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Living the Rebellion

There’s a reason the Star Wars universe resonates so deeply with so many of us especially now.

We are living in a moment where systems of oppression are not just visible; they are emboldened. We are watching as bodily autonomy is stripped away, voting rights are eroded, trans existence is criminalized, and book bans echo the darkness of fascist histories we swore never to repeat. We witness genocide, forced displacement, settler colonialism, and the slow violence of climate catastrophe that is deliberately ignored by those with the power to intervene.

It’s overwhelming and enraging, but it’s not new. This is empire.

Never Colonized, But Never Untouched

By Dr. Panicha McGuire, LMFT, RPT™

When people talk about colonialism in Southeast Asia, they often mention the British in Burma and Malaysia, or the French in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. But Thailand, then known as Siam, is usually held up as the exception: the one country in the region that was never colonized. I used to take pride in that sentence. I still do, in a way. But as I’ve grown personally, professionally, and politically, I’ve started to see the complexity behind it. Because while Thailand was never colonized in the traditional sense, it has never been untouched by the forces of colonialism.

And maybe that’s why I feel so much about it.

A Balloon and the Weight of the American Dream

A Mother’s Day and AANHPI Heritage Month Reflection on Immigration, Family, and Resilience

Arriving in America with Nothing but Each Other

When my mom and I arrived in the United States, we didn’t have a soft landing. My aunt was supposed to pick us up from the airport, but she was late. My mom didn’t speak English. She was holding the weight of immigration and motherhood in a brand new country. And I was having a meltdown over a balloon.

It was one of those shiny foil balloons at an airport gift shop. I was four years old and overwhelmed from a 17-18 hour plane ride. It cost twenty dollars, and my mom didn’t have twenty dollars. I cried, loudly and dramatically, in the middle of a strange place while she tried to calm me down and hold herself together at the same time.

That story stuck with us. It’s not just about the balloon. It was the moment we arrived, physically and emotionally. It captured the helplessness she felt, and the way that survival in a new country often looks like saying no to things you wish you could say yes to. A scared young mom and her small child, already feeling the weight of survival in a place that didn’t make space for either of us. That moment was one of many.