From Trauma to Triumph: A Mother's Journey of Healing and Creativity with Bach Ly

I feel like a lot of moms have this feeling like you know, i'm not allowed to have time to myself every day. You know like, oh, it's a special event when I get to work on my stuff. And that's the mindset you really got to overcome, because it's not a special event. You are a creative being. It's okay for your kids to see you being creative every day.

Welcome to the Moms Who Create podcast. I'm your host, kelly Hile, and I am thrilled to share a podcast that celebrates the incredible moms who are pursuing their creative passions. Are you a mom who feels like you just can't balance your creative pursuits with the demands of motherhood? Each week, i'm bringing you interviews with accomplished and talented moms who have made their creative dreams a reality. I talk to writers, artists, musicians and entrepreneurs who have successfully found a way to do what they love while raising the ones they love. Some of the writers I talk to are New York Times bestselling authors, while some are self-published first-time authors. I also share my own insights and resources to help you navigate the unique challenges of being a mom who creates. So, whether you're an early bird or a night owl, a seasoned pro or just starting out, i want you to know that you can pursue your creative passions and be an amazing mom at the same time. Grab a cup of coffee, a notebook and get ready to join our community of like-minded moms who are on a mission to live intentionally and create with purpose. This is the Moms Who Create podcast, and I can't wait to share this journey with you. Hi everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of the Moms Who Create podcast. I have a truly special human on the podcast today and her name is Bok Lee. Born in Vietnam and raised in Hawaii, bok is the mother of two girls and the author of two books. Passionate about Mental Health, she started a group called Moms Who Self-Heal and she shares her self-healing journey with her latest work called Soy Sauce Fingers, a collection of poems Bok shares and opens up, shares really personal stories in hopes of encouraging others listening. I really appreciate her vulnerability and honesty. She's wonderful. Enjoy today's episode, bok. Thank you for joining me today. All the way from Hawaii and it's like early morning there, so welcome to the podcast. Thank you for joining me.

Of course. Thank you so much for having me. So my name is Bok Lee. I am the author of Adventures at a Lopsided Pawn, a children's book, and my newest work is Soy Sauce Fingers, a collection of poetry celebrating motherhood and self-healing.

I love the title of that. It's so unique.

I really wanted to add a little bit of an Asian flair, because I am an Asian American. I was born in Vietnam but raised in Hawaii.

Before we jump into talking about your books, I kind of want to get into your story. Tell me what inspired you to become a writer. What was it that made you decide that you want to actually publish books?

Well, when I was growing up, my biggest escape was books And I just wanted to return the favor of creating content that could draw people in and make people say hey, that's me. They can see the. This is a quote from my Instagram. But I don't write for myself, that's too lonely. I write so that others can see their dreams reflected in my words.

Oh, that's so good. I'm really interested in hearing about your soy sauce fingers collection. Tell us about your books.

Well, soy Sauce Fingers is a collection of poems that start from the moment it crossed my mind that I wanted to be a mother to having a four-year-old toddler running around and completely disrupting my life, and it focuses mainly on coming from a difficult childhood. I had a lot of mental issues to overcome to truly embrace motherhood, and I feel like that's a topic that isn't talked about enough, where, like, yeah, it's a miracle and it's beautiful and you're just completely overwhelmed, but a lot of shadows rise up from the darkness of us all, because there's a lot of things that motherhood bring to the surface that we're not aware of when we're young adults And we're like I'm totally fine, i don't have any problems, and then the baby starts triggering you to like what is my temper? like What? how do I deal with things that like, do I want to deal with them the way my family has, or do I want to seek a new path for myself? And so the entire book is all about just rediscovering who I am and making new decisions for myself and my family.

That's amazing. What an incredible way to go about it. You're helping yourself as you're writing this book, and also, at the same time, others that'll read it. It'll also kind of help them. It'll help them in their motherhood. It'll help them not feel alone.

It's a very heavy topic And I feel like a lot of times, when it comes to motherhood, we're either, you know, a hot mess that don't care about anything, or we're the overly perfect, sentimental mom. You know like I feel like there's no medium where I can be a hot mess and still love my kids. Right, You know like meet somewhere in the middle and I feel like that's where we all are is like somewhere in the middle of like the perfect in this Instagram life that we're all trying to chase after matching outfits with our kids, you know Right.

Do you actually do that, or is that just a social media thing?

I'm I mean it's so cute, how could you not want to do it? I know, like we all know that within 10 minutes of them putting on that outfit, it's gone.

Frequently I wonder what motherhood was like before social media, before the internet, when you could only really compare yourself to another mom in like a magazine or seeing Martha at the grocery store. You know what I mean. Instead of just scrolling through your phone, seeing the highlight reel of everyone's lives and thinking, oh look at, their kids are wearing that and they're not dirty. My kid puts on a new dress and has chocolate on it in a matter of five minutes, and so it's so interesting to you have to really tell yourself their whole life isn't perfect. They just take the highlights. I love when people put things on social media like pictures of this is why this corner of my house looks like it looks perfect.

I love those too.

They can't do. the other side of their house It's just complete disaster because they just push it, has it been shelved everything? I mean, i've done that, taking a picture. I don't like take pictures of my house and put up. You know I don't. I love my house and it's beautiful, but I don't have that like white and gray, everything that you see on social media. I don't know if I've got it at the same time. If I've wanted to take a picture of something like the corner, i'll just move tons of stuff out of the way to be like oh, look how nicely organized my corner is to display the side number something, and I don't know. I don't know why we do that. It's so silly. I put up a real one on my Instagram where, like, i was holding a book I know, i think maybe it was just a story, i don't know I was holding a book and I was like, oh, my nails chipped, i need to paint it before I hold the book. So it looks better than I painted it. And I was like, what am I doing? Why don't we do this? Like someone's going to see my room be like, oh, her nails chipped. She must be a terrible mom. She must just not care about her looks. So it was kind of an eye-opening thing to me.

I think I'm going to be a part of a generation that is very aesthetically focused. That's honestly just the truth We come from. because we've just been fed so much media, we know what is aesthetically appealing and what isn't, which comes from massive consumption.

Yeah, it's true.

It's not really a you thing. It's like we're all just very aware of exactly how we look on media because we're trying to chase after all the other media that people are producing. It's exhausting.

It's exhausting. We're not a huge studio.

We're not a huge studio with tons of people working on set. We are one person trying to maintain our life and look good while we do it.

And sometimes you just don't want to look good too. but I want to put a video up on my Instagram for, like, the podcast, but I won't have, like, any makeup on my hair. I'll be gross, i'll be like, but I don't look good. But no, i just want to talk and share a message or do something. Who cares if I don't have mascara on? but it's such a hard obstacle to overcome. It really is. It sounds silly, but it's hard to want to show yourself not looking social media presentable. It's just silly. How are we going to do it?

I actually think that's the main thing that stops a lot of creative processes is this perfection. You know, one thing that I kind of learned that was really amazing and kind of completely changed my life was I learned a healing process called Be Set Free Fast. It was developed by Larry Nims And it is a process that helps you remove the emotional charge from a belief. That's interesting, right Interesting. I've been self healing for a really long time and this is the first thing that, like I grabbed onto that completely worked for me and was so effective that I've been able to pinpoint different beliefs. It's easy to tell ourselves we should not feel this way, but it's a whole nother story to not feel that way.

Mm-hmm.

And so this is a process that removes the feeling. That's cool. I'm going to actually, i'm going to look that up, read about that. Oh, i actually did a workshop with Larry and he trained me in the process with him and helped me develop, because I started doing it in 2009. And I was like, if this is going to work, i'm going to make it work for my biggest issue, mm-hmm. And my biggest issue was I grew up in a very abusive household, like emotional damage to the max. Oh, i'm sorry, you had to go through that. So the very first thing that I used the process on was I forgave my mother for my entire childhood. It completely changed my life because I went from avoiding my mom. I was actually living with my mom at the time Like I had. I had just come out of high school, i just came out of a bad relationship and I had no place to go, and it's very common in Hawaii to just like run back to your parents during this time And I had to like feel all of this trauma, just reactivating by being around her. And I learned this process and I'm like, hey, if this is going to work, it has to work for the biggest thing in my life, and so I did the process and it completely changed my relationship with my mom.

Good for you for taking control of your life and deciding to heal that big part of your life. That takes a lot of maturity and a lot of strength.

So good on you.

It's amazing.

Oh yeah, i kind of have my partner likes to say, like you have this unfair advantage. When I was 13, i made an attempt on my life and I completely was. It was amazing. I was guided. I had a dream that night of the attempt that showed me what it would be like if I had died. Oh, wow, yeah. So here's, 13 year old Bach just experienced her own funeral And but the worst part was, at the end I saw my consciousness trapped in the darkness and all of my mental anguish, all of the pain that I carry throughout my life, is still there with me in the darkness. And I realize in that moment there's like a voice that told me your life is where you process the pain, so you have to live if you want this pain to go away. Yeah, so I woke up and I was like, well, i don't want to die now. So I guess I have to change something, because my life is unbearable and I have an undeniable desire to live. So something's got to give, and the only thing that could give was the conditions of my life.

And look at you now you are a mother and you are an author and you're amazing. So you have, you have went through a journey and you are still going through a journey and it's coming. Everything in life that you wanted to do or didn't know you could do is coming to fruition. So look at you.

Look at you. Well, i mean, it's still. you know, the thing with mental health is it's a lot of years of buildup And even when you have the tools, it's still a lot of cleaning.

On the topic of mental health, more and more we're seeing children and adolescents struggling with anxiety, low moods and low self-esteem. This is why early education is incredibly important. The sooner we teach our children about mental health and how to communicate their feelings, the sooner we can actually do something about it. This is something that mental health professional and founder of psych resources Norgentilata is hoping to achieve. She noticed that, since the pandemic, anxiety and children was on the rise at a global scale and something needed to be done, and so psych resources was born. Since then, psych resources has created a collection of research backed activity books designed to help build the skill of emotion regulation so that children can learn to identify, communicate and manage big feelings. Each and every book is inclusive and interactive, has fun and diverse characters, includes educational activities and is a great way of keeping the kids occupied away from the screens. Did I mention that they're recommended by teachers and parents? You can check out their website, psychresourcescouk, where you can find activity books on managing anxiety, building self-esteem, social skills, empathy and mindfulness, and you can follow them on Instagram, too, at psychresources, for weekly content on tips on how you can support your child and help build their self-esteem.

I created a Facebook group called Moms Who Self-Heal, and that's kind of like where I go to find my tribe, and we all support each other with like tips and our own stories of what's happening in our lives. So it's been really good. I think that's the biggest thing like not just doing it alone but having a community. I come from like a really like physically abusive family, and so when I felt the urge to do the same thing to my own daughter, i'm like whoa, whoa, whoa. It's time to stop and reevaluate. Look for the belief that is triggering this vicious response. Clear it so that I never have to do it.

It's so interesting. Well, I'm glad you are healing and you're going through this journey to better yourself and your mind. So how do you balance your creative life with your motherhood?

So one of my favorite methods that I've been following is I use atomic habits by James Clear, where he tells you how to develop a habit, and I use the system on developing a writing habit and a marketing habit and a, because writing is only the tip of the iceberg for a lot of self published authors. The method is create a visual cue that lets you know it's time to write. Always write, no matter what, no matter what you're feeling, no matter if you're like I'm inspired, i'm not inspired, like it doesn't matter. Sit down, put in the time, because that develops the skill. Everything we write won't be perfect and that's going to be okay, but what's important is developing that skill every day. Even if it's just for 30 minutes every day, it adds up real fast. It's when we try to do like, oh, i'm just going to write for like four hours, that's when we run into like all these trouble because, like you can't be away from your kid for four hours, usually Right, yeah. So the key is to develop a habit and start small and grow it. Start with, start with like a five minute writing thing. Get used to showing up, because that's the big thing. We don't show up. Get used to showing up for your creative process and Then, as you get used to it, as you develop the skill, then expand it, then let it get bigger and bigger, like, oh, maybe from five minutes I'll go to 15 minutes, from 15 minutes I'll go to, like, baby step it. The big thing is we're like, oh, i'm passionate right now. I'm gonna do it all today, the whole book. What are you doing to yourself? because the amount of pressure you put on yourself to do the whole book in one sitting is insane and Most of it's not gonna be good. And then you're gonna come back to it and you're gonna scrap the whole thing Instead, develop your skill every day. That's the big thing because, like I did that too, i used to be like, oh, you know, i'm just gonna, i'm just gonna jam it in real fast. Right, i had to do the whole thing real fast, and you're a panic and you're scared and you just right, gibberish. But if you do it every day, you don't have that pressure. You. There's so much more grace that you give yourself if you know, you're gonna do it again tomorrow. I feel like a lot of moms have this feeling. Like you know, i'm I'm not allowed to have time to myself every day. You know like, oh, it's a special event when I get to work on my stuff. And That's the mindset you really got to overcome, because it's not a special event. You are a creative being. It's okay for your kids to see you being creative every day.

Yeah, yes, you know, 100%, 100%. like mom's going to You know the girl she saw by themselves, like whoo, it's a little vacation, this is special treat going by myself, and it's like you're running or don't count that as a special treat for yourself. Our mother doesn't mean that we can't do like normal things, you know. Are we want to write? Okay, then right. But don't consider it this like oh yeah, i get to write now. No, it's gonna be part of your life. You're gonna do it and don't feel bad and don't feel guilty. You don't have mom guilt.

You know, actually a really cool tip if you have a toddler is teach them quiet, independent time. Yeah, because that's what I do when I do my 15 minutes. I've also trained, not trained, but I've also like Help my daughter do her creative projects during that time, so we're just both being quiet next to each other.

Yeah, that's really good.

It's interesting because you got to develop it when they're. You got to develop it like you can't just like throw them down and give them a notebook and all of a sudden They're always gonna be good, like you have to do it in small steps and you have to let them know every time they talk to you to play with you. We're doing quiet time now, so can you please do your quiet time there and I'll do my quiet time here and just be very gentle, but and start small, just like with yourself. Start small with the five minutes and expand it out. So she was doing it in tandem with me, but now she can do independent play, for I Don't know, i've seen her do it for like an hour to two hours. Once She just gets really into it and she doesn't even want to talk to me anymore. How old is she? She is five.

Wow, bok, that's a kind of amazing, for I have a five-year-old and she's very like, gentle and quiet and really well behaved, but I don't even think she could do that much time by herself without being like. So that's really, that's a really good habit that you're forming with her, and it's kind of it is kind of training like you said earlier I Don't like using that word, but it is. I mean, there are children. We're training them for life. We're training them to go to the bathroom, everything.

I like that, you know it's. I just allow her to. whenever she wants to do something, i just give her all the supplies that she needs to do it. So when she's working on those things it's not ever like something I choose, it's just something she chooses. And when she does water experiments she can just go and go and go, like I put her out there with a tub and a couple of cups and a hose and she'll just be there for like half an hour easily Like water experiments always win.

We go to science museums a lot and they always have like a water section And it can be just a thing of water and then like one tiny, like scooper or something, and they'll be there for like 45 minutes playing in the water. I'm like man, water keeps you guys so entertained. This is amazing. There's so much physics in it.

There's like so much you can learn buoyancy density, like it just goes on and on. You add a little food dye in there and they lose it. Oh my God.

So I had to add food dye? I don't think about that.

Wow, yeah, you do food dye in different color containers and then they just spend all this time mixing all the colors over and over again until they get black, and then they're like we need more food dye.

And it helps them learn there. You know primary, secondary, all the colors. It's really smart. You're so smart, bok. You have all these tips and tricks and ideas and I love it. I love it.

Thank you for sharing them with us. Like I said, I just started thinking about how to improve my life since I was 13. So I've been thinking about it for a really long time.

That's awesome. Well, i know some things that you've said here today will also help other people improve their life, and improve their mom life and their creative life. So thank you for everything that you've shared today. Where can everybody go online to connect with you on social media and then also purchase your books?

So the easiest place to find me online is I have an Instagram under Bok Lee author. I also have a YouTube called Bok Lee Healing Mama and a TikTok under the same name and a Facebook page under the same name. If you put in Bok Lee and healing, I pop up.

Yeah, i'll put the links into the show notes as well, so you don't have to worry about spelling or anything, you can just click it and go straight to all of Bok's stuff.

But I really highly recommend everyone joining the Facebook group Moms Who Self-Heal. Even if you're a new mom or an old mom, it doesn't matter. And you know what? I even let dads in, it's not a big deal, i just enjoy working with women. I just really enjoy the sister tribe. Yeah, oh man. Like that's what I'm all about. But I do workshops where I talk about Be Set Fast Free every month or so. So if you join the group, I post up links to go to my free workshops all the time.

That's wonderful. Yeah, i'll definitely link that too so everybody can find that You're so full of resources and a happiness. So, like just so you know, bok, you're like a little bright, shining right now. And I don't, I didn't know you, you know before this, but I can tell that you're just. I don't know you've done some sort of healing. I'm just a happy, wonderful, shining person now. So it's my whole thing Thanks. Don't forget to connect with me in the podcast online on Instagram at mom2create podcast and at Kelly Hyle H-E-I-L. Also on Facebook. Oh, there was my cat. I'm gonna leave that in there because my cat's cute, galvatron. Anyway, also gonna have me on Facebook at mom2create podcast. There too, i have like Twitter and stuff, but like I don't, i don't use it. Let's be honest, instagram is really my jam. I also like Facebook, but anyway, find me, connect with me, build a community, join the, join our book club So many ways to get involved. Thank you guys, so much for listening. I'll see you next week.