coffee date #51 with claudia filipponi

poet & author, extrovert-introvert, nature lover, future traveler, literal ray of sunshine ☀️

me: strawberry matcha w/ boba | claudia: cold madagascar vanilla matcha w/ boba
location: junbi, princeton

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I first met Claudia on a farm. Yes, on a farm.

I was volunteering there for a day, and Claudia was the person teaching me how to work the cashier register and tell people to look for their apples.

As I walked onto the apple farm at eight in the morning, Claudia welcomed me with a wide smile and big cheery eyes 🥺 That’s when I knew that the following 8 hours will breeze by.

With that first interaction in mind, I knew that I wanted to catch up with Claudia again, off the farm, and talk more about life.

My first question to Claudia during our coffee date was “Who are you? Describe yourself to me.” I was expecting to hear a list of professional identities that we are so often conditioned to believe are intertwined with our identities. However, I was pleasantly surprised with Claudia’s response. She started listing all of the thing that bring her joy, such as sitting amongst nature, traveling, trying new foods, writing, etc.

“We are so much more than what we do.” – Claudia Filipponi, 2024

Also, this queen is a cat lover, specifically black cats, and when I asked why, she replied with “Because they are very much misunderstood.” 🥺🥺🥺

Diving into Claudia’s world….

Epiphanies

• Do not punish your past selves.

During our eight hours together on the farm, Claudia would whip out her poetry book and read me a few poems whenever we had a break. Her face lit up every time she’d flip through the pages to find a poem and would proceed to read each poem with so much love, passion, and joy.

One of those poems stuck out to me. She wrote about all of the different versions of herself (ie, the past, present, and future selves) sitting together at the dinner table. Though, we couldn’t find that poem the second time around during the coffee date, I wanted her to elaborate on why she wrote that poem.

She talked about how she realized that her past selves were people just trying to live and tackle whatever situations they were in back then. Oftentimes we tend to punish ourselves for the way we behaved at that event or with that person, but sometimes, in order to actually move forward, we need to accept those versions of ourselves with love and compassion.

“As long as you go through life courageously, truthfully, and kindly, then whatever mistakes you make, you will learn. It’s a lesson.” – Claudia Filipponi, 2024

Claudia also mentioned that her past selves were definitely hurting, and so she reacted in the best way she could in order to endure the circumstances at the time. “She’s okay,” Claudia said multiple times as she explained that attaching shame to who we were in the past, restricts us to a cycle of that shame. Shame is crippling and won’t help us in moving forward. Love and compassion are the secret ingredients to detach shame and move forward.

“Don’t punish your past selves. They were who they were at that time.” – Claudia Filipponi, 2024

• Our rock bottoms.

This may have been my favorite part of the coffee date.

“I love my rock bottoms. I really do.” – Claudia Filipponi, 2024

Prior to this date, I used to fear my rock bottoms because well….obviously. Shit hits the fan during our rock bottoms. We can feel hollow and empty and claustrophobic in our own lives, so I was simply shook when Claudia started talking about her rock bottoms with so much love. I couldn’t help but think How in the world is this girl talking about rock bottoms from a place of such compassion?

Claudia described that her rock bottoms are most definitely painful, but she still loves them because they teach her A LOT about herself. What is triggering me? Why is it triggering me? Does it relate to a new wound or did it reopen a childhood wound? How are we going to move forward from this? Shall we pick ourselves back up?

She also mentioned that our rock bottoms teach us to just take a chill pill. We both used to be in a rat race where we thought we had to keep fixing parts of ourselves to become “better people.” At some point in that process, we realized that it’s never going to end because there’s no such thing as being good or being bad – everything is not so black and white.

“You are not a constant self-improvement project.” – Claudia Filipponi, 2024

Wow❣️

• You have the ability to make yourself feel seen and heard.

For over a decade of my life, I heavily relied on other people to make me feel seen.

I think there eventually comes a point in our life where we realize that we need to cut down our ‘validation circle’ to only include our close tribe of people. We also, hopefully, learn to trust ourselves enough so that we can also be the source of that validation for ourselves. Thus, we reach a point where we aren’t seeking validation from every anonymous face on the Internet or any random person from school.

“If you’re sitting there and you’re talking to someone and they don’t look interested, talk to yourself! If they don’t think you’re interesting, then that’s on them.” – Claudia Filipponi, 2024

Validation is needed. I get it. I need it A LOT at times. But Claudia and I believe that that validation should come from within ourselves and/or from our close-knit people. If we let everyone have a say in what we do and how we live our life, then we’d constantly be living a life that is curated by those people instead of living a life that our inner selves want to live. This dissonance will only create a void leaving us feeling unfulfilled and unhappy.

“Feel everything internally, because everything externally will be truly real.” – Claudia Filipponi, 2024

Claudia further elaborated that “we can’t just not feel anything on the inside and pretend everything else on the outside is good.” In other words, learning to not people please will be extremely useful for leading healthier and more content lives. When we no longer feel the need to people please, we can then begin to intuitively make decisions that fill us with with joy and point us forward.

• Poetry & a love for writing.

Ya’ll should just see the way Claudia lights up every time she gets to read one of her poems out loud. It’s freaking beautiful to watch her swipe through her journal until she lands on one that she’s ecstatic to share.

Claudia mentioned, though, that she wasn’t always like this. In fact, back in high school, she was actually afraid to let herself write. It wasn’t until her sophomore year English teacher, Mrs. Burg, encouraged Claudia to follow her passion for poetry that Claudia finally began to use poems as an outlet and a form of self-expression. Shoutout to all you incredible teachers because you all tend to be that safe space and source of inspiration for children.

“Art is art and that’s all that matters. If you think this is art, then that is art.” – Claudia Filipponi, 2024

As a fellow writer and creative, I sometimes hesitate to share my work publicly because it feels revealing and scary that people can have opinions on something that came straight from my heart. After seeing Claudia jump at the joy of sharing her work, I’m realizing that art is magical not necessarily because of its external appearance, but because of what it means to both you (the creator) and the others (the viewers/consumers).

“Art is supposed to be messy. Love is supposed to be messy. Perfection is overrated and imperfection is underrated.” – Claudia Filipponi, 2024

• Making therapy real. The ups and the downs.

Let’s talk therapy! I’d like to preface this section by recognizing that therapy is unfortunately a privilege in our world today, and I recognize that therapy is not accessible for everyone. I surely do not take my sessions for granted and I hope to one day figure out a way to better the mental health system. So for now, I’d love to share some therapy revelations in hopes of it reaching some of you that need to hear these words right now.

Flashback to when I was volunteering on the farm:

My first therapy appointment was on the Tuesday after the farm volunteering, so I remember while Claudia and I were chatting, the topic of therapy came up. I told her how I was meeting a potential therapist that week and was a tad bit nervous.

Claudia then gave me a little pre-therapy prep talk, where she described that therapy is actually life-changing, but it definitely ain’t all sunshines and rainbows. I wanted to further elaborate on this conversation during our coffee date, so here we are.

“Healing is not all sunshines and rainbows. It’s thunderstorms and monsoons. It’s tornadoes and it’s a whirlwind. It’s many emotions that you’re gonna have to feel.” – Claudia Filipponi, 2024

The thing about therapy that I don’t hear enough about is how we feel after a session.

Both Claudia and I agreed that on our good days, we feel almost euphoric after a therapy session. We’re confident and we conquer a boat load of stuff that day.

It’s on the bad days, though, where that euphoric feeling is replaced with a deep sense of despair that is sometimes hard to find words to describe. Life can feel heavy and draining. What do we do on these days aside from using the tools that our therapist provides us with?

“I find an outlet and for me that’s writing poetry or journaling. If you’re too tired to do that, then you know what? That’s okay. It’s okay to just lay in your bed.” – Claudia Filipponi, 2024

• Loneliness.

Hi friends, just a reminder that loneliness is real and it’s normal. We can feel lonely in a crowd. We can feel lonely when we’re alone. We haven’t necessarily cracked the code yet on how to healthily feel through periods of loneliness, but it has helped me a little to know that we all feel lonely and that I am not alone in this emotion and feeling.❣️