in a season of having and being enough, despite -

these days i've been thinking about my youth a lot. i think of the blackened sky and the cool morning mist against my skin as i climbed into the back of my mum's altis, vague memories of oldies playing in the background and being awoken at the petrol station outside sji en route to anderson road, where i knew i could look forward to a mini bottle of sunkist's apple juice with aloe vera bits as a little "pick me up" before classes started. i think of fourteen year old me with such a fanatic crush on my chemistry teacher it actually made me seriously question my sexuality. or fifteen year old me with a trauma of handing in blank math papers while feeling like the biggest academic loser in the world. i think of digging into my favourite tom yum chicken noodles from haw's kitchen with princesses and our quarterly post-exam tradition of having a well-deserved, fancy lunch followed by the movies, or drinking koi at the windy benches while wearing our faux leather friendship bands that each sported a similar anchor-shaped embellishment made out of cheap metal. i think of the disappointment i felt when i finally got to work at kinokuniya as a cashier and realised that no one there actually loved to read, except for the store director with the same name as my father. i still remember the sinking feeling in my heart on bus 89 on the way back from yet another monotonous shift at a frozen yoghurt shop, as i read about friends and acquaintances getting into my dream liberal arts college on social media (while i was being relegated to the waitlist). i think of the alienation i felt when i finally shifted into my dream college and abruptly realised that i was going to have to find a new "home" in a completely new environment that had seemed all too overwhelmingly artificial and high-achieving. i think of the numbing brokenness i felt from getting my heart trifled with again and again - the unfounded jitters, the suite parties, the chilly night walks past midnight etc. 

i think of this song in particular:

 

it was either the tail end of 2015 or the beginning of 2016. i remember being on a cruise deck drinking a cocktail with my mum when a live band started playing this song. we were talking about my poor love life from being consistently attracted to the same type of boys who were undeniably attractive but always lacked the courage to commit. she said something along the lines of "imagine dancing to this song with your future husband and putting your arms around him while you sway to this on the dance floor...how nice would that be?" 

we both paused and imagined it together. it has stuck with me ever since. 

a few days ago, m and i were talking about how we spent our twenties. his twenties are over, but i'm a few years shy of finishing mine. 

"do you regret any point of your twenties so far?" he asked.

i thought about it -

"no... i'm actually so proud of how i've spent my defining decade so far. i think i've accomplished everything i wanted to accomplish thus far. i don't think i regret any part of it. i truly don't." 

baby n is the reason why i've been reflecting on my youth a lot more. thinking of her makes me think of the relentless 5.45am mornings my mum had to go through in order to send us to schools so far away from where we lived, and all the other sacrifices my parents made for me while i was growing up. i think of the brokenness i felt as a lost teenager and adolescent, and i hope with all of my heart that she will not have to experience that desolate feeling of being left behind by the world. i think of all the boys who may eventually break her heart and hope that she will have enough self love to know her worth and stand her ground. i think of how we can teach her emotional resilience, so that she will be able to overcome any failures and challenges that life will throw at her. i think about the friends that she will make - will she be able to find her people too? i think about how lucky i am to love and be loved - that i have someone i wholly trust, someone whom i can finally dance to journey's open arms with together. i think about the life we've embarked on since our first date and how incredibly blessed we are to have this little human being who makes our little family even more complete. i think about how it's been a long while since i'd felt that dull ache of loneliness from wondering if i'd ever find love. i constantly think about the truest and most beautiful story of my life that i've been working towards manifesting, working with God in tow and not in retrospect. 

i recently found out one of my favourite feelings in the world is hugging baby n close as she snoozes on my chest in a baby carrier. there is just something so pure about feeling her bodily warmth envelope my every being that grounds me so immovably. she feels like this little peanut i want to protect at all costs whenever she nuzzles into my chest for comfort, making me feel like the luckiest person in the world that we get to call her ours. 

this season is God's biggest blessing in disguise, and i try very hard to remember how lucky i am to be where i am - particularly when i feel discouraged about the shrivelled job market from a prolonged tech winter. there are always two sides to a coin, and i choose to see this season as an opportunity to rewrite my career narrative once again, even as i emerge from the duality of juggling motherhood alongside my multi-faceted identity as a career-oriented individual and daughter of the most High. despite how ambiguous being in this limbo feels, i am exactly where i want and need to be. i am at the very cusp of change, and where i go next will be the stepping stone towards defining the next chapter of my life's narrative. God has always only opened one clear door for me, and that door has always been the best door for me. i truly believe it will be no different this time. 

i also recently found out that mental resilience is one of my strengths. it's strange bc i've never really thought of myself as a resilient person, but apparently - according to the person who knows me best (next to myself), he says that i am. we were in the trenches together when we found out about the miscarriage. we were in the trenches together again the day baby n was born - when we found out that she had torn a hole in my rectum (it was a 0.01% incidence) while being yanked out unceremoniously with a pair of forceps. it was absolute chaos - as a delayed side effect, i was throwing up uncontrollably while the oxygen machine periodically beeped in the background signalling baby n's oxygen levels were unstable from her distress. m watched on helplessly as i was wheeled into emergency surgery soon after the delivery (it was in the wee hours of the morning). i laugh when i think back to how my mum kept stressing the importance of "skin-to-skin" contact with the baby just before we checked into the hospital 24 hours earlier to induce the delivery at 40 weeks ("skin-to-skin" was clearly the last thing on our minds and i only got to hold baby n for the first time the next morning after waking up from that episode). we were talking about the future a few years down the road, if and when we're blessed enough to have baby number two - "us and pregnancy don't really seem to get along very well...i'm surprised what we went through doesn't deter you from wanting more children. you actually bounced back really quickly." he is right - somehow i am not horribly averse to the idea of going through this all over again. interestingly, i feel that the scars from my formative years of growing up haunt me much more than the trials i've been through as an adult - and it could very well be bc having someone steadfast to hold my hand and journey through the hard times with me makes dealing with everything so much easier. we just celebrated the end of his master's exam and our second marriage anniversary a few days ago. time passes with blatant disregard for anything and anyone: what had seemed insurmountable (i.e. waiting on God's timing in the sheer ambiguity of not knowing how my career and his residency would line up together perfectly with having a child; going through a full-term pregnancy while working and preparing for the arrival of our baby as he laboured through the final year of his residency; struggling through the arduous newborn phase of being first-time parents, all while he juggled studying after work for one of the most challenging exams of his life) have all come to pass. on paper, everything sounds almost impossible to bear. in reality, we bore everything so incredibly well - all bc of God's grace and how we made it so much easier doing the difficult things in life together.  

i listen to the tunes of my youth a lot, particularly those tunes i played on repeat during my college days. i listen to them often partly bc they bring back a flood of nostalgia for those archived times that now seem so imperfectly perfect through rose-tinted lenses. but a huge reason why i still listen to them on repeat nowadays is bc they remind me of who i was and how i had felt then while in the thick of experiencing growing pains. now, they serve as little celebratory hymns of victory reminding me of how far i have come and will continue to go. 

preliminary thoughts on motherhood

it has been slightly over a month since n's existence here on earth. time is a curious thing - while i was counting down the days to her due date, i could not - for the life of me, envisage how it would be like to push out a human being who had been growing inside of me for the past nine months. childbirth itself terrified me. and now that momentous event has already come and gone. walking out of the hospital with tiny baby n wrapped tightly in my arms felt as if christmas came early. it was our first victory together as a unit of three. even looking at her now feels surreal. i cannot fathom that she is the same person who had been doing little submarines and windshield wipes in my belly - that the little fist which had surfaced to greet us from within the womb is actually the same fist which lobs us impatiently for milk now. 

motherhood feels slightly different from what i had imagined in my head. i am currently writing this with a glass of white wine in hand, soaking in charlie lim's orgasmic voice in my ears (to me, his tunes scream of high school nostalgia) and keeping an eye on our sweet little angel chilling on the couch beside me. it almost feels like the old days. such days are rare, but in times like these i feel like myself again. unlike career-planning, parenthood is too complex and variable to make up five-year plans in advance. instead, we are tackling it by breaking it down into phases: phase one was our twenty-eight day confinement nanny phase, marked by wound healing, recuperation, dealing with the onslaught of new motherhood challenges (i.e. three-hourly pumps and dealing with the pain of breastfeeding attempts) and getting used to a new household dynamic of living with three additional human beings. from phase one we graduated into phase two - a life without a confinement nanny but with our relatively new helper and m still at home with me for a week. now we are currently in phase three - adjusting to a new normal with just our helper and i at home during the day. and i think we have been doing pretty well so far. i do miss not having the house to ourselves, but it has been such a worthwhile trade-off to have that extra pair of hands whose full-time job is to share our load with us. we are still not sure how things will pan out in phase four (when i eventually return to the workforce). but we're just tackling one phase at one time, at least until m is done with his exams at the end of this year. i am just thankful that god has provided so richly thus far, in the form of the people and community that He has placed in our lives.

but beyond the logistics of coping with this new normal, motherhood is also about the intangible adjustments towards this paradigm shift: dealing with an altered and battered body that has been through and continues to go through so much; displacement of hormones resulting in unpredictable mood swings; the inevitable mum guilt and pigeon-holed narratives of self-worth defined by milk production and how much one is willing to sacrifice for one's baby. to a large extent, motherhood has felt reductive: i am enslaved to the pump every two hours, counting down the hours to my day shifts alone with baby n, dreading waking up during the wee hours of the morning just to pump again. the day resets but my tasks remain the same. i feel like a shadow of my former self - almost as if those days of driving customer conversations, pantry coffee chats and putting on my "chief-of-staff" hat are so buried in the past now. motherhood surprises me bc i had heard so many platitudes about how it would be like - statements such as "you never know you can love anyone so much until you have children"; "give yourself some time, you may not even want to go back to work"; "breastfeeding is difficult but it's one of the best things of being a mother" or "when you have your own children, you'll want to give him or her the world" etc, but none of them truly resonate with me. when i gazed into baby n's eyes for the first time, i felt a huge sense of relief and gratitude, but that overwhelming flood of love i was expecting never came (it actually felt strange to have this tiny human being presented before me as my child, and i almost had to manufacture the feelings of love by telling myself that i loved her). being her sole care-giver in the two/three hour blocks during the day (while the helper is resting from taking on the night shifts on our behalf) makes me feel i will most definitely go crazy if i were to do this full-time, without help. i also made the decision to stop latching her one & a half months in bc it was painful, difficult and an inefficient use of both of our time. she is so important to me, but i do not want to make her my world - i still want to be known for who i am and what i can do in this world, outside of being just her mother. i will not trade her for anything, but she came at a cost and i still look upon my new body - the same unimaginably resilient body which grew her from a mustard seed, brought her to term and even continue to produce milk for her, and struggle to find the new me in the mirror (with a hanging mommy pooch and stretch marks peeking from beneath my shorts) attractive. i read somewhere that stretch marks are how love writes on our skin. i am still in the process of appreciating and being patient with my body which i do not give enough credit for. 

before n was born, i wrote a letter to myself so that i could encourage the denise of the future, which is denise of the present moment: 

"in this upcoming season, i hope you will continue to love and affirm yourself regardless of however you feel. just like how the boys who didn't reciprocate your feelings in college days didn't define your beauty and worth, so does not being able to breastfeed or give everything up for beanie define how good you are as a mother and as a person. i hope you'll continue to keep your identity separate - you are multi-faceted: you are first denise - your own individual, before you are beanie's mother. you can be both, in the same way you can fulfil your life dream of being both a young mother and a career woman...by the time you revisit this, you'll probably have gone through the unthinkable feat of pushing this human bean out. you are a champion and i hope that you'll continue to be kind to yourself. you've already done enough. you are enough."

if motherhood were ever a graded assignment, i feel i'll be a mother in the lower percentile rungs for not wanting to sacrifice so much for my child. but tonight, in spite of everything - i think i am doing pretty well. i have already done enough. i am enough. 

what i'll miss about this transitory season

there are moments which you only miss after they pass you by, but there are also moments which you know you'll miss even as they are passing you by. 

i feel the latter so strongly on this quiet night: drake & post malone in the background, sparkling ribena in a wine glass by my bedside as a poor substitute, eagerly awaiting a new jo malone scent i'd just ordered online to mark this new, transitory season from womanhood into impending motherhood. being alone with my thoughts and feeling like myself again despite the burgeoning belly. counting my blessings that He has so wonderfully stitched together the desires of my heart in the wildest manner - turning the mess of this extensive massacre in tech into a personal testimony and enabling me to focus on cultivating one season at a time (where i'm headed for next in my career is still unknown and the unknown is always unsettling for someone like me who loves clarity, but by God's providence i can afford to park that discovery until next year when i'm ready to start thinking about career once again). 

what will i miss? 

i'll miss the stillness of being in our nest exclusive to just the both of us - m & me. i'll miss feeling you doing a little submarine dance inside my belly - squirming and doing little punches to remind me of mealtimes whenever you get hungry (and my body responding by assaulting me with ravenous hunger - the kind of hunger that makes me get up at 5am to make pancakes !!!). i'll miss sleeping in and waking up to the prospect of being able to have a leisurely breakfast as well as a clear schedule ahead of me. i'll miss m snuggling up to my belly and calling your name. i'll miss both the freedom and mobility of being able to go for shopping/tea dates with mumsie at whim, or being able to freely grab lunch with friends/former colleagues. i'll miss wind-down, uninterrupted drama nights with m in the comfort of our bedroom. i'll miss being able to take naps throughout the day and being the most well-rested i've ever been. 

i've gotten so comfortable with this season - it feels nice to feel in control but i'm cognisant that we've also finally arrived at the last stretch of this marathon. i imagine what awaits us at the finish line of this race will be sheer havoc and a whirlwind of emotions - from postpartum blues to inexplicable joy to mental breakdowns from the lack of sleep. but it is also a necessary rite of passage and one that we've actively chosen. above all, it is the passage that allows us to finally meet you - an inch towards manifesting the truest and most beautiful story of my life using the language of imagination. 

pupa

here i am: 

me in the present moment -

taking it all in as i stand at the cusp

of a new and foreign season ahead.

i am where i want to be,

but still - it remains difficult to reconcile

conceptually ready me with the present me,

who feels as if i'm an outsider looking in. 

in this transitory season,

i feel i am in limbo - 

cocooned in a chrysalis. 

days past an unfettered version of my youth,

days awaiting a cardinal transformation

of my identity unlike any other i've hitherto known.

i struggle to remember how life was before this,

but i also struggle to envisage how life will be after this. 

and so

i just straddle the in-between,

trying to embrace this current season of stillness -

stillness before the whirlwind of all that is to come.

hands pressed against my ballooning abdomen

counting flutters and kicks 

emanating from the inside,

the most tangible reminder that 

everything is poised to change: 

the three month countdown has already begun

until we finally get to meet

you.  

(i can't wait to find out how you'll look like, our little beanie)

by His grace and His grace alone

19th feb 2023: today marks the day of my public declaration of faith & commitment to Him who is omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent - Him who makes my cup overflow irrespective of circumstances. 

this is a copy of my baptism testimony which i read out to an audience of approximately eighty+ people today - sharing it again in hopes that it encourages someone else here who has not heard it: 

    "i accepted Christ in 2011, but by 2016 the novelty of a transformative, conversion prayer had worn off. old friends who knew sophomore year me in 2016 would describe me with the following adjectives: “bold” and “unfettered”. i was extremely purpose-driven - but my purpose was entirely of the world. my main goals were to (1) explore all plausible, desirable partner options within my tiny college population to get out of single-hood and (2) to bolster my resume with extracurricular activities for what I termed as a “big-fish” internship in junior year. on the outside, i looked like i had my act completely together. friends were applauding me for being “mulan”-esque and a complete “go-getter” for boldly going after both of these things. 

but on the inside, i was like scattered sand. i had pushed God to the peripheries because thinking of Him was inconvenient for what i had wanted to achieve in life. inside, i was suffused with a choking bout of numbness i couldn’t quite shake off. as i wrapped my arms around myself and rocked myself to sleep on bad nights, i thought about how nice it would be to have someone physical to hold me. i didn’t want to think of God - my omni-potent and loving Father-in-Heaven, whom i knew (in my head, yes - but not my heart) had the ability to satisfy even the thirstiest of hearts. how could i, when touch was my love language, but i could not touch and be touched by someone who lives in the heavens, the stars, the seas - whose omni-presence was more than i could bear, whose boundlessness i couldn’t kiss nor tangibly feel? and so i lost myself to the shadows of chasing after things i knew wouldn’t satisfy, after sinful pursuits in the name of personal growth, after fallible people like myself, and got disappointed again and again by prospective love interests who couldn’t commit, who didn’t seek after my heart as fervently as i had romantised in my head. i only prayed for the want of things, not for the want of Christ Himself. 

    matthew 6:33: “but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” 

    and one day, i broke. by the end of the year, i had gotten so emotionally spent from chasing after all these worldly things which didn’t satisfy that i literally felt i had a gaping hole in my heart. as the new year fireworks erupted at the close of 2016, i told God that life without Him always seemed better until it became emotionally tiring and utterly empty, and pledged that i wanted to do things together with Him and not in retrospect anymore. in that moment, i pivoted my heart: i was going to seek Him as the End Desire Himself, and no longer as a means to things which i desired. 

    there is so much joy in knowing that one is finally walking right with God. being anchored in Christ means that i no longer have to resort to sinful pursuits to fill me and make me feel whole, because i am already whole and made complete by Him and His work on the cross. putting my trust in Christ means that my cup will always overflow irrespective of circumstances - because He is the abundant fountain of Love who truly satisfies. there is so much freedom in knowing that in our hearts we plan our course, but it is God who establishes our steps. there is so much comfort in knowing that whatever door He opens no one can shut, and whatever door He shuts, no one can open. my purpose in life now is to glorify Him in whichever secular spaces He has placed me in: to be set apart so that people around me might wonder what my secret-sauce is, and come to their own realisation that it is God behind the works. 

    and just to complete the loop: two months after i told God i would pursue Him and Him alone, God placed the love of my life in my path. we are currently married and expecting a new addition to our beautiful family this year." 

it still feels surreal that i finally (after years of sitting on this decision) bit the bullet and did it, but my heart is so, so full - i am so blessed to have had m, both families and even friends from our community group show up and bear witness to this special personal declaration of faith. today also marks the next step of being officially incorporated into the body of christ which m & i both resonate with. i am so thankful that we made that decision to take the first step towards anchoring ourselves in a new church community we can confidently call our own about a year ago. it has been so fulfilling thus far to be able to do life in a way we know honours Him and sets a good foundation for our marriage. 

2022 - a season of sowing

2022 was the year of honing in on writing the truest, most beautiful story of my life that i can imagine. if i had to characterise it as a cliché: it was truly the season of sowing the seed in anticipation of reaping bountifully in a future harvest. 

the six month countdown to what will be the largest personal growth journey of my life begins today. i don't think i have fully processed what it will mean and how that event will alter our family dynamics forever. all i can say is that i put my trust in You - holding fast to Your promise that no one, thing or circumstance will be able to shut this door that You have chosen to open for us, as long as it is part of Your glorious will. 

in writing this narrative of my life over the past year i had to wrestle with both loss and coming to terms with my latent inner demons which i never knew were buried so deep within me. losing something which was almost life itself was both numbing and sobering - and perhaps a part of me has not fully healed from that episode, which continues to manifest itself in occasional thoughts of "what ifs" to shake my confidence in god (waiting and being able to do absolutely nothing is the hardest bc it requires faith in its purest essence). i also finally figured out why i had made an idol of my own life goal and set arbitrary timelines for myself - timelines which i used as key markers of success or failure to either affirm or beat myself up as i saw fit. i figured out why i tended to overcompensate - i needed to be my own trailblazer to define what success looked like for me because teenage me had been broken by the world leaving her behind. but there is a silver lining in every brooding cloud - in those dim moments i saw and experienced the love of family and the beauty of marriage.

marriage. 2022 was our first year of being married, which m had to remind me is an achievement in itself. we were just reflecting on how 2022 felt like it flew by and a large part can be attributed to how much fun we had in the past year doing life together. i am convinced that marrying the right person for oneself is one of the most important life decisions one will ever have to make, just bc one will spend so much time of one's life with that person once one crosses that bridge from dating into a god-ordained bond that even the state recognises. being able to find joy in the boring, mundane things in life together is the gift of marriage life. i remember saying in 2021 while we were at the beginning of house and wedding preparation that i wished we could skip over to the "sleepover forever" part. the "sleepover forever" part remains one of my favourite parts of marriage life - ending the night tucked in bed and feeling snuggly under our toasty sheets, chatting about everything under the sun until one of us falls asleep. i used to be a nocturnal owl, but at the beginning of our marriage i told myself that going to bed together over the next 365 days and beyond will be one of the small ways we continue to invest in us, and it has now become my favourite way to end the night. 

2022 was the year where i exercised the muscle of staying put and sinking my roots - to the outside world it may have looked like a career lull but i feel grateful to have stuck to my own path that was the most ideal route to hone in on the narrative i wanted to write for myself. i made the most of being where i was. in my first year of being in the job i had struggled with understanding what good looked like. i am now in the midst of being what good looks like, and this is really what i want to get out of this role before i leave. my favourite triumph of the past year was becoming (almost like?) friends with the cmo of one of the hardest customers in our patch (who had really intimidated me at the beginning of the year when i took over this particular account) and watching my consistent hard work and sincerity pay off with our growing relationship, culminating in a full renewal with incrementals despite the account being flagged up as one of the few accounts with the highest attrition risk. the arduous journey we took continues to give me hope in the value of the work that i do. in 2022 i also took on one of the most prestigious enterprise accounts in our patch that used to be managed only by directors - i feel a sense of pride when i think about the unprecedented breakthrough i had with this account by establishing and leading a recurring cadence across all the business units' stakeholders. i now have a seat at the table and that was a result of hard work, boldness and god's favour. 2022 was also the year where i was both exposed to and dipped my toes into "chief-of-staff" in tech kind of work. it takes years to build a personal brand and credibility within the organisation - it was only by staying put that this opportunity opened up. i am grateful that i got to see and do things that people my age do not usually get exposed to. it was definitely more work but also a lot more visibility, learning and brand-building that i got to do. 

and so, i would say that 2022 wasn't a bad year at all. 2022 reminds me of this image i saw that really resonated with me. a picture is worth a thousand words, so i'll leave it here as an apt wrap-up to this season of sowing: