Community Letter: The Year of the Fire Horse - Moving Boldly into 2026

February 11, 2026

Dear Community,

This photograph was taken by my Dad in 1991. I am laughing at the camera in a small spring áo dài, my grandmother’s arms wrapped around me, her smile bright and steady behind mine. We were welcoming the Year of the Goat – the year that would gift me what I wanted most at the time: a little sister.

It has been nearly two decades since my grandmother passed, but the tenderness remains. I still remember the softness of her knitted cardigan, the warmth of being held, the way her presence made any room feel anchored. What stays with me are not the annual traditions themselves, but the feeling – of being gathered, fed, and loved within a lineage where care is spoken through shared meals, quiet blessings, and arms that hold you close.

At four years old, I did not yet understand all that she had already carried – memory, loss, language, survival, and love – and passed forward in ways I would only come to recognize much later.

As the moon turns and we enter the Year of the Fire Horse, I think about what is carried across generations, often without words. This year is predicted to be a year of movement, spirit, and the courage to keep going when the road is uncertain. Fire warms, but it also transforms. The horse endures, moves, and finds its way forward, even across incredibly difficult ground.

Nearly sixty years ago, in another Fire Horse year – 1966 – Asian American communities stood at a different kind of turning point.

It was a year when a story about us began to circulate more loudly in the mainstream – the idea of the “model minority,” praised in the pages of the New York Times. We were celebrated for perseverance, for quiet striving, for succeeding without protest. But even then, that story told only part of the truth. Through the lens of the majority, it erased what made us fully human – the struggle, the barriers, the exhaustion of those working long hours in fields, factories, kitchens, and small businesses, holding families and futures together through sheer endurance.

In that same era, Filipino farmworkers – led by organizers like Larry Itliong – stood shoulder to shoulder with Mexican American farmworkers in California, demanding dignity in the fields. Their march was not quiet and their movement was not compliant. It was fueled by the same fire we honor now: the belief that our labor, our bodies, and our lives deserve respect.

It was also a time of arrival. After the Hart-Celler Act of 1965, engineers, nurses, students, and families crossed oceans, stepping into a country that offered opportunity and exclusion in the same breath. They built lives anyways. They carried languages, recipes, memories, and hope across waters that could not wash those things away; many of us are here because of their courage.

The Fire Horse reminds me that our history in this country has never been only about “success.” It has been about movement – sometimes quiet, sometimes loud. About survival, solidarity, and the refusal to disappear.

Resilience, yes – but also, defiance.

The Fire Horse reminds us, too, that we come from people who kept going – who built, who cared, who created possibility even in uncertain times. In moments like this, I lean into the wisdom and stories of those who came before us. It is on the shoulders of history that we stand – where we learn, where we remember, and where we find our courage.

As we carry this lineage forward, I see its impact taking shape in the present. Through our Community Health Worker training program, we have welcomed some of the largest classes in our organization’s history this past year – a sign that community members continue stepping into roles of care, leadership, and service. Over the last few cohorts, every participant who began the program, completed it – a reflection of commitment on both sides. And with nearly 80% of graduates moving into job coaching and employment pathways, we see doors opening – not only to work, but to purpose and stability.

These are not just numbers. They are our neighbors becoming trusted guides. They are families gaining advocates who speak their language and understand their worlds. They are the quiet architecture of community health being built, one relationship at a time.

This month, we are also launching a new Bone Health and Osteoporosis Health Education Pilot, focused on supporting women’s health across the lifespan. By bringing attention to prevention, mobility, and long-term strength, we are honoring something deeply cultural: the ability to keep moving, gathering, cooking, celebrating, and passing traditions forward. Caring for the body, in this way, is also caring for memory, dignity, and intergenerational connection.

In the months ahead, Asian Women for Health will continue creating spaces to gather, reflect, and celebrate our communities – including CelebrAsians – where culture, connection, and shared belonging remain at the center.

We are expanding AYMHI, our youth mental health and peer leadership initiative, and launching a larger immigrant storytelling effort that deepens this work (thanks to the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Advancement!). Together, these efforts center the voices of young people and immigrant communities across generations, using storytelling as a force for hope, remembrance, and healing. We are co-creating new approaches to care, shaping futures that do not yet exist but are ours to build.

This moment calls for courage – and we will rise to it, as we always have.

As I step into this new year, I carry my grandmother with me – her warmth, her steady presence, the quiet way she held our family together. I think of the generations who crossed oceans, who kept going, who built lives so we could stand where we do now. Their stories remind me that courage is often quiet, and that care is something we pass from one set of hands to another.

And because of them, we do not enter this moment small. We step forward with memory in our bones, with fire in our spirits, and with one another beside us. We have inherited not only survival, but vision – the ability to imagine something better and to build toward it together.

May this year give us the courage to move forward – not alone, but as a community shaped by love and empathy, carrying steady fire into all that comes next.

With deepest gratitude,