Learn Language through the song - | English exercises

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I can't.

This is why I didn't wear eyeliner for this video.

Sometimes your biggest wound

becomes your greatest source of power.

I'm going to spend time with my dad in Shanghai,

who I have not seen since 2019.

The weather is so nice today,

so I wanted to be outside at this time

since it's going to rain for the next 2 days.

It's like 75, 76° right now.

A few months ago, I visited my dad in China

after not seeing him for 6 years.

And I finally said what had been on my heart for decades.

I'm not sure where to begin or how to even explain

the depth of what this experience means to me

and how much I've grown in the past decade of my life

to have gotten to this point.

To me, this experience reflects

one of the greatest difficulties I've overcome,

one of the greatest mountains I've climbed.

[Music]

It took me so long to finish this video because

although I vlogged my whole week in Shanghai,

all of the key moments

and the main story that I want to share

happen when the camera is off.

So, I decided to share it in this format directly with you.

I don't think I can fully capture the whole story,

emotions, and depth in this one video,

but I'm trusting that whatever I do share will be of value to you

and help you in whatever way you choose to interpret it.

Growing up, I didn't see much of my dad.

We really only saw him every 3 to 4 years.

So, even though he wasn't physically here with our family,

he was a persistent and overbearing shadow in our lives.

So my dad lives and works in China

while my mom chose to raise us in the US.

So we were meant to visit China more often,

but when I was really young,

we experienced a unique incident

with like a mid-flight malfunction.

And after that, my mom developed a fear of flying.

And so our visits became more rare with time.

So very early on,

even when I was in elementary school,

my dad was not really in the picture.

It was more you just check in with him every few years.

And so you can imagine how distant we grew

because as you're going through elementary school

through college, every 3 to 4 years you're changing a lot.

A little bit more about my dad is

he's like a traditional controlling type

and had very high expectations on us.

So he wasn't physically here,

but he financially supported our family still.

And so we would feel this immense pressure from him.

And every time we saw him,

it was like we had to live up to his high expectations of us.

Otherwise, there were consequences and punishment.

My dad in general is a scary type of person.

Even when we go out,

he's scary to waiters and service people.

He's just that ego heavy kind of person.

So, growing up, we had a lot of fear around him.

Fear around his energy, fear around his power,

and also obviously my mom had a lot of her own fears

that bled into me and my brother, right?

Fears that if we didn't perform

or if we weren't good at school

or being good children,

he could cut us off or limit our freedoms.

And so, growing up like this

obviously led to a lot of trauma

and suppressed emotions.

So many things that I didn't understand

and I didn't even know how to express

or share or talk about at all that started to unravel

in my later years in my late 20s.

Not only did we have the trauma of the abandonment,

the confusion, the lack of communication, right?

We thought he would be coming back,

but one day he just stopped coming back.

He just decided to stay in China and not visit us.

And we would have to go visit him

and we didn't know what he was doing most of the time

and whether he would continue supporting us.

There were a lot of unknowns

and thus a lot of uncertainty

and a lot of fear and so much resentment

and sadness, all of that.

So, there's already that childhood trauma.

And then when I was in my early 20s,

just graduating from college,

there was not only the pressure

to do well in school and in life,

but also this conflict that I developed

because I chose to not take a traditional path.

If you follow Lavendaire, hopefully you've heard my story.

But I decided not to take a corporate job because

I wanted to pursue being an artist

and living a life that was more creative

and free that could give me the dream life

that I had envisioned in my head.

And so choosing to go this uncertain path

again brought so much conflict between me and my dad

because he's very traditional.

He didn't understand why

I could not just get a job, any job.

And I told him, I don't want to work in an office.

I'm gonna pursue music and be an artist.

And he was like,

"Artists are crazy people. You can't be an artist."

And so for many years in my 20s,

that added on to this conflict between my dad and myself

where I had this chip on my shoulder that

I had to succeed no matter what.

I had to prove him wrong.

And that did drive me for many years.

But it was a motivation driven by that negativity,

the need to prove him wrong,

the immense pressure that I put on myself

to succeed and make it as an artist.

And so much was just wrong with

how I connected my self-worth with my success.

Not just through this experience,

but just my entire life.

What I was taught since I was a little girl

up until age 20 something.

And all of this started unraveling

when I just kept burning out.

The year 2019, I was about 28 years old.

I had burnt out from my YouTube career

and I did the solo trip in Bali where

I started trying new healing modalities

like breath work, ecstatic dance and

I started to truly experience healing from the heart,

healing my emotions, healing through physical somatic

inbody experiences and having so many realizations

of what was wrong with my sense of selfworth.

I never felt like I deserved love.

I had so much that I had to unravel

and I had to learn about what true self-love

and true self-worth feel like.

So, that's a journey that I've shared.

I won't go into it too much now.

But throughout my 20s,

I did see my dad a couple times.

And if you watch Lavendaire videos all through those years,

I had so many different hair colors

because that was my statement.

That was the symbol to the world

that I have decided to be an artist.

Like this is who I am. Take it or leave it.

I know it's a little weird. It's a little different,

but I'm just going to have rainbow colored hair.

Whatever I feel like it, right?

I'm ever changing. And so, every time I saw my dad,

he would lecture me about my hair color.

We would have a fight and argument about it

that he would think it's crazy.

Normal people don't have this hair.

How do you expect people to take you seriously?

And then there was one time

that I shared on my podcast in 2015.

I arrived with pink hair

and my dad refused to take me to see my grandma.

My grandma was developing Alzheimer's and he was just saying

his excuse was if she sees you like this,

she's going to have a heart attack.

And he drove me to the hair salon to dye my hair black

before I could see her.

He would not let me see her until I did that.

And in that situation, I decided to just like take the loss, right?

I didn't want to make it an even bigger fight

or bigger scenario, so I just did it.

But that just shows you his level of forcing his ways onto others

based on what he wants.

And even the last time I saw him was 2019.

I went to China with my friend for a wedding.

And when I sat down with my first dinner with him,

everything was happy. How have we been?

What? Even my friend was there.

And then few minutes into the dinner, he's like,

"Aileen, come here. What is this hair color?

Why is it still blonde? What?"

And then he lectures me on my hair

again in front of my friend.

And so that's our relationship.

And but the thing is, the last time I saw him in 2019,

I had already gone through,

like I said, some healing experience.

I had begun the healing journey.

I had begun to find some forgiveness in my heart,

some softening, some releasing.

And so I was able to come out of that trip

feeling really positive about my relationship with my dad.

You know we fight and we don't see eye to eye

but in the end I feel gratitude for our situation.

Of course, there are so much pain and many mistakes,

but at the end of the day, I love my life now,

and who I am now is all attributed to all the difficulties

that I went through and all the things I had to overcome.

And so, in 2019, I was like, you know what?

I'm feeling good about this.

I do want to come back and visit my dad at least once a year.

And then 2020 happened and

because of the pandemic, I couldn't travel.

And I couldn't go to China until this year.

I just it just happened that this is the earliest time

that I found to go back to visit him.

So now 2025 this trip where I have not seen my dad

in 6 years was another very powerful healing opportunity

because through those years post pandemic

I went even deeper into healing and I feel like

I'm just so much more empowered and pure now

and more stronger in my authenticity

just stronger in myself more confident more self-loving.

Hello my loves checking in.

So, my solo time in this big month-long trip

is coming to an end.

Tomorrow, my dad comes back to Shanghai.

So, I'm meeting with him and spending time

with family the next 5 days.

This time, our dynamic shifted

and it was so interesting to feel.

It could also be because I am getting older, he's getting older.

This was the first time where my dad

had always been above us.

He was always to be feared, more powerful,

had more say. But this was the first time that

I kind of felt like we're on the same level

and we can see eye to eye even

if we don't agree on a lot of things.

We could agree to disagree on a lot of things.

But if he had something that he didn't believe

or he didn't he had something to say about myself or my opinions,

I could defend myself.

I had the strength to speak back and

to say something speak up for myself.

And I also had the ability to be playful about it, right?

We still talked about my hair. He's like:

"Look, your hair is dark now. Look how good it is."

I was like, "You know what?

I still don't think I did anything wrong with my hair color back then."

I was like, "You know what? I was young and when you're young,

you should be allowed to experiment with fashion. I love fashion."

And then in the end, he was like, "You're right."

So, we got to come to a place where our dynamic shifted.

And not only that was what was even more powerful

this trip and seeing my dad was

having the courage to speak everything from my heart.

To say everything that I wanted to say

and to express about my emotions

and also to speak for my brother

and my mom because they weren't there

but to speak about everything.

Express how we felt,

express our thoughts of that time,

all of these things that I wasn't able to even bring up

or talk about and also to dare to ask the questions

that me and my family had been afraid to ask for decades.

There are so many touchy subjects,

so many I guess very taboo questions

that we just never dared to ask.

And this time I was bold enough.

It was not easy. I asked it on the last day, last night.

It was not easy, but I dared to ask all these things

that we had been so afraid of.

And what was so interesting is

it wasn't even the fact that I wanted to hear a specific answer

that would make me happy.

It was I'm just proud of myself for asking.

And after asking, I got something so heavy off of my chest.

The fear left my chest.

And even if the answer is like unclear

or maybe not what I wanted to hear,

regardless of it, I was okay.

I accepted it. I accepted the reality.

And it was so freeing and so peaceful to to know the reality,

to go there, to actually have a real conversation with him

and to experience the reality of it.

Because when you're when you have so many things

you want to say to someone

or so many questions you want to ask someone,

but you're not actually talking to them.

They're just in your imagination for decades,

for years, that just feels so heavy

and there's so much uncertainty that it just weighs on you.

It's like questions never answered, things left unsaid.

It's so heavy.

And I realized that it feels so good to

just have the courage to express it.

And it was definitely a very interesting experience.

I think something that not many people

would get to experience in their life

because my situation is very unique.

But in the end, I just feel so much more empowered.

I literally wrote like a huge long journal entry afterwards.

Like I literally feel changed. I feel shifted.

I feel so grateful to have had this opportunity.

And also so grateful because I was able to do it

before it was too late. If anyone has like aging parents,

you understand that it could easily be too late

if you just like put it off, procrastinate.

I could have easily not made the effort to go see my dad, right?

I did a whole solo trip in China just

so I could have these 3 days of having dinner with him.

That's it. That's all the time he had.

My brother has not seen my dad since 2018.

They have not spoken for that many years.

But anyway, I knew that this was really important for me

and for my healing and just for my inner peace.

So, I made the efforts to make this trip happen

and kind of force my way into his life

so that I could have these conversations before it was too late.

What was beautiful about this experience was

the ability to share both of our intentions

and both of our truths and to have better understanding of my dad,

his story, and feel more empathy for him.

When I understand him and his story,

even though he's made his mistakes,

I can forgive him easier because I can empathize with him.

And it really was like so interesting to feel

this like level of peace of

I can accept the truth no matter how unpleasant or difficult it is.

Like I can see my dad for the human that he is

and I can choose to forgive him and

to choose to love him still because I feel that

he still truly has love for me and my family.

At the end of the day,

there's still good intentions behind the people.

And so that's where I felt that and this kind of thing

you can't feel just through texting.

We didn't really communicate.

When you're not in communication,

when you're not with someone,

seeing them physically or having a conversation,

hearing their voice,

there's so much misinterpretation

or so much wild imagination that can happen.

And so, yeah, what this trip gave me was a lot of clarity

and just so much peace.

I keep saying the word peace,

but those are the themes like peace,

empowerment, and release.

I'll share an excerpt from my journal entry

after having these experiences with my dad in Shanghai

because I felt like there were a lot of good nuggets

that even if you don't understand my situation at all,

just hearing these words could help you in some way.

And so that's my hope and my goal in sharing this with you.

So in this part of the journal entry,

I was recognizing and reflecting on my power and my authenticity.

If I believe in something true, I can stand firm in it.

No one can doubt my truth.

They can disagree, but it won't affect my world.

My truth is my truth. There's a power in my authenticity.

I'm now at a place where I feel more empowered than ever.

If anyone could have brought me down

and crushed my self-esteem in the past,

it was my dad because we put him on that pedestal

and feared him, feared his judgment,

feared the consequences of his anger

with regard to our safety and survival.

Now I'm no longer afraid. I'm no longer that fragile.

I am strong. I am strong against him.

But also, now I know more so that I am not fighting against him,

but he is fighting alongside me.

He is powerfully, steadily supporting me my entire journey.

He will fight with me and for me that I know now.

Oh, how the perspective has changed.

How much more powerful and strong

and confident I will become now.

He who used to be the fearsome battle

has become my strong and loyal ally.

And the only thing we face now is life.

There is no one person I'm afraid of.

There is no one person who can make me feel so small

like I used to ever again.

I have nothing but life in my face

and the trials that come my way.

But now I know how strong I am.

How strong my truth is.

How strong that unwavering knowing can be.

Where no one can change or sway you.

They can hate. They can judge.

They can say whatever they want to say.

They can think whatever they want to think.

I know where I stand. I believe in myself,

my thoughts and inspirations.

I believe in my creativity. I believe in my dreams.

I believe in my philosophy.

I believe in my ability to live a beautiful and meaningful life.

I believe in my power.

I heal and I grow stronger.

I grow more powerful and unwavering

and also more graceful, more humble, more loving.

I embody all of it. I soften and strengthen.

That is the gift I've been given.

The gift that my life's experiences have given me.

And so I am so grateful for my story,

for the people and circumstances in my life that

caused me pain and sorrow, difficulty and resentment.

I always come back stronger.

And not only that, but my awareness of the depths of life

and my emotions grow deeper.

The experience of life grows richer,

more fulfilled, more meaningful.

My pain led to more meaning and healing.

I have felt broken so that I can then

experience the feeling of coming back into wholeness again.

If any of you are living through, dealing with,

or healing from a father wound or a parent wound

and can relate to me on any level,

I just want you to know you are loved.

You are so worthy and it is so possible to heal fully from this.

It will happen in layers, but that's the beauty of the unraveling.

It's not going to happen all at once,

and you don't want it to happen all at once.

The beauty is in the experience of going through these layers,

of unraveling, of finding your authenticity,

of finding your inner self, your inner strength.

That is your inner power.

And it just feels so amazing once you've really felt that.

And just to give you like a timeline of it, right?

This is something I've been dealing my entire life.

And I thought throughout my 20s

I had been working so hard on my healing and my self-love.

But in hindsight, I had only scratched the surface.

And it was really around age 28, 29 where I truly

began to heal on a very deep level where

I really could like purge the emotions and really process.

And so from age 28 to now I'm 34,

those were the years where I really did

deeper healing and more I guess inner growth

that now I'm at a place where I feel so free from it.

And this is a combination of healing

that I did on my own time and literally interactions

and experiences with the people that have hurt me.

So yes, this is where my story currently ends.

But of course, the story goes on. This relationship story goes on.

But I feel like I'm in a new chapter, a new phase where

I feel like my truest, most empowered version

of myself that I had ever been.

And that is really exciting for me.

Comment down below which part of the story

resonated with you the most.

And let me know where you are in your healing journey.

Sending you so much love.

And finally, to wrap up today's video,

I want to share the poem that I wrote

right after seeing my dad.

I think I wrote this after the first or second night.

And it was after recognizing that he has begun to soften

and the energy has begun to shift a little bit.

It's called "Finally he softened".

Finally, with time, he softened.

No longer a heavy black cloud.

No longer the fearful storm.

No longer the all powerful.

No longer the superior.

I see the lines of his face,

the arch of his back,

the traces of years,

chasing hopes and dreams.

Finally, with time, he softened.

His high ambitions, his expectations,

his will to win met their fair share of lows and losses.

I noticed the calming of his roaring fire,

intense bravado,

strong force of his beliefs and judgment.

No longer small, no longer afraid,

no longer tense.

I find myself able to see more clearly.

In my heart, I have found peace and forgiveness

for the years of pain he caused us

with and without his presence.

Finally, with time, I have softened

to see the man that was there,

the man in difficulty, the man in worry,

the man who was fighting for the survival

and livelihood for himself and his family.

Thank you so much, my loves,

for listening to my story and for watching to the end.

I appreciate you so much.

Thanks for giving me the space to express this and to share this.

And I truly hope that this does

shed some light on the healing journey.

And I really hope that this helps you in some way.

If you think about who I was when I started Lavendaire in 2014,

I was really going through it.

In 2012, I was depressed.

Those two years, I was pursuing music and

being really lost, not knowing what to do with my life.

And over the years, I've had my phases, right?

I've had like a career phase,

I've had burnout phase, I've had healing phase,

I've had slower phase, I've had pivots

and rediscoveries and new directions.

And throughout the past 6, 7 years,

I've been healing through all the layers.

And looking back, I can see how much I've healed,

how much I've grown.

And the fact that I'm able to document that

and see that through my videos

on this channel is quite amazing.

You guys can go back and watch

my healing journey videos from my Bali trip in 2019

to me going through that Eastern holistic healing stuff.

In 2015, I shared the story of when my dad made me dye my hair black

and then when I came home, I went back to like blonde

and pink and all the different colors.

So, I haven't even listened to that episode,

but it was happening in in real time,

and I am just a different person now.

You can even hear it in my voice.

Hey guys, my name is Aileen.

My name's Aileen. What's up, guys?

Hope you're having a wonderful week.

My voice has changed.

I don't know if it's an age thing or that I have relaxed.

I have healed and let go of

so many emotions and so much pressure.

My voice has dropped.

It's become more calm than what it was years ago.

I'm wishing that you find this healing and so much more.

Wishing you all the best.

Sending you all my love. Bye.

[Music]

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