Living in Our Bonus Years

Last week week, I got an opportunity to talk with my friend Randy Kim, writer of the Bánh Mì Bites newsletter and host of the award-winning Bánh Mì Chronicles podcast. Last summer he survived suicide, and then earlier this year his younger brother died. Being able to support him as a fellow suicide survivor has deepened our already close friendship, so it felt natural that when we were chatting about potential podcast conversations for Suicide Awareness and Prevention Month, we would draw on our own lives instead of distance ourselves from our pasts.

Breaking from Randy’s traditional interview format with Bánh Mì Chronicles, we instead choose to have an open and vulnerable conversation about mental health and survival amidst genocide and late-stage capitalism, the need for community care in a culture of hyperindependence and commercialized self-care, and the connections between incarceration and institutionalization. The episode’s title comes from the term that I’ve given the time since surviving suicide - bonus years that I never expected to live and, at the same time, have given me renewed purpose.

Check out the episode on Substack, Apple podcasts, or YouTube.