While I like to think of every day as a day to celebrate Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, May is officially AAPI Heritage Month. That means, it's a month to learn about, celebrate, and support our beautiful and rich community. So, to kick-off this month, I'd like to share a few AAPI businesses you can support. 50 to be exact.

A few weeks ago, as I put away my Christmas lawn decorations, I wondered if there are any Lunar New Year lawn flags I could buy to put up next to my winter gnomes lawn flag. We have a flag for every season and "bigger" holiday, including Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's Day. So why not a Lunar New Year one? But as I started searching the worldwide web for a cute Lunar New Year flag to put on my lawn, I suddenly stopped myself. An annoying and frustrating fear crept up, because I thought...if I put a Lunar New Year flag on our lawn, that is calling attention to the fact that we're an Asian household. Some people might not like that. And normally I'd say screw those people, but with persistent attacks against Asians continuing to happen on practically a daily basis, I cannot just ignore the haters. I cannot and will not knowingly risk my family's safety, especially with a child in our home. 

And this is simply the state of being an Asian American today. 

As the Year of the Tiger begins, may we all be brave (and safe) in the face of adversity. I am wishing you and your family, blessings upon blessings this year 🧧

Over the last year or so, I started noticing people were dropping the hyphen from Asian American and other similar terms. To my own ignorance, this wasn't something new. Dropping the hyphen started more "formally" in 1993, though it seems not universally. I guess before recent years, I had only ever seen and was taught to use the hyphen. So, me being the person who will use a semicolon in a text message, first thought people were just being sloppy. However, as I noticed it more and more, I decided to look up why this might be, and eventually came to the conclusion that I'm also done using the hyphen and  I feel so much freer.