Keep Showing Up

Posted on August 18, 2026 by Catherine Cheng, MD

“What mountain stands before you that you will climb with confidence fortitude courage and power?”

“You don’t get stronger by adding weight. You add weight when you get stronger.”
—Alec Blenis, Instagram

I love this quote. It feels a little counterintuitive at first, yet speaks to the fundamentally important understanding of skill building that keeps us safe, strong, and motivated in the gym: Keep showing up. Do the work. Get help if needed. It’s hard until it’s not, and then you level up. It also resonates in two domains outside of strength training:

Health Habit Change
“I know what I need to do, I just don’t do it.” I have written about this phrase I hear often from patients. For two years I met with one of the dieticians in our practice, feeling both hopeful and a little hopeless at the same time. Every week or two I both dreaded and anticipated the calls, knowing I had both attempted and failed to implement our action plan from the prior session. I muttered this statement myself how many times? We stopped meeting eventually; likely multifactorial but I think we both felt that further gains were unlikely. That may have been a year ago.

I felt a bit defeated at first, thinking my behaviors had not changed much, and I had not lost any weight. But looking back, those sessions served the same purpose as the years I spent with my personal trainer. Julianne was my nutrition coach. She made me better at executing the knowledge I already had, reflecting, investigating, trouble shooting, and brainstorming how to apply both basic and advanced nutrition principles in the various contexts of my life. I now eat more colorful plants, and I get substantially more fiber on a daily basis. I am much better attuned to hunger and satiety, I always fuel before workouts and make sure I bring a snack for after. I keep healthy snacks at the office and hydrate consistently. I eat a lot less dessert, and volumes are about half of what they used to be. I walk the talk of “enjoy every bite” much better now than before. My portions of everything are generally smaller. I estimate that I have shaved a few hundred calories per week from my diet, which should lead to very slow weight loss, about a pound every three months. That actually feels about right, and I can handle this. As I continue to train, both strength and cardio, I see my shape changing more than my mass, which I am happy about.

I keep showing up to apply, adjust, and adapt, and results emerge proportionally. Persistence pays off, and it’s infinitely easier with support from knowledgeable and supportive people like Julianne the registered dietician, my Ethos coaches, and my friends.

Civil Political Discourse
For some years now I have actively sought conversation and connection with my Red Voting Friends. Since 2017 I have supported Braver Angels, and now multiple organizations offer myriad approaches, strategies, and even education and venues to practice connecting meaningfully with people who disagree with us. Some even impact policy in a bipartisan way in local governments. We have come so far, and have very far yet to go.

How hopeless and/or hopeful do you feel about the state of political discourse, nationally, locally, at the level of your policy makers, in your social circles, in your family?

How do you impact those places and groups with your presence, your words, your attitude, demeanor, expressions? Bluntly: are you part of the civil discourse problem or solution?

It’s hard, I know. Uncomfortable, sometimes viscerally and distressingly so. And not everyone is a suitable counterpart for such conversations. Still, it is a learnable skill and more and more amazing people like Mónica Guzman and the folks at Braver Angels, Builders, and the Dignity Index provide support and education to help us do it better. We just have to keep showing up.

This weekend I will gather with one of my Blue voting friends for my first ever “Builders BBQ“. We won’t barbeque and I will not be actively bridging with any Red voters. But Blue Friend and I will talk about how we can do it better. We will practice curiosity, openness, self-regulation, and holding connection in front. We may even role play a little, who knows? It’s not exactly what the Builders BBQ is meant to be, but I have taken the liberty to show up how it works for me, and to keep iterating from here. I fully expect that there will be a Red-Blue gathering in my foreseeable future. If not, no matter.

I continue to invite and facilitate connection, unafraid and well-equipped to wade confidently into disagreement of all kinds with respect and good humor. I have trained for years and it has paid–is paying–off in spades. I keep practicing because while I am proficient, I still have a long way to go. Bridging work is a labor of love. It takes time to build trust, testing, building, and proving the strength of ties that start slim and tenuous, but have the potential to hold us together through the harshest storms.

Each and every one of us has the capacity–and I would argue a civic duty–to engage in building and bridging work, or at least to not contribute to derision and division. The nature of a democracy is that the power should lie with the people. We are the system. We get stronger as a collective when we exercise our power to connect.

Consistency beats intensity. Keep showing up, my friends, to all that challenges us in life.
We’ got this.

Listen to “Keep Showing Up” by Doctor Jose de la Rosa Mambo Town for some extra inspiration!

So Proud of MaBa

Posted on August 9, 2026 by Catherine Cheng, MD

On their 51st wedding anniversary (watermelon ‘cake’ decorated by Daughter)

Who in your family immigrated? Which generation are you?

My parents will visit this week, in the narrow window during which they are not traveling elsewhere and both of my kids are home before going back to college. It will be harder to coordinate calendars hereafter, I realize–I have adult children! What a milestone! I knew it was coming, but it only hit me when Daughter got herself from Trim to Dublin to O’Hare to home all by herself, with luggage, all while I was asleep and at work. [vibrating astonished smiley emoji]

Son is about the age Ba was when he left Taiwan. He and Ma met in high school, in study group at church. They got engaged after he completed military service and undergrad, and she was partway through nursing school, and came to the United States for his graduate studies. They eventually landed in Evanston, Illinois for his PhD in civil engineering at Northwestern, and I was three when he graduated. We moved to Colorado when I was six, and they still live in the house where my sisters and I grew up.

What a different world it was in 1971. Imagine picking up and moving to the other side of the globe, to a country where you barely speak the language, where you have few if any people, and you can only connect with them through snail mail. No internet, no cable TV, analog everything. I suspect most readers of this blog lived and recall those times clearly. Still, remembering is also akin to distant imagining, because our current reality is so drastically different and we simply adapt to what is.

How brave my parents were to do all of that. How mutually trusting in each other, in their own ability to figure things out. And maybe also in the decency of their fellow humans? They recently told me a story of their friend who was stranded in Memphis on his way to grad school at Ole Miss, who was taken in by a stranger, fed and housed overnight, and delivered to the bus station the next morning, all without ever knowing his host’s name. A kind American man helping out a young Taiwanese student, with no expectation of anything in return. Can we imagine anything like that happening today?

What happens when we cannot solve everything ourselves? What if I were stranded somewhere in a foreign country, phone dead, language barrier tall and wide, plans all upended? What if the people I could find were also disconnected from the internet? I suspect we’d find our shared humanity pretty fast, as long as none of us were outright sadists or sociopaths. I imagine that though racism and other ills of humanity existed then just as they do now, MaBa found folks who showed kindness, generosity, and even curiosity. They made friends, connections, and a life.

55 years on, they can look back at a remarkably successful life in every way. Steady professions, completed degrees (Ma got her BSN from CU while I was in high school and ended her career as a clinical instructor for our local community college), three daughters married to amazing sons-in-law, three grandchildren, a wide and exuberant circle of friends, and a remarkably active retired lifestyle. This is the American Dream, no?

My sisters and I watched how hard they worked our whole lives. Our family practiced frugality in ways my friends could barely imagine. Sisters and I experienced both the generation and cultural gaps known by all immigrant parent/native born children families. I think we have all come to appreciate and admire how MaBa confidently instilled traditional Chinese values in us, while also fully embracing qualities of American culture that made us better in synergy. Our academic and extra-curricular standards were high, but only because we could meet them easily–expectations were set by our own potential, not in comparison to anyone else. Tigers my parents were not, by a long shot.

MaBa continue to serve as respected leaders of the Chinese community in the region. They are tribal elders now, and I get to 沾他们的光, ‘dip from their light’, in other words, benefit from their positive reputation. People respect me because they respect my parents. It’s a status I gain by their decades of engagement and contribution to helping Chinese people be seen and included in America.

Their story is so much deeper, richer, and more awesome than I can write on a random Sunday night. As I witness my own kids emerging into fully functional adulthood, it makes me reflect on all MaBa went through to get here today. Somehow my own journey through this life phase feels prosaic and unremarkable in comparison, maybe because my parents were always within reach? I could always call if I needed anything. They could always (and did) fly to my assistance in a crisis. They not only created a solid life for themselves; they laid the foundation for my, my sisters’, and our own kids’ advantages and successes. They have set a loving and selfless standard for ancestral legacy, one that I feel proud to uphold.

Thank you, MaBa, from the bottom of my heart. Can’t wait to see you both soon. And I will do better expressing my appreciation from now on. xo

Cozy Gothic Humanity: Tea & Alchemy by Sharon Lynn Fisher

Posted on July 5, 2026 by Catherine Cheng, MD

Tea & Alchemy, Sharon Lynn Fisher (Instagram)

From last week’s post:
I hope to write here soon about Tea & Alchemy by Sharon Lynn Fisher. Another Shane East performance with Marisa Calin (they also narrate Kerri Maniscalco’s Prince of Sin series–“Think Bridgerton in Hell”–also among my favorites, see 31. Throne of Nighmares), this slow burn, low spice, heartwarming love story between a reclusive, benevolent ‘alchemist’ and a budding tea leaf reader points to all the ways we humans reject and harm one another by default, and how we can choose openness, generosity, kindness, and compassion to overcome those destructive tendencies and make a better world. I have connected with Sharon Lynn Fisher herself, and hope to interview her about the story’s inception and evolution, and what she wishes for the characters and us readers from it.

Thank you, Ms. Fisher, for your thoughtful and generous engagement with my questions! I listened to Tea & Alchemy again this past week, and ‘cozy gothic’ is the perfect description for this story. I love when Harker and Mina sit together thinking, exchanging, and connecting as they unravel dark, mysterious happenings in their community–that emotional connection born of collaborative, intellectual problem solving tickles something for me. That they each see in the other a worthy humanity beyond society’s expectations and stereotypes gives me hope that we can all practice this open, empathic, kind, and generous approach to our fellow humans. The love that grows between them through honesty, vulnerability, and each wanting to protect and care for the other, further lifts and deepens the romantic energy of this story.

*See my own comments in response to Ms. Fisher’s answers below. I’m so grateful for this little interaction! Maybe I’ll be able to do this again with another author; I’ll start a list now.

1. What was most meaningful to you about this story–its inception, emergence, development, evolution, and publication?

I think first it’s that I’ve always wanted to write a vampire novel, but I never very seriously entertained the idea because I wasn’t sure how I could make it feel fresh. Then one day it struck me that simply framing it in my own voice and brand would result in a unique story.* A cozy vampire tale packaged in folklore, cottage witch vibes, and Victorian themes. And it meant the world to me that my publisher believed in me enough to let me have a go at it!

I’m also a huge Daphne Du Maurier fan and have for a long time wanted to set a book in Cornwall. When I visited there a few years ago, Roche Rock struck me as the perfect setting, and its history and gothic broodiness contributed so much to the story’s development.

2. What thread, if any, wends through your writing? Or, how would a reader recognize your work from its nature?

I’ve always loved including fairy and folklore, cozy elements, and gothic drama. And below the surface of that, I find it so interesting to use the Victorian setting to show women who were very much constrained by society growing into their strength, voice, and truth. And part of that comes through the romance, because my male main characters always support and encourage this growth.**

In the past I have written bigger stories, including a fairly epic fae series set in Victorian Ireland (The Faery Rehistory). But I am very much enjoying this smaller-story niche, and how it allows me to really focus on character.

3. What empathy do you feel for the various characters in this story? What are your greatest wishes for them?

The women in my stories often start out doubting themselves, and not truly understanding that their gifts are worthy and needed in the world. I have grappled with this myself in my writing career. I have felt at times that I’m not good enough, or that it’s no more than a self-indulgent hobby. As my books have found more readers, I’ve begun to see how much stories can mean to people, and how people can be comforted and even healed by them. As a reader myself, I know this, of course! But imposter syndrome can really mess with your head.

I write love stories, so of course I wish my female main characters to find men who see them and value them and adore them. Men who help heal them and whom they help heal in return. But I also wish them to find purpose in life and learn to believe in themselves.

Reading back over this, I realize I slightly misread the question and answered more generally, but I think it does apply to Tea & Alchemy. Also, that book in particular was about healing, and what I wished for both Mina and Harker was for their love to be a balm for their deep pain, and to move them both out of their “stuckness.”***

4. What do you most want to share about this story; what do you wish most for readers/listeners to get from it? 5. Anything else you’d love to share about this story?

I think only that it was a joy writing it. Creating stories always begins as a curiosity journey for me. I do a lot of research, and finding little bits that help me define my characters (like Harker’s alchemical theory about vampires) is akin to finding buried treasure. For my readers, I hope the stories will pique their curiosity, too. I hope they will feel they’ve gone on a worthwhile journey. One that reminded them to believe in themselves, to be their own champions, and to love. And especially at this time, one that brings comfort. That feels like a hug.^xo

Sharon Lynn Fisher
TEA & ALCHEMY
SALT & BROOM
GRIMM CURIOSITIES
sharonlynnfisher.com
instagram.com/sharonlynnfisherauthor
substack.com/@sharonlynnfisher

*OH I feel this. As a conventionally trained internist I have often felt constrained and unremarkable in my medical practice from an early stage. Every time I have allowed myself authentic expression, without sacrificing professionalism, the rewards are clear and fulfilling: deeper understanding and connection with patients, and broader learning and reinforcement that everything is connected and we are healthiest when our relationships thrive.

**I think this is something I also appreciate about historical romance, and it applies now. Society today still sets implicit expectations and norms for both genders, and navigating them as mutual allies makes it easier for us all. Regency and Victorian romance heroes use their money and influence to validate and elevate their heroines’ talents, voices, and contributions. Isn’t this what we all wish for modern day men in power to do for women and other marginalilzed groups? The active, loving allyship in these stories gives me hope.

***YES! Both main characters bear their deep, respective loneliness with courage and some stoicism, and find their ways to each other similarly. The cautious yet compelling emergence of their abiding love speaks, to me, of their intuitive mutual empathy and understanding of that innate human need for connection, something that they both long for but had all but lost hope of finding. That they find it in each other is just the sweetest gratification.

xo Yes, a hug, definitely. Thank you so much.