I became a master of disguise - charismatic on the outside, shattered within. By 5th grade, father threatened my life with a metal baton, I threatened my own in return. That was the moment they sent me away to a psychiatric hospital and there I started to see how much I had learned to endure.

I had spent years battling every mental war imaginable: crippling anxiety, relentless depression, shattered self-worth, eating disorders, etc. Yet, I convinced myself this was normal, because I believed suffering was a mere part of existence.

When I unexpectedly lost my father at 19, his death swallowed me whole. I drowned in deeper shame and guilt because, in my family’s eyes, I was the one who had stressed him out most. Everyone believed it, and so did I. No matter how much he had hurt me, he was also my deepest love. Grieving him felt like losing the only piece of love I had ever known, even if it came with pain.

After moving past this, I told myself I had survived the worst, but the wounds only intensified, driving me into back-to-back abusive relationships that mirrored the suffering I had always known, all while my anxiety, depression, and self-worth spiraled even further out of control.

In 2023, everything shattered. “Love” pulled me into a storm of heartbreak so suffocating I could barely breathe. I became a husk at work, and absent from my family and friends. Every day, I cried until exhaustion overtook me, my chest caving under the unbearable weight of grief, pain, humiliation and betrayal.

But in that darkness, something awakened. A force greater than pain itself pulled me back through time, unraveling memories I had buried deep, rewriting the meaning behind every wound I had ever carried.

And when my story changed, so did my fate...

I grew up feeling trapped, physically, emotionally, and mentally. My mother was distant, avoiding my needs as if emotions did not exist. My father carried too many, unleashing his anger on me whenever it became too much for him to hold.

From infancy, I was denied safety and left to cry alone. At just 1  year old, I was locked in the basement and shortly after, I began enduring regular abuse, leaving my small body bruised, bleeding, and silenced.

Yet, I was expected to be strong, poised, and "perfect" at all times. I was taught to act refined and polite, not for my own character, but to protect my parents’ image.

"Was this normal?," "Did my friends feel this way too?," "Or was I the only one who felt like she was drowning in a life that wasn’t hers to control?," I asked the universe before closing my eyes each night.

I spent my entire life searching for ways to upgrade my unlucky reality.
It took a long time, but what I discovered changed EVERYTHING.

Hi, my name is Jen Phan