A new zine about life's in-betweens
For the people who don't always know where they belong, or wonder when the next stage of their life will begin, this is for you.
The first person I ever saw traverse the in-between is my dad.
He was born and raised in Lombok, Indonesia, and moved to the U.S. with me and my mom when I was two. He wasn’t fluent in English and didn’t know anyone.
My whole life I’ve watched him dance the line between belonging and aching for a far away home. With grace and a good sense of humor, he has never stopped turning space into spaciousness, always finding a place to land, always transmuting the pain of rejection into courage and laughter.
I studied his movements for years.
Then one day, I started becoming aware of my own outsider-ness, increasingly finding myself inside of life’s in-between spaces
not white enough for the white kids, not Asian enough for the Asian kids; not fitting into any of the cliques in high school or college; taking years after college to land a salaried job; being a digital editor by title but not by credentials; moving between homes almost yearly because of circumstances constantly changing
It’s taken me years to find my bearings and grapple with my own issues around belonging and being present with what is. And when I find myself stumbling, hands grasping at the walls, I return to these truths:
When I feel like I don’t belong anywhere, remember that I belong to myself
Every phase of life, even if it’s not where I want to be, deserves my presence
These two statements that I manically scritch-scratched onto a journal one day three years ago were the seeds of an idea that has sprouted and fruited into something so fucking special to me.
I finally alchemized a lifetime of feeling like an in-betweenie into The Interstitial, a monthly(ish) zine you can read for free here on my Substack.
The Interstitial is an exploration of these in-between spaces. It’s my love letter to the people wondering when the next phase of their life will start; the people who don’t quite know where they belong but know they belong to themselves; the people who don’t want to contain their multitudes.
It’s hard to be inside an in-between. You’re not quite here, not quite there. You’re not quite this, not quite that. And in a culture obsessed with binaries and labels, it can be limiting and isolating to feel like you don’t quite belong within one such container.
Additionally, many of us have been conditioned to think of the progression of our lives in terms of stepping stones, like getting married, having children, making X amount of money, paying off a loan, turning a certain age, etc.
But what happens after you’ve been laid off, before you get a new job? What happens after you get into an argument with someone you love, before the resolution and repair? What happens after you’ve written your book, but before you get published?
This is the texture of what I want to explore inside the pages of The Interstitial.
These in-between spaces of life shouldn’t just trigger your autopilot settings until you lock in that six-figure salary.
There’s so much potency, unearthing, and deepening inside of an in-between; they shape and transform us from the inside out.
Life’s interstitial spaces are like the punctuation marks inked onto the pages of our stories: they give us structure, direction, and pause—lest we turn into a run-on sentence.
At its core, The Interstitial is me making the case that life’s in-betweens are actually full blown moments that deserve their own stage. Where you are right now, even if it’s not where you want to be, is shaping you. And I want to bring spaciousness to the space you find yourself in.
I would love to publish a new issue of The Interstitial every month. But because Mercury and Venus are currently both retrograde, and my life is a whole-ass in-between of its own, it feels disingenuous to publicly commit to that.
So I’ll say this: I’m aiming for monthly, and if/when that doesn’t happen, just know that life is life-ing, as it is wont to do.
OK FINALLY, it is with such pride and excitement that I offer you the first issue of The Interstitial!
Download it below to access it. Share it, post about it (pls credit me if you do!), print it, write all over it. Please, make it yours.
And if you love all of this or something I wrote here stirred something inside of you, please consider becoming a paid subscriber 🫶🏼 It takes a lot of time to storyboard and create The Interstitial, and your contribution helps generate the space (and motivation) to make it all happen. But love you regardless thank you for being here!!
Can’t commit to a paid subscription but still want to show your support? You can buy me a coffee here :)
So much love
What a beautiful offering for April! Thank you 🥰