This is not an essay about bridging in relation to my work; but rather an approach to connection in relation to my identity.

This writing is part of my processing of the past several years and a reflection of my own identity, grounded by an intersubjective lens into other people’s perceptions of me. I do not tell many people this story, because I have come to expect that my words will be misunderstood and that I will only be blamed for mistakes I made. Writing it on my terms has required my active participation in the cycle of learning, unlearning, and relearning where I have been and, reframing what I mistook for mistakes in the past as choices I made with the tools I had available to me. This is my way of sharing what bridging is from my perspective as a Chinese-Jewish Queer Disabled woman living, and not truly fitting in, in the Western world.