I’m sure many of you are familiar with the Sylvia Plath quote about fig trees, but if you’re not -

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

When I first read this quote in my early twenties, I never felt like I could relate to something more. As I’m writing this, I’m sitting on a flight to New York for a modeling job pondering my life. Six years ago, I dropped out of college because I didn’t know what I wanted to do and moved to the glittery city of Los Angeles searching for the answers. I thought it would come to me in some aha moment like the movies. Yet, here I am 25 and still confused about what I want to do. Modeling was meant to support me through college until I found my “calling”. While I’m grateful for it, a big part of my soul is craving being passionate about the work I am doing. When I was a child, I wanted to be an actress, musician, astronaut, and fashion designer. I guess not much has changed. 

One fig is working in the creative space in fashion, another is a full time musician, a glamorous fig is becoming an interior designer, another is working with kids, another fig is becoming a therapist, another is finding a remote job and traveling the world, the last fig is living a very simple life and having a family. I also flirt with figs like becoming a yoga instructor or a chef, and many more that I drift and sift through as I let my mind wander. 

It’s a blessing and a curse to be passionate and interested in so many different things. Sometimes I envy my friends who are focused on one idea and really going for it. My ideas paralyze me and sometimes I feel like I’m floating on a broken boat searching for my life vest. Perhaps one day I’ll just arrive, or my fear is that I’ll land at the fig tree with spoiled ones rotting beside me. 

All of this to say, I don’t think my indecision points to a lack of knowing who I am. I’m someone who loves art, music, traveling, psychology, food, children, and the earth. I romanticize a lot of different lives.  A year ago, I really wanted to be a musician. A few months ago, I went through a big yoga phase and dreamed up a life where I studied yoga and became an instructor. More recently, I thought how meaningful my life would be if I dedicated it to working with children in some way. In recent weeks, I have considered taking mushrooms and hoping to have some sort of epiphany.

I’m sure a lot of people feel this way. It’s a privilege to have big dreams. I know a career doesn’t define you and may not be the key to happiness, but it certainly would bring some fulfillment. I see the passion some people have, those who are called “workaholics”. I’ve had a habit of  dating them because I am so attracted to it. Underneath it was my secret desire to have that for myself. I don’t want to get older starved, surrounded by rotten figs, and regret not pursuing something because I am overwhelmed with the options. I think it’s time to make some decisions, but I want to be sure I am on the right path. Maybe there is no “right path”. I want to try it all! But life is short and a lot of my figs require a proper education.  Maybe I just want to be Anthony Bourdain. I hope to have a meaningful, positive impact on the world, even if it’s small. I’m just having a hard time deciding how.

Sincerely, 

A girl under the fig tree 

(I will update you if I discover my fig(s) soon)

Being in that apartment in Beachwood Canyon was the loneliest I’d ever felt. I spent months pacing up and around the living room, with a view of this big city and the Hollywood sign, yet there I was feeling completely alone in it.

I’m not a very decisive person but I do know I want two children one day. My friend Michael said that this part of my story is to show my future kids how strong I was. Heartbroken, lonely, mattress on the floor but still 51% hopeful.

I bought a small plant from the grocery store to tend to. I put it on my altar. Just to watch it grow. I’ve always said my plants were a symbol of how my inner world was. I let all of the old ones die somewhere along the way.

I might change career paths. My goals in life are shifting. Maybe my frontal lobe has developed. All I want is to be happy, stable, and loving. All I seek is to have a home to call my own, a great community of friends, and a family hopefully one day. I used to care about different things, but I know those things wouldn’t make me happy. I know what my soul is dying for is safety and stability.

I picked up smoking again. My biggest vice. I quit the vape. I’m allowing this one thing for myself right now. I think I deserve it.

I worry I’ll never fall in love again. Maybe not for a long time. I’m particular, this city is notorious for its awful dating scene, and I’m afraid to give myself away like that again.

Maybe my job right now is to make a life that I love. Maybe I’m losing everything to build it all back up. I applied for some jobs in New York. Maybe it’s time to try something completely new. Maybe all of this is is terrifying, but if I can shift my perspective, it’s exciting! This has been the worst 6 months of my adult life, the last year honestly, maybe the next 6 or year from today will be better (I like all numbers in 3s). I have to hold onto that 51% hope.

I went through an experience recently that had me believe I was really close to God. I could feel it, I felt like I was seeing signs of it everywhere. Being open to this channel, with taking in light and dark. It was all so overwhelming. Now I’m on the quest for answers. Was my mind just playing tricks on me?

I grew up in a religious household. I’ve always prayed for signs, that I’m on the right path, that God is real. A big part of me held doubt and disappointment when those prayers went unanswered. Was any of it even real? But a big part of me held onto faith, that there must be something more to this life than we can see. It’s something indescribable, only felt. Or was it just a serotonin high? Our minds can warp our realities very easily. I wondered if in order to make sense of death and suffering, humans have to believe in a God to survive in the world?

I’ve felt God in the golden hour driving down PCH, I’ve felt God in my darkest hours, I’ve felt God in the eyes of people I love, I’ve felt God in nature, I’ve felt what I suspected is God many times. 

After this experience with what I thought to be God, my life got really hard. I tried to push through but every step of the way, I kept falling down. I looked to God to help me with some of the issues I was having. I wondered why God/the universe was testing me this way. I started to think about all of the other minor tragedies other people I knew were experiencing, zoomed out even further, all of the major tragedies happening in the world and why, if there is a God, is there so much injustice, pain, and darkness everywhere. 

I phoned up my mom, told her how it always seems the kindest people always suffer the most and the worst of them are rewarded. What kind of karma could a child rack up to experience pain? She put plainly that God gave us free will, so while there is light humans have also created darkness. That still didn’t explain my questions about chronic illnesses but I accepted that as a valid point. 

When you're going through a hard time, people are quick to tell you “everything happens for a reason”. It’s the perfect bandaid to zoom out and find the purpose underneath pain. I got to wondering if I believe everything happens for a reason. I myself used to use that phrase all of the time. “Don’t worry, everything happens for a reason!”. I don’t know, there are some things that are horrible or just suck. Perhaps some things are just bad, there isn’t a lesson to be learned. If our fate is preordained, is there a point in faith or prayer?

Another concept of God is the Universe, a more popular idea from the people I am surrounded by. Instead of prayer, you have manifestation, and so on. In my mind, they are essentially the same thing, except with prayer you ask to receive where as manifestation you declare you already have something. 

I started to wonder if any of this was real, or are we humans just afraid to admit that our destinies are just by chance. There’s solace in believing someone or something was watching over us and able to help us along our path. That we are in control of our own luck. This is 180 from what I believed before—- in magic, the universe, god, all of it. But just like when I was young and had my doubts about religion, I always hold onto hope that somewhere in there, there’s truth. 

I read part of “A Course in Miracles” and it introduced the concept that our inner voice, not the ego but the one we call intuition is the Holy Spirit. Maybe all of us have bits of god living through us? The more I’ve looked for answers, the more confused I’ve become. 

I am someone who used to not believe in coincidences. Perhaps I still don’t. I still turn to God this time of doubt. Some small voice in my head tells me no one is listening. Maybe that’s my ego. A simple thing as small as an apple was made in utter perfection. How divine is the feeling of the sun on our skin. I’ll never see 11:11 on the clock and think there isn’t some beautiful significance. If there is a creator, I just want answers. Maybe angels are the people who help us along the way. Maybe I think too much. Maybe I’ve been looking in the wrong places. Maybe (hopefully) it’ll all make sense soon.

Sincerely,

A girl seeking a sign ※

2025 is the year of the snake in the Chinese Zodiac. It’s the year that began with wildfires in Los Angeles. The year Trump came back into office. And a year that broke my heart. I was born the year of the snake in 2001. When snakes shed their skin, they go blind. A tarot reader told me that earlier this year before all the fires in my personal life started happening. It didn’t resonate until a few months later. The world at large has felt really overwhelming and loud. 

It’s hard to feel present and balanced in a world when the news / social media goes : EPTEIN FILES, hopecore, GLOBAL WARMING, divine feminine energy, ELON MUSK BECOMES FIRST GAZILLIONAIRE, how you are failing to regulate your nervous system, PERSON WHO HURT YOU ON THE COVER OF A MAGAZINE, friends checking in, WAR AND FAMINE, wedding montage, ANGRY SONG, sad song, AI EVERYTHING, happy song¿, ICE RAID, old friend you forgot to text back, COMPARISON, how to gua shau your pain away, TRAD WIFERY, self-optimization…i mean growth! All in the palm of our hands, orbiting second long intervals, all. the. time.. It can make you feel crazy/confused— hopeful or hopeless, ugly or perfect, guilty or righteous, angry or eager, or all of the above…maybe even question who you are, where you belong in all of this mess, and why your soul decided to embark on this human experience during this time. 

The noise was too loud. I had to take a break. No social media, no texting, no luxurious moisturizer, no makeup, no Uber eats, no fancy coffee shops, no chit chat with friends, no nicotine, no alcohol, no California, no crushes, no headphones or familiar music, no clothes that felt like home, no shoes, no real contact with the outside world to really see my life more clearly. (I highly don’t recommend this unless you’re in a good place mentally btw). 

Despite the obvious blessings in my life, I knew I lost myself. I changed my hair several times to feel “different”…only to find that I couldn’t recognize the woman who gazed back at me in the mirror. I used to be so light, so free, moving like water, bright like fire, floating in the sky. I used to walk around on my tippy toes humming, but now I was mute with my feet flat on the ground. 

There was a lot I wasn’t ready to face until now, humming like a heartbeat. Surviving like a daisy in rotten soil. My flowers were wilting and no amount of water could put out all the small fires burning me up inside. And like the snakes, I felt blind. I didn’t know who or where to turn to, I wanted to just run away. Some place better that wasn’t here. My head hung like a rose, twisted with thorns, hoping for someone to admire them and say they didn’t sting too much to hold, or that they too shared my pain.

So I left the city I love. And dug, and dug, deeper, and deeper. I wrote a million letters I’ll never send. I tried to burn it all to the ground, gently. I meditated and prayed. I searched for hope in synchronicities and angel numbers. Looked around at all the pain and suffering around me and tried to find the through-lines. Hoping for justice, for balance, for answers, for the truth, for the source. I thought I found it, but didn’t realize the map was upside down the whole trip.

As hard as I tried, I couldn’t find all of “the truth”. I don’t know that I ever will. What I can understand is that life is like a garden. Each relationship or thing you value is like flowers. What brings me solace is tending to those things, gently. I wasn’t caring for myself enough, I had forgotten how. 

I learned that it’s okay to whistle in the wind, but also commit to something greater than yourself. Find real community, make art, call your mom, text your cousins, learn something new, but especially— take care of yourself mentally, physically, and spiritually so you have excess love to spread all over to others. I’ve sown some new seeds and hoping I’ll come up roses in the spring.