My story
There is a particular kind of leaving that has nothing to do with geography.
I know this because I did the geographical kind first. I left Singapore in my early twenties, alone, with a degree I had already decided not to use, moving toward something I could not yet name. What followed was nearly two decades of building across countries, cultures, and roles. A career that took me into demanding corporate environments at Bosch and BMW. Teams spread across continents. Work that required me to be many things to many people, in languages – literal and cultural – that were not always my own.
I was good at it. That was never the problem.
The problem was what I had learned, long before any of that, about what being good at things was actually for. I grew up in a world where achievement was not one option among many. It was the measure. Of worth. Of belonging. Of whether you were taking up the right amount of space. The eldest daughter learns this faster than most. I absorbed it early and carried it a long way, far enough that it took me years to notice the weight of it.
The moment I started to notice was also the moment I started to understand something about the women I would eventually work with. Not because our stories are identical. But because the pattern underneath them is often the same. The high performance. The relentless forward motion. The quiet, persistent question that gets deferred because there is always something more urgent to deliver.
Who am I, underneath all of this?
My reason
That question led me to train as a coach, then as a mental health coach, and eventually to a Master's in Psychology and Neuroscience. Not as a detour from the question, but as a way of taking it seriously. These studies gave form to what I had already observed: that the patterns keeping accomplished women stuck are not character flaws. They are intelligent responses to early conditions, responses that can be understood, examined, and changed.
For most of the women I work with, the pattern looks like success. It looks like ambition, discipline, an exceptional ability to deliver. What it actually is, underneath it all, is a very old answer to a much older question. Am I enough? And the answer was always: only if you keep proving it.
That understanding is the foundation of The Art of Unlearning.
I am not an observer of the world these women come from. I came from a version of it myself. Which is why I know that the work is not about becoming someone new. It is about finally having the space, and the right kind of support, to ask which parts of who you are were genuinely chosen. And to build, perhaps for the first time, from that answer.
