Self-love is trending more than ever, especially with Valentine’s coming up. Nonetheless, I believe it will never be overrated. 

Because self-love is so much more than just face masks and bubble baths. It is the key to a happy and healthy life. It equips you with the healthy self-esteem to have a peaceful and strong mindset, to endure adversity, to know your worth and the people deserving of your presence, and the flexibility to be genuinely happy in your highs, and the strength to bounce back from your lows. Self-love allows us to be kinder and more compassionate to ourselves, and in turn, it teaches us to be kinder and more compassionate to others. 

I had imagine this day for so long—the day I would venture back to our “homeland” of Laos, hand-in-hand with my parents, for them to show me all the places they grew up in, to show me what home meant and what it looked like to them.

What I thought would be a welcoming to my roots—a reunion with the lost parts of myself, was a welcoming to the reminder that we have always never belonged, and have always never been welcomed.

What was supposed to be a trip for my father to finally show us all the things he loved about his home, all the places in the stories he’s told, became another scar to remind him that this place was no longer home.

A morbid beginning, but I think from a young age, I learned what death meant; I learned how much our lives were structured around this moment; I learned that you needed people, I learned the importance of family, I learned the feeling of loving and giving, hurting and not receiving, but also the power of being the example you wanted. I know life gets busy, I know showing up at family events and helping out feels like you give more than you get in return, and I know being there feels useless at times...

I believe our twenties, is the time when we come to realize each day that everything we thought we knew about life, is no longer true, and that in order to become, sometimes we need to unbecome.

In order to learn and grow, we have to unlearn everything we once knew.

In all ordinary aspects of our lives, as well as the extraordinary.

One of my girlfriends came over and posed a question she had read from her daily scroll of Instagram: "What would you pursue without social media?"

As social media has been proven to be one of the top business tools and career options, it has become more pressuring to rely on beyond just popularity, connecting with others, and posting your daily life.

But, sometimes I wonder if it takes away more than it adds to our life in terms of career opportunities.

Removing myself from everything I built, always knew, and defined myself as, to live abroad, doing something I've never done, taught me a few things that has made me more grounded than I've ever been.

They are things that I really wish everyone gets a chance to realize in this lifetime. Because life is too short, and too long.