My Journey Home

Grinding through life

Like most people, I was taught since young that in order to lead a ‘perfect’ life, I needed to secure a good education, a good job, find a good husband and raise good kids. By the time I was in my early 30s, I had checked most of the boxes, save for marriage and kids. On the outside, my life looked good, but on the inside, I was suffering. Thinking back now, it was obvious that I wasn’t really living my life, but rather just surviving from one day to another. Being in the corporate world, I lived a very stressful life – working long hours, getting by with minimal sleep, surviving on coffee and alcohol, knew nothing about nourishing my body, and overworked my body to look fit.

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I was living a life that was so disconnected – from others, from nature, from spirituality, and most of all from myself. I was depressed, even though I didn’t know (or want to admit) it at that time. It was not until my mom was diagnosed with late stage cancer that the reality of how finite life is really hit me. My father had died a few years before from complications after suffering a stroke. He was only in his late 50s and my mom was not much older.  It suddenly dawned on me that I was next in line, especially given my family’s health history. I had a choice at that time – to continue wasting my life away or to make a change and truly start living. I am grateful to my old self every day for choosing the latter.

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My newfound path to freedom, purpose and love

As I thought about what I truly wanted in life, one thing I knew for certain was that I wanted to live a life with purpose and meaning. Doing something to help others sounded like a good place to start. So, I tried to get into humanitarian work, but soon realized that I didn’t have any relevant expertise to be of service to others. That exploration eventually led me down the path of pursuing a master’s degree in counseling psychology. The two years I spent trying to understand the meaning of human existence marked the beginning of a deep journey of rediscovering who I truly am.

 

My thirst to learn more from the leaders of the field of therapy eventually led me to move halfway across the world to San Francisco. For the first time in my life, I experienced a sense of freedom, of just being me, stripped away of all responsibilities, societal ideals and expectations. It was here that I began to open my heart to the idea of living a life aligned with my purpose and who I am. And it also led me to the love of my life. I returned home to my country (Malaysia) full of hope for a new beginning for myself.

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Motherhood saved me

Life was looking promising for me – beginning a new career as a mental health counselor and a newly married life with the man I love. Few months later, I found out that I was going to become a mom, something that was never really part of my plan. Truth be told, I was secretly worried that I would mess up my child if I ever have one because of all the unresolved issues and traumas I would pass down to him/her. But God obviously had other plans for me.  

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“Everyone is a perfect parent, until they become one”. In striving to be the perfect parent (and avoiding all the things I swear I would never do as a parent), I found my way back into a stressful life – in the form of motherhood. Adding to the stress of being a new mom, we decided to move back to San Francisco a year after to offer our daughter a better quality of life. Suddenly I found myself coping with postpartum depression and isolation without the support of family and friends. Juggling these major changes in a short period of time took a toll on our marriage and my health. 

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In trying to address my health issues and making sure I’m bringing up my daughter in the healthiest possible way, I decided to learn about nutrition and health. While this may seem like a great idea, my need to do things perfectly, including creating a perfectly healthy life, only brought on more stress. I soon realized that I have not truly healed from my need to be perfect. It just took on another form. And it was creating more damage for me and the important relationships in my life. I drove my body to the ground, pushing and ignoring the whispers that something wasn’t right with how I was living. These whispers eventually became loud screams that came in the form of gut issues, psoriasis, sleep disorders, thyroid issues, and nutrition deficiencies. I treated my body as if it was ridden with problems that needed to be fixed. I tried different diets, exercises, supplements, natural remedies, and tried to learn from all the resources I could find. My life felt so out of balance that eventually it took a broken ankle and several physical injuries in a year to finally force me to slow down and re-examine how I was living out of alignment with myself. It was then that I finally began to listen to what my body was trying to show me.

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Coming home to myself

I remember my friend once told me how she felt broken in her body, and I thought it was a sad thing to feel. But looking back at how I approached my own healing, that was exactly how I saw and treated my body, never truly listening to what it needed and how it was trying to protect me. As I reflect on my experience, there were many symptoms way before I became a mom and before my mom was diagnosed with cancer. I just chose to ignore them and push on because something else always seemed more important. Over time, my nervous system became so dysregulated that I just accepted the symptoms as my norm. I was functioning on a survival mode, until slowly everything started to break down.

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Thankfully the desire to learn more and improve things for myself eventually took me down the path, albeit a long winding one, of understanding my body and emotions from a whole being perspective. Rather than being driven by fear and the need to fix, it is now coming from a place of love – love for myself as a whole. And that changed everything.

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It has been an experience of coming home to my body and to my heart. Challenging as it was, I would not trade it for anything because I am where I am today with myself because of it. And now I want to create a safe space for others to experience their own healing journey, to know they have a companion to walk alongside them, and to share what I’ve learned in my own process. Most of all, I want to continue this work for the people I love most, so that I can show up in life for them as my most authentic self in my fullest potential.

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What I’ve learned in my own healing journey:​

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Start where there's ease, where you feel safest and most connected to

There are many different ideas out there about what is most important in the healing process. Some may say you should focus on health and nutrition; others suggest that your thoughts are the ones you need to change first; and then some would argue that working on your emotions is key. Everyone seems to have something to say about what healing should look like. What I’ve learned is that while all of these are important parts of the process and can be very helpful, your healing journey may look and feel very different because every one of us is unique. We come with different experiences, cultural backgrounds, personalities and everything else that makes us who we are.

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I started with my mental health because that felt safest to me at that time, one that was most accessible for me to work on. Over time, it transitioned into focusing on my physical health and nutrition. As my understanding of the body and nervous system grew, I began (and was open) to attend to my emotions and the associated traumas stored in my body. This process may look very different from yours. The amazing thing is there is no right or wrong way to do it. The only way is the one that you choose to commit to, for reasons you know feels right at any given point along your journey. Listen to your own intuition and honor your own unique process.

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YOU are the expert of your own healing

I learned a lot from reading, watching, and listening to experts out there – the people who have dedicated their lives to learning about the mind-body holistic health and wellness. The knowledge I’ve gained helped me in getting my own process started. But while others can guide and facilitate your journey, ultimately YOU have the power and wisdom to choose when, what, and how you want to heal yourself. Because the answer you seek isn’t going to come from outside, from the modalities you’ve learn from, the self-help books or courses you take, or the hacks experts (or influencers) tell you. Why? Because the true answer comes from within as you are ultimately your own healer. No one else in this world knows you more than you truly do, the moment you take ownership of your own process and start tuning inward. YOU are the true expert of your own healing process.

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Lead from a place of Love, Wonder and Trust

I have been in search of answers through different modalities for many years, but it has always been from a place of lack, with the view that it is a problem to be fixed. The view that sees myself (and my body) as broken. I know I’m not alone in this, especially when the messages we are constantly getting from the outside world comes from fear.

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But having learned and experienced emotional release and Spinal Flow®, I now have a deep knowing and trusting that I am already whole and that my body is innately intelligent and has so much wisdom to show me. All I truly need is to tune inward, to listen to what my body is communicating to me, rather than continuously seek for answers externally or by acquiring more knowledge or skills. That deep knowing and trusting set me free. But most of all it allowed me to approach whatever I choose to do in my journey from a place of love, curiosity, and trust rather than fear. 

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It comes back to Connection

I have been trying to learn more about our human experience to make sense of mine; first through the mind, then the physical body, and finally the heart (the emotions). There are no shortages of books or resources out there to help me do so. But I realized over the years that focusing on just one of these parts to explain our experiences is what contributed to the problem in the first place – the disconnected view of human life. When I first started, I was living a life that was so disconnected from others, from nature, from spirituality, and most of all from myself. And ironically viewing the problems of my mind, my body or my heart as something to be fixed individually just perpetuated the disconnection.

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The truth is, we are not just sums of our parts, and the problem in any one part affects us as a whole. Just as we now know that the gut is connected to the brain, and the brain to the heart, and every cell of our body is always working together with one another to keep us alive, we humans are meant to experience life as a connected whole being. This made me realize that in almost every problem or dis-ease that we encounter, there is always a disconnection that is happening somewhere in our lives. And this usually originates from a disconnection within us. To heal is to reconnect with all the parts that make us who we are as a whole being. It also involves connecting with the important relationships in our lives, our purpose, nature, spirituality (in whatever meaning it has for you), and to community. This brings me to the next important point.

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It is NOT a Solo journey

For the most part of my journey, I imagine myself trying to find my way and figure things out on my own. It was likely influenced by my story of needing to be independent very early on in life. I imagine it to be like taking a solo journey into the wild to find myself again (thanks to Hollywood movies romanticizing them). I eventually realized that we cannot heal alone. To yearn to be part of a community is to be human. It is our human nature to want to belong with others in order to not only survive but thrive in life, even when we tell ourselves stories of why we don’t need anyone. I was telling myself that partly to cope with the feeling of not belonging anywhere. But truth is, because I was disconnected with myself inside, I struggled to make connections outside.  

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I learned that we heal in relationships. Whether it is through our close relationships, relationships with facilitators, therapists, nutritionists or care team, or other travelers we meet along the way. Meaningful, loving and supportive relationships can be healing, when we allow them to be part of our journey. I am where I am today because of the people in my life - my husband who stood by me every step of the way, my daughter who has been and will always be my inspiration to stay true to my path, my sister who has been my conscience (my Jiminy Cricket) all my life, the close friends I am thankful for in my life, teachers, clients who continue to teach me so much as I bear witness to their journeys, and fellow travelers that I have connected with along the way.

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So, that’s my story…so far. It is one that is continuously evolving, as I begin to connect within and rediscover more about myself. Are there are any parts of my story that resonated with you? Maybe close your eyes for a moment, if that is comfortable for you. And tune in to how your body is feeling right now. Let your heart speak. Is there anything you’ve read that touched you? Or piqued your curiosity and makes you want to explore further? Perhaps that may be a place you can start your own journey. And I would be honored to be part of your process, in whatever way possible.