Kathy Khang - Raise Your Voice

I have kept a journal since I was in second grade. My father encouraged me to use a notebook and write something about each day. Recently my children discovered some of my childhood journals, and as a family we laughed until we cried. Today I had hot dogs for lunch. It was a good day. Our stomachs cramped with laughter and levity as we recognized, even in the commentary of my seven-year-old self, a bit of my grown-up dry humor because today is Monday and no one has blocked me from Twitter. Its a good day.

Journaling started out as a way to perfect my penmanship but became a creative outlet as well as an exercise of self-reflection, observations, and storytelling. Journaling gave me a way to express my unfiltered self without self-editing or public critique, which I suspect gave me courage to eventually write more. Childhood journaling gave me a physical practice of owning and acknowledging my observations, emotions, experiences, and thoughts. This morphed into a career as a journalist, blogger, and author of this booka journey of finding my voice in bits and pieces through the past twenty-plus years of life, parenting, and ministry.

The journey includes that time I joined the high school speech team and heard my voice via video recording for the first time. Do I really sound like that? Is that what I look like when I talk?There was the first time I saw an Asian American woman preach. Can women do that? Can women who kind of look like me do that?There was the time a college professor didnt hear my question because his answer was, Where did you learn your English? You speak almost without an accent. I thought silently, I have a Chicago accent when I get angry and/or animated, but what does it matter?My response was to ask him, Where did you learn yours?

There was the first time I challenged an editor on the use of pro-life and pro-choice versus anti-abortion and pro-abortion.