March 2020

It is the beginning of the Covid lockdown, and the future no longer holds any certainty.

I find myself within the four walls of my home with the life I have been living, in full relief: I am a mother, a wife, a therapist. These are roles I knew well (almost too well), and they are starting to fray. My life shrinks into a series of moment-by-moment interactions, small journeys into the outside world through my hikes in the mountains or Zoom calls with family and friends. I am an introvert, so in many ways, this kind of life is not unwelcome. But something’s missing.

There’s a call within me for change, something deep and still unknown. I set up an altar, eager to return to my spiritual practice which has been left to the side for too long. I wander throughout my house, feeling for the objects that ask to be part of this new phase and find crystals, art, a small journal…and a dragon. This smiling dragon in the form of piece of driftwood takes its place as my guide and would represent the biggest confirmation of my life’s path years down the road. But I don’t know that now, I only sense that it feels right.

I begin to turn inward, wanting to thaw the layers of disconnect that have been held within me from a failing marriage, mental health crises with my children, my own depressions. I turn to writing, as I have always done. I’ve kept journals since I was thirteen years old, written published reports and even a chapter in a book. It is a natural and safe place for me to find refuge and try to make sense of this new and uncertain life.

There’s a book in my mind that I had wanted to start, and I think, yes – now I can write it. Only a few weeks before, I remember walking in a local bookstore and hearing a voice in my head clearly say, write your own damn story! I laugh, thinking that I have a much more academic, “serious” book to write that doesn’t feel like a story, much less one that’s about me. However, the universe has something else in mind for me (as it often does).

Lockdown stretches from days into weeks, and as I sit at my altar to meditate, a door opens to another way of writing that is completely different. It’s not journaling and definitely not academic; it is a new voice, and she apparently has much to say. These writings are personal but not whispered into pages of a private journal. These words are meant to be shared, and they feel powerful.

 

March 2021

Covid continues, but lockdown ends, and I begin to slowly enter the world again.

It’s been a year since I opened my altar and started my personal healing journey, and although I am starting to find a way back to myself, I know it’s only the beginning and more changes are meant to come. My heart is broken, but I’m allowing myself to feel it beat beneath my hand as it rests upon my chest.

I decide to do a workshop on the ‘superpowers’ of our embodied multicultural identities, and since most conferences are still virtual, I’ll be doing it online. In a few months’ time, my whole life will change, and this decision will have been a pivotal moment that helps me find my way.

 

March 2022

What a year it’s been!

In June of 2021 I receive a message on Facebook from a person who says she’s an editor for a publishing company who saw my online workshop, and would I be interested in talking with her? My heart skips with excitement, and I’m just about to respond until my thinking brain tells me to make sure this person is for real. I look her up and this is what I find:

Claire Wilson, Editorial Director, Singing Dragon Books.

Singing Dragon. The smiling dragon on my altar winks at me, I swear.

I message Claire back, we have a wonderful talk, and I’m invited to submit a proposal.

The deep shift I felt in the March of 2020 is starting to take shape: one pathway is tapering off as my separation agreement is signed, and within a few weeks, a divorce decree issued. An immense ending. But another pathway has started: I have a book contract, which is also about to be signed, and I can start writing my book. A brand new beginning.

I laugh; the universe knows what it’s doing!

 

March 2023

I have decided to pause all other work and focus solely on the writing.

To my surprise, the first chapter that emerges is a visit back in time to the early life I shared with my grandparents. Through vivid memories and sensations, I see their faces and hands; I hear them speak their languages; I walk through their homes, still full of life and not empty or gone, as they are now. They come alive for me again, and I understand their presence must be at the beginning of my book precisely because my story is their story. I wouldn’t be here without them, or the gifts they (and all my ancestors) passed down to me in this moment to share.

As I submerge myself in my writing, I feel grateful for the voice I found during the Covid lockdown, the personal voice with strength and depth. It is this voice that guides my book now. Not my academic persona, who was willing to let her ideas be validated first through others’ quotes and citations. She has a different role, and although she also lives in the writing, she shares the space with a voice that speaks to her readers with comfort and questions. This is the voice I embody now, and it tells them, “you’re not alone, I’m with you.”

 

March 2024

The book is done, and I am devastated.

I send the final manuscript to Claire this month and my heart breaks. I didn’t want to say goodbye to the tender intimacy I shared with this book – all the words that came through in the middle of the night, the journeys back into my past that helped me embody the practices and the knowledge, the creativity and inspiration, and even the moments of writer’s block – all of those peaks and valleys are over now, and it is far too quiet.

It feels similar in so many ways to being a mother. This book was a spark in my consciousness that was able to grow within me over time, slowly becoming its own entity. It became something that was a part of me, but fully its own.

From this point on, I will shepherd my book through all the phases of its new development: editing, proofreading, marketing, publishing. I don’t know what any of that means at this moment, and the thought of it all seems overwhelming, but that’s what any good parent does: we continue to love and support our children as they go into the world, no matter what path they choose.

I sit with the silence now and grieve. The words have found their completion, but the book has only just begun a life of its own, and one that I will personally never know.

It’s time to let go.

 

March 2025

The moment has come full circle.

This month, my book will be officially published. I received the physical copy a few days ago, held it in my hands and cried tears of joy. My book is real, and it is here!

There is something profound, for me, in having written a book that is about to published worldwide. I feel humbled that my words will be read or listened to by people I will never know. That somewhere, a person will come across my book and find a phrase or idea that speaks to them and feel a spark of inspiration of their own. And maybe, like my younger self used to do so often, someone will randomly pull my book from a library or bookstore shelf and decide to take it home.

I truly believe we are all connected by the books that come into our lives, tethered by the words we have read together. It is an honor to write, and such a gift.

As I look back now on all the pivotal moments that happened in all the months of March over the last five years of my life, I marvel at the perfect synchrony of it all. The call to go inward and heal. The invitation to write in a different voice. The courage to face so many endings and embrace new beginnings. The fear of letting go. The joy of possibility. For all these and more, I am grateful.

I can’t wait to see what March 2026 will bring!