Growing up as the second child in a family affected by China's one-child policy dramatically altered the trajectory of my upbringing. I was registered under my aunt’s household and raised by my grandmother until the age of eight. During that time, I spent weeks hidden in a dim, cramped room in rural China. These early experiences of separation, concealment, and uncertainty left a lasting imprint on my emotional world and shaped my lifelong curiosity about attachment, emotional regulation, and relational safety. The prolonged absence of my parents during critical developmental years deeply influenced my attachment experiences. Even after reuniting with them, emotional closeness felt elusive. As I matured, I turned toward psychology not only as an academic discipline, but also as a means of self-understanding and healing. Through sustained engagement with psychological literature, I began to examine my own attachment patterns, including avoidant tendencies in my family relationships and disorganized attachment in romantic contexts. These reflections guided me toward a deeper appreciation of relational and systemic theories. Among the frameworks I have studied, Emotionally Focused Therapy (Johnson, 2019) resonates strongly with my belief in the transformative power of emotional connection and attachment repair within families. Narrative Family Therapy (White, 2007) has further shaped my understanding of how meaning-making and storytelling influence identity, resilience, and intergenerational dynamics. Over time, I came to reinterpret my childhood not as a burden, but as a source of insight and empathy. Prior to entering the mental health field, I worked for six years as a Financial Consultant and Auditor in public accounting. While I found fulfillment and success in that career, sustained reflection revealed that my deepest motivation lay in understanding human behavior, relationships, and emotional safety. I am committed to becoming a clinician who bridges personal insight, clinical rigor, and cultural responsiveness. Over the past year and a half, I have been deeply engaged in my training in the Couples and Family Therapy program at Seattle University. I approach learning with intellectual curiosity and humility, immersing myself in diverse theoretical models while critically examining their cultural assumptions. Outside of coursework, I volunteer extensively within the Chinese American community in the Seattle area, supporting families raising children with autism spectrum disorder. I have co-led three cohorts of peer support groups for Chinese-speaking caregivers, creating culturally responsive and emotionally safe spaces to reduce isolation, normalize shared struggles, and strengthen parental resilience through mutual support, psychoeducation, and relational reflection. In addition, I have co-facilitated two support groups for women navigating fertility-related stress and one support group for intercultural couples. These initiatives reflect my passion for accessible, preventative, and culturally attuned mental health support. I am currently completing my clinical internship at a group practice, where I have been seeing clients for over three months. Applying theory in real clinical contexts has been deeply affirming. Working with Chinese and immigrant clients has also sharpened my awareness of the limitations of Western-dominant family therapy models when applied uncritically across cultures. In response, I actively explore culturally adaptive interventions in my coursework. In my Systemic Trauma class, I developed a Bowenian-informed framework for Treating Childhood Emotional Abuse in Family Therapy that is more attuned to Chinese family dynamics. I look forward to refining and applying these approaches in future clinical practice. My long-term goal is to become a clinically grounded, culturally responsive mental health professional serving immigrant and marginalized communities, while advancing accessible mental health care through the integration of research, practice, and cultural insight.