Remembrance & Grace:

the gifts that brought me back

Why hello there. Remember me? I don’t expect you to since it’s taken ~me~ the last few years to remember myself: my multi-facetedness and complex web of curiosities that I try to distill through these reflections; my desire to experience as much as possible in this short journey on the 3D plane; my love for life: this one, miraculous, extraordinary, inexplicable life.

Towards the end of 2024, I wrote about the post-Covid blues and how – despite a multitude of practices to anchor in intentional optimism – depression had quietly snuck into unsuspecting aspects of my mental wellbeing. I had committed to redefining and reclaiming my happiness, unaware that it would take another year and the beginnings of a Master’s program in Intuition Medicine and pausing a decade-long career and getting pregnant and another 10-day silent meditation retreat to unpack all the ways I had actually abandoned myself.

There are moments when I’m frustrated at how long it’s taken and I lament the lost time – time, our most precious resource. I play back things I could have, should have, would have done differently; I revisit conversations and friendships that paused mid-evolution; I spiral with the ‘what ifs’ that take hold of my imagination and launch towards a (false) reality of insufficiency fueled by comparison.

Then, there are the moments of remembrance.

Remembering that life unfolds exactly as it’s meant to.

Remembering that there is no right or wrong, there just is.

Remembering that this – however joyful, challenging, fulfilling, despondent – this too shall pass.

The remembrance feels like a sacred gift delivered from prayers for clarity. It arrives alongside grace: an unfamiliar notion for this Type-A, immigrant child who grew up never thinking she was good enough. Remembrance and grace have paved the path to self-forgiveness as I show up again: haltingly, imperfectly, messily.

Anne Lamott says that, “Good writing is about telling the truth.”

I suppose this is my admission that at the core of remembering myself, I remember how much I love writing. I love the way words can shape worlds; the momentary permanence it provides in an otherwise fleeting existence. I love reading great writing (Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid is a recent favorite) and I love what it sparks inside of me: a hopefulness that somehow transmutes the ennui from isolation into an excitement and exuberance that carries through to so many other aspects of life.

Truthfully, I never know what will emerge in these pages. I don’t know if writing is something I want to do fulltime, or hinge my identity on. But I do know that in these times, as I cling to fragments of joy and inspiration, as I continue the daily crusade of remembering, words are what pour from my soul. And so, I remember to continue showing up, however uncomfortable, however unfamiliar, however hard. And I remember that that’s enough.

With deep love, gratitude and grace,

沈鑫 // Em Shen