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Submitted by: Cherry Rose Tan
Two years ago, I arrived to Venice Beach, California for a retreat. I was staying by the beach, and every morning, I got up early and walked to a dock overlooking the ocean. My brother, a tech founder in Toronto, had died three weeks earlier, so I was pretty tender.
As I walked along the boardwalk, the same song kept coming up on my playlist: “A Moment Apart” by Odesza, one of the most moving songs I’ve ever listened to. There are no lyrics; it’s just really beautiful and intimate. I danced to it and thought about my brother.
I really like to dance; that’s my thing. I love ecstatic dance, when you move the way your body wants to move. I started doing that three years ago and it’s been really healing. When I’m angry or sad, my moves reflect that. It’s very freeing, giving my body permission to feel whatever it wants to feel.
The dock was a very public space, with people biking around and jogging, but I felt like I wanted to be free. I’ve always felt a connection to the ocean, ever since I walked the Bay of Fundy years ago. I was in the moment, giving myself permission to feel what had to be felt. Sometimes I cried when I danced, other times I just danced. It felt really special to dance every morning, sharing that moment with my brother. I couldn’t see him, but I could feel him through the music.
No matter how much I stared, the ocean felt infinite. There was no end in sight; it just kept going and going. A calmness. It’s a really good analogy for life, actually. The ocean is so gentle at times, lapping the sand; other times, it’s super messy as people have to move their picnic blankets. Wow, the ocean is really angry today, really excited!
We live in a world, especially with social media, where it’s so easy to pretend. We focus on all the shiny pieces of our lives, especially in the tech world. Mental health issues can’t be solved by blanket statements. Depression, anxiety, burnout — you have to connect them with a human face. You have to make it personal.
I used to be surprised by the emotions that came out of me. I’m not anymore! Though I’m often surprised at what comes out, what makes me cry. Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m feeling, as I explore. When I feel stuck emotionally, it means there’s an event or an emotion that I haven’t fully processed with my body. If I can identify it, I’ll dance with that memory, so all the emotions come through.
When I lose track of who I am, and part of me wants to disconnect from my emotions, I go back to that memory of Venice Beach and try to reconnect, to allow my heart to be free. In that moment, when I was in pain and grief, there was beauty too. It didn’t feel that different from joy or happiness.
That moment inspires the mental health work I do. The reality of life is that we are going to encounter a lot of pain. A lot of loss. You can’t control it. I want to give people the gift of feeling alive, so they can go through experiences and see a grace in them, see their resilience, rather than their victimhood. See that they are already strong, and that pain can be an invitation to serve more deeply in the world.
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Cherry Rose Tan is the CEO of #realtalk, the mental health movement for the tech industry. With 80+ champions across North America, CEOs pledge their most vulnerable stories. A mental health authority with 12 years of expertise, she has been featured in Forbes, Inc., and more. She teaches at the Schulich School of Business.
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