We were sitting at the dining table Wednesday evening. I had just finished making dinner for my mom and me. Salmon marinated with a MacGuyer-ed concoction of Kewpie mayo, garlic, sriracha and soy sauce that I scrounged and found in my mom’s kitchen. Congee with chicken broth. Steamed broccoli. I overcooked the salmon per usual.

I was hungrily scarfing down the tough salmon shredded over my congee. The bowl I had made for my mom was sitting in front of her, untouched. She was in the midst of telling me an old story about her childhood growing up in Keelung, Taiwan.

Each time I visit her, a good portion of our conversations revolve around the retelling of these old stories. And I attentively listen every time, like I’m watching the rerun episode of a favorite show I had seen a hundred times before and never get sick of.

I feel like she already had this tendency to repeatedly retell old stories even before the dementia. When the aperture of her outer life began to shrink, old stories were really the only line of interest she could offer to connect to others. That and dodgy health advice from the endless stream of questionable YouTube videos she gets served.

Tonight, she was sharing again about her childhood while living in a Japanese-style home built on the side of a mountain in Keelung near the ocean. This house was built raised above the earth to stay cool in the summers – a distinctly Japanese architectural design. She lived there with her four brothers, half a dozen uncles and an aunt who were roughly the same age as her and her siblings, and a family of five white dogs. My grandfather adopted his own siblings and cared for them as his children because my great-grandfather was too poor to raise them himself.

My great-grandfather was a farmer by trade who settled in the agricultural hub of Tainan, Taiwan. He also was musically gifted, which I believe is where my mom got her musical talent, leading her to pursue piano studies in Osaka, Japan and later at San Diego State University. My great-grandfather used to both compose and also make his own musical instruments from gourds grown on his farm. To my knowledge (and great sadness), nothing was preserved or kept.

I watched my mom’s face as she traveled back in time, recalling how they used to have to walk to school through puddles in the rainy Keelung weather, arriving at school with their pants fully drenched all the way up to their knees, too soaked to dry completely. Her brows furrowed with pity at her younger self and brothers having to endure such discomfort when they were little.

Hǎo kělián. (好可怜) How pitiful.

I could see her maternal overprotectiveness straining to reach back to the 1950s with a giant umbrella and rain boots.

I gently nudged her to eat her dinner as it was getting cold. She shook her head, insisting she wasn’t hungry yet. This has been a recurring theme with her dementia – her stubborn refusal to eat at mealtimes unless we are at a restaurant, and then only because it was the sole reason we were there. Each mealtime, I nudge her three or four times before surrendering the battle.

On this visit, I was noticing that my mom’s long term memory was now beginning to show signs of loss. On the second day, during another conversation of old stories, she asked me if my paternal grandparents had stayed upstairs in her house. I frowned and shook my head.

“No, they stayed in the room you and Dad made for them downstairs, the one you’re living in now. You even put in a vent for Ye-ye’s smoking. Remember?”

She got quiet as she tried hard to remember.

“How come I have this impression that the living room was upstairs? Oh, was that the house in La Jolla? I’m getting them mixed up.”

She had been remembering the home that she and my dad had lived in right after they were married in La Jolla, a year before I was born. She was having more confusion around timelines and locations, as if someone had chopped up her life into a bunch of scenes, reassembled them out of order, and also swapped elements in each scene.

She couldn’t remember when we had moved into the house she currently lived in, the one in which we had moved when I was eight. But she could remember how she used to park her car a block away from my elementary school and walk over to pick me up when the pick-up line was too long.

She couldn’t remember how old I was when we lived in the house prior to the one we were in, or when we moved there from New Jersey. But she remembered that we lived through Hurricane Diana (1984) in that house, and how intense and frightening it had been.

This was a noticeable downshift in her memory from the last trip home, just six weeks prior. I wondered quietly where it will be on my next visit.

Somehow that night our conversation wound up on the subject of autism. I told her about the Telepathy Tapes podcast I had listened to, and that some nonverbal autistic children have claimed to be able to connect to other autistics across the world through their minds. My mom was stunned.

“What a world,” she said.

Then my mom told me another story. This one was new. I had never heard it before, which shocked me as I had only been hearing old familiar stories for as long as I can remember.

My mom has been playing piano for her church’s Sunday worship service for almost five decades now. This is the Chinese church that raised me. Even though I no longer consider myself a Christian, I still consider this church my second home, and the families that knew me as a young person, my extended family.

She shared that about 15 or 20 years ago, there was an autistic boy that attended her church. He was around seven or eight years old. Whenever my mom was assigned to play piano for service on Sunday, she would arrive an hour early around eight o’clock to practice.

She told me that this little boy would always quietly walk up to the first pew next to the piano, sit and listen to her practice. They rarely exchanged words as she was focused on practicing. He would just quietly sit there and listen. She said the music must have calmed his spirit.

Years later, the little boy died. She couldn’t remember how old he was, but he didn’t live much longer beyond that time. She reflected that she wished she had talked to his parents before they stopped coming to the church. She grew quiet with emotion.

“I always felt it was such an honor to play for that boy.”

Her voice broke. She looked up at me with a wistful, pained smile, her eyes red with tears.

“Some people you never forget.”

Even now as I am remembering this conversation, I’m feeling the emotion rising within me as I think about the impact this little boy made on my mom in his short life. She didn’t know his name, but she felt his heart and his presence. And through sharing her story, I am feeling it, too.

As her memory is slowly being erased, leaving gaping holes in familiar lived and told storylines, my mom in this moment was remembering how deeply this autistic boy touched her. I thought about the irony in her words, in remembering someone she only knew as a church acquaintance, while she was simultaneously forgetting faces of beloved family members and the facts surrounding milestones in her own life.

She was remembering presence.

She was remembering a connection that goes deeper than words.

My mom has battled performance anxiety her entire life, often complaining she gets stage fright even before playing for worship service. I always found that interesting as she had played for church so often that I figured the constant exposure would have numbed the fear.

But this kind of fear is deeply rooted in her subconscious, and likely spans generations back through our lineage. Both my brother and I inherited this fear of being seen imperfectly.

This autistic boy offered her his presence as she played. And instead of experiencing fear, she was humbled. She felt honored that she could play for him, that her gift of music could offer solace. His presence was an antidote to her fear, reminding her of the purpose of creative expression – joy, peace, connection.

I find this so beautifully remarkable.

It will be another eight weeks before I will be able to spend time with her in her space again. My brother and I are talking about the next steps for her care, making plans to begin the process of getting her used to living with him and his family in their home.

While she will be able to be around family who can care for her, I also know this move will come at the cost of her easeful flow within a familiar space that she has spent the last 40 years of life. And with the loss of familiarity, I’m sure her memory will take a nosedive. I’m still weighing the pros and cons of this decision.

What this moment showed me was that there are still unexpected surprises that can come from someone with dementia. I have to leave ample room for those moments to happen. Room that can only come from curiosity.

I think this might be the hardest thing to hold onto for caretakers of loved ones with dementia. The repetition of questions is exhausting. The mundane routines feel creatively stifling. But if we can stay curious and keep wondering about our loved one – who they are in this moment of memory loss and what they can teach us as we witness them on this challenging unfamiliar road…

…I think we just might be surprised at what they continue to reveal to us.

For me, it’s all about the stories. I’m going to keep asking for them from my mom as long as she can share them. They are treasures in a mine that is actively collapsing.

To me, they are worth more than anything bequeathed in a will.

So this morning, I took advantage of being up before sunrise to do a tea sit at my ancestral altar. My favorite tea is a bug-bitten red oolong tea. It’s an award-winning tea from Taiwan that I found on Path of Cha. I use a small Nankei Ireko Chaki set that comes with two small tea cups. I pour tea into the smaller cup and place it as an offering at my altar. Then I pour tea into the larger cup and sit with my ancestors in silence, listening for their presence and their quiet insights. The tea is the conduit, the pathway of communication for us to connect.

I just returned from a two-week long trip home to Houston to visit my mom and help my brother with childcare while my SIL was in Korea visiting her grandparents. This trip was the longest I have spent with my family since my early 20s. As a self-professed black sheep, I have also always felt like an odd duck. Though I grew up an actively practicing Christian (taught Sunday School, led youth prayer groups, the whole nine), I walked away from the religion in my second year at UT Austin.

My mom, brother, and his family are all still very devout Christians that go to church every Sunday. Their churches are their communities and their extended chosen families. And while I’m grateful to know they’ve got a supportive network of people surrounding them, I don’t ascribe to the same beliefs.

I’ve always been someone who yearns to explore environments and edges that make me a little uncomfortable (hello Sag moon 👋🏽). I’m drawn towards the margins, the underground, the subconscious, the unknown, muddy spaces of liminal murkiness. The non-binary path of energetic and psychedelic healing. Rave culture. Ancestral rituals. I-Ching. Taoism. Nature. Perspectives, philosophies, and spaces that don’t define a “right” and a “wrong,” but rather speak of energetic dynamics, the interplaying relationship between frequencies. Yang and yin. Light and dark. Not as forces of good and evil, but outward and inward, seen and unseen, active and still, giving and receiving.

The decision to spend two weeks with family came from a realization this past June that I needed to be more present as my mom continues down her dementia journey. As a Chinese-Taiwanese eldest daughter, my body bears the cultural programming (often called a “value”) that a “good daughter” is one who sacrifices her desires for the well-being of the family, particularly her mother.

We’re brought up believing that putting our aging parents in nursing homes is the ultimate dishonor. Frankly, with the horror stories I hear about geriatric abuse in assisted living facilities, there is no way I would want that, regardless if I was Chinese or not.

I watched my mother take care of my grandmother – my Pó Pó – with Alzheimer’s for over 12 years. I watched the toll the caretaking took on her. I watched her anger and frustration become her baseline state of being, especially towards the latter half of those years.

I saw how this burden made my mom perpetually irritable and quick to rage. And yet she kept on stubbornly, begrudgingly caretaking, without a thought to her own needs. All in the line of duty that this ingrained filial piety demands.

The day of my Pó Pó’s funeral, the weight of her grief and the exhaustion from so many years of over-giving finally caught up with my mom. She was dizzy, unable to stand, her body pushed to its breaking point. I had to drive her home early from a gathering that evening with her brothers and uncles, some of whom she hadn’t seen in years because they were still living in Taiwan.

My mother’s heart is truly bottomless, especially for those in need. She has told me repeatedly a story of her only time visiting her maternal grandmother – her Pó Pó – when she was in-between high school and college. She traveled alone to Hong Kong to see her. When she arrived, her pó pó, by now in her 90s and completely blind, was sitting in a chair at a table alone. In her hand, she held a small bowl of a few remaining grains of rice. Unable to see, she was scooping into her rice bowl with her chopsticks, trying to pick up the rice. Her mouth met empty chopsticks every time, and yet she still sat there, scooping and scooping, with no one coming to her aid to feed her.

My mom shared that she felt such anguish at the sight of her grandmother unable to feed herself, being ignored by the rest of the family, that tears flooded her eyes. She felt helpless as she watched her grandmother, not knowing what to do.

I have always identified my mother’s love language as service. I have often felt the shame of not being able to fully receive it, chastising myself for being an impatient, resentful ingrate. But this trip shattered my illusion of her service as being purely selfless. I saw more clearly than ever how much her self-worth and sense of purpose came from caring for our family and those in her friend circle.

She self-sacrifices her presence and nervous system regulation in the name of loving care, refusing to take no for an answer. She strips her children and grandchildren of their autonomy to care or choose for themselves, insisting on taking on that responsibility because she believes she knows better, that she cares more for their well-being than even themselves.

As a recovering people-pleaser who over-compensated for others to receive love, I began to see so clearly where I inherited that survival defense strategy. When my mother doesn’t receive the love she longs for from us, a young wounded part of her lashes out.

She needs to be needed, to feel valuable. She needs us to need her presence and care. After all, she’s the only daughter of five children, raised in a traditional Taiwanese family, and married a man whose mother had her feet bound. She own paternal grandmother had hers bound as well. I realize now, it wasn’t that long ago.

So when we reject her attempts to aggressively care for us, she feels unwanted, unneeded, purposeless.

As her short term memory is virtually gone, she repeats a lot of stories. But I noticed a pattern in the stories that she most often repeats.

1. Stories about her childhood with her four brothers growing up in Taiwan under Japanese occupation. Her closeness with her fourth uncle, who my grandfather (the eldest) raised, along with the rest of his brothers and sisters. How badly her eldest brother Ah-Lien would get beaten by my grandfather, who was working with the Japanese and was trained under their harsh militaristic leadership. How my grandmother would cry, pleading for my grandfather to stop.

2. How she used to be her great-niece’s confidante until she became a busy teen and stopped reaching out. “She changed so much! I can’t talk to her anymore.” she would say with hurt disapproval.

3. How she proudly plays the role of “trash can” (her words) to her good friends, letting them vent out all their problems to her. While venting, what I call verbal vomiting, can feel good in the moment as a pressure release, the core problem remains.

Every visit always brings up something for me to see differently, expanding my consciousness. I knew that spending a whole two weeks would bring up tensions that I had not wanted to face or feel in previous years of avoidance. Tensions and wounds that were still present, though the pain has dulled in time and been absorbed into the deep tissue of our bodies. Our mutual desire to enjoy these short visits overriding the tender scabbed parts.

On day seven of the trip, my mom and I had our first blowout fight in decades. I was frustrated at her staunch refusal to get a necessary crown placed on her molar. That tussle evolved into her expressing that she felt rejected by my nieces, and that she didn’t want to go with me to my brother’s place to help with childcare that week. I tried to explain to her that perhaps they’re responding to her constant critical attention and nagging, and that it could feel controlling.

She couldn’t see it. To her, that’s what love looks like. And I was asking her not to love them the only way she knows how.

The fight erupted in her storming away, shouting loudly at me to “shut up” and, in her native mandarin, that she can just go die now. I exhaled a deep, defeated sigh.

Perhaps the grace of dementia is that memory is so short-lived. I gently approached her thirty minutes later. She was still visibly angry, but I wondered if she remembered why. As I made plans to leave her car behind as she had requested and have my brother pick me up, she stubbornly refused to concede.

“Well I don’t know what is easiest. You decide what you want to do.”

“Like I said, I will leave you the car and Albert will pick me up. I’ll drive Jenny’s car.”

“Well you decide.”

“I’m telling you what I decided.”

“I don’t know, whatever is easiest for you.”

It felt like I was arguing in circles with a seven-year-old that didn’t want to be reasonable. I had to just let it go. But I was grateful for the confrontation. It helped me to feel and acknowledge the wounding that still lives within me. And now I’m observing that it gets activated and dredged to the surface by witnessing my mother’s relationship with my nieces. My fierce urge to protect them by advocating for their autonomy is also me advocating for all my little selves.

As I sat at my ancestral altar sipping my tea this morning, I noticed the sweetness of this oolong on my tongue. This tea gets its name from the process by which the leaves of the tea plant are intentionally bitten by insects called leafhoppers. The plants are organically grown to attract these insects. When the leaves are nibbled, the plants release a sweet honey-like aroma as a defense mechanism to scare away these insects and to attract birds. The plant also sends sugars to the bitten areas for faster recovery, prompting the tea leaves to begin oxidizing even before they are processed.

This tea is grown in the Luye Valley of Taitung County, Taiwan. I feel a connection to my Taiwanese ancestors when I sip this tea. I can feel the channels open and am able to receive their messages more fluidly.

During this sit, I found myself fixated on the sweetness and reflecting on the process of the tea that makes the tea so sweet.

Destruction. Injury. Harm.

I began thinking about my mother, and the relationship we have had over this shared lifetime. The fighting, the anger, the wounding, all of it. I thought about my lineage, both maternal and paternal, the suffering to survive, the sacrifices made throughout these generations. I thought about the sacrifices of my own parents – both my mother and father’s sacrifice of real presence with us.

I thought about the cycles of nature, and the necessary role that death plays in aliveness. I thought about the Palestinian genocide, about ICE raids, about all the madness that we have been witnessing across the States with the Trump administration. Collapse is all around us.

Destruction. Injury. Harm.

Destruction allows opportunities for sweetness to emerge. This is what oolong and my well ancestors were showing me. The bitter rides together with the sweet. In fact, the bitter accentuates the sweetness. That is the relationship between death and birth.

Death initiates life, repeatedly.

Bitter gives way to sweetness, repeatedly.

I thought about the moments sitting at the dining table with my mom on this and past visits, listening to her share the same stories, over and over. As if every telling helps her to etch in a little deeper all the moments that have made beautiful this life she has lived. Attempts to grasp tighter to these memories that she feels are beginning to dissipate, as if slowly erasing her life little by little, memory by memory.

These are my favorite moments with her right now in her final act. During this visit, I finally allowed myself to name the unconscious emotional abuse that I experienced as a child. I allowed myself to feel the anger and resentment held by a younger part of me that never was allowed to name or feel this.

As I write today, the anger has vanished, leaving in its place just a quiet gratitude for who she is, ringing through the chambers of my vessel.

The bitter giving space for the sweetness to emerge once again.

Today, I was taking a Lyft instea

What is a template?

Templates are reusable content blocks you can insert into any post. Use them for content you repeat often, like:

• Standard disclaimers or disclosures

• Calls to action (subscribe, share, etc.)

• Custom dividers or recurring sections

• Post templates or boilerplate

To create a template, click "Template" in the editor toolbar and select one to insert. You can organize templates into groups by using "/" in the name (e.g. "Email/Welcome").

d of being picked up by my brother Albert. A dad of two young girls with demanding after-school activities, he always somehow still makes it work to pick me up whenever I visit my family in Houston. That’s just who he is – fiercely loyal, dependable, ever-dutiful son, husband, brother.

But today he was busy picking up both girls from school, fixing them snacks before the older nine-year-old went to gymnastics practice and the younger six-year-old to her first swim team practice.

I was relieved of the guilt I always felt in receiving a ride from him, knowing how busy he is, despite his insistence that he pick me up. I happily climbed into the back of the Lyft and made my way to my mom’s house, my home from eight until I left for college at 17.

When I arrived, the driver dropped me off at the curb in front of my mom’s mailbox. I thanked him, grabbed my bags and walked up the curved driveway to the front door. I knocked loudly. She has trouble hearing the door these days.

I hear the lock turn from the inside, and then a light scuffle as she quickly removed the long door security bar from the knob, rolled up the doormat so that she could open the door all the way.

“I didn’t see you!”

“Yea, the driver dropped me off at the curb so you couldn’t see me.”

Did she look even smaller than in February, just three short months ago? I shuffled into the house, the familiar scent of the house filling my nose. It’s not food, or cleaning products, moth balls, or anything discernible. It’s just the scent of my childhood home. I can even smell it now as I think back. It’s a scent I associate with her, permanently imprinted into my psyche.

“You must be hungry! I can make you some eggs or if you want to go grab some Indian food, you can take my car.”

She knows my ritual of hitting up a local Indian restaurant because I think the Indian food in Houston is better than Los Angeles.

“No, it’s too hot for Indian. I’ll take a look and see what I can find.”

I take my bags upstairs to my bedroom and set them down on the dresser and desk of my formative years. Then head back downstairs to search for a craving on Yelp.

My mom has already pulled out the two “good” mugs and set them on the countertop for me to use while I’m visiting. I remember her scolding me about serving a cup with a chip on it to a previous visiting boyfriend.

Image has always been big with her. But this goes beyond image. This is a respect thing. This is what loving care looks like to her. You always serve guests with the good tableware. But “good” is relative. My mom hasn’t bought any new dishes in decades except these two mugs. I can’t remember them existing prior to my husband Adam’s first visit to Houston back in 2015.

I wonder if she bought them because of him.

A month prior, Albert asked if I would be willing to take my mom to her next colonoscopy appointment. Knowing that he doesn’t often ask for support, I quickly and eagerly said yes. The appointment was tomorrow morning at six a.m. It was almost four p.m. I needed to make sure my mom took the SUPREP bowel preparation solution. Albert had already stocked her fridge with Jell-o and popsicles. Four cartons of bone broth were sitting on the counter next to the fridge.

“Ma, it’s almost four. You need to take this first mixture now and then drink these two water bottles.”

“What? Why? What for?”

“You’re doing a colonoscopy tomorrow morning.”

She frowns at me, then scowls.

[In mandarin] “Ahh, what’s the use? I already did it last year.”

“Yea, but they found some polyps and so you have to do it again tomorrow. It’s ok, I’ll go with you. But you have to take this stuff.”

Still resisting and grumbling, she begins to down the plastic cup filled with sour-sweet solution. She recounts how she couldn’t sleep the entire night last time as she kept running to the bathroom. Even with her short-term memory loss, this experience clearly had made a lasting impact.

“When are you leaving?"

“Where is Adam?”

“When are you going to see your friends?”

“Where are you going when you leave? Are you meeting up with Adam?”

My mom repeated variations of these four questions over and over every day of my week-long visit. On my second day, after having answered these questions at least two dozen times already that day, I heard my voice tense up as my patience was wearing thin. I took a deep breath and answered them again, with the resigned knowing that she doesn’t have the ability to remember anymore, and that I would have to answer them several more times this trip.

Over the last few years, my mom’s weight has noticeably dropped. Albert has been making appointments for her to see a geriatric doctor, planning the visits for when I’m able to be there as well. She had reluctantly begun to do the series of recommended tests that the doctor suggested, resisting every single one.

Her osteoporosis test marked her as “severe.” She refused the MRI and seeing the neurologist, arguing that even if they diagnose her, what good would that do? I had no counter argument to that.

She took a series of spoken tests during the geriatric doctor appointments. The first year, she scored a 17 out of 20. The second year, it dropped to 15. She had trouble remembering the year and a list of objects she was asked to recall, but her problem-solving abilities were still sharp.

She was prescribed Donepezil and managed to take it only a few times, complaining that the pill made her feel weird and not like herself. She wanted to just sleep all day and didn’t like not having energy. I quickly reached out to my brother and we agreed that this wasn’t the best medicine for her.

In her short-term memory loss, daily medication was difficult. We tried writing reminders on Post-it notes. She would just end up misplacing the notes.

This trip home, I bought a Vitamix blender to make her protein smoothies, as I noticed she has an easier time eating sweets. I went to the store and bought frozen wild blueberries, almond milk, dates, hemp and chia seeds for omega 3 and fiber, greek yogurt for calcium. I mixed in a taro-flavored whey boba protein I had brought with me. I made sure to add vanilla and maple syrup for added sweetness. She drank the smoothies without resistance.

I told her to leave the blender out because I would be using it each morning. And every morning, I would come downstairs to the kitchen to find the blender missing. I always found it in the pantry, the base and pitcher each wrapped tightly in plastic bags, secured by tape. Sighing deeply and lightly scolding my mom for forgetting, I would unwrap them.

It’s only now in my late 40s that a new realization is dawning within me of just how anxious a person my mom has always been. And that anxiety centers around all things protection – protecting her house, her things, but mostly, her family, children and grandchildren.

I used to exasperatedly complain about my mom’s obsessive-compulsive tendencies, her perfectionism around keeping her kitchen clean. She would angrily scold me if I made a mess of her countertops while I was cooking. I didn’t ladle oil out correctly. I cooked my vegetables too long. I wasted parts of the vegetables when I cut them. I accidentally got sugar on her counter and now was going to attract roaches. I couldn’t do one thing correctly.

She’s not as particular these days, but I think it’s because she doesn’t have the energy to scold anymore. Her age is forcing her to mellow out. But that protective compulsion still shows up, like her insistence in wrapping and storing this blender daily.

I remember the fights that she would have with my dad when I was around eight years old and wanted so badly to be a Brownie, wearing the brown uniform that many of the girls in my third grade class got to wear, collecting the patches that I coveted on the sashes they wore proudly over their chests.

This was my first yearning to belong that I can remember. To be a Brownie was to be like all the little white girls that lived in my Houston suburb. I wanted so badly to be like them. To eat hamburgers and fries for dinner like I imagined they must be having nightly, instead of the white rice and Chinese dishes my mom would lovingly cook for us.

I remember my parents yelling, my mom angrily putting her foot down because of some salacious story she had read in the newspaper about the dangers of Brownies getting abducted or abused by their troop leaders. This was the 80s after all, when child abduction fear ran high for parents.

My dad would be fighting back in my defense, wanting me to properly socialize and be allowed the life experiences I wanted to have. To adopt the American customs and to assimilate, in ways that he was struggling to do so himself among his colleagues. Even now, I can imagine his hope for my brother and me to become the fully assimilated and accepted all-American that he could never be due to his immigrant status.

I never became a Brownie, but I did join the Girl Scouts for a year in fifth grade. Perhaps that was their compromise. I remember feeling so awkward at every outing we had. I wasn’t friends with the girls who had been members for years together. So while they all sat together, I was left sitting with the troop leader moms, further cementing my status as an outcast.

“Ma, are you awake? It’s almost five-thirty. We have to leave for the colonoscopy in 15 minutes.”

My mom opened the door, hair uncombed and eyes half-shut with sleep. She nodded groggily and went to finish dressing.

It was still dark as I drove us to the gastroenterology clinic. We waited in the car until the receptionist unlocked the doors at six a.m. Within ten minutes, the entire waiting room was filled with patients and their loved ones. When we were called in, I followed my mom to one of the rolling medical beds. The nurse gave us a gown, some socks and a bag to put her clothes into. I stepped out as the nurse pulled the curtain closed.

When my mom was finished changing, I opened the curtain again. She was sitting on the bed in her hospital gown, looking even smaller and more frail than she had a minute ago. I could feel her anxiety, though she didn’t voice it. I helped her put on the long socks, scrunching up the sock like she had done when I was a small child, and gently pulling them over her toes and up her thin, pale legs.

This was the first time I had ever helped my mom dress, or anyone else for that matter. The feeling was foreign and strange in my hands. As someone who has never had human children, I have never before had to dress another human body besides my own.

I sat with her until they were ready. Two nurses came by with the anesthetist and told me that I could wait for her in the waiting room. My mom smiled and nodded at me to go. I felt a resistance leaving her side, knowing her fear of doctors and procedures and wanting to stay close for moral support.

I quickly left to grab a coffee at the nearby Starbucks. Then realizing how hungry I was, I found a doughnut shop nearby that sold kolaches. I picked up a bear claw, a red velvet and blueberry cake doughnut for us. I scarfed down the kolache as I drove back to the clinic.

Within 20 minutes of waiting, I received a call from the receptionist that my mom was done and was coming out of anesthesia. They had found two polyps this time. Thankfully, she didn’t need to do a colonoscopy for another three years.

I walked back to where my mom’s bed was. She was lying on her side, curled halfway into fetal position. Her eyes were shut but her lips were moving, barely audible. As I watched, it seemed like she was talking to someone in her dream state. I wondered if it was my dad.

I placed a hand on her leg to help her ground as she was slowly coming back. In time, her eyes opened. She whispered something to me that I couldn’t hear. Her mouth was moving but no words were coming out. I put pressure on her leg to let her know I’m there. After a few minutes, I was able to hear her say that she needed to use the bathroom. She kept repeating this request but the nurses told me that while she’s still coming out of anesthesia, she needed to stay put.

She looked like a small child to me, curled in the bed. So thin and frail, like she barely weighed more than a feather. The nurse brought us a bedpan just in case. My mom took one look at it and decided she could wait.

For someone who barely took up any space with her physical body, it was astounding to me how powerful her will, and stubbornness, still is. And it was also now becoming very clear to me that my mom needed someone more present to care for her at this stage of her life.

A few days later, as I was sitting on my bed, I was feeling into a tightness in my chest. It felt like a large knot in the middle of a long rope in a tug-o-war battle that was happening between two sides of me.

I had been having conversations about my mom moving in with Albert and his family. These conversations had started almost eight years ago, when Albert purchased a new family home that had a garage apartment with a complete kitchen and laundry. This was to be my mom’s apartment when she was ready to move in with them.

Every time the subject was broached, my mom would complain about the noise in the area and that she never could sleep well when she spent the night helping Albert care for my nieces when my sister-in-law was out of town.

We both heard what she wasn’t saying out loud – she wasn’t ready to give up her independence or the home that she had lived in for the last four decades. The home that she built with my dad.

So we had patiently waited until now, when her weight loss can no longer be ignored. When our fear of her falling and shattering bones can no longer be ignored. Both of us are trying hard to convince her that she really needs to have consistent care now, even if she thinks she can still manage living alone.

During every conversation, she grows silent. I see her anxiety and fear. She would rather die than to be a burden on us in her need for care. Aging is no fun, so ma fan – such an inconvenience – she would say.

On Sunday morning, I got dressed and decided that I wanted to go to church with my mom. She was scheduled to play piano that week for worship service. When I went to her room to tell her, she was already dressed and ready to go. I made a mental note – she has no trouble remembering responsibilities when others are counting on her. Her memory is on point when she is needed.

As we arrived at the church that I had attended as a child and pre-college teen, my mom’s friend Phyllis greeted us. We walked into the sanctuary of the church, my mom putting her bag next to the piano and gesturing for me to sit in the row behind her. I had not been back to this place since my early 20s. I was filled with nostalgia as I heard my mom beginning to warm up.

Phyllis sat with me as my mom practiced, sharing with me how she purposely keeps my mom’s mind active by giving her this responsibility to play for worship twice a month. She shared how concerned she is for my mom’s wellbeing. How much she and their mutual friend JoAnn treasures her friendship.

Suddenly, my church auntie Flora burst through the door, hastily apologizing for her lateness. She spots me sitting in the pew and suddenly stops, her jaw dropping. I flash her a giant smile, and greet her with a big hug.

“Ellen!! You’re back! Oh my goodness, I’m so happy to see you here with your mom!”

“I know, it’s been too long!”

Flora looked the same as the last memory I have of her, probably sometime in the late 90s or early 2000s. Her hair was a bit thinner, but her face and vivacious energy were exactly as I remembered. Emotion began to rise within me as I saw her and my mom jokingly teasing each other.

Flora sat down next to me as my mom and Phyllis were chatting about the worship plan. She told me how much she loves my mom. And how she has seen her change over the years. That my mom has good and bad days, but she sees how she needs care now. And that she knows how stubborn my mom is.

She shakes her head with a pained, wistful expression on her face as I saw decades of friendship and sisterhood, life and loss, being remembered.

My distance from Christianity also distanced me away from this home of church aunties and uncles. Once upon a time, I had been deeply involved, even leading prayer groups and teaching Sunday School when I was in high school and during the first years of college. To be back here felt like a homecoming that I am only able to make now, after the last seven years of conscious healing work I had been doing, much of which was focused on religious trauma.

But today, I was here for my mom. Watching her light up in the presence of her oldest and dearest friends in a community that had brought her safety and comfort as a young mother of small children, while still new to Houston, broke my heart open. This was the community that had stood next to her as she buried her life partner. That had seen her nest become empty when her sole focus in life – my brother and me – had left for college, and in my case, chose to make a home for herself much further away in California.

In my mid-20s, I needed to be far away. To discover who I was. I needed to be allowed to make my own mistakes instead of having an anxious, over-protective mother telling me what decisions I should make. I needed to find my way on my own.

As a child, she had made us matching outfits out of the same fabric she bought at the fabric store. Back then, I was so proud to be her mini-me. I felt so special, like we had a bond that was just ours with our matching uniforms. A private club that my dad and brother weren’t allowed in.

When I entered middle school and puberty, our relationship began to change. After I left for college in Austin and got a taste of being on my own, our relationship became too painful, too restrictive, too suffocating. I felt like I was her biggest disappointment. I was too willful. Too wild. Too fiery. Too uncontrollable.

I was the “bad one.” The one that no longer wanted to go to church. The one that quit her cello. The one that didn’t listen to her, that wouldn’t. The one that took the wisdom she offered and threw it back at her, refusing to receive her love, no matter how insistent she was to give it.

I became the one that she didn’t know anymore. And maybe, the one that she didn’t want to know out of fear of what she would discover.

Being back in this church and witnessing my aunties and uncles excited to see me again, hugging me tightly and beaming at my mom, who was beaming right back at them, I realized that I was being called back home. This time, to be a caretaker for my aging mom so that she could stay close to her beloved church family, in a home she had worked so hard to make for our family, and in the familiar natural surroundings of the trees and bayous peppered with white egrets, blue herons, little red-eared slider turtles, red-faced ducks, and the occasional alligator.

This trip home brought me to an insight that I wasn’t ready to receive until now. That supporting my family will be more rewarding than anything I could possibly create in my life.

I want my mom to be held in peace and safety by this home when she takes her final breath, whenever that will be in the future. I want my brother to feel the readiness of support that can only come from a sibling who is close by. I want to know my sister-in-law. I want to watch my nieces grow up and go through all the changes that were so torturous for me. I want to be there to support them through it all, and to remind them constantly of how powerful they are, and how loved.

As I felt that knot of resistance in my chest begin to loosen in this recognition, I sat on my bed feeling a new and different frequency flowing in.

Joy.

A bittersweet joy that can only come from a decision to sacrifice something you love out of a greater love for someone else. In this case, someones.

Logistically, I still don’t know how this decision will play out. But just sitting in the frequency of this new decision feels life-changing and big. It feels revolutionary.

I’m learning to let go, to not clutch, but to hold everything with more space and lightness so that the energy can move and fill and go where it needs to.

I am allowing this energy to carry me forward, trusting in the unfolding of time and plans.

As long as I continue to ride this current of joy, I know I’ll be exactly where I need to be.

THIRTY from Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu, translated by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English

Whenever you advise rulers in the way of Tao,

Counsel them not to use force to conquer the universe.

For this would only cause resistance.

Thorn bushes spring up wherever the army has passed.

Lean years follow in the wake of a great war.

Just do what needs to be done.

Never take advantage of power.

Achieve results,

But never glory in them.

Achieve results,

But never boast.

Achieve results,

But never be proud.

Achieve results,

Because this is the natural way.

Achieve results,

But not through violence.

Force is followed by loss of strength.

This is not the way of the Tao.

That which goes against the Tao

Comes to an early end.

It’s been four days since arriving back from my trip to Houston to visit my family. My face is inflamed, pink and splotchy, with small little angry bumps covering my cheeks and forehead. Thankfully, when I woke up this morning, I noticed the rash has begun to calm down. A relief, as I’m traveling again in one short week, this time to visit my in-laws.

Our bodies don’t lie. The rash arrived suddenly Monday night, after a much needed cleansing shower post-flight, ushered in by a few small glasses of cold sake. I had just discovered a screw in my deflating tire, leaving me stuck in Los Angeles that night as my partner drove back to Idyllwild to relieve our friend who had been pup-sitting for us while we were in Houston.

Secretly, I was relieved I was alone that night. I had felt an intense resistance to the idea of being around others as I was about to leave, before I discovered my flat tire. I had been feeling frustration and anger that I couldn’t shake, brought on the previous night in Houston when my partner’s hip began to hurt so badly that I had changed my flight (at my mom’s stern urging) to fly back with him instead of staying the two extra days like I had planned. He had played tennis the day before with my brother, uncles and cousins, and had evidently pulled or torn something that was causing him excruciating pain.

Rationally, I knew it wasn’t his fault. But I still felt this flush of frustration rush through my body as I was bagging an ice pack for him to put on his hip, and my mom was hovering over me, directing me as if I were a small child, as she has a tendency to do.

“Don’t fill the baggie too much because then it won’t lie flat on his hip.”

“Put the baggie into a bigger gallon-size baggie so it won’t leak.”

“Cover the big baggie with a towel. No, a thinner towel.”

I inhaled sharply and held my breath as I marched the bag up to my bedroom and handed it to my partner, who was lying on the bed looking like he was about to pass out. I covered his injured area in Biofreeze cream and insisted that he take the ibuprofren he had been refusing. The pain was so bad, he finally agreed.

This whole time, my body was tight and my lips were clenched. He asked for a thicker blanket because the Biofreeze and ice combo was making him cold. My mom was waiting at the top of the staircase, not wanting to interfere but clearly concerned and holding herself back from overstepping. I asked her where the comforter was. She rushed into the room and pulled it out of a big plastic bag that she had carefully wrapped and tied the comforter in for protection.

Everything in her house that she doesn’t use daily is wrapped in protective plastic bags. If you opened any cabinet in the house, there would be numerous plastic bag bundles stuffed in them. Bags of toilet paper. Bags of old photos. Bags of pans. Bags of unused supplies several decades old. All forgotten in her growing short term memory loss until suddenly there is a need to hunt down a relic in one of the plastic bags. Then the mad hunt begins.

My mom takes the comforter and throws it over my partner, fussing over straightening out the comforter with the light blanket he already has over him. She attempts to tuck the comforter under his feet like he’s a small child.

“No no, it’s fine. Please just leave it alone. It’s more painful when you try to tuck it in.”

She reluctantly backs away, the comforter and blanket messily strewn over my partner. This is eating her alive, I think to myself.

Flashback.

I’m five or six years old. My mom is brushing my hair and pulling it back into a ponytail. I wince in pain as she combs my hair over and over, pulling it tight so that not one hair is dangling free out of her grasp. It has to be perfect, clean and neat.

I hated ponytails. I hated how tightly pulled back my hair was that my head hurt a few hours later. I hated how I looked with my hair pulled back so tight. I wanted my hair down. To feel the strands around my face. To feel it flying behind me as I ran fast.

I see my little five year old niece Emerie, who just celebrated her graduation from kindergarten. I see my mom reaching for her hair every visit, trying desperately to tame the little wispy baby hairs under a barrette and to tie the rest back. I see Emerie squirming away, saying as kindly as she can in her frustration, “No grandma, I don’t want you to touch my hair.”

Witnessing my mom fussing over my partner triggers me EVERY. TIME. Witnessing her fussing over my two nieces triggers me as well. It conjures up all the little Ellens from the past, particularly my 16-year-old that craved autonomy and the permission to make her own choices, and all the frustration, anger, guilt, shame that these versions of me experienced while living under my mom’s strict disciplinarian gaze.

I left Houston carrying the activated rage and resentment of my past selves back to California, when that unexpressed fire decided to express itself as a pimply rash all over my face.

Clearly, my high school self was trying to get my attention. And not surprisingly, I had a hankering to listen to old 80s hits driving from LA back to the mountain.

When I finally got back to my home and reconnected with my pups, my body began to exhale. I was exhausted. I slept for almost 11 hours the first night. I was feeling profound burnout and fatigue. I decided that this summer, I’m foregoing onboarding new mentorship clients. I needed to tend to my body. I needed to redirect the care and energy I give out back to myself.

I needed to truly learn how to stop over-giving.

Divine timing is unquestionable to me these days, now having had the awareness around the timing of messages, gifts, healing sessions lining up perfectly in the moments that I am in most need.

As I tended to my face with nightly sheet masks, aloe vera and a clean diet of veggies and nuts once more (Sidenote: the food in Houston is amazing. But it definitely takes its toll.), I saw that my final booked session with my friend AJA miraculously was scheduled for yesterday. As I shared about my trip and getting smacked over the head by my people-pleasing pattern (read: lack of boundaries) yet again, reflected back to me by my mom’s insistent over-caring behavior, my guides shared that my mom is facing her hardest lesson this life. And it’s being delivered by her memory loss.

She has only known how to show love by giving her energy away to others – caretaking, prioritizing everyone else over her own joy and desires. In fact, this IS her joy – being of service and fussing over other people, namely her children, son/daughter-in-law, and grandkids.

She has only known how to be a giver, not a receiver. And in this stage of her life, as she is heading towards dementia or Alzheimer’s, she is slowly being forced to learn how to surrender, to let go and to receive love from all of us. And this is terrifying for her.

All I can do is honor how she loves, as frustrating as it is for me and those who care about her. I have tools that she never got to learn because she was so busy putting her family’s needs first. She was my grandmother’s caretaker for 12 years before my grandmother died. She, too, had Alzheimer’s and often battled my mom as my mom tried to care for her.

My own inability to receive comes from a long lineage of poor receivers in these women. Ancestors who only knew how to sacrifice to show love. This is what I’m here to heal in myself – the ancestral and generational wound of unworthiness – so that I can clear this survival pattern from my lineage. And it’s a stubborn one!

I’m being given an opportunity with my mom’s memory loss to finally love her on my terms as she is forced to receive due to her body slowly shutting down. She is giving up her role as caretaker, and passing that role onto me.

I have to just allow this natural cycle to play out. Not forcing her to understand me and my frustration. Not forcing her to accept a different way of being. But instead, softening.

ALLOWING her to be who she is.

ALLOWING her to love as she only knows how.

ALLOWING the natural cycle of death and rebirth to occur in divine timing.

This is how we heal. Not by will or force. Not by violence. But by letting go and allowing.

And so it is.

Spirit Medicine Journeys

I offer sacred medicine journey solo retreat programs for spiritual + somatic healing. In each program, I guide you through preparation, ceremony, somatic integration, microdosing protocols, and rituals that deepen your connection to Seen and Unseen.

“If your breath is your anchor on a journey through the vast expanse of your consciousness, then Ellen is the hand extended and held throughout. There are not enough words in this world to encompass the warmth, nurturance, and care with which she exudes as your companion and guide. Her presence and insight was as vital to my most life-changing experience as the Sacred Mushroom was.” – Christina C.

Learn more on tripwithellen.com. Now booking for August through November.

Book a free 25 minute discovery call if you’re ready to experience who you really are.

Book Now

Coming this fall…

JIA

An intimate spirit medicine retreat in Southern California for four AAPI women/femmes.

JIA means “family” and “home.” We will walk through a death portal together, honoring the outdated survival patterns we are shedding, nourish + nurture our bodies together, and witness each other in our rebirth.

Email hi@tripwithellen.com if you are interested in participating.

*Jia character drawn by award-winning calligraphist Wai Jia.