Other Brown Girl Next Chapter

Calling on my inner “Other Brown Girl” in my super cape, superpower poncho pose. My first real memory of me stepping and owning my own story.

Jing Lauengco turned a successful career in design, advertising and her
curiosity in self-discovery into a full-tilt adventure exploring a more meaningful life. Entrepreneur. Author. Activist. Adventurer. Speaker. Storyteller. Chief Optimist. Firm Good JUJU Believer. (Now Blogger!) On her way to figuring out what she wanted to be when she grew up, something sparked in February 2017. Then again on Thanksgiving 2019. And again in October 2020. This is her true story.

I had been asking myself a lot lately:

How do I create a meaningful life?
A moment that matters?
A memory that lives on?
How do I create a path to awareness?
An adventure that’s bigger than me?
Going back home to my highest self?

I’m on a mission to tell a new kind of story that represents modern, multicultural, first generation women. Leading colorful, creative lives on our own terms – nobly seeded by our ancestor’s dreams, sacrifices and undeniable spirit.

“I wanted to create a positive platform to share stories celebrating where we came from. Using our own voices and our own words. To always remember where the journey began and to share the journey back home to ourselves.”

Let’s craft a different lens for meaning, identity and beauty. For self-care and self-discovery. Let’s spark multicultural, multi-generational conversations beginning at home. Creating our own standard of cultural impact. At every and any life stage of Girlhood. Womanhood. Motherhood. Sisterhood.

“I’m on a lifelong quest to provide young multicultural girls with content that celebrates CREATIVITY, CURIOSITY and COLORFUL LIVING. To begin their own trail-blazing, pathfinding journey that looks and feels as unique as you, your family, and our collective colorful tribe.”

So began the dream draft of my future self’s bio. I was trying it on for size to manifest a brave IRL experiment hatched to ultimately live up to my highest potential and to follow the brightest north star of my own making. What began as a journey re-tracing and honoring my cross-cultural roots became an unexpected, unapologetic quest for re-generating my own well-being, self-worth, growth, energy, and enlightenment.

I was at a crossroads in many areas of my life professionally and personally. My career path and life path had peaked. Then plateaued.

”I had checked all the boxes for ‘successful’ (with air quotes) adult-ing but had lost my way and was now in a restless free fall – often displaced and always feeling oddly ‘somewhere in between…’”

The world was holding a different energy, less kind and seemingly less culturally accepting post-2016. I was feeling a magnetic pull to define a higher path-finding life force for myself. “What am I doing and what am I really here to do?” I would ask myself of my life and time remaining on earth.

I had no idea that a 22-hour plane ride back to my birthplace in Manila on February 2nd, 2017, two weeks into #45’s presidency and the administration’s travel ban, would lead me to a glimpse of what mattered most. It began as an 11-day trip to see my mom’s rural childhood home for the last time in her life. It soon became a quest to discover my true calling for the first time in my life. I was determined to connect the missing dots that would map my family’s folklore.

“To follow constellations of untold stories and unearth trails of hidden ancestral gems sparkling in the sky from Cleveland, Ohio, to Metro Manila along the South China Sea and back.”

My greatest hope? To capture my Filipino heritage with my aging, increasingly forgetful, feisty mom before it was too late on a once in a lifetime trip to Manila. I wanted to make peace with my past and present to design a deeper, more meaningful life purpose once and for all. (Basically First Generation Filipino Enlightenment 101. No pressure. And no time like the present. You know, NBD!)

Back in the Manila, I had found myself pleading, trying to convince and explain to my younger Filipino cousins over a white rice and sweet sausage breakfast that Filipinos really ARE welcome in the United States! That powerful women leaders and women rights really ARE respected and revered in America! That religion DOES bring people together for the greater good! After graduating at the top of their classes in top schools in finance and architecture, it was bittersweet to hear my young handsome, mahogany-skinned Filipino cousins talk about getting visas, building careers and launching promising new lives in New Zealand and Australia where they knew it would be “different” compared to the America they saw on nightly CNN Manila. I was truly lost and crushed.

“That was the story my overseas extended family saw and knew and were sticking to. Someone had already shared ‘their’ version of America on CNN Manila before I could share my own.”

Returning to the States after my transformational, twilight zone of a trip to the Philippines, I began to feel sadder and smaller as I was questioning “Is this all there is?” again and again in nondescript moments. Despite working hard and being grateful for all the comforts of home and love of family and friends, I found myself blanking out at my MacBook in what seemed to be my very own version of Westernized, middle-class, first-world brown privilege life. Amid the gnawing 24/7/365 news cycles, in an act of first-generation defiance and with “Immigrant-and-immigrant-kid-is-NOT-a-dirty-word!” pride,

“I committed to capturing my recent humbling trip, witnessing the sacrifices that my grandparents and parents had made in their quiet rural provinces many dreams ago.”

Not really a memoir, but a living story I would tell myself. (And my half-brown kid who sometimes forgets he’s half-Filipino.) There must be more first-generation, mid-life-rising women like me? And more positive multicultural family stories like mine? How can I shine a light on those stories – on our multicultural, multi-generational dreams – in our own words and in our own way with less of a distorted, third party, red party or blue party lens? With one that was more human? I wanted to do something. NOW. To convert the live wire energy that was short-circuiting all around me and in me.

I was fired up to say the least. It was a pact, personal bet, bucket-list, double-dare-‘ya rolled into one. Yes, I would make a solemn oath and pledge to write “my story” by November 2020, the next US presidential election year, as a catharsis for me and as living, breathing family history for our then tween age son. It was a sacred promise that I made to both sets of my Filipino grandparents’ spirits and to all future generations of “Me”.

“Rather than becoming numb in the new world order and treading water in a gaining, boiling tide, I was determined to build a positive, less polarizing narrative. Starting with me.”

A different tone for cultural conversations and my ever-looping internal dialogue that kept bubbling up to the surface and all around me. I needed a tangible way out, to remain steadfast and buoyant. Not an externally marketed storyline that would be politicized like a fiery ping pong ball scorching everything and everyone in its global wake. Not fake news. Or one-dimensional cultural folklore. In heated cable news, talk radio, holiday family dinners, bars, and lunchrooms. My search for renewed meaning was built around a deeper intention. I wanted to transcend all the red-faced, scalding white noise and find healthier ways to talk to myself, about myself, and my history.

“Nothing gives you confidence like being a member of a small, weirdly specific, hard-to-find demographic.”
― Mindy Kaling

I was so disheartened and exhausted from pervasive, relentless negativity – mine or others. I wanted to create something else. Defining real relevance for modern women of my generation who were still coming of age in an altogether different way. I didn’t know what that looked like exactly, other than through my close circle of first-generation, international friends. Like millions of women who are their own tribe of everyday, unsung heroines. Bad a#$ examples at the top of their game. Though they might not know it or want to amplify it. And not feel it or have the time, either. I didn’t see it on Instagram or blogs or on YouTube. I and they were way too busy, head down, at home and at work, living it and creating it on the daily and hourly behind the scenes in our modern, moving too fast, lives. Quietly asking each other in hushed whispers and side-eye glances, “Hey, umm, is this all there is?”

“I couldn’t always march, volunteer, donate, post, call or email my elected officials as much as I would have liked. But I could craft a new line of defense – a storyline – to stir up a daily dose of enlightened energy for myself.“

I hit pause on the negative newsfeeds. I propelled positivity in every direction I could. I needed a femme force field to blunt the barbed news cycles mid-sentence. So I crafted it. Designing new dialogue even if it was only me listening in my head. I started to think of my bold gratitude and stubborn Midwestern, Asian-American defiant optimism as my own special brew of JUJU – and activism. It became a positivity shield and white light force-for-good energy orb that encased and protected me everywhere I went. By re-framing my everyday experience and experiment as something playful and – in spite and in light of it all – I could feel my mood lift and life shift. (ex. “FOR THE LOVE OF JUJU! JUST DO IT ALREADY, JING!”) Metaphysical, magical things began to happen. Really happen.

“I began to create a braver and brighter approach to living and being – illuminating all that was good around me and within me.”

Living, loving and deliberately designing a new brand of positive JUJU – “JUJU JING” was born! My very own brown-cheeky, superhero alter ego. An inner Beyoncé Sasha Fierce version of myself that I would call on wherever and whenever I needed to emerge as the “highest Me”. I planned to convert my search for enlightenment and my story. To share it. Not to build my career. Not for pats on the back. This was for real. Real life. My life. Armed with a new attitude, I was began taking notes on my iPhone. I wanted to capture what it meant to be the “Other Brown Girl” creating new conversations around modern multiculturalism and modern women in all stages of life. With joy. (Oh, and, yes, with lots of “good JUJU!”)

“Just JING it!” I would cheer myself on in my black Mini rearview mirror, half-joking, half-smirking, and half-believing it. My wise and wonderful mentor Kathy kindly and matter-of-factly bestowed this phrase on me one day when I was lamenting about a huge architectural project deadline that was looming before us. In my tiny one-person pep rallies after carpool drop-offs or on my way to work meetings with Lizzo cranked, I was indeed tipping ever so slightly in the direction of what felt like a more meaningful and aligned life. My life. Strong, steady, and ready to spark the true JUJU in all of us – quietly starting with me. Which almost lead to the story you were about to read and the story I was about to write and the life I thought I was about to lead.

“Then something happened. A plot twist if you will.”

On a routine visit to the renowned Cleveland Clinic right before Thanksgiving 2019, on my way to living and loving and writing about my beloved, deepening, newfound “JUJU”-ness and finally owning and celebrating my “Other Brown Girl”-ness. I made another unexpected discovery which spiraled me and gridlocked me abruptly mid-leap. As I was busy writing my original story about a transformational trip back home to the Philippines, a new chapter, urgency, and transcendence emerged. Stage 1 Breast Cancer discovered after trusting my gut and getting a second opinion, ultrasound, and 3D mammogram. Of all times in my life, I felt love and light and on my right path, or so I thought. “Now? Right NOW?!” What was the Universe telling, showing, or asking me? And what would be my answer? Here’s what (and how) I boomeranged back.

On the way home from the hospital with that day’s freshly confirmed positive test results in one hand and two double dirty martinis in the other, I decided right then and there to double down and get a double mastectomy exactly two weeks later. And live – really live – for the love of JUJU – pronto!

”I had done the work to meet this moment. The kind where your life is counting and betting on you to lead the way forward and to find your way back somehow. There was literally no time to lose...”

Yes, I was at a cosmic crossroads once again. And yes, the world was a decidedly different kind of place – charged, churning, cresting, and closing in for the first time ever. This time, too close to home and quite literally too close to my trembling and very shaken, formerly optimistically inclined heart. Was I really ready to pivot my exponential sense of loss and terror? To shine a light on my darkening personal pain and leap into enlightenment for all to see – including not-so-sure me?

I suddenly realized that I needed to call on ALL the positive JUJU life forces at play in the Universe. In my lifetime. To converge and convert this defining moment and energy. This may be my last chance. The final true test to pull myself forward with all my might for a renewed, more meaningful storyline which would soon become my very own, very real lifeline. How many chances would I have left to tell my story? Fueled by the true JUJU in all of us – starting with me – now (fingers crossed) cancer-free me that is.

“I needed to find a way to convert the energy. To try and make sense of this past year as I reflected from bed typing on my MacBook while healing from cancer.

Oh, and while watching the pandemic seep into so much for all of us. I had my second surgery March 5th, just before the national quarantine and lockdown hit…”

With more time to think about my life, my trip, my cancer comeback, a surprise global pandemic, and the simmering unrest and question marks all around me, I started to write. And write. And write. To turn the tide and transform. With a few months left leading to another election, at the edge of an unknown, unrecognizable world and another cosmic crossroads that is 2020, I share my stories hoping that you’ll share yours, start yours, write yours. Now. Right. Now.

Which leads to the adventures you are about to read. And gratefully, the story I actually lived to tell. And continue to write in this new, next chapter life.

Thanks for being part of my story and journey. @Juju.Jing #OtherBrownGirlForever