Why Representing Myself Matters Even When the World Is Falling Apart

This weekend, my family and I spent some time playing in the sand at Ocean Beach in San Francisco. While at the beach, I went for a walk and had some thoughts on why even though the world is clearly falling apart, I should continue to represent myself by sharing my perspective and the seemingly unimportant everyday adventures that I have in real life online via my blog, social media and as a freelance writer.

My thoughts on why representing myself matters

When I started blogging over a decade ago at this point, I did it because I became a mother and I felt isolated and lonely. I loved my baby, but I needed to be express myself creatively and interact with other adults. Blogging helped me connect and share with people near and far.

Pretty early on in my blogging journey, I created a weekly segment called “Sundays In My City” as a way to celebrate my city or whatever city I happened to be in. The point was to post pictures of whatever adventures I was having. I also encouraged others to link up and share pictures of whatever adventures they were having. It was a great way to connect with each other, appreciate our surroundings and travel virtually. I continued to do this feature regularly even when I was too busy to blog about anything else until 2020 came along.

Originally, I was just going to take one weekend off – I called it a pandemic pass . But that one weekend turned into many weekends because it’s not like I was having many adventures once it became clear that staying home was the best way to stay healthy. I did do a few weeks worth of #shelterinplacetravels where I would travel to different parts of the world via the magic of photo editing and encourage people to shelter in place to help slow the spread of coronavirus and COVID-19. But when George Floyd was murdered I pretty much stopped blogging because reality mattered much more than my pretend travels or anything I could possibly be doing that wasn’t related to racial justice or staying healthy.

ALSO READ: 5 Books to Help You Learn How to Talk About Racism

Racial justice and staying healthy are still more important than me posting about any adventures I may be having, but I’m going to start blogging again because I realized that my mental health has been suffering because I’m not allowing myself to truly embrace the small joyful moments that happen to me every day or to share them with others in a way that also brings me joy. Oh, and because that feeling of isolation is back big time.

I also want to share regularly again because I know that representation matters and I want to do my part to represent. I want to represent myself and my reality as a multicultural, multiethnic Latina mother married to a biracial Black and white man because I want to be seen. I want my family and my children to be seen. I want BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) to be seen, heard, respected and not be referred to as minorities when in fact we are the global majority.

I hope that by sharing parts of my life and my perspective on certain things I am helping to normalize diversity and multiculturalism. Who am I to think that my experience and perspective should matter to anyone other than my immediate circle? I’m just a worthy human being who is just as worthy of being heard as the next worthy human being and I’m tired of being made to feel like I am not worthy.

Ocean Beach

San Francisco, CA

I showed you mine, now show me yours.

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