Zusmee’s Podcast

Episodes

• Relax. Release. 07.07.2026 2m

  There’s a song I used to skip every time it came on the radio.I never let it play all the way through. The second I heard the first few notes, my hand was already moving to change the station. I didn’t think about it. It was automatic, like flinching.I read something recently that made me think about that habit differently. It’s from a book called The Untethered Soul, in a chapter about resistance. The idea is simple, almost too simple. It says it is possible to go through the rest of your life without another problem. Not because nothing difficult will happen to you. Difficult things will keep happening. But because you stop resisting them.Here’s how the book explains it. Say you’re afraid of dogs. You’ve spent years avoiding them, crossing the street, tensing up the second you see one coming. Every time you do that, you’re not protecting yourself from the dog. You’re protecting yourself from a memory. The dog in front of you right now has nothing to do with whatever happened before. But you can’t see that, because you never let yourself be in the moment with it. You just brace and retreat.The suggestion is two words. Relax and release.Not push the fear down. Not talk yourself out of it. Just relax your body, let the feeling move through you instead of slamming a door on it, and let the moment be what it actually is instead of what it reminds you of.I thought about the song. What actually happens when I hear it isn’t about the song. It’s a memory using the song as a doorway. And every time I change the station, I’m not making the memory smaller. I’m just pulling the bandage off to check if it still hurts, then covering it back up before I feel anything.I don’t think avoidance ever actually protected me. I think it just kept things exactly as painful as they were the day they happened, because I never let myself feel them again in a new context, as something that already happened and is over.I’m not saying I’m going to sit down and play that song ten times in a row tomorrow. That’s not really the point, and I don’t think healing works like a dare. But I noticed something, writing this. I don’t have to keep proving to myself that it’s still an emergency. I can let it just be a song, playing, in a moment that has nothing to do with the moment it came from.That’s the whole practice, I think. Not fixing yourself. Not becoming a person who never feels anything hard. Just, the next time you feel that flinch, that automatic reach for the dial, pausing long enough to ask what you’re actually protecting yourself from.And then. Relax and release. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit zusmee.substack.com
• A Fraud in Both Directions 29.06.2026 7m

  When I came to the US at age ten, the first thing I had to learn was the alphabet.A, B, C, D, E, F, G.I was in sixth grade at Westlake Middle School in Oakland, California. I didn’t know those letters before I got here. I learned them in class, with kids who had known them since they were little. But I learned fast. And somewhere along the way I figured something out — my accent was already good enough that if I said just a few words, people thought I was native. So I made a decision. I would say as little as possible. I would choose my words carefully. I would never say enough for anyone to find out.Find out that English wasn’t my first language. That I wasn’t actually one of them.The two versions of meThere were two versions of me in school.In my ESL shelter classes, I was myself. I talked. I laughed. I felt safe. Everyone in that room was also learning English, so there was nothing to hide. We were all in the same place.Then I walked into my regular classes and I just... went quiet.I was still there. I did the work. But I didn’t speak unless I had to. Because every time I opened my mouth it felt like a risk. The wrong word, the wrong pronunciation, a sentence that came out weird — any of it could give me away. And I didn’t want to be given away. I didn’t want people to know.I thought if they found out I wasn’t a native speaker, they would think less of me. Like my English was a status thing. Like not having it meant I was less than everyone else.By the time I got to Encinal High School in Alameda, my English had come so far that my teachers invited me to join AP English. The same girl who learned A, B, C in sixth grade.I said no.I picked silence over the chance of being found out.What I was actually scared ofI think the core fear was this: if they find out, they’ll reject me. They’ll see me as less intelligent, less worthy. Not someone they want to be around.So I kept my sentences short. I kept things safe. I stayed quiet.And the thing is, that strategy really hurt me. Because you can’t learn a language you’re too scared to speak badly. I was so focused on not making mistakes that I stopped taking the risks that would have helped me grow. My English stayed smaller than it should have because I kept it small on purpose.I still struggle. I still reach for a word sometimes and it’s not there. I still don’t always say things the way I mean them. And I think part of that is because I spent so many years not practicing, not risking, not letting myself be bad at it so I could get better.When I went back to MongoliaHere’s the part that really messed with my head.When I went back to Mongolia, everything flipped. There, my English — the same English I was ashamed of — made people look up to me. I had lived in America. I spoke English. That meant something to them.I should have felt good about that. Instead I felt like a fraud.Because I knew the truth. I knew what actual fluency looked like. I had been watching it my whole life from the outside. And what I had wasn’t that. Not really. My sentences still got tangled. I still struggled to express myself the way Americans do.So in America, I was pretending to be more fluent than I was. In Mongolia, I was being celebrated for the same fluency I was ashamed of.I was a fraud in both directions.There was no place where I just felt like enough.How this shows up todayI notice it most in job interviews.I sit across from a recruiter or a hiring manager and something in me just shuts down. I become that same quiet version of myself from school. I start measuring every word. I get scared that if I say too much, something will slip. They’ll notice. They’ll find out my English isn’t perfect. And then they won’t want me.And that fear makes me worse, not better. I get so nervous trying to hide that I can’t show up as myself. I can’t show what I actually know or who I actually am. I’ve lost interviews not because I wasn’t qualified, but because I was so inside my head that I couldn’t just be present.The hiding never protected me. It just kept me stuck.What I’m working on nowI’ve been reading The Untethered Soul and there’s a chapter called Far, Far Beyond that really hit me. It talks about staying with the uncomfortable feeling instead of spending your whole life trying to avoid it. About letting the fear move through you instead of letting it control you.That’s what I’m trying to do now.I’ve been organizing my life around this fear for over twenty years. Keeping quiet. Choosing the safe words. Saying no to opportunities that might expose me. Holding back with native English speakers, especially white Americans, because the risk felt too high.And what did that cost me? My growth. Real connection. The AP English class. Job opportunities. Relationships where I never let anyone close enough to actually see me.The fear told me it was keeping me safe. What it was actually doing was keeping me alone.If you’ve ever done this tooIf you know this feeling — if you’ve ever made yourself small in a room because you were scared of being found out — I want you to know something.Your accent has nothing to do with your worth.Making mistakes in English doesn’t mean you’re less intelligent. It means you’re doing something really hard. Something most people will never even try.I came here at ten not knowing A, B, C. I learned English from scratch while going to school, making friends, and trying to figure out who I was in a completely new country and culture. That’s not something to be ashamed of. That’s actually kind of remarkable.I’m writing this because I want to stop hiding it. I want to be done with the shame. And I want anyone who’s been doing the same thing to know that you don’t have to keep performing. You don’t have to pass.Your voice, exactly as it is, is enough. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit zusmee.substack.com
• My Backyard, Finally 22.06.2026 3m

  A few weeks ago, I wrote about losing a tree.Not my tree, technically. It stood in my neighbor’s yard, visible through my backyard window. Tall, full, alive. I’d only truly noticed it days before it was cut down. And when it was gone, I grieved it like something that had always been mine.I resisted it. The absence of it. Every time I looked out the window and saw open sky where the tree used to be, something in me pushed back. This isn’t right. Something is missing. This shouldn’t have happened.I wasn’t prepared for how hard it hit me.But here’s the update I didn’t expect to write:I’m okay. More than okay, actually.The first few days were intense. Real sadness, the kind that surprised me with its weight. But then, faster than I thought possible, something shifted. I stopped resisting. And the moment I accepted that the tree was simply gone, I noticed something I hadn’t before.My backyard became somewhere I actually want to be.Turns out, that tree was home to an army of mosquitoes. And it makes sense. Mosquitoes are drawn to shade, moisture, and cool dark corners. A large, full tree creates exactly that kind of environment right in your backyard. Every summer before this one, we’d never sit outside. Not really. A nice seating area, completely unused. We’d step out, get bitten, go back in.This summer? I’ve been sitting outside almost every day. Reading. Quiet. No bites, no interruptions. It feels like I’m on a little holiday every single day, right in my own backyard.I couldn’t have that and the tree.The thing I was resisting was the very thing making room for this.And that made me think.I hold on to things. Tightly. People, places, moments. I grip them hard, resist any change to them, and grieve deeply when they go anyway. I always assumed this was just how I loved: intensely, loyally, with my whole self.But I’m starting to see the other side of it.When I resist change that tightly, I lose the present. I’m so focused on what I’m clutching that I miss what’s right in front of me. Or right outside my back door.I think about my attachment to Mongolia. The friends I have there, the career I built, the reputation I earned, the sense of self I found. I’ve held onto that world so tightly, resisted building anything new here so completely, that I never fully arrived. I told myself I had everything I needed there. And in a way, that was true. But I was living in the past, clinging to a place, a version of myself, an experience that had already passed. And while I was looking backward, resisting the life in front of me, I was never really in my own backyard.I don’t have this figured out. I want to be honest about that.Letting go, really letting go and not just saying the words, is becoming a big theme for me lately. And I’m only at the beginning of understanding it. But this tree, this tree that wasn’t even mine, taught me something I didn’t sign up to learn.Sometimes the thing you resist is the thing setting you free.I’m sitting outside right now as I write this. No mosquitoes. A little breeze. My book beside me.It’s enough. It’s more than enough. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit zusmee.substack.com
• Cheesecake Factory Quiz 21.07.2026 4m

  I had a full existential crisis over a pasta dish. At the Cheesecake Factory. On an iPad. Alone.It was day 8 of training and they had this menu memorization game with hundreds of items. 225+ items. The rules were simple: get it right, move on. Get it wrong, try again. No skipping. No partial credit. Just you, the screen, and your own humiliation on a loop.I got one wrong and felt my jaw tighten. A pasta dish. I had read it four times. I was sure I knew it. And then, wrong. The screen just sat there, waiting. Try again.And something in me went: are you kidding me right now.Not at the game. At myself. I remember the exact thought: you are a grown adult who cannot remember a pasta dish. What is actually wrong with you. And then, immediately, in the same breath: okay but what IS the answer though? Nobody was watching. Nobody cared. I was alone in a break room with an iPad and a coke placed next to me. And still, somehow, the shame was fully there. Hot and familiar, like it had been waiting for exactly this moment to show up.That’s when I realized something had been off for a long time.The shame wasn’t really about the pasta. It never is, is it?For most of my life, I treated mistakes like emergencies. Something to avoid, contain, get ahead of before anyone noticed. Because in my mind, making a mistake meant something was wrong with me. My worth was on the line every single time.So I stopped trying things I might fail at. I stayed inside what I already knew I could do. Safe. Controlled. And slowly, without really noticing, I stopped growing.“Avoidance felt like protection. It was actually just a slower kind of loss.”I called it being careful. But really, I was just afraid. And that fear of being seen as stupid, as not enough, as someone without value kept me stagnant in ways I didn’t want to admit.The irony? By the end of training, I never forgot the items I got wrong. Those were the ones that stuck. The game was literally designed around the thing I’d been running from my whole life: you learn by getting it wrong first. You don’t get to skip that part.Recently I’ve been looking back at everything I’ve tried and stumbled through. Relationships. Creative projects. Business attempts. Job applications. Interviews I bombed. Content I made that no one saw. The whole scattered, imperfect record of my life so far.And I had this thought: what if none of it was wasted?What if every one of those moments, even the ones I’m still embarrassed about, was me collecting data? Learning what works, what doesn’t, what I actually want, what I’m capable of when I stop performing and start paying attention?Because here’s the thing about throwing it all away and starting fresh: you’d be leaving behind the tuition. You paid for it with your time, your vulnerability, your actual life. To walk away now, calling it failure, would be to make it truly useless for the first time.“If I throw it away thinking I failed, it becomes waste. But if I build on it, it was never waste to begin with.”That’s the only way the past becomes a dead end: if you abandon it instead of carrying it forward.I’m not saying every mistake is secretly a gift. Some things are just hard and sad and take time to move through. But there’s a difference between processing something and discarding it. Between acknowledging a chapter didn’t go the way you hoped and pretending it never happened at all.All those years of trying built something in me. A sensitivity to people. A sense of what matters. A hunger for depth that I don’t think I could have gotten any other way. The stumbling was the education.So I’m going back through it. Not to punish myself or rewrite the narrative into something prettier. But to pull out what’s actually there: the lessons, the instincts, the things I quietly learned about myself along the way. And then use them, finally and fully, the way they were always meant to be used.The game was never about getting it right the first time.It was about not forgetting once you did. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit zusmee.substack.com