“If you’re gonna throw your life away, he better have a motorcycle.” – Lorelie Gilmore

Dear Fellow Warrior,

In my last post, I shared some reflections on mental health, part of mental health awareness month in May. I had more to say. And We are here now, mid-year, and mid-summer, mid-July, and it’s Minority Mental Health Awareness Month.

I also celebrated my 42nd birthday about 10 days ago, earlier this month.

Here are some of my intial reflections from Medium and social media this year:

“On the Longer Road to Becoming: Birthday Reflections on Purpose, Provision, and Beginning Again.”

I spent my birthday by myself again, for the third consecutive year, as much I didn’t want to be. I’m still transitioning, I guess. But I was hoping to be somewhere else this year especially, or at least back in Wisconsin with family.

Next year, I hope I can be at a better place. I guess I just never found my sense of community here in DC, and that doesn’t mean I won’t be able to find it, but it does mean that I need to keep looking for what more is out there.

Since the beginning of this summer, I have felt a stronger level of anxiousness and impatience for the next chapter. Because it finally, after many years, felt like something was changing for me. Something was happening. Even just a little something. And then I was told I have to wait again, which basically feels like it isn’t happening, like it was taken away from me.

I still feel I should have gratitude that I am where I am and make the most of it, in a way I have not many times in the past.

In recent months, perhaps since the beginning of this year, I found myself watching clips of one of my favorite shows, occasionally, mostly before going to bed.

It’s the Gilmore Girls. The feel good drama of the early 2000s. The one that makes you want to swim in a large mug of “coffee, coffee, coffee,” and feel the “Ahhhhhh.”

It’s comfortable… fuel for the heart.

At least it used to be. It still is now for me. But I see it differently now.

There seems to be more anxiety and discomfort watching it now. There are some scenes that I have not revisited for 20 or so years.

It may not be that I’m coming back to Gilmore Girls per se. It could be that I am coming back to the version of myself who first believed life was opening up.

That’s why it hurts. Especially now. At a time when I have felt so stuck, and stuck for a very long time.

But it’s also why it comforts me as well.

The show has become a place where that 22-year-old Elsa still exists. When I return to it, I am not only revisiting a lovely community of distinctive characters in Stars Hollow.

I am also revisiting my own hopes, my younger voice, my dreams before I even knew what the next twenty years would bring.

My hopes especially that someday I too will have those friendships, relationships, and sense of belonging and community. That I too will make great strides in my academic and professional achievements. Like Rory, I too could be smart, even if my start wasn’t as great and as privileged as hers.

At the same time, I am also no longer that woman. I am sitting here as someone who has lived through things she never could have anticipated.

That tension is what makes coming back to my favorite TV drama so emotional.

The last time I watched the original series and it’s ending was around the time I graduated from college or perhaps one year out when I was embarking in the American University Washington Semester Program in DC. The series finale was around that time, and I was about 21 or 22 years old… hopeful, and convinced that my life was still beginning and full of opportunity.

Years later, I returned for the Netflix revival: Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. I was 32. By then, I had already lived another decade. I had changed, even if I didn’t fully realize it at the time.

Now, as I was preparing to turn 42, I was once again back in Stars Hollow, wishing that I could have taken in those moments, realizing now how fast time is flying.

Beyond that, what hurts just as much, as time, is the revelation of how different life was actually for me and how it didn’t make sense that I was yearning to be just like Rory or Lorelie.

Differences that I didnt fully process while watching the show because I thought I may have had time… time for that perfect guy…time for that perfect educational experience… time for that perfect job… time to make a difference… time to build community… time to win hearts and minds…

Rory literally is blessed with all the connections, support, and networks, social and financial capital that she needs to succeed in her academics. Most importantly, she has community. An amazing one, even in a small town, that helps nurture her sense of belonging. She is deeply loved.

She literally grew up with a very supportive community. Not worried about being an outcast or feeling different or invisible in any way. She had her challenges and ups and downs, but there was still privilege.

The ending of the original show is a graduation party for her. I think watching that graduation part hurts the most for me, especially as I approach my 5-year anniversary of becoming doctor with my PhD defense this week, because I didn’t have that. And it was something I wanted. I got certain versions of it, and I know I should be grateful. But what I aspired for was a community celebration. A community recognition of the importance of resilience in education.

I didn’t really have a graduation party after college, masters, or PhD. Partly because after each stage, my mentality was trying to get settled for what’s next, which was never figured out.

But I always wanted to change that for the PhD, as I shared in the past, because I have attended and watched so many others be celebrated. I didn’t have strong social or financial capital to make it happen. And for 5 years, I am still not at a place where I could have one solid community moment.

Being with the Gilmore Girls now feels different.

Last year, Alexis Bledel showed up in a cameo for the final episode of the Handsmaid Tale, another favorite show of mine. I actually wrote a post about that, but forgot to publish it last year. Just among the dozen other blog posts that fell in the back burner while I have tried to stabilize my life.

I was so happy that Bledel took that role and won an well-deserved Emmy for it. It some ways I feel it signals where life had gone for me. Not to Gilead, but with facing setback after setback.

For a moment, I wondered if I should even watch Gilmore Girls again. Would it only remind me of time that had passed? Of dreams delayed?

Then I realized something. The characters haven’t grown older. Not in the show. I have. And They have too in real life.

Every time I’ve returned to this series, it has been as a different stage, a different version of myself.

At 22, I was watching Rory graduate from college and start her life, while standing on the threshold of my own at the same stage as her. It was precisely this year 20 years ago that I too graduated from college. (May 2006)

At 32, I returned carrying another decade of life, and in the middle of my PhD program, having just started this blogging experience…still hopeful that my life could change.

At 42, I return again, nostalgic, but also in the process of still getting to know the person I’ve become. Hanging on to a thread that I can still change my stars, that my life can still get better.

The show is familiar. I am not.

Life didn’t unfold the way I imagined at 22. There were years of extraordinary learning and years of heartbreak. There were scholarship, fieldwork, friendships, loss, depression, faith, disappointment, perseverance, and unexpected blessings. Some dreams came true. Others remain unfinished.

Some will stay that way… “unfinished.” Some, with time, courage, determination, and effort, will get “Phinished.”

Perhaps that is why this return doesn’t feel like nostalgia as much as it does a need for reconciliation.

I’m not returning to the show to become 22 again. I’m returning as the person that 22-year-old me could never have imagined. She couldn’t have known where the road would lead. She couldn’t have known how much she would lose, or how much she would learn. She couldn’t have imagined the resilience that would be asked of her.

And she certainly couldn’t have known that, twenty years later, she would still be dreaming.

At 42, I am learning that life isn’t divided into “beginnings” and “endings” as neatly as we imagine when we’re young.

We aren’t meant to keep starting over. We continue the same story.

Every chapter changes us more or less, for better or worse. Every return allows us to meet an older version of ourselves with greater compassion.

My story has not unfolded according to the script I was attempting to write at 22. 20 Years ago.

But it is still being written. This is where I am today… with all of my experiences, my faith, my scholarship, my scars, my love for my family, and my hopes for what comes next.

And I am glad I can write and hit publish on my blogs to help continue fostering my identity capital and courage as a writer. I feel I have been fighting to keep turning the chapter, particularly in my writing and academic journey. I have taken some baby steps, but I am still fighting that fear, that anxiety and imposter syndrome. It just never goes away.

I realize also that writing seems to slow me down a bit too. Particularly the rewriting part.

I wanted to believe that all I contributed to my blogging efforts for 10 Years here meant something. Maybe it means nothing to the world right now. But maybe it will mean something another day.

I know just like Rory, who ends up having an early mid-life crisis in the Netflix Revival, I have a book in me.

Several memoirs, dissertation-to-book, nonfiction, novel, poetry books, and more. At that time, Rory doesn’t have a Master’s degree. And she started to write a book. I have had several books in me. The dream of writing of book started at age 12. And when I come closer and closer to that dream, something always stops me. Something externally, in the surrounding world, or something inside me.

For the past three years I was staying patient. And recently when I came to the realization that I really have to start stomping on the accelerator, I became more anxious for change.

And here I am still waiting, still waiting to start my life.

One of things I had been thinking about with respect to belonging and identity, is whether I am actually allowed to feel connected to a story, to a movie, to a song, to any space or object, because my identity factors are intersectional or different. I have thought about this a lot in the past. But it seems to come up from time and time again.

For my favorite movie, Good Will Hunting. For Gilmore Girls.

Rewatching Gilmore Girls has brought this up for me now. All the main characters are white. And how they brush off some key moments of Asian or brown characters in the show, is something I didn’t notice as much before. They may not have cared too much about DEI back then. I guess we can say that about a lot of our favorite shows even in the 90s and early 2000s. This is another discussion for another time.

And this season is just a season. It’s a temporary rut. I didn’t expect the rut to last this long. But it is temporary.

Alhamdulillah for every chapter… and for the grace and patience to keep turning the page.

I am glad I can find my way back to this particular space, regardless of all that is on the plate. Sometimes all I feel I may have is my writing. And in this space, there is a different kind of freedom. I appreciate the reader’s patience in my unpolished writing at times. It helps to hit the “Publish” button here, until I finally get that idea that I am worthy of being “published.”

I’ll keep writing in the meantime. This may feel like easier writing. And it probably is in some ways. Because I write more with my heart than my brain on my blog posts, whether it’s on Medium, social media, Substack, or this blog. But it still helps. All writing helps with that “courage factor.”

I just hope it won’t be another 10-20 years for me to realize my dreams. Especially when it’s currently at the very tip of my fingers.

I almost wasn’t going to finish this piece. And I hope I can use this same momentum and adrenalin to push forward on other writings that have been pending this summer…

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain 

In Solidarity, Peace, Warmth, and Blessings,

Your sister, Dr. Elsa, Warrior KQueen

“She wasn’t looking for a Knight. She was looking for a Sword.” – Atticus

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Thank you for reading and engaging!

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