. The gym was an outlet for my daily frustrations, a place where I could be present. But no amount of gym could prepare me for the lows of sophomore year fall. College is more than just learning, it is an unlearning journey. As I stepped away from my abusive family environment, I had to unlearn an unhealthy mindset. I had to set boundaries, because if I don’t, my mental illness will set them for me. I had to relearn that it is safe to reach out for help in triggering moments; that real world consequences do not entail punishment, but taking accountability. I had to identify my support system but also learn to be okay with my own company. Socialization is exciting and critical for my development but as an introvert I have to be conscious of recharging my social battery. Sophomore year, I moved off campus, which is typical of my university. While I found a family within student clubs, being on two executive boards was a draining endeavor. I was taking maximum class credits and working a part time food service job. I lived with four other girls and commuted to campus by walking Pittsburgh’s hilly landscape. I cooked my own food which was physically more fulfilling but added to my list of responsibilities. The excitement of these ambitions soon turned to apathy. Overwhelmed with a packed social calendar and academic expectations on top of financial worries, I hit a mental low. It took the help of my support system to admit I was struggling and I was prescribed antidepressants. In sophomore spring, I slowly regained my sense of self. College is a stimulating environment with diverse ideas and opportunities to further explore my interests so alongside my psychology major courses, I took my passion for poetry more seriously and declared it my second major. I focused on creative expression and its process instead of an end goal. I formed relationships with my professors and took initiative in getting a mentor. I cut myself some slack and trying my best became trying to be better. I sought to improve my skills in conflict management and emotion regulation because I am trying to better advocate for myself. Taking care of yourself is hard work with setbacks and small wins nobody witnesses, but I’m worth the work.

Hogwarts houses are not a category of character traits but more so character values, so while I might embody bravery, ambition, and knowledge seeking, my values lie in Hufflepuff. Hufflepuffs find importance in inclusivity, loyalty, and work ethic. When the Sorting Hat sang “Good Hufflepuff, she took the rest,” it was not to say that Hufflepuff is for the unimportant but a recognition of the importance of fairness. Hufflepuff does not turn away students who don’t fit a specific ideal so I believe it to be the most diverse house. Without restricting characterizations, there would be more room for exploration and thus well-rounded strengths. I am a Hufflepuff because I do diversity, equity, and inclusion work as a leader in my communities not for personal power but for the betterment of everyone and myself. Hufflepuff’s mascot is a honey badger, so despite the misconception that Hufflepuffs are cute and sideline characters, we are fighters. I am fiercely protective of what I love and believe in. I have learned from mentors and my peers and become stronger for it. I have been part of an organization that addresses menstrual poverty, organized a climate protest, and created safe spaces for women of color and queer students within clubs. I have used my voice even as censored by lawyers, administration, and opposition. I serve as a bridge between communities and sometimes that means not being in the spotlight but shining it on someone else. I am a Hufflepuff because I am interested in experimentation. I aim to be open to new passions because being a jack of all trades is better than being an expert at one. I am not focusing on the impossible pursuit of perfection. Everything I learn allows me to be interdisciplinary. I am majoring in psychology and poetry and minoring in gender, sexuality, and women’s studies. The skills I’ve picked up are transferable and inspire my other fields. I am able to connect with more people through shared interests and find many ways to academically and creatively express myself. My younger self would be proud that I am continuing to be process-oriented and engaging in a growth mindset. When I was younger, I wanted to be a pediatrician and a fairy and marine biologist. I’m still that child. I’m still dreaming big and sometimes that starts with a lot of small things. I am a Hufflepuff because I put in the work. While applicable to my academic career and leadership, it applies to my personal life as well. Hard work isn’t about grand gestures. Love can be in little things like acts of service or writing down something a person said they liked to give it as a gift later on. Love is about making a commitment to creating time for people you love. Love is not just romantic. The loves of my life are queerplatonic relationships who've become my chosen family. I have an internet friend of eight years from Saudi Arabia. I still call my highschool friends weekly. I chat with the cafeteria workers who serve me. I invite friends who are too anxious to reach out first to remind them that I value our friendship. The Hufflepuff common room is near the kitchen and my love language is food. Cooking for someone I love and carving the space to have a meal with them is a priority for me. I approach every aspect of my life with love. I am brave for love. I am goal-driven for love. I learn for the love of it. This is why I am the perfect fit for Hufflepuff.

Barbies are told to dream big, but small dreams possess great value too. I want a small house, so as to not feel alone in the expansiveness. My ex-Ken loved modern minimalism but smallness does not equate to sterility. I want a soft place to return to. I want to be able to easily invite all the Barbies of my life over--love within reach. My dream house is in a walkable city with a park for picnics and a coffee shop bookstore combo nearby. When you walk through the entranceway of my house, it smells of baked goods or fragrant cooking. There is a bamboo mat at the door and you take your shoes off. You are overwhelmed with the sight of a ridiculous amount of houseplants. There is whimsical fairy-inspired decor because we never really grow out of our childhood obsessions. The rooms have a warm glow, bathed in natural light and hanging mirrorballs. The bathroom has a stained glass window and a bath along with the shower for when my friend whose favorite pastime is taking baths visits. There is a comfy reading nook with bay windows that give into wooden bookshelves with a rolling ladder. I have a chair where I can sit crisscross and a desk with a pink typewriter. There are ornate vintage mirrors that look like fairy portals and pictures pasted all over the walls that are portals to good times. The walls in my room are littered with media posters and poetry/writing I feel a connection to. I want a closet with a technology-sorted clothes system and pink clothes to match my pink hair. There is an excess of tote bags, campy artwork, and trinkets from thrift stores or local artists, many of which are frog knick-knacks. There is an assortment of mismatched ceramic pottery, dainty tea sets for tea parties, and dishware for dinner parties. The dining room has a circle table and we never turn on the overhead lights, only using lamps and taper candles. Sometimes we eat on the floor on a beautiful rug, because this Barbie is not Western. The living room is the most colorful room in the house with wallpaper that adds to the chaotic social energy. With a conversation pit seating is a television and a record player with Taylor Swift vinyls and other female artists. In the corner is a cat tree for my spoiled cats because who is Barbie without her animal companions? The kitchen is stocked with baking supplies and a pantry with actual snacks because I grew up in an ingredients household. The cabinets always have my friend’s favorite tea and non-dairy options for my fellow hot girl stomach issues guests. There is a Vietnamese market nearby and a diverse selection of restaurants where I know the names of the customer service workers. There is a queer and female-friendly gym a short walk away and public transportation that is well funded, getting rid of the need to drive cars. There is little light pollution so the stars are visible and my asthma is a lesser worry. I want a house that isn’t haunted by the fears of my past. My dream house is lived in and well-loved. I want a little life, is that too much to ask for?

I Know Places is my favorite song on Taylor Swift’s ‘1989’ in how it applies to the nuance of queer existence, grappling with private and public perception. For Taylor, this was a representation of a high-profile relationship navigating the public spotlight. Taylor’s songs have always been an outlet for translating my feelings. I did not share her issues of fame. She could not understand the lived experience of a queer BIPOC identity. Nevertheless, she was relatable in an unintentional way for an eleven-year-old me when this album was released. The opening of the song is a stuttering “I” which sounds like being caught off guard, exposed in its quality. It embodies an anxiety I felt when I was outed as queer, even while I was still trying to decipher my sexuality. Middle school and high school did not allow hesitation. Everything felt brutal in its drawn lines, vultures waiting for signs of weakness before picking apart the death of your reputation. But this album is the moment before that destruction, different in the way ‘Reputation’ claims ownership and autonomy at rock bottom. Here, we are still figuring it out, and with it comes ups and downs. It is a fragile coming of age. I love the line “We’re out here in plain sight” because queer existence permeates every space. It’s cheeky in its dig at people who ignore our presence and comforting in knowing there are others like us. The song builds up to the chorus like an anticipation of a bad thing, using the metaphor of a fox hunt. Queerness is a complicated relationship with survival. How can we be safe and free? Seen and not scrutinized? I did not have these answers in 2014. I was running, hiding in the closet for so long. Taylor frequently references secrets in her songs. Secrets that can sink ships but also secrets as the autonomy of having something that is just yours. The line “Not this time” is choosing survival in its refusal of accepting the narrative. My queerness was no one’s business but mine and for a while it was. Sonically, Taylor alternates between her lower range to airy high notes, giving a sense of evolution as my self-concept formed. The chorus is an escape from the anticipation and it feels like an adrenaline rush. “I know places” is the safety of an inside joke or a promise. Love is a commitment and not a passing emotion in this song. Love keeps us strong because we have a hand to grab. I am so grateful for anyone who supported me in a fragile time of development. The line “And you know for me, it’s always you” makes me think of my connection to my queer loves, as they choose me and I choose them. We are hellbent on loving even if sometimes that only means loving ourselves enough to live. There are spaces that were safe havens for queer youth, yet regardless of the sense of community, the song ends with a recorder click as we were deceived by false security. At this part of Taylor’s life and my own, we were coping the best we can in the dead of night. The bridge features a drum beat in the background that sounds like a march. During the eighties, pride was a funeral march. Violence or silence? LGBT+ people couldn’t outrun a system that didn’t love them back but couldn't outrun an infestation of love either. The drum beat did not mean death—we were only getting ready to fight.

I cook, I bake, I worship at the hearth. “Are you any good at it?” How American, to ask how hobbies can turn into hustle culture. The need to monetize everything is so pervasive. Creation has existed before capitalism. Can’t we do things for the sake of it? Can’t we love things because we are human? I wasn’t born knowing how to cook or bake but I was born hungry. I am born into Bún bò Huế . I need no recipe, no notes. I hate the measuring. My hands, a husk of hundred-year habits. Twelve-hour toil, watching it boil, broth that is good for our broken brown bodies. In the kitchen, the women are knuckle deep in rice. I could not say if it was carnage or camaraderie. No, I could not say it was love, but at least there was the understanding that none of us are foreigners here. Here where the men are not. Here no one is marred by marriage or motherhood or mothers. Here I am given an inheritance. I make Chè ba màu, and I slip in the intimate ‘I love yous’ that I don’t know how to say out loud into the coconut milk. She doesn’t know how to say it back either. But when she eats the pandan jelly I think she understands what I’m trying to say. Baking must be done with attention and isn’t attention the same as love? This is the language we share. It is not such a terrible thing, loving in ways I know how. I am an adult when I find out I’m one-eighth French on my Ba’s side. I know better than to claim it, to think that I could be less margin, more margarine. I’ve not known war, only of its offspring. It lives in my pantry, in my parents. I know of the kitchen, of what survives. That’s not my history, that’s what’s been done to me. When I cut into the banh mi, know that it is me that resists. My sadness is a stagnant thing, only animated when I work the dough and whisk together ingredients. The need for precision throws my overbearing thoughts off kilter, shifting me to a space that transcends myself. Tomorrow will happen in a myriad of ways. I will have an appetite for it. I ask myself: With all the love I have, where can I put it down? My love is secure in my loaves. I’d fill the streets and the houses on the streets and the people in the houses with all my love if I could. In the future, I am not a name in history. My name rests with the people whom I’ve fed. I pledge my allegiance to the belief that humanity persists because love persists and love is one big dinner table.