Imagine having everything going in your life, a successful job that you love doing, family, friends. Christina Lau was an active, independent, and, enthusiastic office guard who lived her life to the fullest. One day, her life was flipped upside down due to a car accident on a road trip to Malaysia in 2005. She woke up in the hospital not being able to remember anything that happened just realizing the horror that she couldn’t feel her lower body. She thought she would be okay, but soon it hit her that she would be paralyzed for the rest of her life. She fell into a deep unrelenting depression. She had no aims, no goals for the future. She kept putting herself down over and over, thinking she was a burden to everyone despite the fact that she had a lot of support and love from her parents and friends. She struggled with her depression mentally and recovery physically, having to learn how to do everything again ‘like a baby’. She found it very hard to sustain the will to live, and the one thing that kept her going was that if she died her family and friends would have to bear the loss.
One fateful day, in 2012, she discovered the many others who are talented, and have a huge passion for mouth painting and decided to join. Prior to the accident, she had no experience in painting whatsoever but was definitely able to really throw herself into the artwork. Her favorite things to paint are flowers and landscapes inspired by just going outside and seeing the world around her. She not only had a love for painting but also found a passion for table tennis. She played in the Indonesia Para Table Tennis Opens in 2016. She is a very skilled and successful mouth painter today and has many open views on people with disabilities. She presents herself as a very cheerful, happy person and is able to make everyone smile and definitely be inspired by her story.
If you compare the Christina Lau now to her previous self, you can see that she has gone through some extremely tough times like struggling with depression and surviving for her family. But she has definitely overcome those times and it has made her much str
onger now. Her opinion on disabled people has also changed as she said that prior to the incident she thought they ‘needed a lot of help’. But now she realizes that they are more than capable of managing themselves and unless they ask, there is no need of fussing around them too much; just let them be.
Christina’s life story is extremely inspiring as she was able to completely change her way of thinking and really find something purposeful to do with her life. In doing so, she was able to inspire so many others by giving talks to children and other organizations. She truly is both the victim and the hero of her life story. It shows you that maybe there’s a silver lining to dark situations, just because something terrible has happened to you doesn’t mean that you have to lose yourself you may even find a new version of yourself. Christina Lau saw that when she chose to start painting and playing table tennis discovering two major passions, maybe if the accident hadn’t occurred she would have never learned to paint, maybe she would have lived out her old life as a prison guard never even thinking of painting, it’s safe to say that her life experience is one that is truly inspirational.
Bibliography
Cape, Flying. “Christina Lau, Mouth Artist and Re-Inventor – Flying Cape High Flier Series.”Flying Cape’s Blog, blog.flyingcape.com.sg/high-flier-interviews/christina-lau-mouth-artist/.
Images:
https://www.myactivesg.com/team-singapore/athletes/l/christina-lau-lay-lian
http://mfpa.com.sg/artists/christina-lau-lay-lian/
