It’s a traumatic and confusing time for a lot of Asian people in America. With what feels like nonstop violence against our community, it almost seems like there is no foreseeable end. This is leaving many of us feeling helpless and scared, not only for ourselves but for our friends and family.

The use of social media for activism saw a huge boom last year following the murder of George Floyd. What was once a space for people to express themselves creatively and share their personal lives, social media has become one large PowerPoint presentation filled with carousel posts of information/education, violent videos recounting acts of aggression, art dedicated to those who have lost their lives at the hands of racism and violence, and mutual aid. It’s a lot of information to process in such a short amount of time.

To my fellow Asians, don’t feel compelled to take immediate action. There’s no fix-all solution that we can draft up within a moment’s notice. We were blinded by white supremacy and this hellscape racist reality is rightfully new to a lot of us. I know it feels like you need to plug in all the time, watch every video, and read every post. It feels like we as a community need to know everything in real-time. However, we are allowed to grieve. We are allowed to sit back, go offline, and find things that bring us joy in a world that now seems joyless. This is an issue that involves Asians, but it’s not an Asian problem. It’s a white supremacy problem. The duty of cleaning up this mess rests mostly on the shoulders of white people. This is an opportunity for us to take time to grieve, process trauma, and collect our thoughts while our white allies clock in for their shift.

You can’t heal trauma by exposing yourself to more trauma. Take all the time you need to do what feels right for you. This is a marathon, not a sprint.