Eight months ago, my memoir was published. It came after more than a decade of hard work—digging, sleuthing, making meaning of my past, and piecing together fragmented memories of chaotic and painful experiences that had shaped who I’ve become today.
Though I started this as self-exploration, trying to make sense of my often-puzzling patterns of behavior and thinking, over time it became a mission. As I traced my lifelong emotional struggles to my childhood emotional neglect, I realized what I found useful in my own healing could also help others.
I was relieved that everything leading up to the launch and the promotional efforts that came after unfolded seamlessly and more successfully than I’d anticipated. There was a moment I felt a deep sense of completion and calmness. But now, in this brutally quiet stretch of the post-publication period, I have mixed feelings of grief and disorientation as a one-and-done memoirist.
Recently, I had a dream about being at a serene ocean resort, where I could overlook seafoam-colored water reflecting bright sunshine. The next moment, I was down on an empty beach except for a mother and a little boy sitting there. I was collecting shells and was thrilled to find a perfectly shaped conch shell. A boy exclaimed, “Oh, it’s intact!” I smiled, feeling proud, and put it inside a plastic bag containing other small shells. I wanted to keep collecting more, but felt pressed for time as I had to go back to my hotel room to gather my belongings before getting on a bus where the group of people were already sitting. I rested the plastic bag somewhere near the lobby with the intention of retrieving it later. However, when I returned, I couldn’t find it anymore. I didn’t have time to keep looking for it, so I gave up and started to board the bus reluctantly.
Upon waking up, I looked up meanings of the conch shell, trying to see if there are any deep meanings behind this dream. I was struck to find that the conch shell symbolizes awakening, divine communication, purity, and ultimate truth. Its spiral shape mirrors the sacred geometry of the universe and the inward journey of the soul. It encourages deep inner listening, intuition, and self-reflection.
This dream seemed to reflect the constant inner tension I’m currently feeling between my ego and my soul—my old identity as once an author-to-be and my emerging identity that wants to move from the competitive writing and publishing world into advocacy, where I long for outreach, connection, collaboration, and healing communities. This liminal space is anxiety-provoking, especially for someone with an underlying condition of complex trauma.
As I sat with the dream, I recognized having to get on the bus with a group under time constraint mirroring a familiar feeling from growing up hurried and harried in Japan: the pressure of having to conform to systems that felt rigid, competitive, and deeply misaligned with who I was. As a little child, I spent long hours commuting to an extremely demanding elementary school in Tokyo, often feeling like an outsider in a group-oriented world that never quite fit me. That experience taught me how exhausting it is to live in survival mode when the system doesn’t fit me.
Likewise, the whole process from start to finish of getting my work published stirred up that old feeling. Its hierarchical and competitive, never-ending rat race made me long for something different—no more compete-and-compare scarcity mindset, in part to protect my delicate nervous system.
And yet, the book is doing exactly what I intended: finding its own path through public and academic libraries (WorldCat currently shows 58 library holdings), 4.75 stars on Amazon, Kirkus calling it “a compelling, honest, and ultimately victorious memoir,” soon to be showcased in their “Indies Worth Discovering,” and still finding new readers eight months in.
I’m beginning to trust the process, and that restlessness is not a problem to solve but a whisper to honor. My next chapter hasn’t fully emerged yet, and even though the book is done, hopefully it opens the door to new opportunities to meet people who are aligned with the goal of collective healing around the world. The conch shell dream reminded me to listen inward, trust my soul’s mission, and follow what brings me joy.