Hi, welcome to Tiger’s space. Tiger is my birth animal, also my nickname in college. Whether you have read my story or not yet, I want to thank you for stopping by, and I sincerely hope you’ll stay connected. By telling you and the world every little piece of my past, I have completely opened my heart, and it is my selfish wish to get something back, be it criticism, judging, curse, love, support, or indifference, anything.

I think of life as rowing. Warm support pushes me forward like the tide, but I work the hardest against the current. A famous saying that I believe in firmly is—what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Why did I write the book? What did I want to accomplish? I didn’t think of those questions when I wrote down my first paragraph. From the minute I was born in a thatched shack in rural China, to the Saturday afternoon when I was sitting at the kitchen table in my house outside of Boston, I had changed so much as a human being, as a woman, and something deep inside me was kicking me: just write, write something, remember how much you loved writing when you were a little girl?

For the majority of my life I hated myself and walked around as a creature with a miserable heart. I thought of myself as stupid, ugly, smelly, just like how my mother had told me. I thought of myself as immoral and inferior because I did a lot of things that the books, the society and the leaders had told me not to do. I condemned myself constantly.

Not until in my late twenties did I start to learn to like myself. The process started in April 2000 when a U.S. immigration officer greeted me nicely at the Detroit airport, and continued two years later when Wellesley College told me they didn’t make a mistake by admitting me. Every day I spent in America helped me look at myself differently, not as that girl from the rice paddies with dirt under her finger nails, but as a human being. Everyone greeted me wherever I went, so I gradually thought: oh, I deserve to be treated nicely. My then-husband told me every day that I wasn’t ugly, so gradually I thought: oh, maybe I am not ugly, maybe I am even attractive. I solved an economics problem that no one else in my class could solve and I thought: oh, I am not stupid, on the contrary I am smart.

Gradually I learned to respect, to treasure, to protect myself. And at that point I wanted to face the past, I wanted to heal. That was the motive to write at the time.

So I dug every single little incident out of my memory lane, and then analyzed it carefully and painstakingly like a chemist studying every molecule, like a pianist practicing every key. The process was painful as hell. But I can proudly say that at the age of 34, I have healed, I like myself, and I am finally happy with who I am.

I am sure that I am not the only person who feels this way about herself. And I hope by telling my story, I can give you some support and inspiration. Cheers. Let’s try together.

Photographs by Pavlina Wolf

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