Hi, It’s Victoria-RIza

If you’ve been following The Riza since it’s 2020 debut, you may have noticed a small change to my content. I came up with a tagline to accompany all my Reels, “Hi, it’s Victoria-Riza. Blah blah blah, and this is what I sketched.” This change came to me after mulling over what I liked about the content I was making and most importantly, what I didn’t like. I shared my idea and my creating likes and dislikes with Jordan and with a cousin. Only the two people because if I over analyzed this fresh idea and shared it with too many people, I’d talk myself out of making this change.

Over the four years of creating on The Riza, I’ve tried all sorts of things. Inspired by the Black Lives Matter and the Stop Asian Hate movements, I wanted to write about my experiences of being a Filipina immigrant who grew up in Tennessee and raised in the LDS Church. Eventually, I realized that I needed to share them first with a therapist. Berne Brown speaks wisdom to not sharing vulnerable experiences when you haven’t worked through them yet. I just read that in Daring Greatly. Would’ve been helpful advice back in 2020. My stories fell on deaf ears, or worst, people loved the drama of my having experienced racism and prejudice. I wanted people to join me in ending racism. Instead, they ooo-ed and ah-ed at me like I was a show pony. So that means of advocating for anti-racism dwindled and I got into doing GRWM (Get Ready with Me) dancing Reels. I loooove making this content because it was an outlet for nerding out about my favorite music, dressing for fun, and dancing. Keeping my natural hair in my GRWM Reels was a small gesture of advocating for brown beauty, but then I discovered who was following hashtags with the words Filipina American and I once again, felt too exposed. Then I got into baking and I loved sharing that new venture, but