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I Was Fine Until I Wasn’t
Many years ago, I spent most of my birthday walking alone by the sea after shouting at my husband, swearing like I had never sworn before, and leaving him at home with our one-year-old daughter. If someone had asked what happened, the shortest answer would have been that he asked me what we were having…
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Love Has No Weight, Unlike His Head
One night, just before we went to sleep, my husband put his head on me. He was teasing me, so he didn’t exactly put it down gently. He just dropped his head on me and stayed there. “That’s heavy,” I said. “That’s love,” he replied. Cute. But also, my neck was hurting. I laughed, but…
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I chose Mine, You have Yours.
A couple of weeks ago, I spent almost two hours arguing with the manager of a fast-food restaurant over a few missing burgers. It all started innocently enough. I was planning to pick up dinner myself, but when I opened the restaurant’s app, I noticed they had started offering delivery in our area. I thought…
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“Isn’t It Selfish?”
My two teenagers argued over a handheld game console, and like most sibling arguments, it looked pretty straightforward at first. After listening to both of them, I realized they weren’t actually disagreeing about the console. They were disagreeing about one sentence they had both understood differently. Neither of them was trying to be unfair. Neither…
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No One to Blame but Me
Sometimes, the biggest obstacle isn’t the lack of time or inspiration. It’s the quiet expectation we place on ourselves without even noticing. This is the story of how an ordinary conversation with my daughter helped me see why I had stopped writing—and why I finally opened my laptop again.
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The Omlette I Still Haven’t Made
There are things many Asian children grow up hearing so often that they become part of the background of life. Be grateful to your parents. Especially to your mother. She carried you for nine months. She sacrificed everything for you. And honestly, none of these things are false. Parents do sacrifice a lot, especially mothers.…
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The invisible career of motherhood
What is your career plan? I stopped asking myself those questions when I decided to have children. Not because I threw my life away, but because I understood that raising children was already a long-term project. A project that would require almost all of my energy, attention, patience, organization, and emotional availability for many years.…
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ON : A Silent Impact
Do you have a quote you live your life by or think of often? Do you have a quote you come back to, without even realizing it? I do. Not just one, actually, many. They’ve been quietly placed along the way, often by people close to me. When I was younger, my father would say,…
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Risk Doesn’t Always Look Risky
When is the last time you took a risk? How did it work out? If driving a bit too fast counts, then maybe yesterday. But that didn’t feel like the right answer. So I stayed with the question a little longer. I tried to think of a real decision, something that carried weight, something I…
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Catching Something Else
Last week, I downloaded Pokémon GO. Ten years late. My husband laughed when he saw it, and I can’t really blame him. There was a time when people filled the streets chasing Pokémon, when parks were crowded with players and it felt like a shared moment across the world. That moment has passed, and here…
Ducky Mommy
A warm little place in this hectic world
Reflections on family, relationships, and the things we sometimes understand differently with time.