Midnight Pond - Blog

tongue cut in three

A poem reconstructed.

Safe container

I had a moment of grief. Right before that, an extended moment of regret. A longing to go back to something, but I stopped myself from acting on it and let it simmer.

I went outside the next day with a destination in mind, only to feel my gut pulling me elsewhere. So I let it.

I missed the bus stop I had originally planned to get off at and stayed for a few stops longer. Got off and started walking towards an area I consider to be “of the past.” Meandered until I stopped in the middle of a random street under a beautiful tree.

Tears gathered in my eyes. Grief arrived and passed through me, with it went the regret and longing to return.

Who knew that letting go of an old version of self would take this long. That grief would come in ripples, often at times when I’m feeling steady. Some feelings can only surface when we feel safe enough to unclench. I’m writing to remind myself that I can trust my own judgement even if it came with loss.

Trust that you know who and what environments you need to support your transformation and expansion. Even if it means that you must be alone for a while. Even if it means floating around as you expand. You might meet your past over and over again, until every inch and nerve in your body stops choosing familiarity.

A remnant of my old self believes this to be cold. It is not.

In these tender periods, we need a mixture of people and environments for support. We need the close friends and siblings who love us regardless of who, how, or what we want to be. We need people who can sit with the discomfort of our change and uncertainty without making it about themselves — people who can keep their center and be okay without it anchored to us for a while.

We also need people who can support us in a way people who know us too well, cannot. Sometimes, the best support comes from those who have space to meet the half-formed, shapeshifting, new version of us without the lens of preconditioning.

We need relationships and spaces that are safe containers for our transformation — not pulling us towards contraction, nor boundaryless amplifiers of expansion.

What does it mean to create a safe container?

I’ve been thinking about what it means to create a safe container as a breathwork facilitator. One thing that stuck with me from my teacher training was a chapter on power dynamics and the practice of giving power back to participants. I’ve been thinking about it since, beyond the facilitator-participant dynamic. It is too easy to fall into savior-guru mode with this line of offering, and it is not only on the facilitator to stop it from happening.

We like to believe that we do certain things to help when in fact, we really just enjoy being the savior — the one who held another’s hands and lifted them up from their knees. Regardless of whether it comes from a place of genuine care and compassion, this is participation in a power dynamic.

The part of us who identifies with helplessness will enjoy being lifted, especially those of us who’ve never received the kind of care we needed. When we feel seen by someone and they give us what we need without us being aware of the need, it can literally feel like they’ve given us access to a part of us we had lost. We will happily give away our power. I have lost count of the amount of times I thought I was simply expressing gratitude towards someone, but underneath the gesture I was pushing a burden onto them without consent.

The access is the gift. The trust and connection between giver (for lack of a better term) and receiver is what made it possible. The space between the giver and receiver is the safe container, not the giver themselves.

How to tell if you’re in a power dynamic?

A power imbalance is felt when something changes in the connection. You’ve felt it before. That friend who always said yes pushes back. The partner who chased to close the gap between you stops. Your children not needing you the way they used to.

When we sense the shift, our knee-jerk reaction might be to cling to how things were before accepting the change and adapting. The most selfish thing you can do might feel like the most caring thing in the moment. I’m saying this as someone who has played the fixer/caregiver/protector role even though I was totally unqualified to, more often than I’d like to admit.

Have you ever tried protecting someone from “making a mistake” or regret? Gotten too invested in steering someone’s growth journey? When you do so, you’re essentially saying to the person:

I don’t trust you.

And depending on the context, you might even be saying:

You don’t know what’s best for you, I do.

This is care coming from a place of fear. We’re projecting our own fear of the consequences. There’s also a part of us that fears losing our position and the anchoring that comes from each party playing a role they feel safe in. It’s codependent behavior.

To witness growth means accepting whatever form it might take. To allow for growth means letting the person stumble and take the “wrong” turns. They’re only “wrong” because they don’t align with the truths of your imagination.

It’s on everyone to practice taking our power back when we’re ready to, and giving it back to others whenever appropriate. We participate in power dynamics on a daily basis. I don’t believe we can live without them. Maybe we’re not meant to. Maybe part of relationships is to hold the power for someone until they’re ready to take it back. And the kindest thing we can do is to acknowledge when they don’t need us anymore, then quietly step away.

I used to believe the best teachers take themselves out of the equation as much as possible, and they do. But there’s a difference between a teacher who is able to adjust their presence from an authentic place versus a teacher who doesn’t know who they are and therefore are either invisible or overly present. Having control over presence is a sign of security and authenticity.

I’ve met many teachers over the last 2 years — some directly, others don’t know me. The teachers I tend to resonate with are usually unapologetically themselves and can somehow create the shape and size of a safe container that fits me snugly. They root for you to surpass them. They encourage you to find your authenticity. The best gift you can give to these teachers is to stop needing their guidance one day. These are the teachers who enjoy teaching more than the title of Teacher.

How does one recognize a teacher like this? You’ll know by the way they scramble to give your power back when you show any sign of unhealthy dependency. They will not use an authoritarian voice. Sweet or harsh words are replaced with honesty that encourages you to grow and be in control. They shine a light on your potential and make space for you to reach for it. They most definitely don’t stand in the spotlight on the pedestal, enjoy it, and make you work for their validation.

midnight pond

muffled song of crickets
ripples into water
a frog left wondering
what it was

I watched Yi Yi

Note: I mention plot points from both films. Not sure how much I’m spoiling but I am.

I remember a time when I’d sneak to the end of a film just to know what happens to that one character I wanted cut out. I’d read the end of a book chapter so I could continue without feeling anxious. I don’t do these things anymore. I’ve also stopped over-researching films before watching them. The need for a guaranteed experience lessened, and I’ve gained more space to receive my genuine reactions and the feelings that come with them.

This was very with Yi Yi.

I was fidgeting in the chair. I wanted to get out and run from the feelings some scenes were stirring in me. It hit too close to home just like Sentimental Value. But I came out of one movie theater feeling light, despite having cried wholeheartedly, and the other one feeling this ghostly exhaustion that couldn’t find expression. Shuffling out of the Neues Off cinema, my reaction was stuck at “that was totally not what I needed.”

It felt like a marathon to be emotionally present throughout because so much of it felt familiar. Now, more than a week later, I’m accepting that this is exactly why it's a really good movie. And admittedly, this is exactly the kind of discomfort I needed because I’ve been avoiding it whenever I could. I’m not sure I’d watch it again, though. At least not in the near future.

What interests me is how one film can shift how you experience another, the way a relationship with one person can reveal how you misunderstood your experience in another. I wasn’t planning on watching two films that touch on something tender this close to each other, but I’m glad I watched Sentimental Value first. Not because it was better or easier on my nerves but because without it, I wouldn’t have had a counterpoint to help me reframe my experience of Yi Yi. Both films tackle family dysfunction but they handle repair differently.

Yi Yi delivers a 3-hour intense experience of familial and personal drama with emotions amplified — a wedding then an affair, young love and rejection, an old flame returns, the search for personal meaning. We get moments of relief through the perspective of the son, 8-year-old Yang Yang, whose naivety and playfulness remains intact amid all the chaos around him. It’s not chaos to him, of course, it’s just reality. That’s the beauty of Yi Yi. Upheavals and family dysfunction, unfiltered and dramatized but undeniably real in the lack of clear origin to the patterns and the fact that life simply goes on despite problems and death.

Sentimental Value focuses on this one story — one wound — that spans generations and stretches out the repair process. This focus and detailed exploration of how differently a shared wound can affect all members of a family is what makes the film so real and enlightening. Despite all the sadness and heaviness of the generational wound and its effects.

Walking out of Yi Yi, I was fixated on all the shouting and chaos. Only days later was I able to reflect on the moments of connection and repair that was interspersed with all the drama. The daughter of the family having a vulnerable moment with her grandma in coma because it’s the only place she feels held. The dad patiently responding to his son’s innocent philosophical questions without understanding them. Then in another moment, sitting with his wife on their bed, both sharing that they went looking for something but weren’t able to find that aliveness outside their marriage. Imperfect attempts at connection and repair but valid nonetheless.

Sentimental Value savours moments of repair towards the end and culminates in one significant scene. The daughter and father finish their film project and share a timid look, knowing very well that neither of them are skilled at verbal communication. It’s a moment that mirrors a look at the beginning of the film — a much-needed reassurance the daughter gets from her colleague before going on stage. The emotional arc completes. That look between father and daughter together with the moment where she realizes how much her father was attuned to her in his absence — they healed me in some way.

All this reveals is that I don’t go to the cinema to be confronted with a harsh or unchangeable reality. I go to the cinema to leave with hope. I want a bit of magic. I want to be shown that life doesn’t need to be dominated by drama and the shadows of dysfunction.

It also reveals how far I’ve drifted from my own familial culture. Western texts and methods have helped me heal so much but also equipped me with impossible standards for explicit communication and what’s considered a healthy relationship. At the same time, I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this without the perspective — the distance — I’ve gained from healing through these ways.

The way we’ve done repair at home, when it did happen, was mostly implicit. Explicit apologies, hugs, and verbal expressions of love happened but very rarely. Sometimes, a reach for repair would come in the form of a random question like “hey, what do you want to eat?” and then a follow-up action that communicated “I’ll make it for you because I care.”

Just because an apology isn’t expressed in words, does it mean it isn’t genuine? Do disagreements always have to escalate to shouting and fighting? Is it helpful or confusing to read between the lines? These are the kinds of questions I’m still grappling with as I integrate what I’ve learned in English with the norms of my family and extended culture.

NJ takes Yang Yang to McDonald’s because he wasn’t eating at the wedding.

Maybe the difference in how family relations are handled is very much a reflection of cultural difference or the 25-year time difference between these two movies. I’m not sure. I appreciate both.

I appreciate Yi Yi for showing the unfiltered conflict of closeness in a tight-knit family. That patterns, however problematic, are also what make the uniqueness and sometimes, the glue of a family. Not every pattern needs immediate fixing or resolution; most of the time they get passed on. I appreciate Sentimental Value for showing that repair can happen intergenerationally and through minimal verbal expression, however distant it might seem from the viewer’s perspective. I prefer the latter for the same reason I left the cinema feeling light: it offers hope and reality that feels relieving and grounded.

There is hope in Yi Yi, as well. My favourite part of the movie is when Yang Yang reads a letter at his grandma’s funeral — a cycle of life completing, holding together the plot of chaos. “I want to show people what they can’t see,” I remember him saying. And here’s the full script of this heartwarming moment:

Grandma, there is so much I don’t know, so guess what I want to do when I grow up. I want to tell people things they don’t know, show people things they can’t see. That must be fun every day. One day I might find out where you went. When I do, may I tell people to come with and visit you?

婆婆，我不知道的事情太多了。你知道我以後想做什麼嗎？我要去告訴別人他們不知道的事，給別人看他們看不到的東西。我想，這樣一定天天都很好玩。說不定，有一天我會發現你到底去了哪裡。

I loved this scene and every other part with Yang Yang’s perspective; I smiled through most of them. At the same time, I couldn’t help but see an invisible burden on the boy’s shoulders — a lone dreamer executing the capacity to imagine for almost an entire family. It’s not burden to him, of course, it’s “fun”. I can’t seem to identify with this child-like wonder anymore, only resonate with it and wholeheartedly appreciate it. I’m not looking for hope in the form of a dream that perpetually begins and needs no completion.

I need hope grounded in the possibility of repair and forward movement when generations take small, timid steps together. It’s not repair that comes from starting a blank page, but repair that goes back to the torn and crumbled paper, to smooth it and start writing again.

homecoming

Everything is more malleable
than we believe,

the heart most of all.

Light is fleeting
without the structure of shadows.

So begins the dance between
the dragon and its lair…

Three is the magic number

2025 was surreal and it’s not over yet. The shedding of the Snake continues until 17th February when the Year of the Fire Horse begins. Have you felt the old structures and narratives collapsing? We have the power to discern what’s coming with us before we start taking aligned action. Galloping on the new path that’s opened, wearing the new skin we’re growing...

Moment of stillness with an unintended blurry view.

Unlike previous years, I don’t have a good sense of where the months began and ended. There were about two months where I was totally uninterested in the outside world, spending many hours journaling and drawing quietly and ferociously. My journal is a vessel for my lived experience. One of the loving fences I’ve set up to nurture my creativity and this period of dissolving, incubating, and being.

I’m always amused by how inaccurate my memory is when I go back and read about something that happened. I think about how many contorted narratives I must have carried and let influence, and I can’t help but feel a bittersweet grief — at all the opportunities missed, choices unmade, love never watered to grow in favour of love that drained. Maybe this is the reason I love to document all my internal questioning. It’s a way to honour the stories with no middle or end. At least there’s a place they live, uninterrupted, as mysteries forever unlived.

Three years of writing

One of my favourite writers on Substack, Henrik, posted a note that said no one will pay attention to your writing in the first three years at least. I can’t find the note anymore, but I can confirm from experience that three is an accurate benchmark.

My first year of writing I spent on getting comfortable with just writing and posting them on a fairly consistent basis. I didn’t want to post once, then nothing for three months before guilt pushed me to overcompensate with a series of posts one after another. Only to go quiet for months again.

What I’ve been essentially doing in the past year is trying to write more like myself. Searching and developing my voice. I feel the progress in the grimace on my face when I read something I wrote a year ago. I also feel it in the uninterrupted flow when I’m journaling. I’ve become significantly better at not censoring as I write. I suppose this is “writing from abundance”.

I’m entering the third year of writing and nearly there with finding my voice, though I’m always a bit uncertain. In fact, uncertainty — tension — might be an essential part of my voice. If I am to ever be absolutely certain about something that must mean I’ve chosen to simplify the narrative or that I have become rigid in my thinking.

Midnight Pond is a space for being unapologetically uncertain.

Three languages in one poem

I have been translating myself for most of my life. Whether it was from one language to another, or reframing myself to fit in at school, or editing my words to make them legible to any stranger. Through all the translation, I have lost and found myself again. In between, I figured out that I was doing it because I never felt accepted exactly as I am. An alien everywhere I go. Except maybe it’s all in my head.

I move comfortably between the three languages that have shaped me, but I keep coming back to this project of wanting to combine them. I’m not happy with just alternating, I want them to flourish together. If I could get myself into some sort of trance or alternative state of consciousness, would I feel most comfortable combining all three at once? English would be the body of the ship. Mandarin the mast and maybe Hungarian the sail. Though it feels like the ship had been sailing with a broken mast and a sail with holes for too long.

I discovered that I enjoy writing poetry and short prose this year, and I’ve been trying to fix the mast and sail with multilingual poems. Which is funny because I didn’t understand poetry as a kid. It was cryptic to me. I remember being devastated at the fact that there was no way I could ever know what the poet really meant or felt. Then what’s the point of trying to analyze something when there’s no way to get to the source of truth?

I was reading them wrong, of course. I read them like a translator instead of an appreciator of art. Poems don’t need to be deciphered. You feel them or you don’t. To have a poem resonate deeply means it’s articulated or touched something real, maybe something you’ve hidden from yourself.

Where did this urge to write poems come from? All I did was write from a place of truth or as close as I can get to it, and as I inched closer, this form emerged.

Three narratives

My relationship to astrology was rattled when I started reading into Vedic astrology. It’s slowly dismantled everything I’ve internalized about my birth chart according to Western astrology, and I’ve now found the right distance from it all.

There’s uncertainty around the exact time I was born because it didn’t happen easily. This story fits the Capricorn Ascendant: difficult birth, responsibilities too soon and late-bloomer in some ways, reserved personality until later in life. Maybe I didn’t want to come out of my mother’s womb as if I had already felt the burden of becoming before I was even born. Another narrative that fits is that I only wanted to come out on my own terms, not when I was supposed to. Or maybe I was pushed out sooner than I was ready.

The biological story was that my head was too big and I couldn’t fit through, but considering these different narratives gives me the opportunity to question if I might be carrying the imprint of said difficult birth without knowing. Your Ascendant describes the way you show up in the world, the first impression you give and how others see you.

But now — according to Vedic astrology, my Ascendant may not be in Capricorn. I might be a Sagittarius Ascendant instead or both at the same time. Ruled by the planet Jupiter, Sagittarius is known for its expansive, philosophical, and optimistic nature. The narrative thickens, I guess.

Multiple truths can coexist and they don’t need to agree or cancel each other out. This is a necessary tension of an integrated life. Accepting this brings stillness and dampens the need for external chaos.

Settling closes the process by resolving tension too early and returning to the familiar cycle that treats clarity as finality. Sitting with contradiction is different. It requires staying with opposing ideas without forcing one to cancel the other. Movement still happens, but it comes from holding these ideas together rather than eliminating one of them. In that way, what feels like opposition becomes part of the same structure, and clarity emerges as the ability to carry complexity without collapsing it.
— The Mercer Edition

The narratives you accept shape how you live. Discernment between the ones that serve you and the ones holding you back is a lifelong project. I’d tell my younger self to try to recognize when you’re seeing people through the narrative you project onto them instead of who they really are. Look beyond the first impression, the way they want to be seen. Real people don’t enjoy being on the pedestal. Real people want to be seen as unapologetically human.

The more clearly you see yourself, the easier it is to notice when there’s a mismatch between the narrative and reality. By “clearly” I don’t mean knowing yourself very, very well. It means knowing in what ways you do and don’t know yourself. It means having the confidence to say “I don’t know myself.”

I’ve been listening to Not For Threes by Plaid on repeat. This piece is an organic continuation to Shivers of deep resonance.

Sentimental Value

Spoiler alert. It’s a brilliant movie, please watch.

I watched Sentimental Value before I left for Christmas in a small Kino near Boxhagener Platz. I teared up, I laughed, I hated the dad, I cried. But I left feeling light and resolved. This is my favourite kind of movie. It takes you through relatable emotional experiences of life condensed in just over 2 hours without the looming heaviness, total confusion, or the airy-fairy happy ending.

That moment where she’s about to get on stage and starts sabotaging herself was all too familiar. The tearing of the dress, the anxiety, the heavy breathing. She orders a slap from the co-star she sleeps with — an external push to get her shit together. But that’s not what she needed. What she needed was trust, the kind you internalize from a father who is present. A presence that says “I believe in you. I got you. You are safe.” She receives this sense of safety from the most unflashy character. A quiet colleague wearing a microphone (on the stage operations team?), someone she may not have even paid attention to. It was just a look, an exchange with no words. And out she walks onto the stage, steps into her power and bellows to set the tone for the play, for herself.

dissolving

i’m searching for
anchors in the deep sea
structure in dissolving

holes in the deep sea
i’m
yanked
grasping

holes in the deep sea
swallowing me
holes in the deep sea
tenderly holding

structure is dissolving
melting

I dissolving

Too much coffee

It feels like I’ve lain face down on a pillow with two wooden blocks tucked in it, pushing against my eyes. My eyeballs are sinking inside their sockets. I cannot think but my mind is on and it’s steering my hands, legs, and movements. I’m seeing a lot but registering very little. Cannot process. I feel overwhelmed, but it feels wrong to be still. This is what happens when you don’t sleep enough and drink too much coffee.

Hello, I’ve started a Ko-fi page. If you enjoy my writing and wish to support me, you can do so there. Your support would mean a lot to me, more than I can express in words ♡

Still dandelioning

Sometimes, I’ll write something but the words aren’t mine. They feel sincere, yet I know they’re not coming from my direct experience. The most reasonable explanation I found for these feelings and thoughts is that they’re inherited. Channeled. Maybe from my parents or their parents. We inherit so much more than money, assets, and status that goes unnoticed — not invisible. They leave an imprint on the way we behave, the choices that we make, how far we allow our imaginations to stretch. I’ve written about this before, and I keep returning to this collection of thought. Maybe that’s inherited too.

I often say that I don’t feel native anywhere. I don’t understand the uncomplicated feeling of belonging to one specific country or place. Home isn’t about blood, soil, and citizenships for me, but I also know that “everywhere can be home” is a self-soothing story rather than lived freedom. I was never made to be a wanderer. I always longed for a home that stays, and the dream of finding that home is what kept me wandering.

I moved nearly every single year between 2012 and 2020 from one apartment to another, across a few cities in one country. I was very good at it. The moving and living from a few suitcases. Every time I moved, I would go through an emotional upheaval but I would also convince myself that I needed to leave when the time was ripe.

A nomadic life looks romantic from the outside, until you realize that your sense of home is scattered everywhere. “I carry home with me,” you tell yourself. But here’s a thought to disrupt this story: maybe you’re avoiding the reality that at the root of “everywhere can be home” is a deep longing for stability that you don’t feel you deserve because instability is the safety you’ve always known — the crumbs you were fed.

Maybe, “everywhere can be home” is a mental reframe of “nowhere feels like home”. A clever way your mind tries to protect you from an ache it knows too well — an ache that you may have inherited but never felt.

It wasn’t until I helped my dad move — once again — that I really saw this pattern for what it is. He can’t stay in one place for long, always finding something not quite right. The apartment is too high up. The noise outside is too loud. There’s not enough storage space. I could see the effect of history on him and through him, its effect on me.

I inherited this restlessness, a hypervigilance that mistakes settling for being trapped. It’s a need to break free that somehow keeps choosing situations that feel restraining. As if I need the constraints to justify the leaving. Like everyone else, I have the need for both freedom and stability, but somehow acutely amplified.

We’re trying to protect ourselves from the pain of losing something. Safety, maybe even identity. I am a daughter of immigrants, a descendant of diaspora. Somewhere in our lineage, my ancestors survived because they stayed ready to move. Through the constant moving, instability became safety itself, rootlessness the only home they could trust. I don’t have evidence of this, yet I feel it in my irrational fears and reactions. Why else would it feel existentially threatening to move and equally uncomfortable to stay?

The last time I wrote about home, I was getting ready to leave a place I poured a lot of energy into. Now I’m sitting on the same moss green couch, but this time, in an apartment with a permanent contract. I am happy at this new place. Very happy. And still I felt that itch for change again, creeping up in the quietude of stability when everything felt too steady. Too good.

You know how you’re not supposed to scratch mosquito bites because they’ll spread? I caught myself scratching the itch by cataloging problems. The area is too boring. The kitchen counter is too small. I don’t like the ceiling height. And then the itch would expand into questioning the city altogether: What am I doing here? What’s tying me to this specific city?

There are many writers I keep returning to, but Nix's words often make me feel seen and infuse me with a sense of belonging like no other:

When you belong nowhere, many places can be home-shaped, or you can feel like a wanderer for longer than is comfortable: listless and drifting. Yet belonging nowhere means you get to choose your loyalties and your beliefs. You choose the stake to bear, the price you’ll pay. These decisions end up being consequential. To make them is to sharpen and ossify the wavering lines of fate and direction.

Before Berlin, I was severely listless and drifting. I tell people that intuition is what guided me here — the city of transformation, I’ve been calling it. I say that it’s something that can’t be put into words, but I’m realizing that it may just have been a readiness felt as existential fatigue. I was tired of performing, of not feeling at home anywhere. I came here ready to unravel, even if I didn’t know it intellectually at the time. Even if I resisted it for while.

This city has held me in ways I’ve never experienced. Our chemistry has stripped away everything misaligned. It’s helped me cultivate my connection to my intuition, feelings, desires, fears, and everything else that I had learned to suppress in service of others and survival in the external world. I have felt naked. Literally and spiritually. This is where I’ve learned that true belonging can’t be retrieved from the outside. Until you feel at home within and trust that it won’t be lost, you will always ache for a home to be found everywhere you are not.

Midnight Pond has been an important part of this journey. I keep returning to the art of words, just as I return to the park near where I live. I’m realizing that rooting is simply a constant returning — to the self, the place, the practice, the people — until both distance and proximity serve commitment and returning feels like an instinctive need rather than a search for something lost.

You know how they tell you to put X’s on mosquito bites with your nail for relief instead of scratching them? Writing about home does this for me. I don’t know if I’m breaking the pattern or just getting better at describing it, but maybe this is how you break the pattern. Just like expressing yourself brings clarity to who you are.

This year, I’m still staying without tying it to forever. Still dandelioning.