woman. warrior. writer 05-26-25

Vol. 6 No. 8 05-26-25

Aloha,

We made it! GRADUATION! YEAAAHHHH! Congrats to the Kid! Single parents: you will get through! Crucial to survival are people who extend help and care, whether that be for a few hours, days, or even years. Our village included the sole living person The Kid readily obeys (Grandma), aunties (in particular, Aunty K), entire families (The Young’s), meme sending atheist Godfaddah (Uncle Andrew, whose famous math advice was ‘Oh, 12 times tables? Nah, no one does the 12s….’), friends near and far/past and present, fellow single moms in the trenches, counselors, teachers, uncles, coaches, and neighbors. People who have been there for me, also affected and continue to affect how I parent, as well as people who directly offer a hand. I am so thankful.

25% of all kids in the US are raised in single parent households. Our daily schedule dictated by capitalism, global economies, and patriarchal norms fail to support the modern reality of how many live. One day I’ll write the follow-up to Sports Mom Odyssey: The Hawai’i Review of Books (nominated for Best American Essays!), but suffice to say, graduation happened, and I’m taking the win!

Moms, especially single moms of sons, I see you. I especially see moms who are not reporting on social media that their children are writing novels, making science discoveries worthy of national prizes, and are playing classical instruments for four hours a day, gunning for The Gold Star Model Compliant Child Award. Admittedly, this was, at times, me growing up, until it was not at all. I vowed that my child would never master, to the extent that I did, Compliance and Obedience, that the only thing that mattered was for the Kid to know himself. I’ll let you know if it pans out in a few decades, but my thought is that we all need experiments in life.

I see you moms of sons who have sat in ER for hours and have gone to dozens of medical/dental appointments. I see you moms who have honest talks about sex, porn, booze, birth control, drugs, drinking, and many other realities of modern life, and who try, non-Scandinavian though they may be, to adapt an open model of parenting. I see you moms who had to borrow money from their own moms to buy their kids Cheerios, moms who cope with financial stress, and who may have watched dollar after dollar slide away to legal fees like a burning pyre of waste. I see you moms who teach their kids to drive, who wind up with their car as the pack’s vehicle. This is partially the reality of mostly single moms with no car (I empathize, I’ve been there) and then there are those who refuse to let their kid drive their BMWs so their kid is the buddy of the mom who drives the Honda? Dude, can you please buy a Honda for your kid instead of pushing my car past the 95,000 mile point?!?

I see you moms who rightfully or wrongfully told their kid water-is-life-get back-out-there-and-ride-the-wave and then witness their kid get over the fear, surf the blue, and then a few years later, spend hours in the emergency room. Moms who then, try to act calm, but who in truth, worry when their kid announces they are heading for a particular beach. I see all moms of kids who swear, who cry, who laugh, who struggle to find out who they are because coming of age is never easy—for kids or moms. I see you moms who tell their kid to do their own laundry I-am-too-busy-your-problem-if-your-clothes-are-dirty, moms who don’t always get dinner on the table, and have been known to pony up for a meal that is in no way food, but in fact a chemical blob in the vague shape of a meat chunk. These may or may not be the moms who forgot to pack the elementary field trip lunch. Moms who yelled and apologized. And did it again and had to learn again (again) from their own son telling them, Mom, you can’t do that anymore. Moms who, like their own kids, often learn the hard way. Moms who had to rationally discuss why-drag-racing-is-not-a-good-idea. Moms who cried with their kid when the pet guinea pig had to finally be put down. Moms who sat in sorrow while their kid wept with disappointment about their fathers. Moms who made enough pancakes to feed small nations. Moms who pulled their kid from the team and who survive Footballgate. Moms who cheered from the stands and who hoped like hell that their kid would not get pulverized by some very large children out there. Moms whose own mom says: “Don’t worry, you’ll be dead by the time he complains about the injury.” Hmmm. That makes me feel OK about the injury?

Moms who did not clean their kid’s room and said that-is-your-private-space-but-if-you-get-roaches-in-there-you’ll-piss-me-off-and-pay-the-exterminator-bill and who gazed in disbelief at the accumulation of three years of dustballs, and who wind up scrubbing the damn room. Moms who said clean-the-bathroom-I-can’t-deal. Moms who had big plans about making sure their kid broke patterns from the past and who only sometimes succeeded, and then created other patterns that will have to be undone later. Moms who learned along with their kids what it meant to talk and forgive. Moms who sat through practices, decorated posters, emailed teachers, and said, yeah-I-hated-math-too-I-got-a-D-it-sucks-but-you-gotta-do-it. Moms who looked at a bedroom door with five holes and said ‘OK, drop the anger outside’ and got their kid a heavy punching bag that was hit so hard it eventually fell to the ground. Moms who shut the door and collapsed on the ground, looked up to the ceiling and said, “OMFG I cannot take it anymore” but who got back up because parenting is parenting and love is love. Moms who simply nodded when their Kid said he liked poetry, told you he was moving to Miami, and he had big plans for life and none of them include you! Moms who thought, yeah, that makes sense—you have to want to leave. Moms who tell their kids to have big dreams, but know that dreams are a combination of anger, frustration, determination, and passion, and that those who chase them on any level, are always risktakers, but what is life, anyway?

Moms who say “I Love You” every time they say goodbye, even when the Kid says “you are embarrassing me” and who call their 6 foot kid Boo Dude. Moms who watched every stand-up comedy special during COVID and who have Kevin Hart routines memorized. Moms who get a call from a teacher two weeks before graduation saying, “There are missing assignments”, and who thought the cum laude by the child'’s name might have been a typo (as did Grandma)… I see you moms, who know and who have heard, that you just need one person to believe in another person to make it in this life, who also know that it takes many many people to raise a child, but who still, sometimes in their private thoughts think that being that one person, despite all the help, is exhausting. I see you moms who get tired, but who do not quit. Congratulations to the kids AND moms out there! Hooray!

RESOURCES

BREAK: How to Write Your Divorce Story $29 a downloadable e-guide to help you write your divorce story for your legal and personal files. Bluntly, it’s also good if you are in a marriage, if you want to reflect on how you would like your partnership to unfold, and if you work in the fields of psychology or law to help your clients.

Divorce rewrites a personal story—any woman who divorces challenges the societal norm. The result?

Transformation. But this is also true: We make our lives and our culture through story. In order to move forward, you must rethink your story and reframe what you want your life to be. Submit this story to your lawyer and ask if it’s appropriate for your legal file.

Check out my interview with Oprah Daily!

For e-guide reviews see here.

FREE copies if you are in severe financial need writer@drstephaniehan.com

Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander AANHPI MONTH

Q.O.D. Question of the Day:

What are the similarities between the different Asian American groups?

1. They all eat rice

2. They experience racism in the US

3. They acknowledge a network of interdependent extended family

4. Nothing. Everything. Who cares?

To understand the term ‘Asian American’ you must know its origins. It was and remains a term born of revolution. Activists Yuji Ichioka and Emma Gee coined the term in the late 1960s to name the pan-Asian coalition political group that launched a cultural nationalist movement. Asian Americans do not claim one particular Asian country of origin, a specific immigration experience, a religion, language, culture, or any common historical narrative around which a community politically or socially organizes and/or remembers such as slavery or genocide.

Present-day factionalism between groups of Asian descent in the United State can be due to the realities of modern American life, the flow of capital, migration periods, and historic conflict in Asia. Cohesion of the group is often predicated on positive or negative state action, or crisis rooted in discrimination. “Asian American” constantly expands or adjusts; it has always been, and continues to be, a definition in flux.

• Multiculturalism (20th century term, still accurate and applicable)

• Polylculturalism (more relevant to 21st century global economy and environmental crisis)

• FREE: The Art of Asian America: redefining the term Asian America(n).

REV-STEPH

I’m a Universal Life Church licensed minister (9 years). Contact me if you want to get married in Hawai’i. Check out BREAK: How to Write Your Divorce Story before you get hitched. It will help you to think about marriage.

MERCH

Get your WWW merch. and support women writers!

AUTHORS

Nahid Rachlin (1939-2025)

This fall I plan on doing highlights on various authors, and Nahid Rachlin is on the list, but I wanted to note her recent passing, and write about how Rachlin changed my life and was instrumental to launching my publishing career. In 2015 she chose Swimming in Hong Kong to be the sole finalist for the AWP Grace Paley Prize. Another book won and was published, but this award gave me credibility. SIHK went on to win the Paterson Prize (the only book that year of the prize that wasn't reviewed by The NY Times and on a major press). It won other awards which led to it being finally published by a very small university press. This was not a financial game changer for me--but it gave me confidence and it was Rachlin's stamp that reassured me that I was on the right path. She was the first to pull out the manuscript and read it the way I had hoped it could be read. Rachlin's understanding of how women live in different parts of the world, her Iranian heritage, made my book possible. The manuscript of short stories featuring women of Asian descent--primarily Korean and Chinese had been read, rejected, and shelved by every major publisher and minor publisher and agent for over a decade!

Iranian women have always been part of my life (I was once in an Iranian folk dancing group performing at weddings!), but I am of Korean descent. Rachlin gave voice to women who were not seen. This affects all women, but in particular, women who are viewed differently by mainstream writers and media. At the time there were tops, maybe, a half dozen books of short fiction by Asian women writers.

Her lyrical prose, storytelling, and ability to give voice to those of us who have struggled to be seen in English language writing is a. constant reminder of the meaning of writing and literary citizenship. The stories of women from different parts of the world matter and women's lives are important, brave, and meaningful. RIP and sending aloha to all of her family. Honored and thankful to have, even in a peripheral way, been part of Rachlin's literary legacy of women and story.

SEND UPDATES!

Former WWW, syllabus authors, and students please send updates! Nominate a WWW (including yourself) for fall 2025 — contact writer@drstephaniehan.com

Nu’uanu Cemetery with my mom, photographer Marie Ann Han Yoo visiting the grave of her grandmother, cook, costume designer, and Korean Christian Institute dorm parent Elizabeth Pahk Ahn, part of the first wave of migrants to leave Korea and arrive in the territory of Hawai’i.

Aloha,

Stephanie