When I started raising funds for surgery in December 2005 at the age of 19, there were two common questions that people often asked which left me dumb-struck. “Where are your parents?” and “What about your relatives? Can’t they help?”.
I did not have the strength to explain that my parents were struggling to take care of themselves, much less think about my healthcare, so I usually just shrugged the question off with lowered eyes. Fortunately, the inquirers never probed much further beyond asking about my parents’ occupations.
The next question was harder on me. “What about your relatives?”. The reason I started raising funds publicly was to avoid having to ask my relatives for monetary help. How should I explain to those who had just known me that I would rather work hard and appeal to the public for support than to allow my parents and I be labeled as good-for-nothings?
So I didn’t explain. I just said that my relatives couldn’t help.
And I never approached any of my relatives for contribution to my surgery fundraisings.
The ill-opinion towards my parents and I probably started after my father suffered a brain hemorrhage when I was three years old. After his stroke, my father couldn’t perform his work as a landscape architect, so he couldn’t support my mother and I. As for my mother, she was unprepared to shoulder the financial responsibilities alone and was unhappy, so Aunt Ivy shouldered the household finances including most of my upbringing.
My father had been living together with his younger sister, my Aunt Ivy, since before my parents were married. This arrangement continued after I came into being. When my father suffered the brain hemorrhage, Aunt Ivy put everything she had on the line, mortgaged the house we were living in which was under her name, to pay for my father’s medical treatments. She eventually paid off the mortgage singlehandedly in subsequent years.
Aunt Ivy knew that my parents were struggling in every way, but she wanted me to have a healthy and happy childhood despite the darkness that surrounded me, so she sent me to learn ballet at the age of seven, music when I expressed interest in learning the piano in primary school, and pretty much any skills that I wanted to learn. When she was not working, attending meditation or yoga classes, Aunt Ivy would take me out to shopping and indulge in recreational activities.
Aunt Ivy was a considerably successful career woman among people of her generation. In those days, graduating from the University of Malaya with a bachelor’s degree in Economics and working as the Provident Funds Controller of Malaysia Airlines were admirable achievements. Being her closest and dearest niece, I was treated with flattery and adoration from her friends and our relatives.
But that façade fell apart the day Aunt Ivy suffered a second bout of cancer. Some of our relatives and Aunt Ivy’s friends thought they were doing her a favor by taking control of all her assets against her will. They may have some good intentions, but my father was called a scoundrel and I, a good-for-nothing.
Aunt Ivy eventually passed away in April 2001.
Since then, I never asked my relatives for financial help, not even when I had to raise funds for saving my life. For years since I started my public fundraising campaign, I had been surging forward with a vengeance, running away from the pain, the humiliation and the insult. I wanted my dignity.
In the past seven years since I started my campaign, I managed to raise funds to perform six out of ten lifesaving surgeries of mine in the United States of America. I have also been funding my own continuing education with any available surplus.
But while I was focused on the race to preserve my life on my own, a miracle happened. My relatives read about my cause in the news and contributed cash to my surgery funds, directly into my bank, voluntarily, without my asking.
I started my campaign – Heart4Hope – in December 2005 and went for the first brain surgery which I ever raised funds for in October 2006. By the Chinese New Year celebrations of 2007, relatives from both sides of the family visited us with nothing but admiration for me. Their opinion of my personality changed for the better.
And they continue to contribute to my surgery funds voluntarily.
The reason I write this post is not to point fingers or blame anyone in my past. I have come to terms with my past because I know everything happens for a reason. I have become strong-willed and independent today because of the darkness I experienced in my past.
The reason I write this post is to highlight some lessons that I have learned from my past experiences.
1. Don’t pressure your family members and relatives for financial support. You may ask them for help nicely. But if they refuse or can’t, don’t pressure them. It doesn’t work. Even if they do give in, they will be contributing with a bitter feeling towards you.
2. Everyone has a life to live. Everyone has their personal financial responsibilities and burdens. If they do contribute to our fundraising and surgery, it is a gift to us. Therefore, their support is not something to be demanded. It is to be graciously requested.
3. Those who can or those who will support, will willingly do so. There is no need to pressure anyone, even our own family members.
4. Our family members and relatives would want to see our efforts. When we make the effort to earn the money ourselves first instead of going to them, they will want to support our efforts.
5. Love and admiration cannot be demanded. It will naturally come to us when we have made efforts to take care of ourselves.
6. No matter how much injustice that you may have faced in your past, don’t let it shape your character, personality and behavior. Harboring bitterness will turn people away from supporting you. I know this is true because although the push for me to raise funds was the avoidance of pain, but I was determined to spread the message of hope and love through my fundraising campaign and to make this world a better place in my own small way. And it has worked. Heart4Hope has touched many lives around the world in the process of raising funds for my surgeries throughout the past seven years.
May you live in love, not in fear. May your hearts be opened to even those whom you feel have wronged you.