To the little girl next door,

There weren’t many kids on our block, but I knew you existed on the other side of that old wooden fence. I was a rough and tumble tomboy that played with my brothers and you had your little sister to play with. One day, I saw you peer around the fence while I was sitting on my front porch steps. I smiled and waved. You waved back. We asked each other’s name. I recalled your little doll with tangled blonde hair.

We began playing every day, then every other day until we no longer played. I didn’t know why, we just stopped. And I went back to playing with my brothers.

Years later, I brought you up in a conversation with one of my brothers, wondering why we just stopped playing. He looked at me curiously. “You don’t remember? Her Mom said she couldn’t play with you anymore because you’re not Black.” That blew me away. To this day, I still wonder if I was so traumatized that I erased it from my memory. I wasn’t angry; I was perplexed. Not only was I shunned because of my brown skin; my family was faced with many adversities; an anomaly in a neighborhood with only a few Asian households.

I think that was the moment that formed my want of connectedness and understanding of differences in opinions and beliefs. And It was summed up when I came upon this quote from Rumi:

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” -Rumi

In that instance, I wanted to have a conversation. It had to be something more than not being Black. I wanted to know more. I wanted us to come to an understanding of each other and form a connection. That’s how I move through life now and a significant amount of my writing comes from a place of empathy.

Little girl, if you would indulge me for a moment, I’d like to share a poem that I wrote. In my career, I worked in human resources and conducted exit interviews. In this particular organization, I noticed the same word came up; silos. The repeated concern resulted in individual offices not being open to collaboration, even though the collaboration would be a positive push towards the organization’s overall mission. This led me to create the following poem:

Silos
Towering into the blue sky
Seen from afar on a country road
What do you hold?
Contained in concrete countenance
Are we the same but cannot speak?
What if we opened the doors
And let the grain spill out
What a beautiful mess
Feeding all that stop and wonder
Let’s talk

After I wrote this, I came to the realization that this wasn’t just about a particular organization’s communication problem. It’s bigger than that. This is about what is going on in the world today; deep seated religious beliefs, political dissension…divisiveness.

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing…”

Little girl next door, I’m not mad at you or your Mom.
I just wish we could’ve had a convo, but turns out rejection turned into catapulting me into the world, with a hunger to understand and the need for finding what connects us and not divides us, with meaningful respectful conversation.

Be well, little girl next door. I hope you are safe and doing fine in life.
Maybe someday, we’ll see the same field.

“I’ll meet you there.”