Hello. Hiya!

📍🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🇱🇦 Sa bai dee (Lao for hello) & welcome!

Why this newsletter?

London, England (Summer 2023)

I have overcome a few life traumas. In the process, I discovered the power of “Self-Intelligence,” which stands at the intersection of self-awareness and emotional intelligence. Self-Intelligence is like a superpower unique to you, in which you’re able to assess your feelings, fears and motivations to overcome self-imposed limitations. I am spiritual and a follower of Christ, but I have also been and seen hyper-spiritual people who blame everything on the devil and refuse to take personal responsibility for their lack of self-awareness. Self-Intelligence does not negate the wisdom of God, it gives us the tools to address our own brokenness.

I want to give people the tools to understand themselves by sharing stories and frameworks that have helped me along this journey. Sharing Amy is about finding beauty in dark places. The dark places being the depths of your soul, the parts of your character you would rather not face. Finding beauty being the spiritual sustenance and inner gold you discover in facing yourself. My desire is for people to thrive holistically, in every area of life, because success comes from within before it manifests outwardly.

What to expect.

Every week, I will send you content that will challenge the way you view yourself and others + actionable advice that will help remove roadblocks that prevent you from living the best version of yourself.

The back story.

Cultural Confusion —> Search for Identity —> Self-Intelligence

Let’s start with definitions:

1. Confusion: noun | uncertainty about what is happening, intended, or required.

2. Identity: noun | : the distinguishing character or personality of an individual.

3. Self-Intelligence: (yet to be defined) | : the capacity to understand oneself and to understand one's feelings, fears and motivations.

Confusion: I grew up as an only child to Lao refugee parents who escaped the Vietnam War and landed in San Diego, CA. Besides being born Lao-American in the ghetto section of a beach town, I was also sexually abused by a family member who will remain unnamed and be called the “dead uncle” because he is dead. The combination of being a in first generation immigrant family, gang violence in the 80s, post-war and sexual trauma, caused a lot of confusion of who I was. I didn’t know how to process or communicate the turmoil inside, but it was raging 😡

Identity: I was really f%$#ed up emotionally. I didn’t know how to process my emotions as a result of all the trauma, so I bottled that shit up and buried it deep in my soul, never to be discovered, not even by me. I didn’t know who I was nor my worth. I decided to make up for my lack of self-worth by being overly ambitious —> Feel shame? Great, let’s cover it up with achievements 💪🏼.

Self-Intelligence: My quest for identity was really a need for the sense of belonging. I didn’t feel like I fit in anywhere. I felt alone a lot. I had ZERO trust in authority because I was sexually abused by an adult family member. I questioned everyone, including myself starting at the age of 9. I would override what people said, purely based on how they conducted themselves over time. Actions screamed over words. I was overly critical of myself and others, but that also made me keenly self-aware. I became aware that I had emotions, but I didn’t know how to process them (some psychiatrists might want to diagnose that as being mildly on the spectrum - this topic for another day). I wasn’t on the spectrum, just emotionally unavailable… like all the guys I dated :) Dead on the inside baby! With God’s prompting, I started the emotional healing journey when I was 27 years old, after being crowned Miss Asian America. I got a crown for my outward appearance, but my inward condition didn’t match. It’s been an ugly and beautiful, difficult AF, 14 year journey of facing my own darkness… and still in progress! What I have learned thus far, I’d like to share with others in hopes of helping people find beauty in dark places too.

Actions.

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Thank you for sticking around this far!

Xx,

Amy