What’s in today’s issue

Personal Updates

I recently acquired a third space for myself! I’ll be making art and hosting friends for classes. It’s not ready yet for the public but I’m so excited to have friends over once I am closer to being finished decorating.

I went to Bullhead City on the 19th so that’s why there wasn’t a newsletter hehe 😅 It was hot and we ended up being super delayed on our flight back so we spent a majority of Sunday in the airport… which wasn’t ideal.

Other than that we were hanging out with my husband’s dad and that side of the family.

I had an adequate time 🙂‍↕️ although it was too hot for my liking and the hard water made my skin dry and my hair crunchy.

But either way I’m so excited to transition to my little studio space soon!

I found a new podcast while trying to predownload for my flights.

It’s called Euphomet and they explore a bunch of haunted/spiritual/alien type stuff.

To be honest I will need to relisten to the ones I’ve downloaded since I mainly slept through a majority of it. BUT the things I do remember was something about a dream experiment. Where one of the hosts was exploring a cemetery and was talking into a pay phone that had no dial tone. Within 14 days he had a lady that he had never met come up to him and explicitly say that she remembered him from a dream. 🤔 Which is interesting.

It makes me think about my dreams and what they could mean.

I can only count on one hand 5 very serious dreams.

tw: familial/friend death

Each dream I’ve had were within a day of someone dying.

When I had just turned 18 when my paternal grandpa died. It was probably the harder deaths I had to face since it completely took over my birthday 😂 I only laugh noooowww because it was so close to it.

My grandpa was in hospice after 2 strokes at the age of 79 and died 3 days after my birthday. The first stroke made him wheelchair bound but he was normal aside from needing to use a walker every once in a while to go outside. The second stroke was not as forgiving. I was kind of a wreck the days leading up to it since a lot of things were going on… I was testing for my black belt in karate, doing community college, etc young adult stuff. Eventually the hospice had called and said he was lucid/aware enough to hold a conversation so we should come and say goodbye when we had the chance. He told me “If you see me in your dreams don’t be afraid” which… in turn probably made me think about it for a while so…But in reality I was scared. I didn’t really know what to expect since it was a pretty cryptic thing to say on your deathbed.

So the next night I had THE dream. The first ever dream of this kind.

I was in a room and he was asleep, wearing that gray jacket he always wore, and a suit. He was always really well dressed and was usually in slacks and a button up 🤔 he was born in 1933 so I mean I think that was pretty normal for guys to dress kind of formal.

Anyway, he didn’t look or speak to me but he was facing away from me. Laying on his side. I was trying to wake him up but it wasn’t working. I would try harder to wake him up but eventually he kept getting farther and farther away from me each time I try.

I never cry in public. So waking up in bed with tears is always preferred… I’m emotionally stunted (not because of my grandpa or anything) so waking up this way was hard.

I had another dream of him like… years years yeeeaarrrss later. It was random but he was facing me this time. I wasn’t scared this time since it wasn’t so daunting or stressful.

Maybe he knew I was afraid the first time.

I’ve had a very important friend die of cancer, she was young. It happened 5 years later after my paternal grandpa died. We were always in a group chat with my two other friends. We all met online through Hetalia aaaaand tumblr (I KNOW I KNOW 😭)

But we would talk and draw all together and when she got the diagnosis we were FUCKED up. At the time she was only 17 and she was the little sister of our group so you can tell how devastated we were. Things escalated so fast that she had just a month.

The dream consisted of us hanging out one last time before I woke up. Honestly thinking about it is still really hard even now. Months after it happened I would frequently think of her while I would be doing homework and stuff for my studio classes.

Come to think of the pieces I made during that time was really reflective of how this affected me.

The 2nd time was when my great maternal grandma died, she was almost 96. This was during covid and the family was divided (not because of covid but from underlying stuff from my aunt on my mom’s side’s husband and my dad).

It was a sudden, non-covid related kind of death, and in the summer. My cousin and I would frequently visit her at her assisted living place. None of us were able to really say goodbye so my cousin was notably more worse off than my other cousins and I.

It’s not my first time doing this.

I had the next dream.

I was in the back room of my family’s restaurant and in that room there is a couch, a desk, and a bed. Just how I remember it. She was laying on the bed and also facing away from me. I didn’t try to wake her up this time but I was observing? I felt more at peace vs the first time I’ve had a dream like this.

“Baakbaak (what we would call her, probably the little kid Cantonese) you look cold” I remember thinking before I woke up.

The most recent one was when my maternal grandpa died, he was about 82, due to a brain bleed. This was like in October 25, 2024, but it still feels like it was a year ago. He had brain surgery when I was a kid and I remember vaguely that I was in the blocked off section of the restaurant and the ambulance had to take him to the back room (with the bed, couch, and desk) to do some emergency stuff. I feel like that influenced my dream.

He was also in hospice for a while. I had to fly down to Phoenix from Seattle because my family had said that the time was coming. This was when my uncle had freshly had a kid (I say freshly but she’s like 4 now 😂) and she was in the room with us while grandpa was in the active stage of dying. I had told my cousin to not come because it would have been too hard for her. Unfortunately…….. my youngest cousin was there with my mom holding her and making her face his dying body. “Say goodbye to Je je/ yeh yeh (however you wanna pronounce it spelling wise)” Is what she was saying while he was doing the death rattle 😬.

My dream of him was more upfront. Peaceful but also daunting. He stood in front of me and told me “Don’t be afraid you don’t have to be brave” and then walked away.

I think the older I got the more upfront they choose to be.

My therapist told me that it’s like a self actualizing thing since I’ve been so emotionally closed off that I cannot allow myself to be vulnerable and accept comfort from other people. So maybe if the dream thing is real that he just told me to stop being this way, not for the family, but just for me.

I’ve had extended family also pass away but I was not close enough to them to have this type of dream. I feel like my mom explained to me that these dreams are them either saying goodbye or visiting. My family isn’t religious so the concept of heaven and hell don’t really weigh much on them. Even though my remaining grandma does go to church but it’s less about god and more about hanging out with friends.

I like researching and learning about religion and spirituality. But I want to know the lore and less about joining if that makes sense 😂 I don’t have the time or energy to be doing any of that. IF a god exists I would be more likely to believe that there would be more than one. I’m a little superstitious but I don’t really let that tell me right from wrong or negate what is logically true.

As much as I would like to idealize about a mystical place where I can live out my life after I die… I’m scared of losing myself to something I will never know until… you know I eventually go.

I think that’s why I LIKE to listen and watch these types of ghostly/spooky things? I like and hate the idea of ghosts. This would just mean that I’m constantly being observed, even if it’s like residual or even intelligent? But I wouldn’t mind hanging out and observing a little if it were real.

For a bit I would watch/listen to Ask a Mortician. Her upload schedule is slow BUT the content is educational and keeps my mind grounded in regards to this scary subject.

My earliest superstition was from a Shoujo Beat magazine. It was the Halloween issue from like eons ago 😂 I just looked it up and it’s from 2007 holy shit

It had a list of Japanese superstitions that made me think about it for YEARS. Honestly if I had it on me I could list them off accurately but this is what I remember and what heavily effected me 😂

Never close your eyes in the shower when washing your hair??? Ghosts will watch you shower…

LIKE maybe I just don’t enjoy being watched or perceived by anything so this had me showering with my eyes fully open even if I got soap in them for years…

Not really part of the magazine at all but the chopstick thing. Every time my husband would stick his chopsticks in his food I would reach over and push them down so they weren’t sticking straight up. He doesn’t do it anymore but when other people do it I just have to stare and let it go.

I can’t tell if it’s my OCD/anxiety but a lot of superstitious things affect me that way. If I don’t do this something bad will happen and if I do it RIGHT NOW I will feel soooo much better 😂

Another urban legend thing that I think a bout a lot is the Daruma game??? I dooooon’t know why everything just involves being in a dark ass bathroom and tubs but that shit is not for me… You basically just get in the tub in the dark, face away from the drain and chant Daruma like 3 times (of course). Once you do that you got like not a lot of time to do your shit before it gets you. Its purpose is that it will grant you one wish if you can avoid it for a set amount of time. But again it’s me being scared of being perceived by anything AND being chased 😭 these scary ass games with really bad prizes always get me.

My July will be hella busy since I’ll be moving stuff around to my little art studio AND my apartment 😅 So my availability will be kind of limited for the time being.

I’m reallllyyyy behind on posting too so I’m hoping I can get my shit together soon to get things scheduled and make more flash.

speaking of flash… if you got an idea of some stuff you wanna see 👀

Final thoughts

Thanks for reading!

Lemme know if this shit was too insane in the membrane 😅I always seem to go deep when I find something about spirituality.

Here’s my favorite meme I’ve been using