Author: Tay Lee Hoon
Company: Cheng & Co Global Advisory Sdn Bhd
Position: Labuan & Sabah Branch Director
《Loving Myself Was The Beginning Of Reclaiming My Life》
After a company dinner in 2020, I got drunk. Emotions that had been buried inside me for years suddenly erupted, and I cried out, “Who can save me? Why is this happening to me? What did I do wrong?” Only then did I realise that the pain I carried had begun much earlier. When I was sixteen, my eldest brother was murdered, and his body was only found a month later. My mother was devastated, yet I could not shed a single tear. The grief I could not express sank deep into my heart, and from that point onward, the relationships within our family gradually began to fracture.
I once believed that if I worked hard enough, earned enough money, and arranged everything properly, I could somehow put my family back together. Not long after I graduated and started working, however, I discovered that I had a tumour in my brain. Instead of stopping, I pushed myself even harder because I wanted to take care of my parents and siblings. My career improved, but I became increasingly stubborn and emotionally guarded. Eventually, my marriage also came to an end.
For seventeen years, I raised my child on my own. Deep inside, I longed for someone to care for me and love me, but that longing also caused me to be hurt repeatedly in relationships. I kept searching outside myself for the love and security I had never learned to give myself.
In 2019, I began facing the emotional wounds left by the loss of my eldest brother. I spent more than RM100,000 attending business courses, yet I also accumulated credit-card debt because I lacked confidence and used spending as a way to fill an inner emptiness. When the pandemic arrived, life fell into an even deeper low.
Later, a former colleague introduced me to Eastern wisdom, and I began learning about inner cultivation. But the moment that truly awakened me came in 2023, when my second brother passed away from illness. I asked myself, “If I cannot even help the people closest to me, why am I still exhausting myself chasing money and running everywhere? Am I going to become the third child to make my parents experience the pain of losing a son or daughter?”
My second brother’s passing became the true turning point of my life. For the first time, I brought my attention back to myself. I stopped exhausting myself emotionally and began learning how to love myself. Between 2023 and 2025, I cleared my debts, and slowly, my heart became more peaceful. I no longer needed a relationship to prove my worth.
Then, in 2026, another relationship allowed me to see my own attachment more clearly. This time, instead of resisting the pain, I asked myself, “What is this experience trying to show me?” I finally understood that I could love someone sincerely without insisting on possessing the relationship.
Life is like a collection of strings held in our hands. My responsibility is to take care of the strings that belong to me, and to cherish those who willingly hold a string together with me. The strings in someone else’s hands—even when they belong to the people I love most—are not mine to control. It is not because I do not love them. It is because I have finally understood that there are lives and choices we cannot control for another person.
When I began healing my own heart, letting myself go, and allowing others to follow their own paths, I finally took the pen of my life back into my own hands. Loving myself was not selfishness. It was the beginning of reclaiming my strength, my choices, and my life.
This time, I want to write the story that belongs to Tay Lee Hoon with my own hands—to illuminate my own heart with the rest of my life, and perhaps allow that light to reach someone else along the way.
— Tay Lee Hoon