In August 2021, I jumped on a Cathay Pacific flight with a purple suitcase and my 2 daughters from Hong Kong to Spain, to visit my family in the Canary Islands after 2 years separated due to the pandemic. As soon as we landed, the Hong Kong government suddenly changed the quarantine policy and we were not able to come back home. We left my husband behind with our dog while we were technically locked abroad, just like in a movie.
As the months went by, things didn’t get better. In fact, they got worse. With the Delta variant of the coronavirus, Hong Kong decided to lock borders and forbid flights from most countries. For 2 years, Kong Kong airport, one of the busiest in the world, was operating at 1% capacity. No one was coming in and no one was getting out.
After 4 months in Spain, I decided to fly with my daugthers to Australia, my husband’s country to spend some time with my family in-law. My husband managed to visit us twice in 2022, and I became a solo parent on the Gold Coast, Queensland. Our girls were 3 and 4 and within one year, they had started kindergarten in 3 countries in 3 continents.
At 41 I started a life from scratch in a new country with the support from my family-in-law. I started applying for jobs to return to the corporate world but no one opened the door when I knocked. I received dozens of automated rejection emails and I started to question my worth.
The months went by, the inbox of ‘no’s’ continued to pile up and in July 2022, I decided something had to change. If the recruiters were not seeing my value, it was up to me to show it to the world. If I didn’t have a network, it was up to me to build one. If I couldn’t get a job, I had to create my own.
I decided to create change and it all started with my mindset: I was not a victim. I had everything in me to design my own path and paint success with my own colours. If one door was closing, I could knock on the next one, or even better, build my own door!
From the moment my mindset changed, the universe spoke back: time became my ally, and I used it to study and write every day. Being an unemployed foreigner with an accent turned into my advantage: I started writing about cultures and inclusion and it resonated with thousands of others who were feeling excluded in life. The rejection from the corporate world opened freelance opportunities and I became a solopreneur. I went from not having a network to building an audience on LinkedIn that kept on growing every day.
Life gave me lemons but I didn’t use them to make lemonade. Instead, I took the seeds and used them to plant my own lemon tree. Every challenge can become into an opportunity, every failure can turn into learnings and where others saw scarcity, I started to see abundance.
It’s been 8 months since I pressed the erase button and decided to rewrite my story. I’m no longer the girl waiting on the side lines for luck to knock on her door. That girl went out to the world and created her own luck. She started speaking at Podcasts and writing for Medium, she became a consultant in diversity, equity and inclusion, she’s a growing LinkedIn creator and has reached a digital audience of 8,000 plus.
Life rolls the dice but you get the play the game. It’s up to you to fill your canvas with your brushes and your paints, your skills and your experiences. You have your superpowers, just like I have mine. I just had to connect the dots looking backwards and paint new dots as I move forward. Last month, I published my first ebook on Amazon, it’s called The Lemon Tree Mindset: 19 lessons to reinvent myself.
Today I have my own lemon tree. It’s beautiful and it’s growing. My mission is to help you plant yours.