Yoga, writing, and coffee
I start my day with a dense and creamy foamed latte, my fantasy breakfast treat. Hopefully, I’ll be able to enjoy it alone before my kids need me.
Breakfast at the hotel where we stayed in Tokyo, Japan, at near the end of 2022.
As a parent, I often see myself reflecting the behaviors and traits of my own parents, which isn’t always what I wanted when I’m with my kids. My parents’ impatience, worry, and strictness touched all aspects of life from finances to relationships. While they provided me with what they had the best, creating emotional and meaningful connections had been a struggle.
Growing up, I became a pleaser and always strived to earn good grades and make my parents proud. After leaving home for college, I never moved back in with my parents. At 30, I made the decision to move to a new country and started a new chapter in a foreign country.
For the first two years of college, I barely studied. I was disoriented with no direct expectations and people to please. I focused more on making friends and participating in outreach than studying. It wasn’t until my senior year that I found the motivation to turn things around and start working towards my goals.
At that time I first discovered yoga. I didn’t notice the benefits that the class claimed but something made me persist. Yoga gave me the breathing space I needed. Often represented a confined and reserved space for just myself — on my mat — with no expectation that anyone would enter my zone.
For the past 18 years, I’ve practiced yoga on and off and most of the time I saw yoga as more like physical activity. I was hardly aware of the emotional and spiritual aspects of the practice until years later I joined a more private class where the instructor introduced elements like calming music, essential oil, sound healing, and comforting words. It made a difference to me as a first-time employee in the corporate world when I was not protected from the school setting anymore.
Yoga had not made another wave in my many life transitions, from moving to a new country, starting a new degree, or becoming a mom. Life became so hectic that I couldn’t even commit to a class. Until the pandemic hit in 2020.
The pandemic presented an opportunity for me to rediscover the various aspects of yoga, as well as meditation and journaling, as I needed ways to cope with the isolation and stress of being separated from my children.
Writing was not something new to me. I wrote poems and essays when I was around 12 years old. Although I stopped when I was in junior high because the expectations were all about exam scores to ensure a college with a good reputation. It wasn’t until graduate school that I picked up writing again, this time in English rather than my native language of Traditional Chinese, and on a topic that I had never considered— science.
The combined, even conflicting, command of the language, culture, and topics appeared to present an opportunity to change my perception of the world and myself.
Fast forward to 2022, I’ve been working as a corporate scientist for almost a year and I spent the summer working as a science journalist in a print newsroom. Both are the result of hard work and a mindset shift from early childhood expectations — my parents would never have thought about my life and career route.
I’ll turn 38 in two months, and with two toddlers and a full-time work partner, I’m prioritizing my physical and mental wellness. I enjoy what I do for a living, and I also have a physical body and a mental state to maintain that can keep me happy — all while I sip my coffee (hopefully a foamed latte) and think about how to make my days work for me.
* First appeared in Medium blog.