My Rest Story
As someone who spent most of her life believing that a "good life" — the life I dream of and that I wish were possible for all of us — could only come through immense struggle, I NEVER imagined I would be here, talking about rest with you.
As the daughter of Vietnamese boat refugees who grew up around domestic violence, emotional and physical abuse, and a culture of secrecy and shame, survival started at a young age. As a child, I had the privilege of hoping that things would get easier when I grew up. But then I became an adult… and the world didn't get less complicated. There never came the day when the feeling of being free and unburdened suddenly dropped into my lap like a miracle.
So I survived, as many of us do, by making the best out of the circumstances while searching for ways to drive change, praying life would not always be this hard. This looked like pushing against systemic barriers, fighting for seats at tables, creating opportunities, caretaking my community before myself, and working hard and way too much, with no end or relief in sight. Sound familiar? 😣
I learned how to survive because I had to. Then, I learned how to rest because I HAD to.
In the depths of grief, burnout, and depression in early 2021, I reached a breaking point. My chronic stress levels were unmanageable. The allostatic load (cumulative impacts of chronic stress in my body) led to health concerns I’d never had before.
I realized: Even if my external circumstances NEVER changed, I had to take better care of myself. If survival remained my only way of living, it would eventually kill me. And every single day, it was already taking so much out of me — my joy, connection to self and others, hope.
Since then, every step of my rest journey has been informed by my years of survival:
Knowing the starvation of survival is what makes me hungry to devour rest.
Knowing what survival cost me is what encourages me to receive abundance through rest.
Knowing how much I DID to feel worthy in survival mode is what helps me relax into my inherent worthiness.
I am grateful to survival for guiding me here. I am also grateful that survival is no longer the ONLY or dominant strategy in my life. The way I was going, I’m not certain I would be here today if something didn’t change.
Facing the un-sustainability of survival and making rest a priority totally changed my life and what I thought was possible for someone like me: a neurodivergent and autistic daughter of refugees living with complex PTSD and chronic pain who now gets to guide others to the healing realm of rest.
Rest helped me reclaim my humanity, dignity, and divinity. It opened doors I never thought possible to new ways of living, relating, and working that help me feel whole.
I hope for the chance to support you in doing the same. 💕
With love and gratitude,
Cassandra Lam