by June Lin-Arlow, AMFT 

When I started to get text messages from well-meaning White friends checking in on me, I knew something was up. I opened the news on my phone, and my heart sank. Six Asian women were murdered by one man’s desire rooted in patriarchy and White supremacy. I felt nothing. It was so normal and so horrifying at the same time that my body could not process the dissonance. These texts felt intrusive, like finding out about something that happened in your family from someone who was not in your family. I felt ashamed that I didn’t know before they did. 

I thought about responding that I was “still processing but thank you for checking in,” but I’ve been letting the part of me that takes care of White people rest these days, so I didn’t respond. Until that point, my heart was already breaking from witnessing attacks on elders and hearing from friends being targeted by anti-Asian assaults over the last year. I was thinking through the conversations I could have with my elders about how we could protect ourselves while being in solidarity with our BIPOC community. This news pulled me back into a paralyzing numbness and later rage, where I could not do anything useful. 

Over the course of the week, I was able to have conversations with different groups of Asian friends and clinicians, and I finally started to think and feel again. I appreciated that everyone had such different ways of relating to what happened because of the diverse experiences of privilege and oppression within our own experiences of being Asian in America. Sometimes it feels like the ways we are projected upon by the White gaze hold more similarity than any other aspect of our lives. Asian women are frequently fetishized and exotified as a screen for White male sexual fantasies to play out, and this objectification is continuing to happen in the broader discourse around the tragic events in Atlanta. 

I wanted to reach out to send my love and support to fellow Asian clinicians, especially Asian women, who are doing the difficult work of caring for others amidst our own struggle. I’m holding you in my mind and heart. Please do not hesitate to reach out if you are needing support: jlarlow@ncspp.org. 

I am tired, and I do not seek to educate here. If you’re interested in learning, here are some resources from educators: 

• Anti-Asian violence resources
• The Deep American Roots of the Atlanta Shootings by May Jeong
• Cathy Park Hong: I’m So Sick of the Fact That It’s Not Changing by Sejal Shah
• An Unnoticed Struggle: A Concise History of Asian American Civil Rights Issues
• 'Model Minority' Myth Again Used As A Racial Wedge Between Asians And Blacks by Kat Chow
• A Letter to My Fellow Asian Women Whose Hearts Are Still Breaking by R.O. Kwon
• "I want you to care when people are still alive": Yves Tong Nguyen of Red Canary Song