Aloha mai kākou,
There’s a light rain falling, quenching the muggy heat of this Sunday August afternoon. I’m sitting here with the dogs and cats and my uncles as they create wedding playlists. One list has a mellow tempo for wedding day interludes, and the other is full of their favorite dance songs. The festivities are in six days, and it’s been a long journey to get here—26 years to be exact!
We’ve been busy cooking, shopping, organizing, prepping. An Aunty from the community choreographed a dance theater number for them to perform while Grandma Gigi sings a slow, romantic Frank Sinatra song in her signature, delicate soprano. Old friends and our kumu hula are doing flowers and making delicious food; we are nearly all dancing hula during the reception. I appreciate this: after so many years, they don’t want the day to be all about them. This Saturday will be a celebration of their community and everyone that has been a part of their story up until now. They were surprised to exceed their anticipated guest count by at least 40 people; I suppose they underestimated how many folks would want to be part of commemorating this part of their journey.
This makes me think of another commemoration coming up soon. I was fortunate to be a fellow of the Asian Pacific American Women’s Leadership Institute back around 2016. This year, APAWLI is celebrating 30 years of supporting Asian Pacific (American) leaders. I was introduced to APAWLI and its founder, Martha Lee, by Aunty Pua. Martha and Aunty Pua attended the Zen dojo together in Kalihi, where they got into good trouble with fellow Zen sisters like Norma Wong. I have been fortunate to get to know Martha over the years, thanks to Aunty Pua. Together with friends, we gallivanted all over Chicago on a quest for natto. (We found it!) Aunty Pua tried to get our friends from Mississippi to enjoy natto with her–unfortunately, she did not succeed. (But I digress…!) Aunty and a friend and leader whom I admire very much, Cheryl Kauhane Lupenui, made it possible for folks like me to be APAWLI fellows.
I appreciate the ways that APAWLI has helped to make singular spaces of sovereignty and connection for women over the years; many women in Hawai‘i and all over the US have participated. I imagine that in some ways, the world was very different when APAWLI started. Perhaps the conditions and situations that women like me were experiencing fighting for/against back then have changed by now. I sure hope so. But I imagine, in today’s climate the challenges have perhaps shifted, but not disappeared all together. (26 years ago, it would not have been possible for my uncles to marry. And here we are.)
In my rambly sort of way, this leads me to my next thought. Lately I’ve had reason to reflect on what it means to be in a middle space. This is different than “the middle” as described by Aunty Pua. In terms of work and society, a middle or mezzo space, if you will, is like this: I work where we are not community, we are not providing direct services to community. We are not government, not a legislator or a mid-level manager in a large or medium system. In my work, I and others like me exist in a sort of in-between space, with priorities and foci of our own making. What a privilege this is! There’s freedom and danger in this liminal sort of profession. You have to work hard to hold yourself accountable. You have to be a good listener to hear and sense needs and support well, without driving outcomes and priorities in ways that are inappropriate. You have to check your emotions, your presence, your modicum of power and influence, however small, large, or imagined. Or you don’t have to do any of these things. How do you know what the work is if you are not accountable to the community in meaningful ways?
I’m the kind of person that believes everything is connected. Our actions affect others, our decisions ripple out. Relationships are everything. A Chuukese proverb I learned from one of my most remarkable teachers and mentors when I was working in community, Innocenta Sound-Kikku, says this—“Angang chek aramas, aramas chek angang.” People are everything. Everything is people. The benefit of coming to the middle creates a space to take care of people, so they can rest, grow, connect. And working from a liminal space, I feel driven to support the leaders and folks who are doing the good work of making the community better, in their mission areas, in all the ways they can, large, small, and in-between. And these leaders can be found all over the spectrum.
How does this all tie up? Not well, I fear. A bit disjointed. But I think about my uncles, and the community they’ve cultivated around them over the years, the many circles they have touched through their lives and work, whether engaged internationally to improve public health across the Pacific, building community in a dense and complex valley on O‘ahu, being the poke man at the local fish counter, or as a healer, touching many lives. They have done all this and much more. I think about APAWLI, about Martha and Cheryl and Aunty Pua and the circles of women they and others have cultivated over many years, spaces for folks to come to the middle and just be, to rest, grow, and connect. To recognize and be recognized. I think about all the partners I work with, who are amazing leaders in their own right, who fight tirelessly (and are so tired) making their communities safer, more whole, green, beautiful, ancestral, sacred, loved.
Imagine you’re celebrating after several decades of fulfilling your mission, your relationship, your passion, your love. What’s on your playlist?
Mahalo nunui,
Dawn
Photo taken 7/28/25 over Kaua‘i