My childhood was full of instability and insecurity. My grandmother was the one who stayed by my side and took care of me through it all. She was my family’s harbour.

She was a generous person. She never counted what she gave. She always gave more than she kept for herself. She gave me the best of everything she had. I kept telling myself, once I “made something of myself,” once I had a stable income, I would spend more time with her.

Then she grew frail. Her eyes clouded over. Her skin wrinkled. Her mind slowed down. She stopped noticing the blue sky. And I never got the “better time” I thought would come.

My mother and my grandmother are the strongest women I have ever known. Without them, I would not be who I am today. This film is my first real attempt to understand what that strength cost them. While making it, I realised something about myself.

The parts of my personality I always thought were just mine were never only mine. They came from the way my whole family learned to love. In an East Asian household, we never really said what we felt. We never learned how to speak our emotions out loud. That silence, it seems, gets passed down. Strangely enough, once I moved abroad, I started opening up to people I barely knew. I found myself telling them this story, telling them how I felt. I also started talking to ChatGPT. Through those conversations about grief, I kept asking myself questions. Every so often, I would arrive at a new feeling, a new thought. That was how I worked through all of this, on my own.

This film is for anyone still, as an adult, trying to understand themselves and their place within their family. It is for anyone living with grief, or who has lived through it before.