What's your yellow?

I love the color yellow. It reminds me of sunshine and light. But it wasn’t always that way. When I grew up, yellow meant something different. It meant weakness and fear. It was something unwanted and rejected. It was a color used as an ethnic slur to refer to Asian Americans. Have you watched the movie Crazy Rich Asians? It ends with a cover of Coldplay’s song “Yellow.” Director Jon Chu wrote to Coldplay to ask permission to use it because he too had grown up feeling shamed for being “yellow” until the song came out and changed the meaning for him. It became an empowerment anthem, a way to reclaim the color and its meaning. One of the things we do in WomanSpeak is listen to music, which I carefully curate. After hearing the story of Jon Chu, I knew I had to play it because all the women who come to WomanSpeak are there to reclaim themselves. We were all shamed for something growing up, for something integral to who we are…being too sensitive, too loud, too intuitive, too [fill in the blank]. But it’s time to reclaim all those things, to shed the shame and unapologetically be who we are. WomanSpeak isn’t just a public speaking program. There are women at all different levels from beginner to expert who are in it. The program is about discovering yourself, stepping into who you already are, and no longer holding yourself back. It’s about reclaiming ourselves.

We have some openings in our group and will be doing an Intro Night on Wednesday, March 20th @6-9pm in Ballard. Join us if you’d like to experience the program and be in a place where you can just be unapologetically you and be accepted and supported unconditionally.

Some info:
We meet twice a month, the first and third Wednesdays from 7:00-9:00pm in Ballard. Intro Night meets one hour before the program to learn about the program and then you join the regular circle after to try it out. The monthly cost is $129 with a one time initiation fee of $75 which funds a girl through GirlSpeak. The full program curriculum lasts 16 months but you can do the program as long as you like, there is no minimum. Intro Night is $25. Register here. Follow the event on Facebook.