I sent out my fundraising update email this past weekend. I think it’s a good thing to do, to update your donors to let them know if you met your goal, and by how much. Most people don’t respond, which is fine, but it’s nice to know that the people who do read the updates care.

Two of my colleagues emailed me to let me know how moved they were by my fundraising update. One said that he reached out to a dear friend of his who he knew was struggling with depression. Another said he was struggling himself and found it inspiring that I would “bear your soul.” He said he found it so shocking how brutally honest I was.

I’m just being myself. We spend so much of our time trying to be a certain way around certain groups of people in our lives. When it comes to the way I grew up and my experiences with my brother, I can’t be bothered to mask anything or spend time fabricating stories. I rather just say what I want to say. I’m settled in my thoughts and emotions. If other people can’t handle it, then it’s really their problem to deal with and confront.

Today, I participated in the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) Out of the Darkness walk here in Manhattan. This year, I raised over $5,000 for the cause. I really didn’t think I was going to surpass my $4,000 goal, but my new colleagues’ levels of generosity have really astounded me.

I was on the stage taking photos with the big fundraiser sign that ranks the top fundraisers in order. This year, I ranked third in Manhattan, which is kind of a big deal considering exactly how big the group of fundraisers is in this borough. Thousands and thousands of people participate in this walk, and it’s only getting bigger each year that we do it. While on stage with Chris taking photos of me, the director of the program found me and asked me if I was Yvonne, and I said, yes. So we talked for a bit given that she’s the new director and is still getting to know everyone, and she said she’d been following my stories the last few years and wanted to meet me, but felt shy about e-mailing me. She asked if I’d be interested in sharing my loss story with other suicide loss survivors, whether it be at events or talks, or even one-on-one with people who reach out to AFSP. I said I’d be happy to do it. I think it would certainly be challenging, to speak publicly about it and not make it all a sob story, but I think it’s a challenge I’d be up for, especially if it can help others cope and get through their loss, or help people who want to understand and be more empathetic be there for their loved ones.

What is the point of going through life with all your tragedies and losses if no good can come out of it? Every day there’s so much suffering in the world. It can be so overwhelmingly depressing unless you want to do something about it yourself.

It’s been endless customer breakfasts, lunches, random meet ups between sessions, and endless stimulation. There hasn’t been a dull moment in the last three days, and it feels like in every conversation, I am selling our company and product and what we do. And then, there are the moments that surprise me, when I am hearing my customers chat with other customers, and I hear them telling them why our product is important and how it’s helped them, and why it could help that person’s business. Why don’t we have these conferences all the time so that our customers can just network, share learnings, and do my job for me?

No one really wants to hear why we think we’re great. Customers want to hear from other customers about what value they’re deriving from using us. Networking is what these events are actually about. And so hearing people singing our praises (or even singing my praises, which is crazy to me) — it’s so humbling. There’s no other word to describe it.

Fundraising four years in a row for the same cause certainly has diminishing value for most people, whether it’s for people who choose to continue donating, or for the person who is actually doing the fundraising. The first year, it’s new. Everyone’s excited that you are raising money to increase awareness and help others in need. All your friends (at least, the ones worth keeping) cheer you on and donate, if even a small sum, to show that they’re supportive of your efforts. Then, the second year comes. You’re asking the same group of people to donate… again. And then you meet new people, whether it’s new colleagues, friends, or acquaintances, and you ask them to donate. Then the third year comes, and the fourth year, and so on. Can you count on people to continue supporting your cause even though the fundraising just keeps going? It’s not like you’re raising the money for yourself, right? It’s going to the foundation to help others, not into your actual wallet. It’s tiring, but I want to keep going. I hope people don’t think I am ungrateful asking every year to donate; I get that not everyone has tons of money lying around. But I have to keep doing this.. partly for selfish reasons because I feel like it’s the only way I can keep Ed alive… for me.

I’ve been increasing my goal by $1,000 each year since I started, so this year, it was $4,000. I felt it was a big stretch for many reasons: it’s four years for the same cause. The story has evolved as life evolves, but it’s still the same cause and the same reasons. I’ve started a new job this year in a remote office, which means that if I’m not sitting in the headquarters being a physical reminder about my fundraising drive, I thought no one would feel compelled to donate or care about my story or reasons for fundraising.

I guess I was really wrong there. So many of my colleagues donated, and in very large sums, as soon as I sent out my outreach email back in August. And today, I posted on my company’s #team Slack channel, which almost everyone in the company across the world checks, and within hours, I exceeded my goal. I had multiple donations of $100, and one from our cofounder of $250. Colleagues I still haven’t even met yet donated generously and sent encouraging messages. It was really humbling.

One of my colleagues who donated who I still haven’t met messaged me and said how much my story touched her. She said she literally cried when she read my message on my fundraising page. “Before I read your page, I never really thought about the significance of sibling relationships,” she said. She said she never thought about suicide on a personal level much or the Golden Gate Bridge in that light until she read the details on my page.

That’s the thing about tragedy. Sometimes, when you share your story, it gets other people to think about the things they take for granted and don’t think much about and really force them to confront their fears and stop avoiding all the things that are painful but necessary to understand. I’m happy to be someone that others can go to when they’re in need. I just wish more people would be open about all the things that aren’t so pretty in life.

So many chefs and celebrities over the years have been accused of cultural appropriation. Some of it is legitimate, and some of it may be a bit off base. Famous chef and cookbook writers like Ivan Orkin, the owner of Ivan Ramen, and the British chef and cookbook writer Fuchsia Dunlop, who was educated at the Sichuanese culinary academy and is the author of several acclaimed Chinese cookbooks that vary by region of China, have both been accused of it. The thing about both of them is that they both have made seemingly complex cuisines more understandable to Asian Americans like myself, who oftentimes struggle to understand how to “bridge the gap” between Eastern and Western culture. Ivan Ramen introduces new techniques to the humble ramen bowl by introducing rye as an ingredient in ramen noodles. Fuchsia Dunlop tries to use more modern techniques in Sichuanese and Hunanese cuisine while preserving flavors, and even writes a memoir that helps me understand the nuances of a culture that I’m supposed to claim as my own, even though I’ve grown up here in the U.S. She’s actually studied the language and the history of China, and tried to understand the language nuances and cultural differences in a way that someone who isn’t Chinese in China can understand. It’s people like Ivan and Fuchsia who have helped me better understand these Asian cultures, one of which I’m supposed to identify with. But in China as in the language, everyone outside of China is an “outsider,” even those who are ethnically Han Chinese.

After I checked out from my disgusting hotel yesterday at noon, I had an Uber driver take me from the hotel back to my parents’ place so I could rest for the remainder of the afternoon. The oddest thing about the drive, though, was that the driver took the most erratic route. The quickest way to get from the financial district to my parents’ house from downtown is via Pine, and it’s especially fast when there’s no traffic (and at around 1pm on a Friday, there was none). He did begin by taking Pine, but when we were reaching the end of it, he went on some weird back streets and continued to use backstreets all the way back to the Richmond. And another odd thing: one back street he took brought us right past the Columbarium, right past Loraine Court, where my brother now rests.

I felt guilty this week for multiple reasons — being in San Francisco for work and not being able to participate in our mid-year kick off event, which was the primarily reason I was out here to begin with. I felt guilty being laid up in a terrible hotel bed when I was supposed to be engaging with my colleagues and doing work. I felt bad using company expenses to not work and instead to vomit into a toilet while being sick. And I also felt bad knowing I’d have no energy to go visit Ed at the Columbarium. It would be the only trip I’d ever take to San Francisco since my brother’s passing that I would not have gone to visit him, and it made me feel terrible.

So maybe this erratic route was some strange, other-worldly way to acknowledge my brother, to acknowledge the fact that I wanted to see him and say hello despite falling ill and not being able to do as I originally planned.

I sent out an email to a number of my colleagues today, informing them about my AFSP donor drive this year and asking for their participation. I felt a bit awkward sending the email, especially given I am in a remote office, and the majority of people are far away in San Francisco. Out of sight, out of mind, right? Who’s really going to donate to my drive or care about me and my brother when they don’t see me every day?

I’ll be honest. At the rate I sent out this message at my last company, I got a lot more donations, and I’d assume that’s because I worked at that company’s headquarters, thus more people around to see me, but the amount that each person donated at my current company in the last 10 hours has been a lot more. And not only that, one of my colleagues  who donated even shared my AFSP page with his fiancee, who then donated $100 to my drive and wrote me a very personal message, telling me that she was really touched by my story and my courage in sharing, and she had lost her father to suicide about ten years ago. Not only that, both her brothers in the last year had attempted suicide. She felt lost and struggled to discuss it, but she was inspired by what I wrote and how I’ve chosen to move forward. She hopes to work through her feelings.

I get negative about fundraising every year. It’s part of who I am, I guess, because the apple never falls that far from the tree, and I generally don’t always believe in the pure goodness of people. But these responses from total strangers always inspire me to move forward and continue raising money for this cause. It’s the only way I know to keep Ed alive. I think he’d be happy to know that I was touching the lives of complete strangers in a positive way because of the legacy he left.