I’m a former Asian high school teacher (former teacher, not former Asian). I forget I’m not in my 20s or 30s until I happen upon a mirror, at which point I realize anew just how quickly time passes.

I was born in East Los Angeles California but moved to the suburbs at the age of six. I met amazing people and went to fantastic schools during those formative years. However, I’ve always been a city girl at heart. I felt like a fish out of water in the suburbs, but I like to think that’s when I became a mermaid.

As a child, I really loved music and art but abandoned these very short-lived passions to chase someone else’s dreams in a corporate job. After donning a business suit (which felt more to me like a Halloween costume) for several years and attempting to climb that particular ladder of success, I realized that though a perfect passion pursuit for some, economics was an inauthentic profession for me.

In the 90s, I traded my conservative neutral-colored high heels for some Steve Madden platforms (loved the 90s fashion) and dove into a new career teaching high school and coaching soccer. It was the greatest privilege to spend my days sharing space, time and ideas with the teenagers I taught.

I was then totally sidelined by a litany of diseases and symptoms which heartbreakingly catalyzed my resignation from teaching. During the darkest periods of my illnesses, I saw my life hang in the balance more than once. The beauty and the brevity of life were never so clear.

I emerged with more reverence for the beauty of life and became determined to unsilence the parts of me I hushed due to criticism.

I also began to realize how being continually teased or excluded for being Japanese subtly impacted my view of myself as a second-class citizen.

I would say that a lot of this inferiority complex was on a sub-conscious level (hence why it was established for years without my recognizing it), but it was powerful enough for me to develop patterns of sometimes staying silent, accommodating other people’s needs in lieu of my own and absorbing criticism as truth without further investigation.

So many factors can negatively influence us; stifling us or causing us to feel off or out of sync. Even something as seemingly minor as one casual comment spoken to us years ago can affect our present selves in numerous unpleasant ways.

For years now, I’ve been bent on discovering, expressing and reclaiming passions, dreams and personality traits that are authentically mine but were put away needlessly for one reason or another.

It’s been so enlivening, fulfilling and healing to do so.

I’m now learning to sing, dabble on the keyboard, and play acoustic, electric and bass guitar! I am so thankful to have finally found my way back to these early loves and dreams, which have indeed been fulfilling.

To be quite honest there have been troughs as well as crests accompanying me throughout this emotional and evolutionary journey. At various moments, I’ve had to process regret, grief and anger. But the freedom to express these emotions has been cathartic, and funnily enough, its own form of self-preservation and reclamation.

There is something indescribably empowering about living a life that is expansive and true to who I am.

Will you join me on this journey?