By Rachel Nguyen, 2025 CLA Intern
Every Monday and Friday, Nancy starts our morning with a grounding exercise: We begin by taking a deep breath, and then identifying four things we can see, three things we can feel, two things we can hear, and one word to describe how we feel in the current moment.
In the ever-tumultuous political landscape we’re embedded in, I find that small practices like this allow me to regain direction as to what I am working towards and living for. With news of increased ICE raids every day, my body was trapped in a state of constant fear, anxiety, and isolation. The weekend I returned from Việt Nam, I was embraced by my family, only to learn that 160 people of our greater Southeast Asian community had been forcibly taken from theirs.
In light of all this, my CLA cohort and I attended a Community Care and Decompression event at Midnight Books LA. We began the event with a guided meditation inspired by Tibetan Buddhist Lama Rod Owens. This practice prompted us to reflect on our seven homecomings—sources of “home” that we can draw on for strength and clarity. These include a guide/teacher/mentor/advisor/elder, a thought-provoking text, your communities, your ancestors, the earth, the silence, and yourself. I appreciated this exercise because it asks us to move away from the hyper-individualism of Western self-care and acknowledges that our existence is intricately embedded into our greater community and ecosystem.
In a world that so desperately tries to silence us, I try my best to remember the many other avenues of unapologetically living, being, and speaking out against injustice and harm—art being one of them. The following week, CLA intern Kyle Ching and I volunteered with the Little Tokyo Service Center to paint the Umeya mural. Nestled between Little Tokyo and Skid Row, this project revitalizes the Umeya Rice Cake factory and warehouse into a mixed-use affordable housing development. We met countless creatives who specialized in a variety of media, ranging from writing to digital art, and were united by one passion: community-led storytelling. “We are thinking abundance. The goal is to achieve depth [in painting the mural] because there is no limit to what the mind can imagine,” said Skid Row artist ShowzArt. His past and present work reclaim public space for unsheltered voices and imagines belonging in the face of exile, thereby begging the question of what home means for those who have been displaced, whether from their homes or their country.
Home is a lineage, a struggle, and a promise. When the state tries to sever our roots, we remain deeply entangled with one another, those who came before us, and the land that continues to hold our histories.
CLA interns at the Community Care and Decompression event hosted by Midnight Books LA
The views and opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not reflect the views or positions of CAUSE or the CAUSE network.
The CAUSE Leadership Academy (CLA) for students is a nine-week, paid, internship program that prepares college undergraduates to lead and advocate for the Asian Pacific Islander community on their campuses and beyond.