The Little Girl, the Penguin, and the Storms She Survived

When I was a little girl, my best friend was a toy penguin.

It had a rubber button that made a funny quipping sound when I pressed it. I would pull it along behind me as I wandered through a big house on a hill.

The house was filled with people, yet I was terribly lonely.

My father was absent. My mother had to work. My young aunts and uncles were busy building their own lives, and I often felt invisible.

My mother would prepare food before leaving for work. That was what I had to eat until she returned. Sometimes, I went hungry.

From my earliest years until I was about nine, that house was my world.

Throughout my preschool years, I would wait along the hallway for my mother to come home. I would watch for her orange Ford Escort. The moment I saw it parked outside, I knew my mother was home. I was no longer alone.

Perhaps the adults remember those years differently. Perhaps life looked perfectly normal through their eyes.

But my memories are of a little girl alone in a darkened room beneath a mansion, trying to make sense of a world where she often felt forgotten.

So I created another world.

I invented imaginary friends. I became a magical princess who could turn ugly things into beautiful ones. Sometimes, I was a powerful warrior who rescued people who had been forgotten or mistreated.

I read Enid Blyton books and disappeared into the adventures between their pages. For a little while, the loneliness would go away.

I wrote poetry. I sang myself to sleep. I imagined a future where I would be strong enough to conquer the world.

I was going to be Wonder Woman.

But growing up did not make life easier.

At school, teachers called me a rebel. Later, an employer described me as a loose cannon. Peers thought I was stubborn and bratty. Management sometimes saw me as an underperformer.

"Why can't she just toe the line?"

That was the kind of question I seemed to hear throughout my life.

I had opinions, and I expressed them. I wanted to be heard. Yet the harder I tried to make my voice count, the more I found myself pushed into corners or placed in what I called "cold storage."

I was angry. I was frustrated. Sometimes, I felt the whole world was against me.

Inside my head, one question kept screaming.

"WHY?"

Still, I worked hard. I wanted to prove that I could succeed and build something meaningful with my life.

Then came one of the biggest storms of my adult life.

I wanted to help a young woman who was struggling, so I brought her into a business venture as a founding partner.

My intentions were good. I wanted to give her an opportunity.

But we had very different understandings of what it meant to build a startup.

A startup needs time to grow. There may be little or no revenue in the beginning. Founding partners have to understand the risks and responsibilities involved.

Unfortunately, we could not agree on many things. She challenged decisions and made demands on a company that had yet to generate income.

The consequences were devastating.

We lost clients. We lost potential business opportunities. The company encountered banking problems and was eventually left as an empty shell.

Everything I had worked so hard to build seemed to have collapsed.

I had survived a lonely childhood, rejection and criticism. But this was a different kind of darkness.

I felt betrayed, defeated and exhausted.

And strangely, it was during those moments that I remembered the little girl with the penguin.

I remembered her sitting alone, writing poetry, inventing adventures and singing herself to sleep.

I remembered how she waited for her mother's car, hungry and frightened, yet somehow believing that tomorrow might be better.

That little girl had survived without knowing what resilience meant.

Perhaps I could learn something from her.

I began attending talks and seminars. I listened to speakers, reflected on my experiences and gradually started questioning the beliefs I had carried for years.

One realisation was particularly uncomfortable.

I had been getting in my own way.

For so long, I had allowed other people's opinions to influence how I saw myself. I had spent years fighting to be accepted, recognised and understood.

I began to see how my own limiting beliefs had shaped my decisions and reactions.

So I made a choice.

I would stop letting society decide who I should be, how I should behave and where I belonged.

I would take responsibility for the life I wanted to create.

My faith became an important part of that journey. I trusted HIM. I believed HE had a better plan for me, even when I could not see it.

I kept moving.

Today, I am a mother of four.

Motherhood has taught me lessons that my younger self could never have imagined.

Children grow into individuals with their own personalities, choices and struggles. Some remain close. Others become distant, caught up in difficulties of their own.

And sometimes, the wounds inflicted within a family cut deeper than anything the outside world can do.

That has been one of my hardest lessons.

After more than half a century of living, I am learning that I cannot control how other people think, behave or respond to me.

I can only decide what I will do next.

I still have scars. Some are uglier than I would like. Some have taken years to understand.

I wear them anyway.

My mother has grown old. My father has passed away. My children are beginning their own journeys, and I am entering another chapter of mine.

I cannot pretend that every storm has passed. Life continues to bring challenges, and some days are harder than others.

But I have discovered something important.

When I was a child, I waited for someone to come home and make me feel safe.

For many years afterward, I waited for the world to recognise my worth.

These days, I am learning to give myself permission to move forward, even when the world does not understand me.

I still think about that little girl in the big house on the hill.

She had a toy penguin, a head full of imaginary adventures and a dream of becoming Wonder Woman.

She never imagined how many storms she would have to survive.

But she knew how to take another step.

And more than half a century later, that is exactly what I am still doing.

One step at a time.

Told by Syireen Rose

Written by Sam Choo

Story Tags: Childhood, Resilience, Self-Discovery

Syireen Rose is a mother of four whose experiences of childhood loneliness, business setbacks and family challenges have shaped her belief in resilience, faith and the courage to live life on her own terms.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/syireen.rose/