THE RETURN
“The bad news is time flies. The good news it that you’re the pilot.”
And just like that, over a year has passed since my last post which mentally I had celebrated as my return to blogging AKA my digital therapy… Alexa, please play Ironic by Alanis Morsette. The return has been sparked by none other than my mother. The pillar of my life that managed to hold my three siblings and me up when all was lost. This is me finally listening to her as well as that little voice tugging at my heart this whole time. I’m back to the creative craft I naturally fell in step with since I was a kid, writing.
So much has happened over the past 1.5 years of posting, a quick summary: I began my journey as a DJ and a digital artist (woo!), got engaged (what?!), made new girlfriends that made my soul sing '“how the hell did I get so lucky?,” got my first couple of clients as a motion designer (YAY), moved to London (aww, but change = growth so, awesome), got married this January (QUE?!), to now planning and hopefully soon starting a family (fill up that cup sugar pie, shit just got real).. and yes, I know I’m lame for being my own cheerleader, but sometimes you’ve got to woo! yourself, pun intended.
Now that I’ve actually written what the fuck has transpired, I’m actually feeling a bit better (therapy, I told you). By the way, this draft was written on my belated bachelorette party trip from a deliciously fluffy, ridiculously enormous bed with a new close friend who I am so grateful for entering my life during COVID, Kayla. It was 5:43am - and I already had been up for two hours pondering why I was stuck in a cycle in my life… little did I know this was the beginning of the phoenix rising, but more on that in a later post.
Enough fluff! Which will return because that’s my voice and this blog is not an academic paper, but rather a collection of posts on life and its confusing lessons. To get back to the point, I’m back. If you’ve read my posts in the past (you haven’t) then you know I’m the youngest of four and came from the picture-perfect fairytale family… although over the years I realised I was just blinded by the filter of Innocence.
It’s too long to go over everything, which I have covered in my old blog Color Me Hong Kong and in a previous post here at The Haute Yogi, but to try and keep this short, picking up the pieces of my fine china soul has been a delicate process that I’m still working on today. Trying to keep pieces in place, realising some have been wrongly put back together and trying to find where they belong (it’s hard being raised by a broken family, misery loves company and it was the blind leading the blind during my tween and teen years). This is a process I know will take time, a lifetime really. Terrible, self-sabotaging and self-destructive habits that were taught and kept up from childhood have been uncovered and examined, like dusty artefacts found in the desert. It’s only since the last year, moving to London, that I finally found myself ready to ask for help in therapy. The multitude of layers (and personalities, goodness are we all case studies in the end?) were peeled back and dissected. I finally started my journey of self-acceptance and forgiveness.
It’s from the strong pillars my parents (ok as well as the planetary alignment in my birth chart) built in me that kept me optimistic, kept me trying to stay balanced of being healthy with diet and exercise to hopefully counter the terrible habits I had collected (little footnote, as this draft was written before my Awakening in Amsterdam, I’m going to keep it going as is and will also share my experience when I’m ready). I suppose I was constantly trying to heal myself, but since my dad passed when I was 11 and I was introduced to hard partying ways, I always had a vice in my life, without my awareness, or care, that it was there. An escape. However, when you find yourself in a thriving, healthy relationship, surrounded by inspiring souls and realise all the times angels had your back when you had brushes with death, you begin to question why do we fall back to these vices or devices that set us back? Why am I my own worst enemy? And what excuse do I have now to escape this fucking insanely beautiful life I’m so lucky to have?
This is one of the things I appreciate as I get older, the refinement process and the turning inwards of taking accountability for my actions because they’re no one else’s responsibility but my own. I’m no longer a lost 13-year old susceptible to external influences, I’m actually the reverse of those numbers and being: I’m a strong 31-year old goddess who is full of self-love (on my good days) and is ready to give love. I’ve finally started shedding the guilt of the past… there is no blame needed after all, it’s already done and dusted. There are only blessings and lessons in this life and it takes courage to recognise your own faults and demons. It takes even more to take accountability and befriend them. The most fun part, and the hardest that is a life-long journey, is being self-aware that we all have a choice over our own actions. Dancing with our demons and surrendering to the process.
Befriending all the demons in my head. Bare-faced and fearless at the Pulitzer in Amsterdam.
So as I grow older, the less time I have for bullshit excuses and the more I refine my life. Not for you, not for my husband, not for my future family (ok that’s a lie, this is as much as for my future kids, I don’t want them to take on my emotional baggage), but I want to dedicate this for myself. I deserve to be happy, no matter what kind of guilt I used to stupidly carry for not being the daughter/woman I would have been if my father never died or the daughter my mother deserves. This journey of self-healing is for my inner child, the 11-year old Samantha who still thinks her dad is coming to join them at Christmas in Switzerland. The starry-eyed girl who thought she had the power to change the world. We all deserve love, despite what we might have been told in the past. We all deserve a chance of living to our full potential. I am not wicked, I’m just broken nd trying to heal and understand myself more through my writing and my art. My deepest of hopes is that you, whoever you are reading this, might also learn and heal too from the life lessons of my journey. That maybe you see a reflection of yourself in my experiences and that hopefully you too will share your own with me. So I’m back to writing, to my behind-the-scenes sharing, to my therapy, to maybe a journey with you together in this dance called Life. Cheers Warrior.
Much Love,
Samantha Vaughn