“The Heartbeat: When your whole life changes, because you make peace with the past.”
A weekly email for women entrepreneurs of color filled with powerful mindset techniques to create a life + business you love.
In my latest podcast interviews, I’m embracing a new idea: accepting your parents wholly.
This isn’t easy for someone who didn’t get what she needed from her parents. Who, in fact, experienced trauma because of their own traumas, shortcomings, and best misguided efforts.
But, it’s only in doing so that I’ve also felt more whole.
This past weekend, my parents came for a visit.
They came because I left a few rings at their house during Christmas. When I asked if they could mail them back before my upcoming trips to Austin, Texas and San Juan, Puerto Rico, my mom said that she and my father would simply drive down to San Diego from L.A. to bring them to me.
“But,” I said, “Wilder’s not going to be here.”
To which my mother replied: “Y’know, I have a daughter, too.”
So, my parents came. They came with bags of homemade bao zi they told me to freeze and share with my friends.
I brought them to brunch at an oceanfront hotel in Oceanside, and afterward, despite the brisk weather and high winds, they wanted to take a walk with me down the pier.
My father loves fishing. Most of my memories are of the speedboat he purchased, then upgraded to a yacht, then downgraded to an eyesore in the backyard that caused so much friction with my mother.
Whenever we can, we find places for him to drop a fishing line.
As we walked, we discovered the last Queen Anne cottage in San Diego where they filmed Top Gun, the house Kelly McGillis’s character lived when the couple hung out on the front porch. The house is still there, now a pie shop, and a replica motorcycle that Tom Cruise rode in the original film in front beside a placard, an entire modern hotel built in a U-shape around it.
We stopped so that my parents could take a picture. My father used to ride a motorcycle in Taiwan, and my mother and I encouraged him to get on it, then I told the two of them to pose and I now have a happy goofy photo of them together.
The three of us laughed a lot.
Today, when I spoke with my therapist, I know that the only reason I can have this relationship with them now is because I have grieved.
I have grieved the disappointment of who I needed, who they couldn’t be, and who they are now, doing what they could as fallible human beings throughout my life.
“You can love your parents now,” my therapist said, “And you can still be angry for what they couldn’t give you. You can hold both.”
I don’t think we’re taught enough that life is imperfect…
That a person who’s “done their work” is someone who can hold a range of emotions without sacrificing one feeling for another.
Without giving up joy for pain.
Without forsaking love because the grief of loss is heavy.
Without needing everything to be perfect before enjoying the moments unfolding before us.
Your life doesn’t need to get to a certain point before you can be who you’ve always wanted to be...
You can hold it all now.
Sometimes, it means you first need to let the hurt in to heal it.
You can handle it. (I promise.)
If I can, you can.
And the reward is so worth it.
The next thing I’m working on is forgiving myself for choosing to bring someone into my life to whom I now have a lifetime commitment and could not have known when we met is not who I would have chosen had I known better. It’s a forgiveness filled with grief and knowing that because of it, I now have the greatest gift of my entire life.
See? This is what happens when you allow yourself to feel everything.
Like I say, “Life may not always be pretty, but it is indeed beautiful — make your story beautiful today.”
P.S. Want to work with me? Neuro Linguistic Programming helped me to get to this relationship. I healed a lifetime in less than 30 minutes — and it’s why I became a Master Practitioner. If you’d like that kind of life change, schedule a complimentary call to see if an NLP breakthrough session is right for you.
The latest excerpt of my book just launched on the F*ck Saving Face podcast.
Get a free coaching session for F*ck Saving Face podcast listeners!
Editors at Penguin Random House found me on IG to ask if I would interview two of their upcoming authors, co-founders of The Yellow Chair Collective: Soo Jin Lee and Linda Yoon.
Their upcoming book, Where I Belong, highlights personal narratives and mindfulness practices about how to heal trauma and embrace the Asian American identity.
Their podcast interview will debut in late January 2024 to coincide with their live event — in fact, they’ve asked if I’ll facilitate a live conversation in La Jolla, San Diego with them at Warwick’s, the country’s oldest family-owned-and-operated bookstore!
From now until Jan 31st, any listener of the podcast who leaves a review on iTunes will be entered to win a copy of their signed book, and a complimentary 45-minute coaching session with me.
Reserve your spot at Warwick’s if you’d like to join me as I facilitate this live event. (I’m planning to bring Wilder so that she can see her mama in action!)
