On my birthday, I gave away the gift of storytelling

Sunday musings: The night I realised my words had helped someone else find their voice.

Seven months ago, I was invisible.

No audience. No platform. No blueprint. Just a queer, gender-fluid parent trying to hold it all together while raising a neurodiverse daughter. I had a past I was ashamed of, a voice I didn’t fully trust, and a story I hadn’t yet learned how to tell. I wasn’t sure anyone wanted to hear it anyway.

However, on my birthday this past Wednesday, I stood before a room full of strangers, keynoting an event on human-centric storytelling, which I was invited to by Jeremiah Su. I debated Sabrina Princessa Wang in a live Human vs AI duel.

And just when I thought the night could not get more surreal, the crowd surprised me with a birthday cake. There was applause, warmth, and yes, a moment when I felt genuinely seen.

But that was not the moment that stayed with me.

It was afterwards, when Jay Ng Jun Jie, one of my oldest friends from secondary school, came up to me. He had been there in the audience. And he remembered.

He remembered me at 15. The me who got arrested for planning a gang fight. The one who smoked behind the void deck, bullied other kids, and hung out with gangsters. The kid everyone expected to either disappear or self-destruct.

Jay is now a creator with over 30,000 followers on Instagram. He told me he had hit rock bottom after a business failure. And in that dark place, he stumbled across my content, words I had written during the early days, when I was still unsure if my voice mattered at all.

He read it. He felt it. He pinned it to his feed. And he told me it gave him the courage to share his own story.

That is when it hit me again, in full force, that this is why I do what I do.

Not for applause. Not for cake. Not even for the dopamine of a viral post. But for moments like that. For the chance that something I wrote, something pulled from the ugliest, messiest parts of me, could become a mirror for someone else. It could remind them that they’re not alone. It could permit them to be fully, unapologetically themselves.

This is the power of human-first writing. The kind rooted in clarity, courage, and care. The kind no AI can replicate, not because it isn’t smart enough, but because it has not lived, failed or healed. It has not loved, lost, or crawled its way back from the edge.

That is what I teach now in my HALO Masterclass, which just kicked off this week. Over the next five weeks, I will guide a small group of founders, creators, and leaders through the process of transforming their lived experiences into a brand that no machine can replicate.

Your story does not have to be polished. It just has to be real. We do not write to impress. We write to connect. We do not post to perform. We post to reflect. And the stories we are scared to tell? Those are often the ones people remember forever.

So here is my invitation.

Think about the version of you your old friends would not even recognise today. The version you had to fight for. The one that took years of shedding, rebuilding, and reclaiming. That story, that transformation, is your most valuable asset.

Likes do not pay the bills. Trust does. And trust is earned through story.

Let’s stop trying to go viral and start trying to be true.