One of the hardest places during my time in Canada was in what they call the Early Year Centers.
I remember attending their Post Partum Mood Disorder programmes, nursing my baby, stained with shame with my diagnosis and my firstborn’s severe eczema.
I’d often sit in a corner, empty, lost, wishing I could disappear.
When I feared returning here, it was a mentor who told me, “Pray that God will close your old chapter and start a fresh one.”
In the first 30min of my time back here, I was stunned by how the staff still remembered me- “You’re that Singaporean doctor who went to Hopkins!”
As I watched my kids playing, laughing… very quickly, I realized I was not that depressed, lonely, helpless mom I saw myself as anymore.
I had gone through the tunnel and emerged the other side.
My kids ran to me and said, “Mummy, thank you for bringing us here. You’re the best Mummy in the world.”
I’m learning- not to be trapped by our pasts, but to use them as a reminder of who we once were, to propel us forward to be humbler, but better versions of ourselves.
If you’re struggling with restoration and moving on from painful memories, start with giving yourself time to heal, and when it’s time, take a deep breath, declare that it’s done, and walk right into it.
You can’t change old memories but you can make new ones.