When My Life Looked Perfect and I Was Falling Apart

Content note: This post includes references to sexual assault, trauma, depression, and substance use. Please read gently and take breaks if you need to.

We spent the last three days driving up the coast to Central California. Our trip started in Orange County, California, then we drove to beautiful Santa Barbara, and the next day we made our way to Pismo Beach. It was such a simple change of scenery, but it felt like a deep exhale.

The ocean has always been a reminder of tranquility and peace. Even with my two young children in the car, the drive was amazingly quiet, leaving so much space for gratitude and reflection. Two years and four months ago, I could never have imagined feeling this: an overflowing sense of joy and peace, oozing from my heart.

I’m so grateful for my life. It truly is abundant, even though this wasn’t always the case.

The strength I was raised on

Growing up, I was taught to do what I was told. Follow the rules. Work hard for the finer things in life. In many Asian families, perseverance, sacrifice, and service to others over self are core virtues. Overall, they aren’t necessarily a bad set of principles to live by.

In fact, those principles helped me build a lot.

They’re how I paid for my own braces and cheerleading camp at age 14. They’re how I worked my way through college, both my undergraduate and graduate degrees. Perseverance is how I landed a career at a major corporation after being initially overlooked. Determination is what helped me work my way up the corporate ladder into a “fancy title” position and a six-figure income, using an atypical career path.

But here’s the part I didn’t understand at the time.

Those same virtues that helped me succeed also taught me how to endure.

And endurance can become a kind of armor.

When perseverance becomes armor

Perseverance, pushing through, sticking with it, not quitting… it served me well. A little too well.

It helped me push on instead of dealing with the emotions surrounding being molested at ages 9, 19, 21, and 36. These were isolated incidents involving different perpetrators. A couple were close to the family. Two were complete strangers.

And it didn’t stop there.

Layered on top of that was growing up in impoverished conditions, early parentification from raising my younger siblings, occasional violence, and the loss of pregnancies.

I suppressed my emotions on most fronts and still managed to pull off a “normal-looking” life. But I wasn’t left unscathed. The ramifications showed up as lack of confidence, low self-worth, shame, and all of shame’s many disguises. And those pieces, the ones I thought I could outwork forever, would later surface with a vengeance when my standard operating principles started failing me in 2012, at the peak of my career.

2012: the year the outside looked perfect and the inside fell apart

By early 2012, everything I thought I wanted… I had.

From the outside looking in, my life was perfect: married, two kids, a cute Spanish-style home, a fancy-title career I thought I loved, a six-figure income, and a company car.

In reality, I was terribly unbalanced.

My career took up just about every waking moment between the commute, time in the office, and the work I brought home daily. I was a dedicated employee, but I was a zombie wife and mom.

Eventually, the imbalance caught up with me. Stress began showing up physically: numbness in my face, aches and pains, nervousness, anxiety, panic attacks. My marriage started to collapse, and my performance at work started to slip. Depression crept in. Lack of confidence reared its head again.

Then came September 2012. My division was consolidated, and I was offered a position with a longer commute or a severance package. I opted for the severance and ran.

By the time I left, my ego had convinced me I was a failure. That’s when shame showed up, loud and consuming.

Acting out, numbing out, and the lowest point

With time on my hands and severance pay, I started what I now recognize as the beginning of my healing. But at first, it didn’t look like healing.

In the beginning, I acted out.

I lived in anger and blame for a while. I was mad at the company for not giving me the resources I needed to be successful. I was mad at my husband for not understanding how hard I worked and why. I threw caution to the wind in the most selfish and reckless ways. I abandoned my values of compassion and understanding to pursue momentary escapes. I allowed my marriage to keep falling apart.

I stayed busy with social activities. I tried to start different business ventures. I consciously chose anger so I wouldn’t have to be accountable for my current state.

Late 2012 through 2013 was a record year of trips to Las Vegas. A girlfriend’s bachelorette party. A couple of business ventures. A birthday celebration. Most of the trips led to excessive drinking and behavior that didn’t even feel like me.

Up to that point, I had never drank to the point of memory loss. This was a version of me no one recognized, including me. I created challenges for some of my most cherished friendships.

The drinking combined with antidepressants helped me avoid feeling anything. Or at least I thought it did.

In reality, it just numbed the pain of self-judgment.

I was at my ultimate low. My perfect little life had unraveled. By early 2013, I filed for divorce. I was depressed, still unemployed, and on the verge of losing my marriage.

The part of me that knew something had to change

As dismal as all this sounds, at heart I’m an optimist and a realist. I knew I was lost. I knew I needed help.

I was seeing a therapist weekly. I had already started soul searching and reexamining my values. But if I’m being honest, darkness can feel easier at times, and sometimes it even feels more “fun” than doing the inner work. I wasn’t ready to dissect my behavior yet. I was still angry about where I was.

I didn’t understand how I got there. I had worked so hard. I gave it my all. And it still collapsed.

I didn’t know what was next for me, but I knew things had to change. So I kept searching.

How spirituality found me through desperation

That search led me to experiences I never expected to be part of my life.

My search led me down paths I never expected to explore, from retreats and spiritual study to energetic healing practices that helped me access what talk therapy couldn’t always reach. I started learning from teachers and frameworks that emphasized healing, self-responsibility, and the power of the mind-body connection.

Through desperation and hopelessness, I stumbled into spirituality and inner work. And slowly, something in me began to soften. I stopped fighting myself long enough to finally hear what I needed.

By late 2013, it became clear I was meant to become a coach.

The turning point in 2014

In early 2014, I enrolled in a business coaching program and attended a seminar that challenged me to face my fears, not just professionally, but personally. I walked away from that experience and made a decision to invest in support, in my growth, and in the version of myself I was becoming.

At the time, I thought I was simply learning how to build a coaching practice and step into entrepreneurship.

What I received was far deeper.

It was the beginning of real inner peace. I learned tools to process emotional trauma I had carried for years. I started releasing fears around failure and success, vulnerability, being accepted, fitting in, and speaking up.

And I continue doing the deeper work, the core beliefs that sit underneath it all: unworthiness, “unlovable,” and “not safe.”

Where I am now

Today, what I value most isn’t a perfect life, it’s a regulated nervous system, self-trust, and the ability to stay with myself through whatever life brings. I still have moments that stretch me, but I don’t abandon myself in them anymore.

If you’re in a season that feels like an unraveling, I want you to know this: it can also be a return. And you don’t have to do it alone.

If you’re ready for support, I’d love to help. You can explore my coaching offerings or reach out to book a consultation, and we’ll talk about what you’re moving through and what you want to create next.