Writing From The Heart

Writing From The Heart

It had been almost a year that I had made that conscious choice to stop writing for a while.  All these years, every word written for my blog was done out of my hope to share a point of view that I felt strongly about.

Increasingly, I found this difficult to do as I tried very hard to juggle writing about what was truly authentic to me, with managing the sensitivities of others.  “Was that post about me?”, seemed to be the  frequent text message I woke up to in the morning.

I even had my husband once told me to “take down that blog post because while you don’t have to deal with them, I do.”  That became the cause of our regular rows where he maintained that I needed to have more tact while I insisted that the world needed to be aware of the difference between what was true and the pre-engineered fizzy koolaid that they had been sold.  My father had always taught me to be true to myself under any circumstance, and he brought me up in an environment where he encouraged me to fully express myself.  I found it hard to come to terms with having my voice stifled because I had to be mindful of what others thought.

When I had to start thinking about being sensitive to the feelings of others, taking into account the ramifications my writing might potentially cause with every word I wrote in my blog, and every post I published across my social media platforms, I decided that I could no longer pen another word in my blog.  I also decided to veer towards neutral topics across my social media platforms, sticking to the regular fitness and food posts.  But I became more disillusioned as months and days passed by, simply because I lost my sense of self.  I was no longer writing or speaking from my heart.

When I cut out the writing out of my life for a while, and made myself devoid of that only channel for self-expression that I was most familiar with, I was forced to deal with my emotions on my own by internalizing them.  I  withdrew into myself and walked through an introspective journey for a year.

The past year had been a year of deep learning for me about myself.  I learnt to accept my vulnerability – it was okay to feel that deep sense of hurt and disappointment, nurse it, then move on.  I learnt the importance of drawing the line between interpersonal relationships – friends, colleagues, staff, clients, family, and acquaintances, each of them had a role to play in my life and I should not be setting almost equal expectations on them.  I learnt that no matter how much I could do to pull family members, a team, a situation, a crisis, together and lead from the front, the honest truth, was that I had to stop being the school principal all the time, trying to get everyone to play on equal footing at the playground.  I learnt that when someone has a problem, it was not my problem.  I could not keep taking on that responsibility to try to solve it for him or her.   I learnt to make peace with my inner child – a traumatic past in my childhood need no longer bind me in fear, anger and hatred.  I learnt the value of forgiveness – more than anything else, letting go of hurt and anger was not about acknowledging that a dishonest, hurtful situation did not take place.  It was just my way of giving myself peace of mind.

So if I had to fill the pages of my blog with every incident that described this path of learning, I would not have enough pages left.   I was determined not to let my hurt and disappointment experienced, cast a shadow of doubt on the people I had invested time and energy over the years as  I tried to lift and inspire them with positivity. 

I felt that if I could no longer fill the pages of my blog with authenticity, then I could no longer write that blog. 

This point of view also took a toll on my passion for freelance writing for sports events.    I was disillusioned when I was delivered key messages about athletes during interviews, that had been “massaged” by their PR teams, painting them to be “inspirers of community with a personality governed by humility and a great work ethic..” then see a couple of them behave like depraved thugs.  How could I bring myself to share an article with the public with the objective of convincing them about how wonderful an athlete might be when he clearly was not?  Strangely enough, the current environment was one where many took a dig at fake news.   I was not going to be a perpetrator of fake news.

The start of my recuperation from all of last year’s “bullshit” came in the form of a family trip back to the UK.  I stopped writing.  I just took lots of photos.  Writing could hide my disillusionment. Photos could not. When I had to be present to my family for 3 weeks in the UK, I spent less time on emails as well as reading through all the social media news.  I just made time for self and I had meaningful conversations with my family.  I had no contact with drama, toxicity, inauthenticity and anything that drained me.  And most importantly, I came out of that trip making a pact with myself, that I would always choose to walk away from any form of drama and never allow anyone or anything to invade my peace. I would never allow anyone to feed me with untruths and expect me to sell otherwise.  I would never allow anyone to tell me to stop writing or saying something, just because it would “open a can of worms” and not aligned to what was written on that label pasted on that pre-engineered fizzy koolaid. If I was forced to do anything, or say anything  outside of my values, I would rather not have anything to do with it. 

I am starting to write again.  Slowly just getting back into it. I remain adamant about walking in the light of what is true, never writing or saying something unless it came from the heart.

 

About The Writer

The writer of this blog post is a Marketing and PR professional for over 20 years.  She is a passionate observer of life bent on inspiring others to live life positively through her writing by combing through moments worth celebrating every day.   Due to her ardent love for sports especially boxing and MMA, she is also a freelance sports writer on the side, contributing articles to several sports media when time permits.  She works in partnership with her husband, David Ash, who is an avid sports photographer from www.singaporemaven.com.  She enjoys Boxing and nurtures a dream to fight competitively one day when her coach stops making fun of her.  She is also a psychic intuitive by birth and runs a consultancy that does tarot and numerology readings under her brand, Sun Goddess Tarot.  This blog is affectionately called "The Crazy AngMo" as she is married to one, although she has not yet explained to THE Ang Mo that when translated, he has been labeled  “the bloke with ginger hair”.  

A Slice Of Happiness At Work

As I was browsing through my Instagram feed yesterday,  I spotted a photo of my friend, Glenn at his workplace.  The photo showed a sea of happy faces. His colleagues were clearly enjoying a lot of camaraderie.   The sheer joy in that photo was infectious and I felt so happy, not only for Glenn, because of the passion he had injected into his job at his new workplace, but also the inspiration it could potentially create for others who were "looking for a slice of happiness" in their jobs.  When I remarked about how much happiness there was in that photo, Glenn replied that that happiness existed because "I love my job."  

How many times have you been at work, riding up the elevator to your office with a fellow colleague in the morning and you might ask, "How's work?" and he or she might reply with deadpan face and in Singlish, "Llike that loh...."  That truly annoyed me.  How could anyone come to work early in the morning, clock in 10 to 12 hour days, and feel absolutely no passion for his or her job? 

I had often advised my staff that if they felt that they were losing passion and zest in their jobs then they had to question what value they were bringing to the company.  If they found that they were gradually losing interest in their jobs, then they should be thinking of ways to re-define their roles, and re-shape how they could add value to their jobs.  Nothing, however, could be an excuse for not injecting passion into the job.  Once you lose that passion, it would be time to leave for a new job.

I love my job. I enjoy what I do everyday.  Whether I had spent time and effort making  decisions to help shape the company's business strategy or nurture my team to develop them as solid public relations and marketing professionals,  I truly enjoyed what I do daily.

The icing on the cake would be the great relationships between members of my team that were founded on trust, open communication and sincerity.  Today, this sisterhood of a team worked very hard and played hard too.  Both within and outside the office environment, I see a lot of passion and team camaraderie.

The team's happiness, like Glenn had rightly inferred, is ultimately because they all loved their jobs.

We look forward to going to work every morning, because we have so much to share, so much to tell each other, and so much to do together. Hell, we even enjoy going for girly trips together.  It's definitely a sisterhood, isn't it?

About The Writer

The writer of this blog post is a Marketing and PR professional for over 20 years.  Due to her love for Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), she is also a freelance sports writer on the side, contributing MMA-related articles to several sports media.  She works in partnership with her husband, David Ash, who is an avid sports photographer from www.singaporemaven.com.  She is passionate about Muay Thai and nurtures a dream to fight competitively one day when her coach stops making fun of her.  She is also a psychic intuitive by birth and runs a consultancy that does tarot and numerology readings under her brand, Sun Goddess Tarot.  This blog is affectionately called "The Crazy AngMo" as she is married to one, although she has not yet explained to THE Ang Mo that when translated, he has been labeled  “the bloke with ginger hair”.  

Fighting To Keep My Passion For Writing

I love writing. I love writing my blog, I love writing about the woo-woo spiritual stuff that the other side  of me writes about regularly, and  I love writing about sports – Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) in particular.  

Yes I do have a clandestine love affair for the sport and secretly wished I was 25 years younger so that I could take down the trash-talkers I write about most of the time.  However, that is of course just a dream and my husband's nightmare.  The Universe is so perfectly clever, knowing that my brash and callous nature would cause me to lose a kneecap in the cage that it had decided to get me to concentrate on my day job, run my business and just for the fun of it, get my ass into the gym to pretend to fight like Cris Cyborg or Connor McGregor while I write about fighters who try very hard to be Cris Cyborg and Connor McGregor.

Lately however, I have been getting slightly dispassionate, uninspired and disillusioned.  You see, in the course of writing about my favorite sport, I keep reading the same stuff about fighters, how they train, what they eat, how they cut weight, and how they want to "beat the crap out of their opponent" in their upcoming fights. And horrors, i discovered myself writing the same thing too.  My passion gradually waned when my articles were written from interviews that are orchestrated like the script of a governmental speech.  The articles began to look similar and read like it was the manual of a new  kitchen appliance.  I started to question my journalistic integrity and wondered if I could have written that piece a little differently.

I was trained in creative journalism.  No, it is not about the skill of sensationalizing an event as mundane as the opening of a new jar of candy that is expected in most tabloids.  It is about creatively thinking of unique story angles that a reader would find valuable to read.  In this world of combat sports, I am bored of the same repetitions about being trained by world champions when my readers want to get to know the true human being behind the gloves. I am looking for authenticity. I am looking for truly interesting stories that define the fighters as regular people with substance on top of the guts and skills they display within the cage.

Some of these genuine stories are far and few in between.  

I got excited by the story of a fighter whose family had left his ancestral home when he was just a wee boy, relocating to a foreign land far away, only to make an emotional return many years later to fight for the first time back at his ancestral homeland.  That story had given me a glimpse of the experience of his past that had shaped his character and attitude as an athlete and a fighter.  After publishing that story, I witnessed him losing a fight after being accidentally stomped on by his opponent, yet he accepted that defeat with graciousness, joked about it and moved on, like a champion.  As the writer of that story, I connected the dots of this display of sportsmanship with his childhood experience. 

I was enthused by conversations with fighters who were authentic. One of them was a professional chef who juggled between his day job and  his training efforts as a professional fighter. I knew that interview with him was going to be a lot more fun, the minute he opened our conversation with a joke,” If it all goes pear-shaped, at least I can cook!”  

Even a 16 year old amateur fighter triggered much interest in me because I saw a boy display a lot of humility in spite of his excellent performance in the cage and his winning streak as an amateur fighter. You see, he made me wonder how someone exposed to an industry like this at such a young age, could still hold his own and display that humility so lacking amongst the many that I have encountered. 

When I got to meet my favourite female fighter who was a former Strikeforce Women’s featherweight champion and current Invicta world champion in the featherweight category, I really did not care about how far she had come and what she had done to become a formidable female fighter that is worthy of putting a lousey fighter in her place even at a weight category of 135pounds. And she responded to my yearning for that story with a bit more substance when she spoke about her difficult childhood, and her insecurities.  She even shared that her greatest challenge was dealing with the public's misconceived perceptions about her when they do not know the real person behind her fight persona. She was not afraid to allow me to uncover her vulnerability and I respected her for it.  

Do not get me wrong.  I enjoy talking to real fighters. However, the key word here is REAL.  I crave for authenticity and I think, I can write much better and with a little more passion when I can get to know the real people behind their gloves.  

The photo accompanying this blog post was taken by David Ash, www.singaporemaven.com

About The Writer

The writer of this blog post is a Marketing and PR professional for over 20 years.  Due to her love for Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), she is also a freelance sports writer on the side, contributing MMA-related articles to several sports media.  She works in partnership with her husband, David Ash, who is an avid sports photographer from www.singaporemaven.com.  She is passionate about Muay Thai and nurtures a dream to fight competitively one day when her coach stops making fun of her.  She is also a psychic intuitive by birth and runs a consultancy that does tarot and numerology readings under her brand, Sun Goddess Tarot.  This blog is affectionately called "The Crazy AngMo" as she is married to one, although she has not yet explained to THE Ang Mo that when translated, he has been labeled  “the bloke with ginger hair”.  

Another Level Of Weird

Celebrated Our Wedding Anniversary In Sri Lanka

A few months ago, I suggested to David that we should celebrate  our 13th wedding anniversary  in Sri Lanka.  There were no other reasons for the choice of destination other than that I had never been to Sri Lanka and I wanted to book an accommodation that was set off the beaten track so that I could reconnect with myself amidst serene surroundings. I was very keen to use that time to work on my intuitive skills and practice channeling.  Then I remembered, it was our 13th anniversary.  It should be a vacation that included my husband, my best friend and soulmate all rolled into one.  We should also have time to focus on US.  I decided that maybe, that week in Sri Lanka could be used to let him get closer to my passion of doing intuitive readings while I got closer to his passion of photography by accompanying him to places off the beaten track like Yala National Park, the local temple, the local fruits and vegetable market and even secluded alleys within the village or in town, to search for subjects for his photography portfolio.  He even jokingly asked me to allow him to have some fun throughout the week, to demonstrate his unique skills of being a walking bible of useless information. No need for a travel guide then.

Roping In A Partner

Thich Nhat Hanh said, “The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.”  So, before I arrived in Sri Lanka, I had decided not to do any research about the island. Instead, David was roped into my channeling practice.  I worked with my hands,  my heart and my mind while he was my walking guide book who could validate my readings.

The Friar On A Mission

One example was just before our plane landed in Colombo, I started meditating and got into the zone enough to channel a couple of images.  One was of a Christian monk (Friar Tuck from Robin Hood came to mind).  He wore a dark robe and had a large cross worn in front of him.  When we arrived at the accommodation that we had booked, David whipped out his guidebook and said, "Oh that was very good.  The Franciscan Friars arrived on a ship together with the Porturgese in a bid to spread Christianity in Sri Lanka.  Let's do another one."

The Banyan Tree Told Me

Another example was a visit to a town square near the Galle Fort.  A couple of gigantic banyan trees stood in the middle of that square, so I had decided to put my hand on one of the tree trunks, closed my eyes and got into a meditative zone to channel any images or messages that came to mind.

  I saw prisoners or criminals being paraded around or near these trees. The image that I saw within my mind's eye were scraggly men, one was tied to a large pole and flogged and a couple of them had heir ams outstretched and bound to a plank each.  I was nervous about revealing this to David at first. I was worried that he would consider the image as a product of over-active imagination.  I could just hear him say, "Stop watching too many useless TV programs."   Instead, David asked, " So, what did you see?" Encouraged, I went ahead to reveal my visions that I got.  His face lighted up with a smile and he said, "Very good.  The guidebook here wrote that this square used to be where the magistrate courts stood during the Dutch and Portuguese colonial days.  Criminals were indeed paraded around the square and some were flogged or even hung. Let's do another one."  Wow! I was hit with a wave of exhilaration. My visions were getting clearer and the best thing was that David was so encouraging and proactively supported me all the way. There were no rude "where did you park your broom?" type of silly questions or comments from him.  I was so happy.  He acted as my coach in place of my intuitive coaches while we were on vacation!

Another Level Of Weird

When I reflected on our week together in Sri Lanka, one thing came through strongly for me.  This was really what a marriage was all about,  right?  We both encouraged and supported each other's passions no matter the level of understanding we had about these passions. I could not understand why he brought along with him huge bags of different camera equipment when in the past, I had no problems using my little compact camera.   He on the other hand could not understand why I went around touching trees and walls of old buildings while closing my eyes in meditation.  However, more than accepting each other's quirks, we encouraged and supported them too.  I was very grateful that I could practice channeling with David's help even though he clearly thought that I was on to "another level of weird".

About The Writer:

The writer of this blog post is a 44 year old mother of one, who spreads her time between her day job as a marketing professional at a financial institution, her hobby as a certified professional tarot reader and numerologist, and her family which includes a 20 year old son and 3 dogs with personality disorders.  She's married to a Scot who has been affectionately called "The Crazy AngMo" and prays that he does not find out that the term when translated, has labeled him as a "Ginger Head".   Together, we create a home made up with more nuts than a fruitcake but filled with plenty of love.  Her other blog can be found at http://sungoddesstarot.blogspot.com

Photo credit:  Photo taken by David Ash at Yala National Park, Sri Lanka

Reclaiming My Space

A few days ago, David posted this picture on Facebook that got me thinking about my constant desire to reclaim my personal space.  Do not get me wrong.  I enjoyed doing things with him.  In the last 13 years of our marriage, we did so many things together from playing rugby to planning yoga trips, to praying for the rescue-car to pick us up midway through the half marathon.  All these years, we often discovered new things about each other as "BFFs" should.  We seldom did anything without each other.  We were always "Team Ash".  We had never felt the need for space from each other too.  

Reclaiming My Space

Today, we are at a stage of our lives where we regarded ourselves as "pre-empty nesters" living with almost a figment of imagination of a son who only showed up in our room at wee hours of the morning to steal socks from David's drawer.   We were very thankful for the time and opportunity to re-discover new passions and hobbies. Some, were discovered with each other, and some on our own. Increasingly though, I felt the need to reclaim my personal space. I believe, in many ways, David felt the need to reclaim his as well.   The great thing about marrying my BFF was that besides finishing each other's sentences and pushing each other up the steep and rocky hills of life, we knew when to give each other space, and when to share our respective spaces from time to time.

In recent years, I  pursued a more spiritual lifestyle of practicing yoga and daily meditations whilst running a wee metaphysical business on the side called Sun Goddess Tarot.  David pursued his passion of rock music and photography more ardently than ever, whilst running a wee photography business on the side called Singapore Maven Photography.  For a while,  I felt that there was plenty of space within which we could indulge in  our individual creative self expression.  At the same time, when we were called by clients to "do our thing" at events together, we had so much fun.  This was truly bliss.

Sharing My Space

When I saw the photo posted by David on Facebook, I made an attempt to recollect the times we participated proactively in each other's passions without invading each other's personal space.  These thoughts slowly came back to me, and warmed my heart like a cup of hot chocolate with marshmallows on a rainy night.  I would like to share them here:

1) I often jokingly called David my "unicorn guardian", to which he would retort, " Shhh! You cannot go around calling me that. What if the rugby guys heard it?" You see, because I had been pursuing a spiritual life tapping into my intuitive abilities to help my clients, I had exposed myself to a lot of negative energy that drained me constantly.  David protected me from these by encouraging me to get out more to feel the grass beneath my feet so that I could ground myself better.  He sometimes even drove me, before sunrise, to the beach to meditate to the sounds of the wave as the sun was rising.  He knew I was often hardened by my ego and worried about what people thought of my "woo-woo" crazy ways.   So he might join me from time to time, to feel the grass beneath his feet too.   He was in my space.  And I needed him there for a purpose.

2) I sometimes joined him at his gigs when he jammed with friends.  During those moments, I could see that I was but the second wife.  His first wife was his guitar. He held and cradled it with so much love and played it like a teasing Don Juan. He often had that intense look about him when he was playing with the band.  However, I also caught him beaming from ear to ear when I was there, sharing his space.  This was because I had a purpose.  I clapped the loudest.  I whistled loudly when he played some of my favourite songs.  I hopped around the band like a rabid hare with my camera, taking lots of photographs, so that I could proudly post them up on Facebook and Twitter.  I enjoyed being in his space.

3) This afternoon when we visited Mum and Dad, and had lunch with them.  David gave me space to be that 12 year old again, chomping noisily on my favourite food that Mum had lovingly cooked.  Occasionally he would look at me in horror but dismissed it 5 minutes later when I exposed the Singaporean in me by talking and laughing loudly while my mouth was full of food just because I was happiest when Mum cooked my favourite food for me.  He gave me my space to enjoy that semblance of childhood while I was at Mum and Dad's.  

4) Funny enough, this afternoon while visiting Mum and Dad, I had given David space to do what he enjoyed doing - tinkering with Mum's laptop.  He helped her run the virus scan, cleared her email folders and updated her software.  At the same time to my delight, I overheard a conversation between them which went like this.

Mum: Quick.  You search internet. Please compare different washing machine brands that I wish to buy.

David: Ok, this brand here costs only $499. Very good. It has 1 tick against the list of features.

Mum: No, no. I need one with 3 ticks. Must have 3 ticks!

David: Ok, this other brand costs $505.  It has 3 ticks. I sent you link.

I loved that conversation because I gave my very Scottish husband time and space to bond with my very Chinese mother.  That was a special space.  I left them to it because I would not want to invade their space as they created a Mother-in-law-Son-in-law bond that transcended cultural, ethnic and racial barriers.

Do I need to reclaim my space? I think not.  I know when to share it and when to own it.

About the writer:

The writer of this blog post is a 44 year old mother of one, who spreads her time between her day job as a marketing professional at a financial institution, her hobby as a certified professional tarot reader and numerologist, and her family which includes a 20 year old son and 3 dogs with personality disorders.  She's married to a Scot who has been affectionately called "The Crazy AngMo" and prays that he does not find out that the term when translated, has labeled him as a "Ginger Head".   Together, we create a home made up with more nuts than a fruitcake but filled with plenty of love.

His vs Hers

David attempting to be at one with nature

Notice the intense look in David's face when the guitar is in his hands?

David in his element when he jams with the band

That's me doing one of my daily sun salutations in Bali