MEET ASHLEY KOK

ON HONOURING HER YOUNGER SELF

“My crazy is my ability to reconnect with and honour my younger self.”

MY STORY IS …

I think this chapter of my story is all about acceptance - for myself, my needs, my feelings, and all the other things outside of my control. This comes after years of ignoring my own needs in order to keep the peace or fit in. It’s a relatively recent shift after some very low years of battling with low self-worth.

A big relationship of mine ended in 2017, and I was only 19 but I say big because of the role it had in my life then and the role in all the events after. The months after the breakup were extremely low, I was mostly alone while studying overseas and anxious thoughts held me back from socialising or even asking for help (though it was very clear to me then that I probably needed some help).

Days of dragging myself out of my house to avoid being alone, only to end up crying in the library over my books; I don’t remember much else from that period (the brain always comes in clutch to protect us huh?) but it was more than a bumpy year later that I started to appreciate my life again.

How? I honestly think I was just fed up and tired after all the bad days - I saw the only way through as accepting where I was at. Like finally recalibrating your compass on Google maps after insisting you knew the way and now you’ve gone around the block four times.

After years of having my feelings shut down, being told not to cry so much, or express too much, trying to accept even the most natural feelings sometimes felt ridiculous to me, almost laughable.

I don’t think it’s objectively funny, just a testament to how mean I used to be to myself. I’ve googled “how to love yourself more” more times than I’d like to admit but I thank my lucky stars that one of those times introduced me to the concept of honouring your younger self.

Today, this is a thought that sometimes makes me teary-eyed, because I was so mean to her, and I let others be mean to her too. That pushed me to want to get to know her, to understand her so I can protect her. When I tell you the ways I have acted so out of character (in the best way possible) all in the name of respecting her has been an amazing change in my life.

I have so much more acceptance for the consequences of my decisions because I was guided by what I wish she had gotten, guided by the needs of my inner child. 

I think this is one of the key reasons I feel so strongly about female empowerment - for other women and girls, especially young girls to know a life with the smallest doses of shame and the biggest waves of self-acceptance. Working on a festival like Sexy is Okay was never in my books, but something clicked in me to be bold, embrace my own needs and do it. And it turned out to be one of the best experiences of my life thus far. I truly am excited to see where this journey will take me and the connections I get to make along the way.

photography Zahwah Bagharib