ENOUGH TO RISE

A memoir/self-help hybrid focuses on healing from trauma.

In this unflinching book, Choi shares how she recovered from a difficult childhood. She recounts growing up in San Francisco’s Chinatown with working-class immigrant parents who emotionally and physically abused and neglected her. She felt unsafe and unworthy, but learned to repress her feelings to survive. As an adult, she became a successful cancer medical researcher who enjoyed a vibrant social life. On the surface, she appeared to have it all. But her parents’ health was failing. On the same day her mother was diagnosed with cancer, Choi was laid off. “My life was in freefall, spiraling out of control. I felt powerless,” she writes. “I, the eldest daughter warrior, was responsible for keeping two sick parents alive.” After an unexpected breakup and her father’s death, Choi lost the will to live, but reached out to a friend who helped her reframe her dark thoughts. Following her mother’s death, the author experienced an existential crisis. Choi moved to Berlin, explored her sexuality, established a coaching career, married, and had a son. Becoming a mother motivated her to break generational patterns and seek healing through therapy and psychedelics. The book concludes with the author’s visit to Hong Kong, where she reunited with family members and reclaimed her self-worth. Throughout the story, Choi injects “Moment To Self-Reflect” sections that invite readers to explore how the author’s experiences mirror their own. Choi’s absorbing memoir is vividly written and deeply heartfelt. Her detailed scene-setting skillfully drops readers into her childhood environment, including a kitchen that had “sticky peanut oil residue coating every surface.” The author unpacks therapeutic concepts, such as the “father wound” (the enduring trauma caused by a dad who is absent, neglectful, or abusive) and the “vulnerable” inner child. She also bravely shares the darkest moments of her life, from hurting her younger brother as a child to experiencing sexual assault at the age of 28. But the book covers so much ground—childhood, career trajectory, sexual experimentation, marriage, and motherhood—that the most compelling part, her complicated relationship with her parents, sometimes gets lost in the fray.

An engrossing and harrowing story of self-discovery.