Being bilingual is like swimming between different waves — constantly, back and forth, 1000 times a day. The scraps of paper in this image come from three different sources: some are used by my daughter when I was teaching her Japanese alphabets, some are frottage from wood plates I carved for Mokuhanga (Japanese woodblock print), and some from Mokuhanga prints with mishaps. Honoring our native languages helps us preserve our cultures and identities, as these make up our whole selves. It is especially important to invest in language preservation when one exists in this White, English-centered society. Teaching my daughter my native language has been one of the most difficult projects I’ve ever taken on in my life. It required me to reverse my assimilation and start to love my native language and culture again. On many occasions, my child has shown me ways to confront and shed yet another layer of internalized racism.