Mindspace

Palm Springs Visit

Here at Palm Springs on an impromptu trip with my parents. It's beautiful. The Marriot Palm Desert Villas are set on artificially constructed rolling hills, against the desert sky of stars twinkling against the heat. We wake up to ducks at our doors steps and 2 ponds in our backyard. The kids have a ball feeding them with bread and crumbs. Aidan wanders around the grounds as we can see him from our window. The kids are at such the perfect age to appreciate this.

Aidan is running around in circle going "It's beautiful! " Nally is enamored with everything from everything from crickets, to ducks to making wreaths out of vine.
We wake up to the desert sun against the palm trees and rolling putting green quality grass.
After 4 trips to Phuket and a couple of exchanges to Newport Beach --- we finally feel the gratitude of buying a time share.
It's always an ordeal to run away and we would never intentionally have chosen this place for ourselves. But having traded this place months ago, just because it was available, presented us with another option to run away for future Christmases.

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We spent a day taking the tram to the San Jacinto State Park. In 10 minutes, we are up 8500 feet in the mountains with a feet of snow. The kids are ecstatic -- snowballing and sledding; running in from the cold. We are tickled to have the biting winter air against us just hours away from basking in Desert sun.
It was the perfect amount of snow for me. Just enough for the season, just enough to feel Christmasy, just enough for the kids to throw snowballs and just enough for us to come running into the warmth.

The Chias and Chois are grateful for the "enforced rest", me less mindful than my retreats. i notice myself less precccupied with the kids, less mindful of their activities, trusting that they will find solace for their bordom and hours. Tomorrow is our last morning here, perhaps i will finally sit outside the porch and drink in His beauty, sipping coffee and reading the Psalms.

Miffed in Palm Springs

Big clash last night God, and i am almost thrilled at how it sours the whole evening. I don't think he understands, just how self-mutilative i can be. A true ragaholic, i have no qualms about how much i destroy and how much goes down in flames.
These days, i am so struck by the very lack of core that a ragaholic possesses. It's not unlike any addict. Beneath all that rage, there is nothing, no-one worth fighting for. Hence, there really isn't any argument about how much our own destructive behavior hurts us. There isn't anyone to hurt in here. Just lots of people OUT THERE.
Last night, empowered by the presence of my parents, my husband got to be as vocal as he ever was. i got to experience, the joy the sheer joy of being on the other end of illogical rage. Wow, that is what it's like for someone to act completely out of line, have 2 people witness it and me have nothing to do with it. He ranted and raved like a little spoilt child, and then went against everything he blamed me for, and my mother sighed at the sheer illogic of it. Even my parents "punished" him with 30 minutes of silence -- he was completely out of line and i disappeared into a book while he can soak into his non-ra-rahness. It felt good to have an environment that is finally congruent. In his family, someone would change the subject and then everyone would act like nothing is wrong.
But this morning, some part of me is trying to love myself, even if all of me wants to set him in flames. That my kids, my parents, this trip deserves better. That even with 3 bottles of wine, his crazy sleeping habits, and watching my parents bicker, this has to be a trip worth taking for me.
To enjoy the kids and the surroundings, as if there was no one here at all. Just me, just the warm sun and the beautiful trees. Lots to be grateful for: a dissociative husband who is willing to lose himself in the kids -- more time for me. A cuddly college bear, who is providing all the endorphin highs i need when pressing his hard nose against my fingernails, lots of food.
I'm definitely realizing the anesthetic quality of my Kindle, that if i wake up in the middle of the night, and i can't sleep the backlit quality of the Kindle, the grounding texts of my favorite authors, they do the perfect job Melatonin is suppose to do.
Yesterday, i found out that if i drowned myself in a book -- everything around me melts away. i am lost in Pema Chodron, Brene Brown and the others.

Grandparents visit

Guilt

Today i will realize that i will always struggle with the guilt of being a bad mother. That i am struggling against generations of perfectionism and result-orientedness. That historically, we have only affirmed and recognized performance and results instead of beings and wisdom.
Because of that i will be gentle with myself during these times of guilt. i will not listen to the voice that says i am a bad mother. i will trust that has a path of success and reward that has some but not all to do with me. That if i instill character, i can guarentee times and life choices that happen in spaces and times i don't exist. If i instill results, i can only guarentee ( and not even ) only instances where i am present.

Preface

This book came about from my wrestlings as a born and bred Singaporean which makes for a bona fide Tiger Mom of the most potent breed because in a country with 2.5 billion people on _____ sq feet there is really only room for one animal. As a therapist, in my own therapy and people ask me about my dysfunctional family, i tell them it's more like i had a dysfunctional country.
i fled and found psychological asylum in the USA, said f-you to cambridge all my Oxford educated professors and proceeded to acquire like clockwork 2 BAs and 2 MAs before i finally landed in a calling quite by accident and purely again in the only way i get anything done -- in sheer drunken reactivity.
This book is written in the throes of mornings when i wake up with a full blown panic attack about worrying if i am ruining my children because i resigned being a TIger Mom. This verifies the fact that in spite of my yearly declawing and a repeated de-voicing and i am still every inch my country's daughter.
This book is a compilations of meditations that i had choked out of full blown panic attacks wondering for the 100th time what exactly are the navigational spaces i am raising my children.
i know what i don't want, but every inch of my body screams of the principles that chant in my head. Most days i struggle with shame and enormous amounts of guilt.
But i know being a psychotherapist now, what really matters and the consequences of being raised inside that cage.