G was insistent that it was just nearby. I insisted that Google maps said it was at least forty minutes away. I was shushed and told that I must just have the breakfast. She was flipping eggs, and my Uber app was loading over and over with no one available. I spoke in German to my host mother that we must leave now. The Australian man who was having breakfast with us saw that I couldn’t get an Uber and said, “Oh G will take you, she’s a great driver.” Here I was triggered back in time, like I was living in my chaotic childhood home with constant interruptions and being hijacked by my mother’s agenda. No control. I was an adult but all of a sudden I was a child. We have all experienced circumstances where we are compelled to feel triggered from a different, historic place that has nothing to do with what’s happening in real time. The trick is being mindful enough to know that it is happening. I could feel my breath shortening. As if I were in a time machine, the feeling of being dependent on an unpredictable and volatile female caregiver made me want to recoil into a hole in the ground. I just wanted peace. I could feel resentment rising in me that my peace was now being taken from me on a holiday I was paying for by woman whose only job was to accommodate us. I took a deep breath and tried to connect with myself. I knew intuitively how I would behave next would be a test.

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In December 2022, I was spending the slow end-of year period in a small village in Switzerland. The same village I had stayed in as an eighteen-year-old exchange student back in 2002. It was my safe and happy place, my secure base. Hay House UK, the publisher of this book, invited me to attend their annual Christmas party in London. I always believe human connection is best. So, I decided to fly my host mother on a girl’s trip with me to London so she could attend with me. I had gotten my team in Singapore to help find me find an Airbnb. I opened my email to see pictures of a stunning flower-laden terraces and five-star reviews. As an Airbnb newbie, I didn’t think to check whether the owner lived in the property and whether there would be multiple guests also in the house.

The journey to London actually took a long time because the village I stay in is quite far from Zurich, and I was still jetlagged from Singapore. We arrived cold and exhausted to the house in Chelsea, which was hoarded with personal belongings on every surface. Our accommodation wasn’t at all as the photos looked. I found the Airbnb owner, G, scattered, almost manic, and instead of letting us drop our bags and rest, ordered us immediately into the kitchen to place our breakfast order for the next day. This should have been the first red flag; we weren’t even given a moment to sit down. Honestly, in my speediness to book this stay, I had never even considered or cared if there was breakfast. The menus were thrown in our face to order, and it became clear that her agenda was more important than the comfort of her guests. I breathed deeply. I did the practices I had learned in countless classes. This booking was very expensive, I could have gotten us a hotel in retrospect, but I wanted to spoil my host mum with something unique. As I looked around the kitchen, strewn with things on every countertop, I knew intuitively it wouldn’t be a comfortable stay.

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At my hypnotherapist’s office many years later, I would find a chart I wish I’d had when working on my new self, this model (linked below) clearly illustrates the stages of change. I wish I had seen it much earlier—this tool would have saved me beating myself up, knowing that backslides are part of the natural transformation process. The transtheoretical model of stages of change was developed for people who were attempting to quit smoking. I share it with you now so it hopefully alleviates some suffering for you too, if like me, you’re admonishing yourself. In it, one can clearly see that relapses or backslides are part of establishing change permanently. There is humility in seeing that the maintenance never ends, humility in acknowledging that some of us may just always be fighting that itch to do something that may compromise our relationship with ourselves.

If you’re at the part of the journey where you feel the shame shower, where you feel angry at yourself for a backslide, as I did, here are a few practical things that may help:

Attachment Theory

Attachment theory has been around for a long time. John Bowlby, looked at how the bonds we form with our primary caregivers shape the way we connect with people for the rest of our lives. And then Mary Ainsworth built on this work by actually identifying the different attachment styles through her research. Attachment theory explains how we make sense of relationships as adults, based on how we were loved—or maybe not loved—by our primary caregivers growing up and other profound experiences throughout our lives. There are three major attachment styles that have made their way into pop culture largely to do with dating, which is why they’re relevant to the story and the work on boundaries we are exploring in this chapter. Your attachment style can have a profound effect on not just the romantic relationships you choose as adults but also in the work environments you choose to say in and the friends you keep.

Secure attachment.

This attachment style is often associated with people who love wholeheartedly. They know how to express love and affection. They are often characterised as growing up in an environment where their emotional needs were met. They trust that others will be there for them, they feel safe being emotionally open, and they’re able to set healthy boundaries without fear of losing the relationship. They also do not feel smothered by commitment and affection.

Anxious attachment

Anxious attachment is characterised by a deep fear of abandonment. This is where you may have had a primary caregiver who was basically a rollercoaster—love was there, and then it wasn’t, and then it was again. So as adults, that kind of back-and-forth becomes familiar in every part of our bodies, including our nervous system. We end up constantly worrying about whether the people we love are going to leave. Abandonment is a core fear for us and love feels fleeting and never satisfying. People with anxious attachment can really struggle to ask for what they need or set boundaries, especially when they become attached to people who have an avoidant attachment style.

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I recently was told that my book Let’s Talk About Loneliness was getting a second print run and with it a new cover.

Watch the video for the cover reveal!

Here’s a little from the new back cover text:

‘Simone Heng’s essential read o ers the tools
you need to reconnect once again and build
authentic and meaningful relationships.’
Vex King, Sunday Times best-selling author

SIMONE HENG is a human connection specialist, international keynote speaker and award-winning author. With a background in global media and communication, she has spoken at TEDx, Harvard University and worked with organizations across the world to help leaders and teams foster authentic relationships. Simone’s expertise is rooted in her multicultural upbringing and years of experience in broadcasting, making her a sought-after voice on the power of human connection in leadership and business.

Have you ever felt lonely despite being surrounded by people? Perhaps you’ve spent the day with friends, family, or colleagues and come away feeling disconnected, unseen, or misunderstood. You’re not alone. In a world where digital connectivity increasingly replaces face-to-face interactions, we’re all struggling to build the meaningful connections that create a genuine sense of belonging.

In this compassionate book, human connection specialist Simone Heng explores the hidden roots of loneliness and shows you how to:

Understand the impact of childhood experiences, grief, and life
transitions on your relationships

Build stronger connections at work, online, and in everyday life

Recognize the patterns that shape the way you relate to others

Develop more fulfilling friendships and relationships

It’s time to be open and honest about how we’re all feeling. Let’s talk about loneliness.

The 2024 Silver Nautilus Book Award winner in the Social Change and
Social Justice category.

I cannot thank you enough for your help on this journey.

It’s been a wild ride since 2023.

You can grab the book HERE and the new cover should be on its way to you too.

In retrospect, if I could speak to my early-thirties self, I would embrace her tightly, tell her she was safe and that once she aligned herself, really connected with her true self, she would never betray her brilliance again. How many of us have been on the brink of such moments and given into our base instincts? As someone who had issues with love and connection, I was cognizant that returning to old patterns could cost me years of progress. YEARS! Like being at the end of a horror movie escaping a serial killer and being yanked back into the house. This phase of being in flux on the way to your transformation is what I want to discuss in this chapter. The tenuous push and pull between the less powerful version of you.

However all those years ago experiencing that shame shower at Clarke Quay, I wasn’t quite aware of any of this. I shook my head and answered to my cousin on the phone in painful sobs, “I don’t know.” I had been working on air on late night radio, put out to pasture on the least desirable shift as woman in her 30s, no longer in her entertainment-industry prime, and out of nowhere, a Dutch guy had asked me to meet with him and two of his best friends who were in town from the Netherlands. He had sent me the location and it was a place I would never go, some sort of ping pong bar. Literally. Again, I ignored the fact that my intuition was pinging off and that my love addiction was compelling me to do something I didn’t need to do. This is what happens when we are disconnected. Our body is sending us somatic responses and we just ignore them. I now know I wasn’t the girl who wanted to play ping pong and drink beer and that this didn’t make me feel safe or seen, so I would now take aligned action on that and not go. I was and am the type of person who wants to have deep conversations in places where I can be heard.

When I arrived, I was already resentful of myself. The venue was loud and full of people who were very young, and when I tried to make conversation the music was too loud. This guy and his friends were almost seven feet tall, making conversation almost impossible. They eyed me like dirt, like so many European men tend to do when freshly in Singapore. Dirt or meat. Neither option particularly human. I had never felt more unseen. They didn’t even bother to say hello. It was so bizarre. I turned to my “date” and said, “Why on earth did you invite me here? Why did you think I would enjoy this?”

The version of me now would have turned long before to say I was heading to the toilet and taken some deep breaths, come out and excused myself. Or better, I would never go to something like this at all. He was not at fault. I had betrayed myself my connection to myself. I had given into this toxic cycle of attachment I was handed at birth, the one that said I was not good enough, not worthy of being seen and the one that said my needs should be ignored. Sometimes our needs are so well ignored in childhood that we learn to continue glossing over them long into adulthood. Even though all the signs pointed to this experience being familiar,

As you can well imagine from any experience of spending time in a place you would rather not be with people you don’t actually respect, it was all a disaster. I have found at the times when our sense of self is most fragile, our ego becomes huge. I learnt more about this as part of the Authentic Relating practice, this idea of posturing to cover the lower integration of self. So being greeted like I did not exist, triggered my ego, and I became enraged. I ran out of the bar into the grotty stairwell, my nervous system overwhelmed. “Where are you going?” He asked. I could barely breathe. “Your friends were so rude to me! Why would you think I would like this place?” I repeated. He replied with a shrug. The shrug of a person so simple and unperceiving of the internal torment of others, it repulsed me further. I felt shame for the thought, knowing also that it wasn’t him that was to blame. My relationship with myself was growing and I could not go backwards into unawareness. This interaction was a gift. Arriving back at the little studio I was renting at the time, I exhaled and made a new contract with myself that I would not emerge again until I had fully learned to listen to my boundaries.

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“Why did you go, Simone?” my cousin asked me in disappointment as I sat slumped on a bench at a nightlife destination in Singapore called Clarke Quay. I was crying down the phone to her. These questions we should be asking ourselves are often asked by people who truly love us, who observe us from the outside, who don’t want us to continue to do the same negative things to ourselves over and over again like a hamster wheel of insanity. These “why am I like this?” questions should be something we ask ourselves regularly because being analytical about our behaviours strengthen the relationship we have with ourselves. These questions unveil our paradigms and the stories created by some of our deepest wounds. More often than not however, we never ask these in the eye of the storm because turning the magnifying glass onto ourselves can hurt like hell. Over that phone call, hand shaking, chest hyperventilating, I could not think how I’d gotten to that place both emotionally and physically. I had been doing copious amounts of therapy, at least a visit a week since 2015, and it was now 2017 and I had been progressing so well.

I had been recalibrating the way I reacted to my co-workers in the toxic workplace I was part of at the time, a workplace, which had gaslit me into feeling I wasn’t good enough, I knew that feeling of insecurity in my bones, it was a replica of my childhood home. While all of this was happening, I had been following through on a plan to leave this full-time job. Every hour I wasn’t on air on the radio or sleeping I was studying the new industry I wanted to be part of and yet amongst all this diligence, I could feel the restless old habits wriggling inside me. The behaviours which are self-sabotaging, the temptation to do things that aren’t in service to your goal. I imagined the less optimal version of me to be a sort of translucent amoeba, floating in the fluid spaces, it wanted to grow, to fed off all the good that was building like a parasite and take me off the mission of my transformation. For most people looking in from outside, the act of stepping out of a disciplined routine to blow off steam would seem innocuous. Nothing more than the antidote to extreme discipline. Like wanting to eat junk food after a water fast. But I knew myself enough, with a myriad of traumas still needing further healing, my intuition knew that going out that night to meet him wasn’t a good idea. So, my cousin was right: Why did I do it?

The shame shower as I sat at Clarke Quay after that “date” made my toes curl. I had been “interacting” for a few months with a fresh-off-the-boat to Singapore Dutch man. He fit my only criteria for men at the time in that he was physically attractive.

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Therapy

At the beginning of the therapy process, I had developed a hard exterior to protect me from more pain. On top of this hard exterior I layered humour, and I would bring this sassiness into session until my incredibly perceptive therapist said, “What do the jokes do for you?” I sat with the question. The jokes masked the pain. They too were like the swiping, drinking, dating, shopping and other dopamine droppers I had so effectively employed to avoid burrowing deep into my skin and tweezing the callous of truth out.

Therapy, as I mentioned earlier, has by far been the most life-changing for me of all the modalities I have undertaken to improve my self-connection. This is largely because any form of therapy is completely bespoke. Talk therapy talks back, and the human connection you feel in it can make you feel supported and understood. This is possible only because of two very specific factors, however. The first is that the cost of therapy is within your means. For me this was incredibly draining on my finances as in Singapore it’s not subsidised by the government. This meant the cost of therapy was stressful. I know it is this way for many people. I remember it being such a priority for me and being in such emotional pain at the time that I decided that it was more important to me than eating. Healing was my highest priority. If therapy is beyond your budget, consider following social media accounts by psychologists which will essentially “drip-feed” you new therapy concepts you may find relevant for further research. I’d highly recommend unfollowing other accounts at the same time which may trigger you or cause comparison, so the new more positive content can shine through. You can also explore a range of AI therapy apps that are flooding the market and are very reasonably priced.

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Meditation

I started meditating after the pandemic when I attended a beginner’s course in Australia. The instructor explained the science behind why we should meditate in conjunction with breathwork, this was the first time I had encountered this. Meditation in conjunction with breathwork sends a signal to the vagus nerve to communicate to the prefrontal cortex and trigger five happy hormones to drop into the bloodstream: dopamine, oxytocin, melatonin, serotonin and endorphins. All of these position us to start our day better and calmly connect with ourselves. If you are a bit like me and need knowledge of the science behind things, to give you more leverage to persevere with a new practice, then I hope this knowledge was valuable. Interestingly, what I have found over the years is that the spiritual and scientific often seem to reinforce each other anyway. When we meditate, we get the opportunity not only to sit with ourselves, but also we gain the power to change our state whenever we want.

After putting in place a regular meditation practice, I went to a retreat in Laos where meditation with monks was part of the experience. I remember entering this pristine temple and sitting with my fellow retreat participants as these Devarana Buddhist monks led us in prayer. Many of us began crying halfway through the forty-minute session, this is how meditation is a powerful tool to self-connect as it’s often in the vacuum of stillness that epiphanies about yourself flood in. I now also do active meditations when I walk and run. You can access meditation for free online and begin any time.

Coaches

Coaches are a wonderful way to connect more fully with the self. Engaging with a qualified expert one-on-one allows an even more bespoke approach and therefore exponential progress on the journey to becoming a force. Many people in Asia, where I am based, prefer coaches to therapists/counsellors as there can still be a stigma behind traditional talk therapy. Coaches can be a mixed bag, what worked really well for your friend may not vibe with you and discovering that is part of the process. Do your research and find a coach that caters to your demographic and has the type of qualifications you value. It’s very easy to find a good coach simply by using the search hashtag for “coach” on Instagram or LinkedIn. Prices will vary based on a coach’s qualifications, experience and popularity. I have used coaches for every part of my business and personal life, and all of them have allowed me to get to know myself better. They can also fast-track any process you are hoping to go through because they have distilled the knowledge for you, getting you faster to force-hood.

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A Disclaimer

What’s paradoxically amazing and scary about the internet is the low barrier of entry and ubiquity of information at your fingertips. Should an individual not have a great relationship with themselves, there will always be an issue with extracting the knowledge which serves them and releasing what hurts them. We’ve seen this with the rise of fake news and cults. It’s the relationship you have with yourself which will determine which information you absorb and how you apply it. It’s your knowledge of yourself which makes you hold a crystal instead of doing the deep work with a therapist which you may need. It’s the relationship you have with yourself, your self-connection, which helps to extract the lesson when you watch a video tutorial on YouTube. It’s the relationship with yourself which gets you to complete an online course you purchased instead of spending the day watching Netflix. One of the greatest gifts of some very “successful” people I have coached, is the way they connect the information thrown at them by so many sources and apply it to their unique personal circumstances. It’s when you can do this that you really see exponential positive change from your self-development work.

Inward Curiosity

Turning our curiosity inward is one of the most important parts of forging a relationship with yourself. It’s what brought you to this book and will keep you growing long after the last page. It’s usually a rock bottom that forces people to start having inner curiosity, feelings of extreme dysregulation that leads to a deeper enquiry of what is going on inside. I hope by reading this chapter, it won’t take a crisis to get you to look inward.

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*This book was set the be published by the publisher of my first book, but after years of struggle and many other reasons, I decided to release it on Substack instead. Each week, the 52,000 word book which was tentatively titled “Be A Force” will be dropped here online. The sections will start with number 1 and then progress over the 52 weeks of the next year. The Chapter title will be placed in the post description for clarity.

The teacher for the feminine womb-healing workshop I’d signed up for was late.

My friend, another student, and I had raced across Singapore in crushing morning peak-hour traffic. I remembered the Eventbrite page insisting we arrive sharply at 9AM — latecomers would be locked out. That warning had been looping in my mind the whole taxi ride. I hate being late. I feel it’s disrespectful. By the time we got there, anxiety was fizzing through my body. This was a new course for me, something far more “woo-woo” than I was used to, but I was struggling with my fertility at the time and had reached the point where I was willing to try anything that might help.

Just as I was internally justifying why I was even doing this, the teacher’s taxi screeched to a stop in front of us. I actually stepped back, afraid my foot might get run over. She climbed out looking utterly frazzled, wearing an almost translucent white cotton maxi dress and gold sandals. She was not present, that was for sure. We’d been waiting outside in the heat, which in the Asian tradition of hospitality felt almost rude, and she didn’t even apologise for being late.

“Stay open, Simone. Stay open,” I whispered to myself, trying to soften the agitation rising in my chest.

We filed into the narrow staircase of the renovated conservation building. The entrance smelled faintly of incense and yoga mat rubber. Inside, everything was decorated in soft neutrals — beige cushions, linen throws, a large brass gong placed ceremonially in the centre of the room. The lacquered wooden floors were immaculate, gleaming with that particular Singaporean cleanliness.

I excused myself to go to the toilet to calm down. It felt ironic to need grounding before a class built around meditation and deep embodiment, but I knew enough about how the nervous system reacts when we try something unfamiliar. So I let myself breathe. In the bathroom, neat displays of essential oils lined the counter — arranged by the colours of the chakras, of course — as if promising instant enlightenment for $29.90 a bottle.

When I returned, we sat cross-legged with firm, narrow cushions propping our hips forward. Our teacher perched on a small elevated ledge and began explaining the concept of the class. As she spoke, I noticed the hem of her maxi dress had become trapped under her crossed feet. Without breaking her flow, she tugged it loose — and in the process flicked the skirt far too high, flashing all of us her completely naked vagina. In Singapore. One of the most conservative countries.

My brain short-circuited. Did I just see that? Was… was this part of the class? Had I misunderstood the level of vulnerability expected today? Had I made a mistake wearing underwear? A shocked laugh tried to claw its way up my throat, but I forced it down because I genuinely did not know what the protocol was here. For the next thirty minutes, I hovered between disbelief and suppressed giggles. I missed half the content because I was too busy trying to wrangle my monkey mind back into the room. Every time I managed to centre myself, the image would replay again in my mind. I felt childish, immature as a high schooler after dealing with the heaviness of the egg freezing process.

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*This book was set the be published by the publisher of my first book, but after years of struggle and many other reasons, I decided to release it on Substack instead. Each week, the 52,000 word book which was tentatively titled “Be A Force” will be dropped here online. The sections will start with number 1 and then progress over the 52 weeks of the next year. The Chapter title will be placed in the post description for clarity.

There is No Time Stamp on Grieving

You can never judge someone or even put pressure on yourself over the speed of the grieving process because every single person and situation is different. In the wake of my father’s passing and requests from relatives to behave in a way that may have worked for them, adopting their approach wreaked havoc on my nervous system for decades to come. My loss is often still painful when I achieve something I wish my parents could see or if I went to a country I would have loved to take them to. Grief specialist Gina Moffa says: “You’re going to be grieving the rest of your days in different intensities and different ways. It comes up on anniversaries and birthdays and holidays and days that only you know with somebody and so it will return to your nervous system and you’re going to be re-living that.”

What We Can for Those That are Grieving

If you have experienced loss, you will know the moment where you are sitting in your emotional mess but trying to look happy on the outside. It’s a complete disconnection of the self. You almost mask your grief so as not to make others uncomfortable. This means severing the relationship you have with yourself. And what happens often during this time is that someone says they “understand” how you feel. This can be extremely triggering for the griever. I remember also having my loss minimized, being told six months after my father’s death, “How can you still be sad, Simone? There are children in Africa who are starving. You have so much to be grateful for.” These comments can often be re-traumatizing. So, what can we do for the griever? Allow them to honour the person they are grieving. Refrain from saying you understand their loss, simply try and hold the space and listen. This may help to make it less awkward for everyone. Ask them what they loved about their late relative or special person.

Unblocking Unprocessed Trauma

The pain surrounding loss exists but sometimes can be so profound that we do not want to go near it. Here’s how Gina suggests unblocking unresolved issues if you suspect this is you: “There are essentially two ways to unblock. One is to talk about it, and the other is to release the energy of grief in the body.” She works with clients to regulate their nervous system, to get them to sit and be calm enough to feel what they need to feel. She recommends EMDR, somatic experiencing, yoga for grief and art therapy to help people who are invested in unlocking grief from the body. Talk therapy is of course recommended for those who feel like that’s the best way they can excise their grief.

Another approach for unresolved grief in the workplace, such as the pain of demotion, losing out on a promotion or being moved to a different team, is described in a paper for McKinsey by Charles Dhanaraj and George Kholrieser. Here’s their simple model for attempting to resolve grief in a healthier way:

1) Become consciously aware of the problem.

2) Accept the pain of the loss (Don’t numb and avoid it)

3) Take action to let go of the past so new meaning can be found from the experience.

Physical Survival Care

Maybe you’re not grieving but someone around you is. Something you can easily do to support those experiencing loss in your circle is to help them with their basic physiological needs. Satiating these can go a long way to improving their mood. Our basic needs like nutrition, hydration, sleep and so forth are vital during the exhausting mourning process. I remember when I was organizing my dad’s funeral as a student and my only saving grace was that I got time off class to do so. Most working adults do not have this luxury—they are working full-time, juggling childcare and funeral costs and may not be able to take unpaid leave. The whole process is so stressful, Moffa suggests that caring for these basic needs is one of the first things to be dropped when someone is dealing with loss. “They forget to drink water, to eat protein and they’re rarely sleeping.” She suggests that getting into nature is vital for these individuals. If you don’t feel adept at handling the psychological needs of those grieving around you, see if you can step in with healthy meals, supplements, booking them a massage or even offering support for childcare.

*The next 1000 words will be uploaded in one week’s time for paid subscribers

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*This book was set the be published by the publisher of my first book, but after years of struggle and many other reasons, I decided to release it on Substack instead. Each week, the 52,000 word book which was tentatively titled “Be A Force” will be dropped here online. The sections will start with number 1 and then progress over the 52 weeks of the next year. The Chapter title will be placed in the post description for clarity.

Let’s Talk About Trauma

I recently received an email from someone who had been in one of my audiences at a virtual event where I was a speaker, she had read my first book:

I’m 68. Wish I had had your book years and years ago. In my late 20s, my alcoholic parents wrote me a letter saying they disowned me. I, frankly, was always weird (highly introspective, oldest) who my one sister bullied mercilessly, and my mother never intervened. So, when the letter came, I merely wrote back and said: No, I disown you. Had NO contact with any of the three sisters or parents since.

About ten years later I suffered a near emotional collapse after I married a man simply so that he could be on my health insurance. It was the only way I thought I could get him to hold a job and move out of my home. Talk about picking up street urchins for rescue. After that, I threw myself into other toxic relationships and did get some degree of therapy. When that delivered more pain, I remained celibate, and except for work, relatively isolated. I retired just around the time of the pandemic and suddenly felt lonely. Picked a man, who I since figured out, was a total narcissist.

I have been up and down emotionally, trying to blame him for being deceptive with me, and then I attended a meetup where you spoke and realized: Damn, it’s not about him. It is about me. There are so many trauma wounds I haven’t dealt with. I have, for the last six months, been going to Adult Children of Alcoholics meetings, but realize, at my age, I need to speed up the process with a professional therapist.

This time, I’m not fighting it. I am actually looking forward to getting healthy and hoping with the concrete suggestions in your book, that I, the supreme introvert, will figure out how to get beyond my deep and dark loneliness. Thank you.

PS. I got your book on Audible and hearing your voice tell the story is more powerful than I think it would have been just reading from the pages. I am, however going to buy the book(s) to give as gifts for members of my ACA fellowship who have described loneliness as their greatest dilemma as well.

This email blew me away, both in its candour and in its revelation that trauma and grief undealt with from as early on as childhood could derail our decision-making, perception of interactions and indeed the relationships we choose to be in, well into the autumn of our lives. Natalia Rachel, author of Why Am I Like This? Posits that when we have unresolved trauma, we are usually holding onto experiences of the trauma triangle of powerlessness, grief and anger. In her opinion, all of these three experiences, that go unprocessed inside us, alter the way we’re experiencing grief as a transformative emotion.

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*This book was set the be published by the publisher of my first book, but after years of struggle and many other reasons, I decided to release it on Substack instead. Each week, the 52,000 word book which was tentatively titled “Be A Force” will be dropped here online. The sections will start with number 1 and then progress over the 52 weeks of the next year. The Chapter title will be placed in the post description for clarity.

It wasn’t until 2013, that I was challenged to face this unresolved grief and trauma head on when my mother suffered a tragic stroke, and this time I could not keep the lid on my crazy. I was a pot boiling over on the stove to everyone, all the time. And yet with all my most heartfelt good intentions, I again was not equipped to handle the tsunami of trauma because this time, there was a different kind of grief I had not met yet.

Dr. Pauline Goss coined the phrase “ambiguous loss” to describe when a loved one is with us physically but no longer psychologically or emotionally present. It’s where you microdose on losing the identity of a loved one, when they suffer from a cognitive illness, like my Mum. It’s important that I introduce you to this form of grief because according to relationship expert Esther Perel we are all experiencing it now in our daily lives, as mobile phones rob us of the presence of those around us, when their heads bow down mid-conversation to turn their attention to their devices, their presence redacted, much like my mother’s.

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I can still remember the moment my father took his last breath. It was April 6^th, 2004. I was nineteen years old. and he was lying in a single hospital bed that we’d pushed into my bedroom because my room was the only one on the ground floor of our home. Understandably Dad didn’t want to spend his remaining days in a hospital surrounded by strangers, harsh fluorescent lights and the lingering smell of bleach. I stood holding his hand which felt like holding a cluster of brittle chicken bones. My mother, her brother and my sister bordered the rest of the bed along with the Silver Chain nurse tasked to take us through this most intimate of moments. My mother was keening, a kind of primal, animalistic crying that I’d only ever heard and seen before in documentaries of women in Africa who lost their children in famine. My uncle, her brother, as if in a trance kept repeating: “Robbie, don’t go. Don’t go. Don’t go.”

At the time, I still felt like child. Watching these authority figures be so vulnerable was terrifying. I just couldn’t look, and so I turned my attention away from them to look at my dad. I squeezed his hand. And as I did, he inhaled and his chest puffed out. His eyes rolled back into his head, and he sighed and as he did, something left him. Something which deeply human. Some religions call it a soul, but all I know is that once it’s gone, the genie can’t be put back into the bottle.

It is surreal to see someone die in front of you. When my 19-year-old self had watched movies, seeing an actor take their last breath was dramatic, but there was always an emotional distance. Something about knowing the dying person is acting sanitizes the experience. Those films never prepared me to see the person I loved most in the world take his last breath. I slept that night in my sister’s room. I couldn’t sleep in my room with Dad’s body there. The next morning, I went to the bed he was in, and I looked at him with a strange detachment.

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Geez, it’s gone so fast.

Seven years ago, I started the business with one belief:

That human connection isn’t a “soft skill”…
It’s the skill of the future.

And now, as we enter the era of AI, that truth has never felt more urgent.

So to celebrate 7 years of Simone Heng Speaking Pte Ltd, I wanted to give something back to thank YOU for all the support over the years.

On June 1st at 8:00pm SGT, I’ll be hosting a complimentary live webinar:

Human Connection in the Era of AI

This will be a powerful 40-minute session exploring how we stay deeply human in a rapidly changing world — followed by a live 20-minute Q&A where you can ask me anything about business, speaking, love, life, and human connection.

But there’s more…

10 attendees from the webinar will be selected to join me for an Exclusive Private Fine Dining Experience at Brasserie Astoria in Singapore this July.

An intimate evening of meaningful conversation, beautiful food, and genuine connection.

Join me for that webinar first though!

🗓 Date: June 1st
🕗 Time: 8:00pm SGT
🎥 Live Webinar: Complimentary
🍽 Bonus: Chance to be selected for an exclusive private dinner in Singapore this July

SAVE YOUR SEAT HERE

I hope to see you then!

And thank you so much for your support up til now!

Narrative Therapy

Narrative therapy is a therapeutic practice that invites you to re-author your life story. It enables a separation of identity from your issues and this helps to foste growth and change. Ingredients definitely needed to become a force. Steve Madigan, a narrative therapy practitioner, has shared the three major stages of narrative therapy and they are a good guide for you to self-reflect on from the comfort of your own home:

1) Deconstructing problematic dominant stories

2) Re-authoring problematic dominant stories

3) Remembering conversations

Using the awareness you have of yourself (self-connection), choose a story which has informed your evolution. Can you pull this story apart? How could it be re-told to yourself?

Reduce Your Story Down to the Facts

Here’s an exercise you may find really helpful. Chris emphasises that because as humans we create stories to make meaning, our brain will “fill in gaps” of narratives that we don’t have facts to verify. We saw this earlier with my “You have a pretty face” story. What we fill in is telling data for those of us interested in connecting better to ourselves. Get out your journal and write down your life story. Go into as much detail as you like. Once done, get out a highlighter and highlight only the parts of the story which are fact—just the description only and no inferences or assumptions. It will probably shock you how little of our stories are based on fact and how much we colour them with meaning that is inferred.

Your Story Affects Other People

We often project our stories on other people, whether we are aware of it or not. I was recently on Facebook and I felt a little guilty that I post so much but comment so little with my personal social media boundaries. I decided to lend my support to a friend and fellow speaker. He had posted an announcement that he had made it to LinkedIn’s top content creator list for Singapore. I was very fond of this person, wanting to cheer him on, I commented: “Well done and next, why not the global list?!” He commented back something along the lines of: “Thanks for your belief in me but I have little desire to be on the road with a young toddler at home.” I was utterly confused, you can build a LinkedIn following from anywhere at any time, it’s an online platform and it has nothing to do with your geographical location. I wrote an answer to a similar affect, but I also felt I was under attack.

Many people don’t understand my lifestyle of flying 40% of the year to spread my message around the world, but I absolutely love it. So I felt he was giving me a dig when I had been supportive. I replied on the post: “If you’re alluding to my lifestyle I have no idea what this has to do with my comment? You can build a global following from anywhere and I have many friends that do.” He read this and messaged me on Whatsapp. His story soon unfolded itself. He wrote: “I am just so tired of the chase to do more.” It was terrifying that both of us had come into conflict by projecting our narratives on each other. His self-consciousness that he felt people were judging him that he wasn’t doing more international engagements and mine that I was simply trying to be supportive show and that he had a disdain for my lifestyle on the road. Taking a step back and really reading the facts of what are being said rather than the narrative we are weaving inbetween the lines is vital to mending and tending to your interpersonal relationships. Ask yourself the question when embroiled in a similar situation: Before I respond in this situation, am I engaging in a story or reality?

Try Literally Re-Writing Your Story

Benjamin A. Rogers and his colleagues published a study in the 2023 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The study developed a new measure called the Hero’s Journey Scale, which quantified how much someone perceived their life to follow the archetypal “Hero’s Journey” narrative structure. This structure has been used for millenia from ancient texts to popular films like Star Wars and fairy tales like Cinderella.

Here’s the structure:

1. Protagonist (you)

2. Shift

3. Quest

4. Allies

5. Challenge

6. Transformation

7. Legacy

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Narrative Therapy

Narrative therapy is a therapeutic practice that invites you to re-author your life story. It enables a separation of identity from your issues and this helps to foste growth and change. Ingredients definitely needed to become a force. Steve Madigan, a narrative therapy practitioner, has shared the three major stages of narrative therapy and they are a good guide for you to self-reflect on from the comfort of your own home:

1) Deconstructing problematic dominant stories

2) Re-authoring problematic dominant stories

3) Remembering conversations

Using the awareness you have of yourself (self-connection), choose a story which has informed your evolution. Can you pull this story apart? How could it be re-told to yourself?

Reduce Your Story Down to the Facts

Here’s an exercise you may find really helpful. Chris emphasises that because as humans we create stories to make meaning, our brain will “fill in gaps” of narratives that we don’t have facts to verify. We saw this earlier with my “You have a pretty face” story. What we fill in is telling data for those of us interested in connecting better to ourselves. Get out your journal and write down your life story. Go into as much detail as you like. Once done, get out a highlighter and highlight only the parts of the story which are fact—just the description only and no inferences or assumptions. It will probably shock you how little of our stories are based on fact and how much we colour them with meaning that is inferred.

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Early in 2026 I got an email from my publisher in London asking me to verify the characters of my Chinese name as the Chinese publisher wanted to have the characters on the translated work’s cover. I freaked out. I had no idea they were even in discussion over purchasing the Chinese language rights.

A few people on Instagram asked me what the process is. When you publish traditionally, the publisher takes your book to major book fairs and has dialogues with international publishers over buying the rights to the book in their language. It’s not something I can push for or even am privy to. There is a designated person (or team) at each publisher, whose sole job it is to sell inernational language rights.

Very early on upon my arrival in China, 100 books arrived at my hotel room and I got to touch the Chinese version for the first time. Unboxing your book is always so special. This was an incredible way to honour my late father, as you can see in my reaction here:

Next stop was seeing the book on the shelves of Shanghai’s biggest book store. You can see in the video how freaked out I was:

Next I signed 100 books in both my English and Chinese name. I did 100 unique messages, so not one person had the same repeated.

Finally a launch in collaboration with UOB China, in which they made a massive life-size cut out of me which was hilarious. The team also made such a nice sculpture with the books:

I gave a one hour talk and fireside chat on the future of human connection and then I was back on the plane to Singapore:

I am filled with gratitude to each and every one of you who have supported the journey of this work. It’s been a very wild ride with many lessons. Just the way all good adventures should be.

Please let me know any questions you have regarding the process.

You can buy the English version of the book HERE.

The Chinese version is apparently also available on Tao Bao.

Simone Heng is a human connection specialist and award-winning author. She works with organisations to hardwire connection into their culture to drive performance, keep top talent engaged and improve productivity.

Simone is based and was born in Singapore but has also studied in Switzerland, was raised in Australia, and worked in the United Arab Emirates. She has a communications and cultural studies degree from Curtin University of Technology.

Her book Let’s Talk About Loneliness is published by Hay House and available globally. It is the winner of the 2024 silver Nautilus Book Award in the social change and social justice category. It is also a finalist in 4 categories at the 2024 International Book Awards. Simone also sits on the advisory board for the Foundation for Social Connection in the United States.

*This book was set the be published by the publisher of my first book, but after years of struggle and many other reasons, I decided to release it on Substack instead. Each week, the 52,000 word book which was tentatively titled “Be A Force” will be dropped here online. The sections will start with number 1 and then progress over the 52 weeks of the next year. The Chapter title will be placed in the post description for clarity.

Narratives Are Influenced by Context

Chris also works with a lens of intercultural context, having come from a background as a third culture kid. He emphasised to me that our narratives are also at the mercy of the culture we live in, making it difficult at times when cultures come together with conflicting stories: “We project an assumption that a lot more is universal than it really is. Whatever stresses us doesn’t necessarily stress somebody else. Whatever soothes us doesn’t necessarily soothe everybody else. We all have different values that we’re working under, and we tend to interpret everyone else’s actions through the lens of our own story. It’s useful to step back sometimes and realise, that the other person has their own story”

Here’s an example of how this showed up in my life. I had always adopted a narrative that I was intelligent because in Australian high school growing up, I was always testing near the top of my grade. There was also a positive racial bias with having a Chinese surname in the Australian environment. During the nineties and 2000s, East Asian students were always portrayed in American media as being smart and this was the entertainment we consumed in Australia, and so this helped again to reinforce confidence in my intellect.

Fast-forward many years and even though inside I still felt like a nerdy Chinese, I entered the entertainment industry in Asia. I was surprised here to be treated like a complete bimbo. This was the 2000s, where the stereotype of a Eurasian woman in media was that you could not be more than one thing. You were smart or pretty but never both. This story projected on me resulted in a total absence of any creative agency in my early career. I was told over and over again to be thin, look good, be silent and know your place. This story became internalised and caused a vicious cycle. I folded the narrative into me like dough being kneaded. I felt dumber and so I stopped investing in my mind completely. The narratives we allow to become embedded are very dangerous and their existence is sometimes simply a matter of context. If we moved our context, the story changes. So if they are completely movable, they can easily be woven to empower us rather than keep us small.

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The Power of Self-Narratives

The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves are so easily shaped by news from a doctor or nurse. I had experienced this before when I was told my father would die. Then again I was told my mother would never walk again. The speed with which the brain brings in stories to soothe our nervous system is scary, like muscle memory offering to keep the psyche safe. After leaving my breakdown on the beach I went to a café which was closed. There, while sitting on the outdoor tables I could feel my mind searching for a new narrative to comfort myself. As someone who was building my self-connection muscle at the time I was aware that I had split my consciousness into two tracks. I was aware of what was happening in the present moment and also aware of what my psyche was doing to protect myself. The new story, the one that I was actively embedding, said things like: “I am more than my ovaries or follicles. I will be patient for love and I will choose a man one day, when I am ready, that will value me for these things and not the fruits of my uterus. I am worthy and enough for me, regardless of the number of follicles resting in my stomach. In lieu of children, I will fill my life with a mission. The mission will probably never talk back at me or tell me I am a bad mother. Or tether me to locations or people I would rather not be around. My mission will light me up daily. I will hug my nieces and nephews born of women I love so much I wish they were my biological sisters, and this will suffice.” And just like that I had re-set. My breathing started regulating again. The doctor would later tell me I can still have a baby; it’s just going to have to be done the natural way with no back up in the freezer and it’s going to be a long shot.

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