What Is Your True Passion?

I will share my admissions paper:

“Mommy, I want to become a therapist when I grow up,” I proclaimed to my immigrant-mother who had shed tears and sweat forging a new life for the two of us in America. At the time, the traditional trajectory of medicine or law was all she knew of success.

I was only fourteen.

“Why would you want to do that?”

“Well, I want to help people..”

“Bao-bei, you can help people fight for their justice or help save lives through law or medicine!”

Bao-bei (宝贝) is a term of endearment in our native-tongue. My mother often weaponized the term to sway my decision-making.. She did everything out of love though– all she knew of love. To love meant to sacrifice. Even as a teenager, I knew what she meant. She meant no.

But I was growing into myself, heading into my “trying years”. I was learning defiance and I was growing up away from our cultural norms in America. I was beginning to learn how “the Americans do it” as she said but honestly, I think I was just standing up for myself. So I spoke up once again with a subtle shake in my voice: “Why can’t I?”

It was probably my mother’s trying-years, too—trying to get her daughter to stay “on course”.

I would never go on to tell her about the blog that grew 13,000 subscribers solely for my writing alone. No ‘selfies’, no beautiful scenic photographs, no 10-second-attention-grabbing videos. My audience consisted of teenagers to young adults grappling through identity, familial, and relationship issues. Many of my subscribers followed me to Instagram where my following then grew to 135,000. But I was to be a lawyer. None of this information mattered.

I remember how my mother’s face would twist into a question mark. Therapy didn’t exist in her generation. Emotions were seen as weaknesses, a glitch in the matrix. Feeling depressed? Not only how could I but how dare I? My mother is illustrative in telling me about how my grandmother grew cabbage with her bare hands until they were calloused and sold them for 5 cents per pound at the town marketplace which makes me not only privileged but too revolutionary. Life, for her, was about physical survival. Therapy? A generational concept.

As a reader, you can see that I, in fact, did not go on to become a therapist. I was faced with two options and coming from my devotion to filial piety– I made my mother proud. I studied for the LSAT, got into Loyola Law School, passed the California State Bar and began legal practice.

The story should really end here.

Some autonomy existed though and it seeped through every crevice of my legal career. I would continually be haunted by my decision-making or therelackof with every opportunity life gave– whether it be during a deposition of a witness or the way I naturally leaned in wherever the human condition and emotions would allow. During my time in law school, I would intern at the Los Angeles Deputy Attorney’s office, specifically choose the domestic violence unit and would be more intune with my victim’s emotions than her rights under the law. Don’t get me wrong– I didn’t study law half-heartedly. I would obsessively re-read case laws during my criminal law class to understand why a victim and/or the defendant would commit the alleged act. Criminal law is made up of four elements: (1) mens rea, (2) knowledge, (3) recklessness and (4) negligence. Mens Rea in Latin directly translates to “guilty mind” which also translates to “intent”. I would identify patterns in victims as well as specific traits in the perpetrators. It was the same in evidence law. Under the Federal Rules of Evidence, the prosecution is allowed to admit evidence that can be used to prove motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, lack of accident, and modus operandi. In law, modus operandi refers to a method of operation or pattern of criminal behavior so distinctive that separate crimes or wrongful conduct are recognized as the work of the same person. I scored in the top 15th percentile in that class.

In my 2nd year of law school, I applied and was accepted to volunteer at Crisis Text Line. Crisis Text Line is a global nonprofit organization providing free mental health texting services via SMS messaging available 24 hours a day, every day, throughout the United States, Canada, UK, and Ireland. Chosen applicants go through a 30-hour training program consisting of videos, reading materials and tests. Everything is confidential and we don’t provide real names as counselors. At the end of texting sessions, we are able to see small notes left by the individuals we engaged with. I saved two of them– one that read, “Thank you for helping me express my feelings. I will always keep our conversation in mind,” and another that said nearing the end of our session, “One more question...will I end up with the same person? Or is it random? I liked talking to you.” Unfortunately, every texting session is randomized and I’d always wish they were doing better than the short time I spent with them via chat.

I would also go on to represent a 6-year-old victim of an unrelated gang shooting as a 3rd year law student and somehow end up in our clinical children’s care room talking to my client’s then 16-year-old brother about how hard of a time he had being my client’s primary caretaker in their parents’ absence.. Even during my practice as a civil litigator, my client, a middle-aged small shop-owner, said to the Partner I reported to, “That young woman on your team is so nice to talk to and always picks up.” Later on in my legal career, I would understand that litigators do not get our reputations.. for being nice to talk to.

Emotions are not easy to identify and are often even less easy to articulate. I don’t know if it was that I kept looking for reasons to reach out to people or if it was the other way around. All I know is that I will always find myself gravitating towards helping those with problems that are oftentimes underneath the surface. To this day, I am still pleasantly surprised when people continue to open up to me on their own accord.

The coach will not divulge what is shared in the coaching relationship without consent. You, of course, are free to discuss the coaching relationship with anyone at any time.

Yes.