BEFORE I KNEW THE WORD SURVIVAL

​

My story began in a small Cambodian village, where being taken from my mother was explained as a promise: a better life in America.

​

Instead, I learned loss before belonging. I lived in a refugee camp and endured physical, emotional, and sexual abuse from the very people who were supposed to protect me. At fifteen, I chose the uncertainty of leaving over the danger of staying. I slept in cars and train stations, searched dumpsters for food, and became a mother while I was still a child myself.

​

I did not call it resilience then. I was simply doing whatever it took to make tomorrow possible. I could not change the beginning I had been given, but I could decide what came next. Motherhood deepened that resolve: my children would inherit safety, possibility, and love—not the pain I had known.

​

Your story may look nothing like mine. But perhaps you know what it means to become strong because there was no room to fall apart—and to decide that what happened behind you would not become the ceiling over the life ahead.

​​​

THE LIFE I BUILT

​

That decision carried me far. I built a career, led teams across Asia and four continents, made money, and created the better life I once dreamed of. From the outside, I had made it. Inside, I was still living as if danger were always near.

​

Achievement taught me how to perform safety; it could not teach me how to feel it. Loss, heartbreak, and another abusive relationship reopened wounds I had learned to outwork. Eventually, I faced the truth: I had spent a lifetime becoming who I needed to be for everyone else, and I no longer knew how to be at home with myself.

​

COMING HOME TO MYSELF

​

Healing did not arrive as a single breakthrough. It came through honest conversations, therapy, stillness, community, and the courageous practice of returning to the parts of me I had abandoned. I learned that survival is not the end of the story. We are allowed to feel safe. To rest. To receive care. To become whole without earning it.

​

Selah-Vee grew from that return. I created the sanctuary I once needed—a place where mental health care and restorative wellness can meet; where leaders can set down the weight of always being strong, survivors can feel seen without being defined by what happened to them, and every person is welcomed with compassion rather than judgment.

​