Issue 86 | ~group hug pls~
Dear Cosmos Community,
This week we welcome the one and only Cassandra Lam, Co-Founder of The Cosmos as our Guest Editor!
On January 1, 2020, my friend Hailin added me to a group text with 4 other Asian American women. We had been catching up over the holidays when Hailin mentioned that some friends were planning to do “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron together. As I listened to her speak, my mind wandered to the spot on the bookshelf where my unopened copy had been collecting dust for 2 years. Emboldened (and called out) by this visceral reminder of how long I’d been putting my creative recovery off, I asked, “Is there space for one more?”
While we weren’t all total strangers to one another, we certainly weren’t established as a “friend group”. So at our first gathering, we sat in a circle to build the foundation for our journey together.
We took turns introducing ourselves: who we were, what drew us to seek this out, what we hoped to give to and receive from each other. We named our fears and insecurities: our struggles to break-up with productivity, our tendencies to deprioritize self-care, our inner critics’ penchant for comparison. We made vulnerable requests: let’s meet biweekly even if we didn’t finish the assignment, let’s cultivate a shame-free culture, let’s make this experience work for us. The more we shared, the more the threads of our individual lives wove into a collective tapestry bounded by shared values, a symbol of our promise to care for and protect each other.
Looking back on this memory, I cannot help but feel it was fate that brought this friend group into my life. Because in the act of trying to survive a 2+ year global pandemic, war, climate crisis, and escalating anti-Asian violence… I’ve also lost, outgrown, and become estranged from some of the people and spaces that once felt like home. I’ve laid in bed, feeling lonely and scared, wondering who I can call, who I won’t be a burden to, who wants to talk so that all that’s happening inside doesn’t swallow us whole.
Whatever it was that brought these life-changing friendships with Asian women into my life, I’m here to let you know that you don’t have to wait for a miracle. The support system we created, which has been thoroughly tested by everything we’ve faced these past 2 years, isn’t the stuff of fairytales or magic. It was the outcome of showing up for ourselves and for each other, with honesty and compassion, again and again and again.
My journey of healing through community care (and those of other Cosmos community members I've been lucky to witness) has led me to theorize that friendship can be a fertile practice ground for freedom. Meaning our relationships can be spaces where we question, experiment, dream, and create new ways of being and relating that can disrupt systems of oppression.
This is the intention behind GROUP HUG, a 12-week community care program by The Cosmos for Asian women, femmes & non-binary folks to grieve, heal, and build collective resilience. Through somatic + creative practices, community grief rituals, and storytelling sessions, you will learn self + community care skills, practice caring for your everyday mental health in these times of crisis, and form relationships that will hold you during and beyond the program.
Sliding scale pricing starts at $200/month for 3 months. You can apply for financial aid until Friday March 11 at 5pm ET. Financial aid is funded by community members who purchase at the CHAMPION tier of our sliding scale pricing ($800/month). The more folks who enroll, the more financial aid we can give away!
~Dates & Things~
March 11: Last day for financial aid applications.
March 18: Registration closes!!
With love,
Cassandra Lam, CoFounder of the Cosmos
Thank you for loving and supporting me, you know who you are!!
Asian American Federation launched the first-ever multilingual Asian Mental Health Directory — it’s in 17 languages. We’ve seen a number of directories come up (Asian Mental Health Collective, Asians for Mental Health, South Asian Therapists) but this is the first we’ve seen with so many language options!
A series of gifs made by Brown Girl Mag on Asian American stories was one of my inspirations for The Care Fund!
Every week I’ll share 3 stories from the community that were submitted for The Cosmos Care Fund, our creative aid fund that distributes micro-grants for Asian women to tell their stories. In a time when the headlines are filled with stories of our un-safety, our hope is to create a place on The Internet where we can feel safe, hopeful, and seen 🥰
Every paid subscription to this newsletter directly supports The Care Fund. Applications for our next round of funding open April 1 — help us raise $888 by then so we can support more stories like these!
Vina V. (she/her)
After over a decade of learning, discovering, and unlearning, as well as making a solo trip to the homeland, I can truly feel within my body that the Vietnamese people and our experiences are more than that of war. Our culture, like our people, is rich with stories and beautiful with nuances. To honor this, I put together a collection of three herbal blends that represent my connection to the Vietnamese and Vietnamese diasporic experience. I’m calling this project Tea & Thơ, thơ meaning both letter and poetry in Vietnamese. In a way, this tea collection is my love letter to my people and the stories they have told and the ones still left untold. My teas are all inspired by someone or something, thus every tea coming with their own story.
Shareen M. (she/they)
I’m a 55-year-old emerging Japanese Okinawan American poet, but I also write flash fiction and creative non fiction on diasporas, identify, and generational intersections. I would love to share the importance of voice as a POC and getting published as a way to create community and increase representation rather than reinforce ethnic stereotypes.
tan e. (they/them)
As a non-binary filipinx person, I want to tell my story of liberating myself from the archetype of Maria Clara, which is this falsehood of what filipinx women “should” be obedient, self sacrificing and pleasure oppressed. To live is to serve and that I am a disgrace if I put myself first. These past two years I have had to slow down and scale back how much I serve my community and learning how important it is to feed myself first before I do so. In this photo series called “liberating Maria Clara” I am creating scenes of myself in a decadent picnic scene, with filipinx food/deserts in a very modern take of the Maria Clara gown. It will be like Bridgerton meets filipinx cottagcore and it is important to show that rest and joy is not just an escape of pain but a celebration of living and thriving.
Applications for our next round of funding open April 1!