Monthly Archives: July 2026

Quiet Listening

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Yesterday was one of those days. One part chaos, one part overwhelm, and before I knew it, frustration gave way to deep sadness. My tarot reading reflected a sense of heaviness before my day even began. I reached for a deck I haven’t worked with in quite some time, one I usually reserve for the autumn season, yet yesterday morning she seemed to call to me. After sitting with the reading for a few minutes, its message became clearer yet I still had a hard time embracing it. She’s an honest deck, one that doesn’t soften the truth, and perhaps I wasn’t quite prepared for what she had to say.

In any case, I moved through the day as usual — morning coffee, quiet ritual, and then the arduous process of setting up my sound equipment to record another mini sound journey for social media. Well… let’s just say things unraveled from there.

After hours of troubleshooting, I think I’ve identified at least part of the problem. I may need a higher quality condenser microphone, along with a much better understanding of audio mixing. The microphone I purchased, after much research and deliberation, is at best mid-range. My sound therapy mentor recommended a far more expensive model, one I probably should have waited and saved for. I finally got everything connected correctly, hit record, cautiously optimistic, and when I played the finished recording back… it sounded awful.

When I record, I have to wear headphones because no sound comes through the speakers directly during the recording process. Through the headphones, everything sounds one way. But once I export the recording as an MP3, it’s a completely different story — louder, filled with static in the background, and completely unlistenable. That the sound itself was louder, however, meant the microphone wasn’t necessarily the problem. More likely, it’s my lack of knowledge around audio mixing.

Ugh. I had convinced myself this would be easy because I’d produced a podcast years ago. Then I remembered something I’d conveniently forgotten — editing those episodes was painstaking work. This is more difficult than producing a podcast by far with my singing bowls strewn all over my tiny space floor and barely enough room to walk without knocking one over!

By late afternoon, I decided to call it quits. Every one of my 18 singing bowls, both crystal and Tibetan, had found its way onto the floor. I tiptoed carefully through my tiny space, mindful not to knock one over. A couple of months ago, I accidentally chipped one of my clear crystal bowls after clipping it as I stood up from the couch! Ouch, the whole set was a major investment.

Instead, I surrendered. I snuck into bed and took a long afternoon nap, something highly uncharacteristic for me. My body had been talking all day. I had simply been too distracted to listen. It wasn’t asking me to solve another damn problem. It was asking for rest.

I’m trying, with great difficulty, to slow down every day. To listen to my body. To trust my intuition. To spend less and less time on social media and to loosen the grip of pressure and expectation that the world seems to demand. It’s a daily practice. Some days it feels nearly impossible.

When I turn inward, I realize that I’m still deeply fatigued. Even small amounts of stress pull me back into the nervous system dysregulation that has shaped so much of my life. How can I invite others into rest if I haven’t fully embraced it myself? There’s no way around that truth. I must first tend to myself.

Yet I still can’t seem to escape the feeling of living inside a pressure cooker. The world is simply too loud. Notifications. Expectations. Constant urgency. Even my new neighbor’s child (one of three), whose daily tantrums spill through the walls, has become another reminder of how desperately I long for quiet.

I can’t escape the world around me. But I can control how I choose to connect with it. I’m still learning new ways to pause, be still, listen deeply, and be at peace with not accomplishing everything I think I should. For years, it’s felt like I’ve carried the weight of the world on my shoulders. These days, I’m seeking something radically different — more quiet, less noise, and the simple practice of being.

It’s a daily commitment, one I fall short of with some frequency. Perhaps that’s the practice.

May your day hold a little less noise, a little more joy, and moments of harmony that remind you to listen inward.

Photo by Kinga Howard on Unsplash

Summertime

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What is it about summertime that takes me back to my youth?

The older I get, the more aware I become that there are fewer summers ahead than behind me. There’s a Portuguese word for this feeling: saudade. It describes a deep, melancholic longing for a person, a place, or even a version of yourself that is gone and may never return. It’s the bittersweet ache of being grateful the past existed while quietly mourning that it’s gone.

I can actually feel the word saudade. It’s a sensation that settles somewhere between my heart, my throat, and my belly.

There’s also senescence, but hell, saudade sounds a whole lot sexier 🤣

Summers were uncomfortably hot in the South. I grew up in Bossier City, Louisiana, where heat, humidity, mosquitos, and very large bugs were part of life. Yes, we had a bug zapper hanging from the metal canopy over our backyard patio.

I remember lying on the front lawn during my childhood, staring into an endless blue sky, picking dandelions just to blow their fluffy seeds into the wind. Every once in a while, I’d wander to the ditch behind our neighborhood, catching minnows, crawdads, and toads, all the while hoping my parents didn’t catch me; they strictly forbid going anywhere near the ditch.

Yep. That was childhood in Louisiana.

Summers were also for swimming, of course. I lived in a two-piece 😂 My parents had a pool built in our backyard, and the anticipation of finally being able to jump in felt like waiting for Christmas morning.

Ironically, once it was filled with water, I was terrified to jump in. I clung to the side of the pool until my mom enrolled me in swimming lessons at the local YMCA. How I hated those lessons. Swimming lap after lap felt like torture.

I became a strong swimmer though. You couldn’t keep me out of the water after that. There were countless afternoons and pool parties with my girlfriends, our skin glistening with baby oil as we stretched out in the blazing Louisiana sun for hours. Back then, a tan was the goal. We had no idea we were collecting the sun damage we’d spend decades trying to undo.

Music has always been like a time capsule.

This morning I was listening to Fantasy by Aldo Nova. Some of you may be too young to know who he is, but hearing that song immediately transported me back to my youth. I have a classic rock soul, though I love other genres of music. (Country is probably my least favorite… although I did have a country music phase in the mid-2000s!)

There are a few artists who never fail to stir memories like Blue Öyster Cult, Red Rider, Robert Plant, The Police, Fleetwood Mac, Scorpions, Duran Duran, Adam Ant, Blondie, AC/DC, Night Ranger, Def Leppard, Van Halen, Styx, Eagles, Journey, Rush, Heart, April Wine, and Foreigner. I’m sure I’m forgetting a few, but you get the idea.

Certain songs are like time machines, carrying me back to who I was, where I was, and how I felt. My first heartbreak. Summertime freedom. The quiet, rebellious part of me that wouldn’t fully emerge until years later, after I stopped trying so hard to fit in. I was fortunate to grow up surrounded by unforgettable music, and those songs are like old friends whenever they find their way back to me.

I think certain songs mysteriously call out, wanting to be listened and paid attention to. Perhaps it’s my guides. Perhaps it’s my own intuition gently reminding me to sit with this feeling of saudade. To embrace getting older instead of resisting it.

I’ve lived a life filled with brilliant moments and profoundly painful ones, as we all have. And there’s still a part of me trying to make sense of it all, searching for meaning in the moments that hurt the most.

Until then, I’ll keep listening to the music that nourishes my heart and soul.

I hope you do the same.

Rock on🤘

Taiwanese American Memoir Book Club Q&A

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Howdy, folks!

It’s getting steamy here in Southern California. I’m already longing for those cool, crisp autumn days, though “fall” and “winter” here are generally very mild.

Lately, I’ve been immersed in launching my sound therapy and private psychotherapy practice, surrounded by singing bowls, drums, my keyboard, and guitar as I prepare to share more music and sound videos. What I didn’t anticipate was how much audio engineering would become part of the journey! The microphone I purchased barely picks up my Tibetan singing bowls, my ring light decided to call it quits, and I’m still trying to determine whether the culprit is the microphone itself or the M-Audio interface and phantom power. It’s been equal parts frustrating and humbling, and the learning curve has been much steeper than expected. Still, I remind myself that I’m slowly making progress.

In the midst of all this learning, something unexpected happened. I was invited to the Taiwanese American Memoir Book Club for a Q&A about my memoir, Beyond Two Worlds: A Taiwanese-American Adoptee’s Memoir & Search for Identity. I hadn’t spoken publicly about the book in quite some time, and I assumed it would simply be an opportunity to revisit a chapter of my past. Instead, the evening became something more. It reminded me that while I’m building something entirely new, I’m also carrying forward parts of myself that have quietly shaped this next chapter all along.

It’s hard to believe that nine years have passed since my memoir was published, and fourteen years since I stood in Taipei and met my birth family for the first time. So much has happened since then, especially over the past three years. Sometimes I wonder what that earlier version of myself would think about how far we’ve come. I think she’d be pleasantly surprised and proud.

One of the first questions I received was, have I gone back to see my family in Taiwan. It was almost embarassing to reveal that I have not. I did not want to share personal details why; I did not anticipate that I would not return for so long. My marriage had much to do with my inability to return; however, last year, post-divorce, I planned to take a trip to Taipei during the Lunar New Year. Chronic exhaustion prevented me from so doing. It was a disappointment to my family as well as to myself. Returning to work after such a trip, as amazing as it would have been, would have caused further exhaustion, and I did not want to increase the symptoms of burnout. Sometimes the heart is ready before the body is.

I was genuinely grateful for how kind the book club participants were. There were other thoughtful questions, some I had difficulty answering. One that I fumbled over included how my daughter has developed her own cultural sense of identity. It made me reflect on how disconnected I was from my own cultural identity for much of my life. Inevitably, that shaped the way her father and I introduced our daughter to her multicultural heritage. My hope is that one day she will be curious and take a greater interest in celebrating her multicultural ancestry. It took decades for me to embrace my own birth heritage and only after finding my “secret” adoption contract. Thereafter, I was insanely curious and longed to learn as much as I possibly could about Taiwan and my ancestry.

As the years passed, I slowly drifted from my Taiwanese roots. Career demands, everyday responsibilities, and for many years, simply surviving took center stage. I never really found a Taiwanese community here in Southern California, and somewhere along the way that part of myself became quieter.

At the end of the Q&A, I realized that the invitation hadn’t simply brought me back to my memoir. It brought me back to a part of myself I’d allowed to become dormant. Perhaps that is where all new chapters start, not by becoming someone different, but by listening for the parts of ourselves that have been waiting to be heard. Somewhere in that quiet, I suspect another book is longing to find its voice.

Perhaps this invitation wasn’t simply an opportunity to revisit my memoir. Perhaps it was Taiwan calling me home again. This time, I’m listening.