you r not alone in this

There is no other way to put it – we were a ragtag bunch. After all, what do you get when you bring together two middle-aged mums, one dad, two younger techies, a designer and a journalist?

Probably a row of people sitting next to one another on the MRT train on the way to work.

Instead, this group came to The Mind Cafe in Prinsep Street every week to chat. And not just about anything, but well-being skills, and how we can put them into practice in our lives.

In other words, the one thing all seven of us had in common was our wish to cope better with life’s difficulties and be happier.

This was one of the well-being circles by social enterprise Happiness Initiative. Being in the circle involves attending eight Saturday morning group discussions on various topics, led by two trained volunteer facilitators.

Well-being circles are not a replacement for therapy, but meant to enable us to bounce back from life adversities, reads the message by Happiness Initiative co-founder Simon Leow in the participant journal we were all given.

I had signed up to kick habits that make me unhappy.

The mindless doomscrolling – excessively scrolling through content that makes one feel negative – tended to be my go-to coping mechanism when I was stressed or sad. I would dwell upon what I was lacking and reproach myself – which stressed me out even more.

Our facilitators at the well-being circle pointed us to American psychologist Martin Seligman’s theory that humans are primed to worry to stay alive. We are constantly on the lookout for things that demand our attention, to recognise dangers and think about how to survive them.

In the programme, we learnt that the key is to catch the negative thoughts beginning to take hold and to question them. For instance, is it really true that everything is always going wrong in my life? Not so. I might be having a bad day, but there are many things I am thankful for in my life.

We took some time to identify our triggers – events that draw a negative reaction from us – and ways to put a stop to the negative thoughts that come up whenever we are “triggered”. For me, I find that breaking away from a certain app to take a shower can stop a downward spiral of social comparisons and self-loathing.

We were taught to become more aware of our beliefs – and the feelings that flow from them. Negative or limiting beliefs like “I’m not good enough” could then be challenged and reframed to a more constructive narrative, such as “I can learn from this”.

The sessions gave us a structured way of thinking about our problems and coming up with solutions – an empowering experience.

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Real talk

We had our doubts about how effective the circle would be when we started out. Our backgrounds were different and the age range was wide. “Thank goodness you’re in my group,” one person told me. “I thought I would be the only young one.”

Interestingly, it was this diversity that enabled candid discussions. Knowing that these were people who I wouldn’t have had a chance to talk to outside of sessions, I confided in them freely, without fear of judgment or repercussion.

The others must have felt the same, and soon earnest conversation flowed among near-strangers. Questions were asked and answered.

I soon found myself taking in different perspectives, going beyond the assumptions of my usual circle. (After knowing your bestie for over a decade, you kind of know what she’s going to say when you tell her about another Instagram hang-up: “You’re still on this?”)

Often, what we see in a hyperconnected social media age are the highlight reels of people’s lives – the girls too good to be true, the paper-white teeth and perfect bodies that can make even Olivia Rodrigo want to throw her phone across the room.

The circle, in contrast, prompted us to think about our attachment styles, past pains, triggers and the bumpier stretches in life, whatever we were comfortable sharing. 

I was moved by the mum trying to improve her relationship with her daughter, the man navigating the difficulties of a job transition to a new company, the 20-somethings finding their way around loneliness or trying to start their own businesses.

We showed up week after week ready to share and to listen, with some of the conversations continuing into lunch at Plaza Singapura.

We’d skip the small talk and the niceties usually associated with strangers, diving straight into things that mattered to us.

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The circles, which have just concluded their sixth wave, have had a ripple effect.

The two facilitators in my group are former participants who came back as volunteers. Happiness Initiative’s other co-founder, Mr Sherman Ho, tells me that 46 out of 168 volunteers have participated in previous circles.

The next round of well-being circles for the social enterprise will be an inter-university one, starting in January 2025 with student participants from the National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Management University and Singapore University of Social Sciences.

Apart from Happiness Initiative’s programme, there are now 11 other well-being circles in Singapore that address the specific needs of each community. These include youth-centric circles such as Project Re:ground @ The Red Box in Orchard Road, and one in the Yuhua area, where there is rising concern for the mental well-being of elderly people.

More than 3,000 people have participated in these community well-being circles, overseen by the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth as a key component of the SG Mental Well-Being Network. This is a national platform launched in 2022 to connect citizens, social service agencies and mental health advocacy organisations to safeguard mental health.

On my part, I’ve made my partner take tests to find out his character strengths and attachment style, or think about his deep-seated beliefs, often right after the sessions over a cooling plate of mala.

It has made for some good lunch conversations.

Meanwhile, my circle has come to the end of its eight sessions.

Reflecting on my life and hearing about the lives of others has helped me feel less alone in my struggles.

I’m reminded of the lyrics of a song one group member brought up when another mentioned a sense of isolation in adulthood. “You’ve got troubles, I’ve got ’em too. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you. We stick together, we can see it through, ’cause you’ve got a friend in me.”

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building and moving house and the memories we have

Somewhere along the East Coast Park stretch, there is a tree branch “planted” into the sand.

It was a Covid-19 project. During the pandemic years, my family would sometimes cycle to the beach near our home in the evenings and make a quick picnic out of dinner.

On one of those excursions, my daughters – then three and six – delighted in finding a snapped-off branch with leaves still attached to it. They dug a little hole in the sand, stuck the branch in it, and carefully doused it with water from their drinking bottles.

In the intervening years, we’d search for “our plant” when in the vicinity. “There it is,” the girls would sometimes say when they glimpsed a sapling, imagining that the branch had grown.

Later on, as they got older and busier, and my time got more compressed, we did not look for the plant as often any more, but it still looms large in our collective memories – a moment of no significance to others, but evocative of a certain time and place for us.

At the end of 2024, my family will be moving out of our home in Siglap, where we have been living for eight years and which is pretty much the only home that the girls, now six and nine, have known. We will be shifting almost halfway across the island to be closer to their school, so we are leaving not just the apartment but the entire neighbourhood and community.

When my husband and I decided on the move earlier this year, we quickly and decisively set things in motion, recognising the good sense that drove it.

Yet, in the months since, I have also found myself at times unexpectedly bowed by emotion at the prospect. At dinner with a good friend and current neighbour one night, I found myself tearing up in the restaurant as I spoke about the impending move.

What was I grieving for?

The music in the community

At work and even at home, much of my attention is turned outwards.

In a particularly hectic year of elections and hot wars around the world, my colleagues and I are constantly keeping abreast of fast-moving developments across different time zones, ranging from big-power rivalry to political polarisation, economic malaise, religious nationalism and disinformation campaigns – so that we can make sense of what is happening and why it matters to our readers in Singapore and South-east Asia.

It is exciting and meaningful work. But it can also be consuming. As The Straits Times US bureau chief Bhagyashree Garekar remarked during a recent work retreat back in Singapore, “you have to be a little in love with what you are doing” to constantly seek to understand the nuances of all that is unfolding.

To keep things on an even keel, I find myself hunkering down at home and in the neighbourhood during my spare time, seeking solidity in everyday life.

When someone asked me what I do for self-care, I replied that I enjoy going to the wet market every week in Marine Terrace.

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The reasons are twofold: For one, I reckon I am being somewhat productive even as I relax by buying fresh produce and flowers for the home.

But there is another factor at play: Over the years, I have struck up some sort of relationship with the vendors there.

The vegetable uncle knows that I am always on the lookout for Singapore-harvested vegetables and throws in some sprigs of spring onion or coriander. The flower auntie thrusts Cantonese mock-scoldings and packets of Yakult at my daughters. I exchange holiday plans with the fishball noodle uncle.

Our mutual dance of commerce has evolved, from the initial years of fumbling in wallets and fanny packs for banknotes and coins to a quick wave of the mobile phone as the QR code became ubiquitous in the market. Some were faster, others were slower, but everyone is now on board and I saw the market aunties and uncles grow, in that sense, as they saw my children grow.

On weekends, our family evening routines generally take one of the following two forms. We bike along the park connector – where both girls have learnt how to ride as we run and pant alongside them – to a nearby playground where children from nearby homes play grounders. Or we bike to Bedok Jetty, where taciturn fishermen oblige the girls with their many questions: “What did you catch? Is the fish dead? What are you going to do with it?”

We will miss them, as we will miss the friendly Burmese woman at the dry-cleaners in Frankel Avenue, the staff at a hipster bagel-and-records joint in Joo Chiat Road that once made my daughter’s day by playing her then favourite Beatles song over the speakers, and the Jalan Tua Kong coffee shop stall owners who helped me out when I urgently needed cash for a funeral wake – I PayLah-ed them in return.

Research has shown that eight out of 10 people apparently buy goods from their local business because of how that same business helped the community. That might be true, but I like to think that what is greasing these relationships is simply humanity.

Of course, at our new home, there will be new places to discover, new memories to make, new community relationships to build. It will just take time.

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Regrets, I’ve had a few

I have wondered if what is really also happening is that I am grieving the passing of my children’s childhood, one associated with our current home.

Our older daughter is in the final months of her single-digit years, and the younger one is fast losing her babyishness as she prepares for primary school. While I try to live in the present, I sometimes pre-emptively don the armour of mentally girding myself for the future when they grow up and necessarily grow apart.

Parenting experts, in trying to offer exhausted parents of young children some perspective as they ride out the challenging period of herding little ones, warn that “the days are long but the years are short”.

I have found both the years and the days to be incredibly short.

Mixed into all of this is the seemingly inevitable guilt of being a working mother, one trying to juggle the many balls up in the air.

On one of my days off work this year, I walked our younger daughter to school instead of dropping her off on the way to the office. She is young enough to still find magic in the pathways, be it blowing on a lalang stalk or balance-walking on the ledges that line the street-side verges.

Midway, we found a snail across the pavement. We worried that someone was going to step on it, and tried to move it. But the creature simply would not budge and I gave up after a while. After taking a few steps, my daughter said: “Mama, let’s try to make it wet so the snail can walk.” She doubled back, splashed some water from her bottle on the snail and I moved it to the side with ease.

Having saved the world, or rather, a snail, we carried on.

Will such moments be gone, I think, allowing myself to be melodramatic. Have I given her enough of myself, at a time when she still wants me?

The answer is probably no. But I have also come to the conclusion that what I can give of myself – if I am not busy and am happy at work – is also not satisfactory.

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In trying to reframe my thinking, I have landed on the takeaway that what I am closing a chapter on is not so much my children’s childhood, but a specific idea I have had about the kind of mother I can or should be. A colleague, who is mum to a teenager, reassures me that my children will still need me, albeit in different ways.

While preparing for the move, we are sorting out our worldly possessions accumulated over eight years – from the massive amounts of artwork that the children did in their pre-school years to clothes now too tight, too faded, too faddish.

We are throwing out stuff and making space. A new home awaits.