#059: When Art Becomes a Mirror for the Parts You Hid With Tammy Nguyen Lee

Have you ever felt the quiet ache of wanting to be seen… not for what you produce, but for who you really are?

In this deeply moving conversation, we sit with award-winning filmmaker, producer, on-camera talent, and creative Tammy Nguyen-Lee as she shares what it was like growing up carrying stories that had no safe place to land. Stories shaped by culture, silence, expectation, and the longing to be understood.

Tammy reflects on how her work slowly became the place where truth could live… even before she had the words for it. We talk about what happens when art becomes more than expression, and instead becomes remembrance, reclamation, and release. About the invisible weight so many creatives carry. About the cost of feeling unseen. And about the courage it takes to finally let your real story breathe.

This is not a conversation about success or performance. It’s about the inner life of a creative. The tenderness. The ache. The quiet bravery of choosing to tell the truth… even when your voice shakes.

If you’ve ever wondered whether your work is trying to say something your heart has known all along, this episode is for you.

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Transcript

A Historic Event That Still Heals

SPEAKER_01 0:34

It touched the hearts of so many and healed a lot of people and created a community that they never felt seen or heard or understood. And even now, it's been 50 years since that historic event. We are now talking about that today. And having been there at the forefront of building this community and being allowed and being um welcomed to this really sacred, intimate space of these stories has been one of the honors of my entire life.

SPEAKER_06 1:20

Hello, hello. It's Maddox and Dwight, the Connections and Community guys. We're here for another episode of For the Love of Creatives. And today our guest is Tammy Nun Lee.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Hi, Maddox and Dwight. It is such a pleasure to be here. It's been a long time coming. I am delighted. Um, a little bit about me. I am a first-generation Vietnamese-American filmmaker. I'm a refugee and a boat person. I'm the president and co-founder of Against the Grain. And today, um, one of the treasures and pleasures of my life is to be a mom of three. I'm a connector of people, a bridge builder, and I love to bring people together to share stories and just get to the light.

SPEAKER_06 2:06

So, and just so our audience knows, the way we met Tammy was we were at a creative mornings event, and she was the guest speaker, and she knocked out of the ballpark. I mean, not all of them do, but you definitely did. And we raced up to her right afterwards and said, please, please, please be on our podcast. And so that was several months ago, and it did take a little while, but you know, good things are worth waiting for.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

They are. And thank you for being patient and just never giving up.

The Birth Of Operation Babylift Film

SPEAKER_06 2:36

Yeah, yeah. We're we're here now, and timing is everything. And we're very excited about this because we just loved the story that you told at Creative Mornings. And not that you'll tell exactly the same story, but some remnants of it now, because you know, it just depends on what we decide to talk about. But I'm I'm gonna lead off with uh, and I I kind of want to know in your creative pursuits, your creative journey, your creative life, what is the thing that you're absolutely most proud of?

Finding The Adoptees’ Voices

SPEAKER_01 3:16

I mean, this year, it's just a perfect year to think about and talk about that. Um, what got me here with especially against the grain is this one foundational project called Operation Babylift, The Lost Children of Vietnam. And it came to me kind of by accident. I was um just recently graduated from SMU. I had taken kind of a sabbatical year, a year off to um fulfill my requirement as the Miss Asian American Texas pageant queen. And I was directing a play for the Vietnamese American Community Center. Um, at the time, it was the 25th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. So this was April of 2000. And we were doing a banquet called Thank You America. And in that time, I was allowed this pleasure of directing a play. Um, and we sewed together pieces of the exodus from the war. And being a Vietnamese refugee and being so young at the time, the war was not really something we talked about in our family very much. If it was, it was very much, you know, in hushed whispers. You know, our family was very much traumatized, like many Vietnamese Americans who came here during that time. We did not talk about this. But in that small amount of time planning the play, um there was in a Vietnamese, there was a Vietnamese nurse, a Vietnamese, uh, she's actually American nurse, but had a Vietnamese last name, Mary Nguyen. I will credit her to this day for telling me this small little tidbit. And she said, Tammy, have you ever heard of this thing called Operation Babylift? And I was like, I have never heard this before. Please tell me more. And she was a nurse, um, she's Caucasian, married to a Vietnamese man. She had served as a nurse in the war. And she said, at the end of the war, we helped carry baby lifts, baby babies onto planes, and they were brought to US homes. And we thought we were bringing them to a better life. And I absolutely was floored by this little big piece of history that I had never heard about. It was never taught to me in any history book. It was never talked about in my family. And so we pulled that into parts of the play, and that just stayed with me for a very long time. Um, I went fast forward, I went to UCLA for the producers program, graduated in two years. It's the program's two years. And at the end of it, I was granted um a scholarship, a grant, the Mickey Dude grant, to do whatever I wanted for$5,000. And being a boat person, I actually got into the program based on stories about being a boat person. However, I had struggled with how could I ever tell this story? Because it was so intensely personal to me, the things that had happened to me and to my family, that I just couldn't touch it. And so what I realized was I I I could tell, I wanted to tell the story about Operation Baby Lift. So that story was supposed to take about a year. It definitely did not, as most documentaries do and need to. It kind of went this way and that way. Um, it was made during a time before Facebook, uh, when we were, there were just blogs about this one event in history that would pull people together from various parts of the country, names, emails. And it was so incredibly hard to make this film because it was one person after the next referring me. Um, I didn't know any of them. I was not a babylift adoptee. And it started with one person who then I would hear their story, I would ask if they would allow me the space and the time to listen to them. And then one thing led to the next. And I would crisscross the country um listening to stories and then figuring out what is it that I want to know about this part of my own cultural history and allowing it time to grow because I thought it was just going to be this story about Operation Babylift, and really what it needed to have was a direction that was completely different than anything else that had ever been done at that point. And it was to allow the adoptees to tell a story from their own perspective. And to that, to that point, no film had given them as a collective group a way to do that. And this was such a gift. Um, it took more than three years. It was independently financed. The entire budget was, I think, less than definitely less than$10,000 with the$5,000 that we had started. And it was just done on a shoestring with so much passion and love and everyone chipping in and doing things because they felt it should. And 16 years later, you know, it went on to premiere at the Vietnamese Film Festival. It won two Audience Choice Awards, but more importantly, it touched the hearts of so many and healed a lot of people and created a community that they never felt seen or heard or understood. And even now, it's been 50 years since that historic event. We are now talking about that today. And having been there at the forefront of building this community and being allowed and being um welcomed to this really sacred, intimate space of these stories has been one of the honors of my entire life.

SPEAKER_06 8:51

Oh, what a privilege, truly. Wow.

Shoestring Filmmaking And Hard Lessons

SPEAKER_01 8:55

And the story's not done. So we're gonna reopen that too. And, you know, I took a big sabbatical from filmmaking to be a very intentional parent. So I say, you know, my children might are my trilogy, but that was my first passion project. And now I get to circle back um into my very first passion, which is filmmaking, alongside my children watching me, which is such a gift.

SPEAKER_06 9:21

That just sounds amazing. So this begs the next question. I mean, you're telling a story about something that was just like really huge and on a tight budget, you know, lengthy, trying to search for people, get their agreement to participate. What would you say was the biggest challenge that you had to overcome with that project that you reaped so much from?

SPEAKER_01 9:53

Well, when you do an independent project, there's just so many challenges because there's no, in good ways and bad, there's no rules. So how you do it, when you do it, how much you do it for is truly on you. So the challenge was, you know, constantly the who, what, where, when, whys. It's like, okay, why am I doing this? When am I gonna do this? You know, how am I gonna do this? Um, that was a challenge in the gift. You know, it was always the the light side and the shadow side. So for me, I loved the challenge of constantly trying to figure out, okay, what next? Where does this go next? And how much am I gonna spend producing, directing it in tandem, as well as then adding narration on the on the back end? I got a chance to really fulfill so many roles and learn so much. I made every mistake in the book as far as filmmaking goes. I had, I think, two different cameras that we used. We went from mini DV to HDV. Um, gosh, what a great learning experience to be able to say, no one, I'm accountable, no one but myself and how I want this to be. And I'm actually like a perfectionist, so that's hard because I don't know that I want answering to me in the real world. But I I did the best I could with what I knew, with what I had. And looking back, I'm truly um proud of the work because it it's authentic, it's gritty, um, it's honest, it's everything that it needed to be.

Content Over Perfect Cinematography

SPEAKER_06 11:27

You know, you talked about the mistakes that you made. That is something that I think creatives are confronted with every day and something that they really struggle with. Speak a little bit about how you how you navigated those mistakes and and and what was the end result of those mistakes? Because we oftentimes think mistakes are just nothing but mistakes, and we fail to glean the big, you know, learning and lesson and gift from them.

SPEAKER_01 12:05

I mean, um technically speaking, it is not um great cinema. And even the the structure of it, it kind of goes a lot of different ways, kind of like my mind works. It starts as one thing and goes to the next. And it's um, like I said, I learned what I learned in film school, and then I on the fly, like you're not really shooting a scripted, like a scripted setup is a lot of storyboards, and uh you have a dip cinematographer, you've got a light, like a gaffer, you've got more around you when it's you and one other person shooting it, it's like news. So you're you are literally on the fly doing everything. And so if things are out of focus or if the framing isn't perfect, um at the end, it doesn't matter because it's the content and the interview. So I think that's the most quintessential thing to take away from it when you're a documentary filmmaker. Is did you get the interview? Did you get the story? That's what matters. So even recently, I had the chance to talk to the pilot of the C5A Galaxy, who has a really important role in all this, which I we can talk about later, but we literally did a Zoom one night in his living room. I think it was 11 o'clock my time, and maybe, you know, I think he was on Pacific time. So maybe like, you know, two hours. And he had literally one, we had one window before I was gonna lose him and he was gonna lose me. He put on a cute little shirt and a tie. It was me in my dining room, him in his living room. And the story that came out of it, you would never have cared or known what the framing or the lighting was because the story was solid. It was there and it was from the heart, and that's what mattered. And no one else, he would agree to no one else. And that was such an honor, too. Was I was working with a multi-Emy Award-winning travel journalist who asked if um this gentleman would come to our event and he wasn't able to, and he wasn't actually able to even get a response from this pilot, but because I was close enough affiliated with him, and he'd I had earned his trust, he responded to me. And I could not be more grateful that he did. And to this day, I mean, he'll text me messages when he's on the road um eating finger food. And it's he's the most hilarious hero. And that that's the relationship that we have is the coolest thing ever. But like for me, I think my gift is because I honestly want to know, I honestly want to connect that people feel comfortable. And I live in my truth, the good, the bad, and the ugly. And I think people are willing to be vulnerable with me and they'll have that conversation. So that is my asset as a documentary filmmaker, is how are you gonna get the story if you can't get your subject to trust you and allow you the space to tell the story?

Personal Ties To The C5A Crash

SPEAKER_02 15:03

It's beautiful how through this project you got to uncover some things that wound up giving you a tie to something that was maybe really distant, really um uh a secret. And you've you have shown a light for everyone. And it's such a testament to what it is to to be genuine, to seek truth, and to uh really go deep on being authentic and and mining uh everything that is that is true. And wow, I mean you you have managed to give the example of what it is to do the hard work to be uh curious and uh to really go deep on who it is that you are, how you got here, and you know uh show that for others. You know, this is something that probably um would have been really hard to find out more about had you not done this project.

Why History And Memory Matter

SPEAKER_01 16:23

Well, I think that there's a stubbornness to me too. So, like there's that shadow side of curiosity. Um, I don't know that I had a choice in the the matter. And you know, a year into RD on this, I found out that it had a personal connection to Operation Baby Lyft because um the first flight out actually crashed. And this pilot was the pilot of the C5A. And you'll hear in the documentary that, you know, 12 minutes in, the pilot is taking off and it's a C5A galaxy, and the cargo doors, uh, it was a rush, you can imagine. The end of the war was very, very chaotic. The cargo doors were not put on correctly. So with the cabin pressure, they are ascending. The the all the lower, the lower cargo, which is not equipped for passengers, by the way, it's like the size of a high school gymnasium. And then the upper cargo has the space for the babies and their caretakers, and the lower cargo is for the older children and their caretakers. But um, you know, moments into flight, the cargo doors blow out, and everyone who was in the lower cargo gets pulled out and, you know, they fall, they perish into the rice patties below. And I realized um, you know, one year into RD that I had a personal connection because my mother told me that I had family on that flight. And I had just read the name Dolly Bui in the microfish. If you remember like researching, I was at Texas Tech, and they had they still have an amazing um Vietnam archive library there. And I had read a name that was very unique, and that name struck a nerve with me. And I found out later on that that was my great aunt, and her children were on that flight as well. And so it became very personal for me, not only this part of the history, but like the entire project itself and how we were all connected. And with the Vietnam War, I don't know if you'll know anyone that wasn't impacted by that war, whether it was a serviceman or someone who, you know, was a refugee itself. Uh, I there's so many points of connection back to that war. And so for me, it was a point of healing. Um, whether I wanted to or not, everything in my body was driving me to this story to finish it. And I think in many ways, even though it was not my personal story, it became it actually surprised me in so many ways along the years and even up till recently, how much I have a personal connection to it. But really, we all have have a connection to these stories. Um, and it just shows you we're all in this together. I just I can't imagine um the life that I would had had this not, had the universe not given this to me. Um, the curiosity is just a need to heal. And I think that for better or for worse, and my mom would say for worse, I have a distinct drive to the truth. And in my culture and my custom, that is not sometimes seen as okay because um we don't talk about those things. Yeah, that's a lot. Um that rug, let's pile some more things under that rug. We just need to get on and move on with it. We survive. And for me, my point of survival is I cannot survive with things under the rug. I personally have to stand in my truth, and maybe that's because of my westernized culture, but the eastern side of my culture would say that is not to be spoken of. We don't need to talk about that. We just need to move on because that is how we are resilient and move on, which I understand as well. But for me personally, uh, I cannot heal that way. And I would think most people do not heal that way by ignoring the past. They have to address it head on in different ways. You know, there's subtle ways, there's assertive ways, um, there's more. traumatic ways, but in when you talk about trauma, sometimes you gotta rip off the band-aid, sometimes you gotta, you know, swabble with saline solution. There's so many different ways to deal with wounds from the past. And for me, this was just the ultimate wound for for myself and my people that I felt I I had to do this. I couldn't answer you, tell you why then I just had this definite need and definite drive to do so.

SPEAKER_06 20:50

Wow. I'm I'm kind of in awe. I mean the all the connections that you speak of and then the length of time that you've been involved in this. It's this ongoing thing. How many years ago was this?

Who I Had To Become

SPEAKER_01 21:05

So I graduated from UCLA in 2004. I got the grant uh that year didn't start working on the project till 2006. And then uh we released it to film festivals 2009 to DVD in 2010. And um that year it was like the 35th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. So this year marks the 50th. So I wouldn't have told you then that this would have been my life. I never would have thought that as a filmmaker in my late 20s, early 30s that this would have been the project that would define my life. But somehow, somehow it has it has blessed me in so many ways and so many others. And like on this milestone year, so many of us who are impacted by it, especially the adoptees and the servicemen and women who were there at the time helping the orphanage aid workers, the flight attendants from PM, who are all thinking retrospectively back to that time, especially given what is going on in current day, we think, wow, that would never have happened today. And look where we are because that was allowed to happen look at the adoptees how their lives have been changed for the better. Look at our country how we've been changed for the better. History allows us so many things to see ourselves then now and in the future and I I know you you agree if you do not know your past you do not know where you're going. And those who are bound to forget the past are you know you you will repeat you will repeat it. Repeat it the mistakes of the past correct and I think our memories are very short lived these days and we have to always remember history or her story.

SPEAKER_06 22:58

You were very young when you started this massive project and I'm thinking probably at that time in your life you you probably weren't processing and thinking well who do I need to become to do this? But looking back on your life now in retrospect can you unpack for us and tell us who it was that you did need to become that internal those internal things that had to shift not the external stuff but the the who do I have to be in here to do this to pull this off to make it happen.

SPEAKER_01 23:40

I mean even today there's so many things that I do that I'm not consciously aware that I do but I'm sure it's because I was guided by so many amazing professors um even my own personal life my mother is um you know one of my biggest uh life sources you know she is the ultimate example of resilience she came from a very you know um her life was not easy uh the culture was not easy on her her gender her birth order um socioeconomic class of being you know privileged but like all those things combined it created an environment that was very difficult for my mom and that makes her very complex and also she's one of the most generous people I've ever known in my whole life but there's also a lot that lives within her that is um how do I say it two things can be true at once um that sometimes don't make sense for me but I have learned to if you have parents you make you make peace with who they are because that is what they know. And I'm a mom now so I have a very different way of seeing her and myself um and like for my professors too like we are all humans and all these people who had an imprint on me whether it be my SMU film professors or my UCLA producers program chairs or my friends who were just experts in the field um I love to meet people who are passionate and you can't help but be impacted by and affected by the energy. I I did a personality test recently and I I found out that I'm an ENFJ do you know what that means I I don't know what it means.

SPEAKER_06 25:38

I'm familiar with the test and did the test a few years ago but I don't have it all you know memorized so I know exactly what that translates to.

SPEAKER_01 25:45

So I think it's based on like Meyers Brig and um you know I'm very into therapy I'm very open minded about healing and all that stuff so in its all its many forms. And so I think you know E is for extroverted right and is for I think hopefully I'm not getting this wrong introspective F is for feeling and J is for judgment and my my therapist said that my numbers are like kind of off the charts and she asked me like Tammy are you like a are you like like a clairvoyant and like have you ever you know come up to someone and and they said you know how do you know these things about me I'm like yes it's because you feel like you you get a sense of their feeling and like I am I'm a processor and I'm a scientific person because I think by way of adulting I have learned to adapt and do all those things but like the inner child in me needs to like Maddox and Dwight if we were in the room I would just be like hugging on you and like touching you and like you know feeling you you know like I just feel your energy.

SPEAKER_06 26:49

That's us. That's us I I think that's not so much clairvoyant. I think that's empathic.

Fear, Risk, And Creative Courage

SPEAKER_01 26:55

Correct. And so creatives uh tend to be you know probably in the same sphere. Maybe it's uh intros like introverted versus extroverted you know because uh it's the way you express your energy I was surprised that I was extroverted but I think I also how was explained to me was I get my energy from being around people. And it's not like having to be the center of attention it's just that I love being within community. Yeah you're a natural connector yes so to answer your question um I I just think that I'm always learning from people around me and um I I don't know that I I thought about who I needed to be too much just because I was I'm such a doer and I'll think later and I'll ask sometimes I'll ask permission later and I'll ask forgiveness later because I'm just in the moment passionate doing the thing and you don't think about it until later and go, oh how did how much how did I do that? No fear. There's a saying in Vietnamese it's um which means the deaf are not afraid of gunshots that's the literal translation but it's like it's true if you can't hear it then why would you be afraid of anything like you just do the thing you go and now in my my later years I'm in my 40s now late 40s I have had more reminders of fear because I have children I take calculated risks now as before I probably would just do whatever be much more adventurous and I'm trying to get back to that as creatives we have to be willing to like get back to the let me make a risk let me be willing to fail because when you're younger you're like whatever you just want to get the thing out you don't think about the risk you don't think about the failures and so you just do the thing and all of a sudden you have this amazing whatever because you didn't think about it. And I'm a chronic overthinker now I need to get I need to stop overthinking.

SPEAKER_06 29:04

I I I I suspect many of us can see that in our past how how we just didn't you know we didn't think about can we do this we just assumed we could and and we we did it. You know I I look back I was telling Dwight a story just yesterday about um everything that happened from me from the latter part of 1980 to the latter part of 1981 it was a year and in one year I I got a divorce I closed the family business I got my license as a hairdresser I opened up my salon I came out as gay and there was I mean there was in a 12 month period of time you know I I built a business and I I look back and I think my God you know I came out so now I'm dealing with parents that don't know how to deal with me being gay so there were just so many pieces parts and I just navigated it and now I look back and and look you know I I never unpacked it the the fact that all of that happened in an extremely condensed period of time.

SPEAKER_01 30:24

Yeah because your life force just I think it's a survival thing. Like when you're in survival mode are you really thinking and in many ways you get primal like I just need to think I I need the things to get me out of this food, water, air shelter you know Maslow's hierarchy of needs what is the thing that's going to keep me alive and you're not thinking you're doing because it's your instinct and so maybe in many ways many of us who are artists are like I need this thing to survive if not because a lot of us do art why why why are we creating it's because likely we have some trauma some hurt that we're trying to cycle through and heal because why else would we choose to do this thing? You know like I maybe I should be an accountant it's much more stable it's much more normal but why do I choose to be in this space that's so unpredictable and like nonsensical and crazy I have no other option.

Making From Scarcity And Ingenuity

SPEAKER_02 31:17

I must do this part part of the answer is because it feeds our soul in a manner that nothing else can true yeah and for feeds our soul yeah and for for some of us it's the only way we can metabolize the the things that uh are are causing us pain.

SPEAKER_06 31:41

It it is for me it is it's it's like meditation on steroids like there's this sense of peace when I'm creating particularly when I'm painting and I think that was present in all I did as a hairdresser because hairdressing is art you know you're changing somebody's hair color you're putting makeup on their face you're changing the cut and your canvas is not a flat surface you know it's got angles and shapes and there's no two canvases that are alike and um it fed my soul in a manner that I was able to do it for 40 years. That's we would still be doing it if my body hadn't said sorry dude you're done you're healing yourself and you're healing others it's an amazing art form.

SPEAKER_01 32:37

They should call it hair art.

SPEAKER_06 32:39

We call art you say that again we heal ourselves when we heal others yes absolutely that's so necessary we heal ourselves when we heal others and vice versa and and we also teach what we must need to learn so true kind of go hand in hand I think you know I I look back on the times when I was accelerated the most and it was when I was teaching something that I only knew vaguely to somebody that knew less than me.

SPEAKER_03 33:18

It's magical you want to learn something teach it. You really want to learn it teach it.

SPEAKER_01 33:23

That's so true. And to be willing to say you know what I don't know at all but let's try this together and you know if we mess up or not like I always tell my kids you know it's not in the 100s that you it's not in the perfection. It's actually in the failure and how you learn to get back up. And that's so cliche to say but it's so true. Like when I when they come back and they have like a bad grade I always say you know it's okay because that way I know you know the teacher knows like where is that muscle that needs to be strengthened. And you and it's the willingness to get back up that is really what life is about because if you are constantly perfect in 100s all the time who knows if you actually know anything right but then when you get the bad thing then you when you get knocked down that's when you go oh my gosh that's where I need to work that's what builds our resilience. Because you the glows are great but without the failures you don't get the grows.

SPEAKER_06 34:21

So you have to have the glows and the grows I think so too so dipping back to another time in life how did creativity show up in your life at the earliest glimmer?

SPEAKER_01 34:37

Oh goodness well when you have nothing you are forced to be very creative. So growing up we were you know refugees starting over had nothing um I remember my mom worked very very hard she her first job I think she was a uh a waitress at a very upscale Vietnamese restaurant and so my great aunt who was one of the foremost caterers in Washington DC again you know had no formal training but she took care of me and so I grew up in kitchens a lot like her kitchen and then my other aunt's kitchen here um in Dallas and when you don't have a lot of money you get resourceful on like toys for instance like I remember a memory where we didn't have money for toys so I found masking tape. This sounds a little psycho but like I turned little balls of like I took masking tape and put them into little balls in different sizes lined them up against the wall and I thought you know I pretend that they were dolls and I would talk to them. Sounds super psycho right now if I say it out loud.

SPEAKER_05 35:35

No not at all it's what you have it's magic.

SPEAKER_06 35:42

I mean you were entertained by little balls of tape.

Against The Grain Origins

SPEAKER_01 35:47

I I just and then like I had a little sister who I wanted to entertain she was uh still is um almost eight years younger than me seven and a half years younger and when she was born she was just one of the loves of my life like I thought I would actually stay up in the middle of the night with my mom to try to change her diapers because I didn't feel like anyone else could change your diapers better than mom or me. So as we were growing up again we didn't have a lot growing up my parents were working you know sometimes multiple jobs to be able to support us and then send money back to Vietnam to our family that were still there. And I remember one Halloween my sister was born right before Halloween and we lived in this cute little pink house that my father had painted pink on the outside and inside with pink carpet because I was obsessed with pink. And I wanted to entertain her so we didn't have money for Halloween decorations like I do for my children now. So I would take um Kleenex, cotton balls, sharpie and thread and I would turn them into little ghosts and hang them from the ceiling fan and you know just turn it on and away they go and she would laugh and you know simple times simple but it was fun and it made a smile and I think about those memories a lot like the things you're forced to do with very little to be creative because you have to get it out and you want to smile and you want to have joy.

SPEAKER_06 37:08

It's the magic though I wouldn't be I wouldn't want to be a kid right now for anything they're handed an iPhone at a very very early age and they didn't most kids now are so spoiled they didn't have to use their imagination or or make anything it's just unreal to me. I I too grew up in a family that did not have a lot and my dad would make toys for me by hand out of wood he'd carve something or he would glue something together I I had stilts that he made I had a go-kart that he made um from just scraps from just old stuff laying around and I and you remember it to this day handmade stuff. I love the handmade intentional stuff I look back on that as being so special.

SPEAKER_01 38:03

Yeah you know I yeah it I bless the kids' hearts that I know and to try to keep them simple and down to earth with those sense of sensibilities like my father is an amazing artist and like back then he still he would just whatever we wanted he would build it and he would figure out how to to build he was an artist in his mind became a civil engineer because he had to but like he's always building and touching and you know texture and colors and um my house is filled with his artwork you know that he's actually painted on the walls or painted in frame for us. And I think we try to keep those values instilled in my kids to this day because somehow someway like that art has come from generations that had come from somewhere on both sides. Even my mom she actually used to say Tammy why are you so rebellious and then I found out later on from her friends that she was the ultimate rebel like she was a drummer in a girl band. I mean I was like are you joking me like now you wonder how I became against the grain you're the OG against the grain middle black sheep like for real who was a drummer in a girl band that's so cool.

SPEAKER_02 39:17

Well the apple doesn't usually fall very far from the tree and is that the is that the inspiration for the name and Against the grain?

SPEAKER_01 39:26

No actually against the grain came to me um a lot of good ideas come to me in the shower I don't know about you it is like I don't know what it is about water and showers or maybe it's the early in the morning thing but I I a lot of my good ideas come in the shower and um it was that spirit of just being brave and unconventional and thinking outside the box like and then the A T and the G were for the founders the original founders of um against the grain and then I use those same initials with my children. So their names are also begins with AT yes that's cool it just runs through I love a good theme. But I just think that um you know a lot of people ask you know what does against the grain mean I'm we'd be like at events and one time someone actually asked me if we were like a nut if we didn't like rice.

unknown 40:22

No

SPEAKER_03 40:24

My God.

SPEAKER_01 40:26

No, it's nothing, nothing to do with that. We love rice.

unknown 40:30

We're not.

SPEAKER_05 40:31

It is hysterical.

SPEAKER_01 40:36

And I've never forgotten this person. But it was a very honest question. Walked right up to me at like one of the cultural fairs. And they're like, do you not like rice? I'm like, no, what? No, we love rice. What it means is so I said, team, we gotta make our branding like much more obvious. Like we're gonna do a trifold, and the definition of what against the grain is gonna be really big on it. The inside joke was always, we love rice.

SPEAKER_05 41:11

That is too funny.

SPEAKER_03 41:13

We're not hungry.

SPEAKER_06 41:16

I love that. Oh, some of the things that just show up. That is so funny.

SPEAKER_01 41:21

We meet people where they're at.

SPEAKER_06 41:23

Yes, yes, absolutely.

Light Of Day: A New Documentary

SPEAKER_01 41:26

So, what's the next big project? Oh, wow. Well, that took me a little while too. Like I said, I took a time, a big chunk of time out of my career to be a very intentional mom. And uh the next career move, I have a couple, uh, the next passion project for um through ATG is a documentary called Light of Day. And it started when a dear friend of mine served on the panel of Groundbreaker Speak, which was this amazing um interactive panel of groundbreakers, trailblazers, change makers who would talk about their path to success. And um, my dear friend Gothamula, who is the founder of Color Me Safe, asked, you know, would it be okay if I told my story being a survivor of domestic violence? And at that point, we had been friends for years, and she had never, never told me about that. And I said, That is so brave of you. If you would like to, I will be there to hold your hand. And that day came, and she was at the podium, and I was sitting next to her, and I think there's a picture of me ugly boohoo crying as she's telling her story, tears just flowing down her face. And I just remember thinking, man, so brave of her to do that in front of an audience. How can I not honor that? How can be how can I be a filmmaker asking people to be honest when I am not honest about that in my own life? So I shot the sizzle for it with a couple of my um wonder these wonderful women who were brave to talk about their story, never really telling the truth about how this topic has impacted my life. And so this might be my swan song, y'all. The one thing that puts me over the edge. Because as I told you, I don't do personal projects well for a reason. So it took me um a long time to figure out how I'm going to tackle the rest of this because it was about them and their story, but really I'm pulling back the layers more. Um, and talking about how, you know, family violence, domestic violence is and survivors of it, it's a manifestation, but it starts from layers of intergenerational post-war trauma, like from the abused to the abuser. And how do we talk about this? How do we identify it? Um, how do we heal from it? How do we move on from it? So it's a really, really big topic, not just in our community, in my personal Asian American community, is which is where it started, but like for all of us. And so through our ATG scholarship winners who are insanely talented from filmmakers to um dance majors to uh music composers, they are hungry for the opportunity to be mentored and to have uh projects like this. And so I have realized why would I shoulder that burden by myself? If they're asking for mentorship, then I am happy to create an opportunity and environment in which we can collaborate together. The older generation, me, and then the younger generation, them to bridge that together and work on this project. So that is the next multidisciplinary interactive documentary is to create light of day into a very, very big, very personal project that hopefully will heal others and really myself.

SPEAKER_06 45:12

So you're you're stepping out and you're gonna do something that you've never done before.

SPEAKER_01 45:17

It's so uncomfortable, it's so scary.

SPEAKER_06 45:21

Yeah. Have you ever heard this the saying or the the uh the phrase, what got you here won't get you there.

SPEAKER_03 45:31

Wow, say that one more time. What got you here won't get you there.

SPEAKER_01 45:39

That's called a midlife crisis. The thing that served you till now no longer serves you.

unknown 45:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 45:47

I mean, you have told, you've helped so many other people tell their story, but never having really told your most vulnerable story. So so you we talked about how, you know, all those years ago when you started the first project, the massive blight of the children. Um at that time you didn't really contemplate, you know, who am I gonna have to become to do this? But I'm gonna put you on the spot now because you're about to take on one of the most challenging projects of your life to tell your own story. And first of all, from my own personal experience and from the people who I've touched in my life, I can tell you that this will be probably the most healing thing you ever do. And you're being called to do it because your soul and spirit want to be healed. But the question is, you're gonna be stepping out into turf and territory that is completely foreign, places that you've never gone before. So who does Tammy need to become to do that? Once again, that that ends, what has to shift in here?

SPEAKER_00 47:05

That is uh the the question I have been struggling with for the last two years.

SPEAKER_01 47:11

And I am so good at doing it for others. I realized this by looking at my girls in particular. Like they are a reflection of me in that they are also very good at being brave and advocating for others, but they couldn't advocate for themselves. And I was noticing this trend in them.

SPEAKER_06 47:31

You've been their role model.

SPEAKER_01 47:33

That's exactly what it was. I was like, oh my gosh, this is completely my fault. I have been leading them in this way. Don't fault in the sense that I'm accountable for leading them. So I said, you know what? Because they're watching me do the same. I advocate for others, but I'm not standing up for myself. I'm not advocating for myself in my career and my personal life. And so I took some major, major stands in my personal life in particular, and in my career as well, to stand up for myself and advocate for myself because I was hiding behind a lot of different things. Um, you know, this sensibility of like who I needed to be, I'm the eldest daughter, I have perfectionist tendencies, I'm a people pleaser. I was constantly doing what I thought I was supposed to because I was told you're supposed to. Um, even even with an organization like Against the Grain, um, I was being brave, but like for everyone else and still not for myself. I was okay with everyone else being vulnerable with me, but I couldn't, I could be vulnerable like this all day long. But like to actually go back and tell my story, I couldn't because it impacted my own family. And that sense of dignity and responsibility still weighs on me heavily to tell it in a way that honors them. Because part of my story is so tied up in them that I can't completely fully tell my story. So I'll I'll I'll get as far as I can.

SPEAKER_06 49:00

You know, you're you're answering the question. You said you've grappled with this for two years, and you're you're really very articulately answering it right now. You're talking about how the the person you need part, it's multi-layered usually, but one one thing that you're describing that you need to become is a a person who can advocate for themselves.

SPEAKER_07 49:33

And what it gives.

Advocating For Myself And Boundaries

SPEAKER_01 49:35

I didn't know until this year what healthy boundaries meant. Like to say no and say, no, you're not, you're not gonna have access to me. I don't need to reply to you, I don't even need to talk to you. If you're gonna be mean to me, I don't owe you an answer. If you're going to say these things or treat me this way, I don't need to please you. Like, no, no to that. I didn't even understand what that meant because I was taught that this is how it's supposed to be. You keep going for the sake of your family, for the sake of the kids, for the sake of okay.

SPEAKER_06 50:08

I I want to suggest that you not be too hard on yourself or think that you're late to the party.

SPEAKER_04 50:15

Thanks.

SPEAKER_06 50:15

I have a lifetime of working with women, and I can't, I mean, there's a big portion of the female population that will live their lives out and die without getting the boundary lesson that you got in this last year. So, you know, we have this tendency to think, God, it took so long, or I wish I hadn't waited so long. Timing is everything, and life unfolds the way it's supposed to. You weren't ready to get that lesson earlier than this.

unknown 50:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 50:50

Yeah. And I was so ready, but rather than feeling like, oh my God, I've waited I wasted so much of my life not knowing this, think about how much of your life you get to live with this knowledge now. Things will be different moving forward because you know how to set boundaries. Yeah. Women and any culture struggle with this. I I have not yet met a culture that women don't struggle with this because there's some form of patriarchy in every culture. It's a man's world. And I personally hate that.

SPEAKER_01 51:31

I'm so glad that we have verbiage around it, though, to be able to say things like patriarchy and toxic masculinity, because you know, had I not had that, I'd just been like, well, this is just the way it is.

SPEAKER_06 51:41

No.

SPEAKER_01 51:42

No, no, I don't, I reject that, especially because I have a son. And I even think now my role as a mother to him is even more not that it's more important than my my girls, but like the consequence of not raising a son that understands this and how to navigate in a world that is should make honest space for women and his sisters and his mother would be such a disservice. And we already we obviously see the consequences of what happens when men are not raised to love and honor and respect women.

SPEAKER_00 52:17

It's not okay.

SPEAKER_03 52:19

Not okay.

SPEAKER_01 52:21

So the contrary of that is let's do the right thing, especially moms of sons and moms of daughters too. I I I'm actually surprised at some of the women who treat girls this way, like they believe in toxic masculinity. They're like, well, a girl shouldn't be outspoken because that's not very ladylike, or you know, the things that they are brainwashed into thinking.

SPEAKER_06 52:40

That's and that is all brainwashing, and that is all propagated by the patriarchy. I've done a little studying on this. You know, there's one thing that I'm seeing that perhaps you have or haven't thought about. You know, you're talking about how difficult it is to tell your story. But when you make this shift and you advocate for you, now you're being a role model for all three of your children, male and female. They will learn from you how to advocate for themselves. What a gift. So this isn't just about you. It is in a really, really big way, but it's gonna have an impact on your three children. It's gonna further have an impact on their children because you could be the turning point that changes the way we look at all that. You know the way that you were raised was the way that your mother was raised and her mother was raised, but you have an awareness now where you can change the trajectory for future generations.

SPEAKER_03 53:52

This is huge.

Telling Truth Without Harm

SPEAKER_01 53:55

I have to. I mean, I've I I saw this one image on Instagram. It kind of reminds me of this. This, like, there was an image of an umbrella and a woman and her child standing on the under the umbrella, and it said, Do not let the storms of your life rain on your children. Something to that effect. And it's really related to like intergenerational trauma. It's like, you know, all of these things, like I refuse to let those traumas of the past and the hurts of the past and the haunts of the past impact my kids. Because I look at them and I said, You never asked to be born. You didn't ask to be here. I have been blessed to be your caretaker in the time that I have. I don't want any of that for you. And it takes a lot of introspection to go, okay. I am so guilty of this. This is how I was raised, this is what I know, but I don't want any of this for you. How can we stop this? Like, how can we stop the crazy train? You know, it's not easy.

SPEAKER_06 54:52

When you tell your story, when it comes out of your mouth, audibly out of your mouth, and others hear it, everything is gonna shift.

SPEAKER_03 55:04

Because you're gonna lay a burden down in that moment.

SPEAKER_06 55:09

I I I tell a story from time to time about a gentleman that was on my previous podcast. The podcast was called Um The Authentic Amen.

SPEAKER_02 55:17

The Authentic Amen.

SPEAKER_00 55:19

And I love that.

SPEAKER_06 55:20

He came on to the he was in his early 70s, and the podcast was about men and their quest to become authentic. And he had something very traumatic that had happened to him that he felt an intense amount of shame about 25 years ago, and he had been looking over his shoulder for 25 years, wondering when somebody was gonna find out his secret. He had carried this for all those years, and it had burdened him so greatly. And he made the decision on my podcast to put that horrific thing that he felt so much shame for out into the world on a podcast that could be listened for, you know, God knows how long. And he reached out to me a few days later and he said, I don't even know how to thank you enough. I don't think I I had talked to my partner before I came onto your podcast. I had told him I'm not going to talk about that. And he said, in the midst of the episode, the little voice in my head said, You have to talk about it. And so he chose to talk about it. I didn't know this until after the fact. He chose to talk about it. And he said, for the first time in 25 years, I'm not looking over my shoulder.

SPEAKER_03 57:02

He freed himself of that.

SPEAKER_06 57:05

And your story is not so dissimilar to that. You're carrying something that most likely has a great deal of shame attached to it.

SPEAKER_03 57:18

How could it not?

SPEAKER_01 57:23

Yeah, uh, we all have prisons. Uh many of us hold the key to our own prisons, and if you'd be surprised how many people would open the door to it and still choose to get right back in that cage. Because that is what you know that that's safer than what is beyond. It's super scary to open that door, find the key and open the door and step outside and to free yourself. But I think we all deserve that. And that is what I say is stepping into the light, finding the light.

Gratitude For The Hard Lessons

SPEAKER_06 57:56

I I am over here being your biggest cheerleader. I'm a little space for you to come out of the closet with that story and and and be free yourself.

SPEAKER_02 58:06

Yeah, and free others.

SPEAKER_03 58:08

While you teach your kids to do the same.

SPEAKER_00 58:15

I have a huge road ahead of me.

SPEAKER_01 58:18

I wish it were just mine to tell, because I would probably be much more bold and brave and brash and brazen and all those things, but I have to be respectful to those who are all involved in this. Uh so yeah.

SPEAKER_06 58:31

Um well, and part of part of that becoming that we're talking about is how do you become the person that can do that? What do you need to become to do that? You know, there, and there is a difference in telling your story in a manner that's uh defamating, or uh, I'm using a probably a$10 word that I'm not using correct correctly, but you know, to to make others wrong or to um make them feel bad, there's one way that you can do that, and there's another way where you just tell the truth with no kind of you just tell the truth. With no slant on it, no, no type of, and that's where the authenticity really shines. You know, if your heart's in the right place and you're just going to speak your truth with with no intention of of harming anybody else in your life that might have been connected to that, the way it lands for them is not your responsibility.

SPEAKER_00 59:45

It is tricky. It's a tricky one because I also know that everyone is connected to everything.

SPEAKER_04 59:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:50

So it's delicate.

SPEAKER_03 59:54

It is. And and you have everything you need to do that.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:01

Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:02

I'm getting there.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:03

I know that about you already. You know, I've heard two stories now. I will get there. You will get there.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:11

And you know, you don't have to get there alone.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:14

Thank you.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:15

You said you love therapy. You know, therapists can help you with that, a coach can help you with that.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:20

You don't have to do this on your own.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:26

Yeah, that was like one of the biggest realizations is that to be and to carry the story that I have the few people that do know the truth is that it does feel so isolating. You know, it does feel like how how could this have happened?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:46

Uh it's a crazy story. It's an awful story.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:52

I wish it weren't mine, but it is, and it's made me who I am.

Community, Vulnerability, And Next Steps

SPEAKER_06 1:00:58

Well, you know, that's where the gratitude is. It's made you who you are, and who you are is pretty friggin' fabulous. You know, I look back on my biggest trauma in my life with complete gratitude. I would not wish it on my worst enemy. I would not want to relive it, but I am grateful for all of it because it forged me into the man I am today.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:24

And I wouldn't want to be a different man than I am today. That's so, so good.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:32

There's something magical that happens when we can make full circle and be grateful. You know, at one point somebody said gratitude only works if you're grateful for all of it. You can't be just grateful for the good stuff. You have to be grateful for every experience, good, bad, and ugly. And I got it. I was like, oh my gosh, I get it. And when I could look back on that and feel gratitude for it, because yes, it made me fierce in some ways, it made me strong. It made it, ooh, yeah. I wouldn't trade that for anything. If you could say we would take that whole trauma and that experience away, but you have to give up what you got out of it.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:18

No way, Jose.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:20

No way. Yeah, a girlfriend of mine recently said, she said, you know, Timmy, you have to be grateful for the lesson as it comes to you. And I was like, oh, but some lessons are so hard.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:40

No, but like any other way, would you have gotten it? Probably not.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:47

Not life unfolds very intentionally when we get out of the way. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. What what a beautiful story. I have enjoyed this thoroughly. Yes, this is bad. I knew you would have just, you know, I I can't I can't wait to hear your story. I can't wait to share your story. You know, you you you have something that you can impact. Well, you never know where the ripples are gonna have what impact.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:26

How many people you will impact by this.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:31

We shall see. I mean, sometimes you just have to do it for you first and not think about like all that part. I think for the first time, I don't want to overthink about that. Because in many ways, as a producer, you put on your okay, the metrics of it all. And I think in many ways, if I'm going to be authentic about this, it has to come from a me for me uh space first. And I think then everything else will flow.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:01

I agree. Yeah. Yeah. And once you've told it for you, it'll be easier to tell it for others. Yeah.

unknown 1:04:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:09

Yeah. Beautiful. I I mean you said you've been pondering over this for two years, but I you you seem very ready to me in everything you say. I mean, maybe not quite emotionally yet, but you have all the pieces, you have all the motivation, all the inspiration.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:31

Um the first step is always the hardest. You know, you talked about how hard it is to free yourself from that prison and how it's so comfortable to to go back to what you know. But you've you've done hard things before, and you'll you'll pull this off with with a plum.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:56

Thank you. I mean, I've had, and I'm very grateful for like the friends who have been there for me because you know, your family is oftentimes why you got to where you are, you know. Yes. And then it's like the friends who have been cheerleaders and challengers and advocates have given me the strength to see myself in a way that I couldn't see and do for me in that space in that moment. And so it's a testament to them. Um standing by me, you know, I'm so blessed to have so many angels in my life. Between my HG tribe, between um just old childhood friends who reminded me of who I was and who I still am. Um, people who I just meet, like literally on the plane. I'm that person who can talk to anyone on the plane. And find a point of connection. You know, anyone who's brave enough to be human with me and like share that story always has such an impact. And like, even like creative mornings, like you just find your people. Like as if the universe splits you apart, like there's no such thing as a soulmate, but you like you're all splintered apart in and many, many people, and you just slowly start to find your way back, and that's the light.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:27

It's that vulnerability is the way you find each other.

unknown 1:06:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:31

Mm-hmm. Vulnerability is I always say it it builds bridges, clears pathways, and in a manner that nothing else can.

unknown 1:06:45

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:47

Well, this has been a lovely conversation. I'm so glad that we got to spend this time together.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:54

I'm so grateful for both of you. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:58

Thank you, Tammy. This has been absolutely wonderful.