The Hoffman Process bringing peace to inner conflicts and how The Retreat helped manifest her new sense of being in the world.
My name is Jianjia. It’s Chinese and literally means ‘health and elegance’ but the allegorical meaning is something fierce meeting with something wispy and mystical; my Mum would say a dragon meeting the clouds. I’ve always known the dragon woman and the magical cloud inside. But it’s always been a struggle for me to align two such dissimilar elements within myself. It’s always been a drama. Of course I’m a Gemini.
Being a Hoffman graduate I would not be able to write about my life journey without reflecting on my parents. They were both from impoverished backgrounds and their ascension from the kampongs (villages) of then-developing South East Asia to their modern day lives in New York, London, Hong Kong and Sydney, set my barometer for success and what I felt I had been given to build upon. Relationships were demonstrated through face, money and security above all. The trauma and mis-management of rapid socio-economic rise that runs in my bloodline is palpable. Their story has always been very hard to portray in Australia and the UK where I grew up. Their challenges were not translatable at all it seemed to me. Both my grandparents had a hard life too – “they had an outhouse,” as one of my friends once said. That one stayed with me for months while I tried to understand why her comment had bothered me so much.
In some countries I’m called a 3CK (Third Culture Kid) but that doesn’t really do me justice. I’m like a 7CK. I don’t live where I was born and I didn’t grow up in a place that my parents were truly part of. I’ve spent the majority of my life in places I don’t call home. I look one way but I speak another. Then there’s the philosophical cultures I’ve had to learn to negotiate – the traditional familial Chinese mindset and culture of impoverishment that was handed to me by my Mum, while growing up bountifully in western countries. The dragon in me managed it all but I didn’t really know where I belonged in that whirlwind of intersections. I’ve always found a consolidating, singular principle missing. Potentially not being able to understand how this complexity affected my value system meant I have been a colourful revolving door of change and adaptation over my 43 years.
Before Hoffman, I had a bit of a dramatic life. I was practically a single mother, working full time running a business, looking after two children; the first being my child I’d had 18 months prior, the other a husband, apparently my partner in life. In our 9 year relationship we had moved 9 times across 4 countries, not counting a move to Japan we cancelled 2 days before the movers came to collect boxes. Drama. I even found a growing bald patch on my head. My Chinese Medicine doctor said it was a result of stress; it’s humbling to face when your body starts to translate the pain you don’t know you’re living with.
Dragon lady was chasing success and security. My mother had successfully raised me to be financially independent but that also meant intensely fearful. I was also chasing the feeling of home. The moves were driven by my discontentment, a yearning for more but thinking ‘more’ meant more fire. More fierceness. But that fire just led me to burn.
This must be a familiar place to many who come to Hoffman where ultimately you experience a new way of seeing yourself and others. It found me right after my divorce, stone cold with rage and not a tear shed for my nine year relationship after I asked him to leave but unable to stop crying about a grief I could feel but could not explain. It was clear to me I was in deep pain and needed something to change. What or how I did not know.
The Hoffman Process helped lift the veil on why I was where I was and shone a bright light on the experiences I had lived. It taught me forgiveness, compassion, kindness and a softness I had been too tight and scared to allow. I started to understand the wispiness of me, a gentle joy I had never known. A lightness of being, that had existed inside me all along and was available to me whenever I needed to call on it. A freedom, a vastness. And should this article be read by those who have not yet done The Process, my story can end here.
‘Happy Ever After’ implies a simplicity that doesn’t do justice to the journeys of those flying high, engrossed in the search. After the words ‘The End’, if you sneak a flip of the page, there is a whole other chapter following titled ‘Integration’. This can be a whole book on its own. Integration (they said) takes 2-3 years and practicing the new found freedom requires fire, sweat and tears. I could name my wisp and explain my dragon, but what I was flying towards needed to be called into question.
Integration is not a piece of cake. If it was, it would be one of those badly made, healthy vegan cakes, made with pumpkin and courgette. Dense and heavy, packed with all the good stuff, sure it’s cake, but it’s not ‘fun’ eating it until you develop an appetite because you know it’s good for you and everything starts to change. So, I kept practicing my tools and newly learnt knowledge and eating my not fun or frivolous health cake.
Dragon lady started speaking through my body again; I was getting minor panic attacks from the helplessness of working in a huge corporation. I was living an enviable life in one of the world’s shiniest cities, in a job that paid more money than I needed. Dragon lady had gotten me there but it was Wispy’s turn to show up. She brought an innate sensitivity and gentleness, a disadvantage in that particular environment. She also brought a level of empathy enabling complex collaboration, but was totally undervalued when it came time for professional progression. Frustration ensued. The company I was running became ‘sunsetted’ and I was offered a package from the acquiring company enabling me to take some much needed space to think. I had been struggling with my success values; they did not seem to match my company’s. My fire had been extinguished and was replaced with tendrils of smoke. I was confused but Wispy had no place there, she was spent and fed up. And so I took the space. I mean, I needed it. A lot of time, a lot of space.
Freedom! The cage yet again had been lifted! But here’s the thing about space and freedom and why I don’t like big menus. It makes it harder to pick what to eat when you don’t know what you want. Previously I had eaten what others had ordered for me or followed what others had chosen for themselves. That had only bought me indigestion. Now it only made sense to make my own way. But where did I want to go? What was ultimately meaningful to me? In the words of the inimitable Chandler Bing, “Can; open. Worms; everywhere.”
The following year was not an easy one. It’s hard to express what it felt like up there in the clouds – the space I had created by not following other people’s values and expectations. Dragon me was deeply dedicated to creating a path that was truly my own but it didn’t feel like freedom, it felt like a void. I just wanted someone to tell me where to go. I had the expectation that freedom would bring an ease, but I found some days I felt I was going crazy with the expansiveness. Humorously I really was now a dragon flying in circles around clouds. It was deeply uncomfortable. What I started to understand was that I did not know how to ‘be’. I only knew how to ‘do’. Ironic, flying around, blowing all that fire, realising I had been that meek all along. Chinese parenting doesn’t allow for much individualisation and it was a deeply terrifying moment for me realising I did not in fact know who I was if someone did not tell me. I was a 10 course Chinese wedding banquet meal realising I might never be celebrated and recognised, for my colour of success was not the same as what I was taught.
What a mess. What a painful, messy, unpleasant process. I mean, everything was meaningless and needed to be questioned. I had to bring it back to myself, the drawing board, to anchoring principles, to the singular light that Hoffman teaches.
Which brings me to last October and ‘The Retreat’. Staring at the sawdust toilet I thought to myself with bemusement, “Why have I done this to myself again?” I was practicing the principle of fearlessness and single-mindedly decided I wanted to become a facilitator, knowing it collectively brought me curiosity, excitement and joy at the thought. I turned up to ‘The Retreat’ without much deliberation, forgetting just how hard personal development is. The mystical threads of smoke of me were surprisingly determined and strong. There was nothing wispy about it.
I won’t spill the secrets (you know how this goes) but if the Hoffman Process shines light on the fact that you have the ability to choose who you want to be, ‘The Retreat’ teaches you how to make decisions to be able to live with that choice. Loosely the program framework revolves around the Enneagram, with elements that Graduates will recognise. But ultimately it was a strange realisation. Until doing ‘The Retreat’ I didn’t realise I had been missing a piece of the puzzle. I learnt how to combine both dragon and wisp and how to distil my principles to help chart the onward journey.
And so my journey goes on. But the nature of it has evolved yet again.
I am now flying my own path. Maybe a wispy dragon before, now I feel there is a sturdiness to my softness. Instead of ferociously wanting to get somewhere to attain something, prove something, I’m more about simply being what I am, and playing with the wind.
I write this overlooking the South Pacific Ocean, having chosen to leave the life I had in Singapore, the concrete jungle of dissatisfied corporate soldiers. I now live by the sea in Sydney, mindfully, embodying something different to the life I had before. Peace, for one. Courage, curiosity and levity are others. The singular principle that guides me is ensuring I am making my choices. That I only do things that I want to do – that I think I am chasing my version of success. And that includes helping people to enable the change they want to see in themselves.
This year I will start travelling to Byron to train as a Hoffy Facilitator, with the support of my husband who will take care of our son. The relationship with my husband reflects a major part of my journey where I was lucky enough to cross paths with him and have the awareness and skills to build and sustain an honest, provocative but deeply trusting relationship. The principles we focus on in our relationship are growth, communication, love. For the first time in my life I am having my needs seen and met. For the first time I am able to express my story cohesively.
I am ‘living the dream’ I was told by my ex-COO when I ran into him a few months ago. He still lives in Singapore, the shiny city of many lights, on a multi-million dollar contract, and is still shackled. Maybe he loves it. It is very possible he’s deeply fulfilled and happy, but his words made me curious about that. It’s no longer my concern, though, any of it. The race, the comparison, the shoulds. My days of confusion and self loathing are gone, recognising the struggle of seemingly having ‘everything’ and yet always searching for more. I let go of a fight I realised I didn’t need to win.
