By Laych Koh and Kimberly Lee
After years of domestic abuse, Siu Lim‘s turning point was when her parents – former Cambodian refugees who had escaped Pol Pot’s murderous regime – found out about the abuse. “My mum found out and saw pictures, and she was in utter shock. She said ‘How could you do this to me?’ She did not say ‘How could you let this happen to yourself?’ She was saying she had raised me and taught me never to allow this, my dad too. To never let a man touch me. To see them so distraught broke me,” Lim said in an interview with makchic. Her four children were also a key factor: she said her son had witnessed an incident, and she could not bear the thought of her children learning that abuse was acceptable. “It’s not okay to be in such a toxic relationship.”
Lim, fresh faced and radiant after teaching a Pilates class, met us recently to talk about her book Reborn – My Journey of Personal Transformation, (written alongside Dr Victor SL Tan) and expressed her appreciation that we had read her book. It was a hard book to write, she admitted, as she had blocked difficult painful memories for years. She persevered because she felt she had to share her experiences so other women in abusive relationships could see that there was a hopeful path ahead.
“I’m actually shy about all this, it’s a vulnerable thing for me. But when I was going through all that I went through, I always wished someone would share their stories and tell me ‘It’s okay, it’s going to be okay.’ Because I honestly thought I was not going to be okay, that that was the way I was going to die – in the corner of my bathroom, after being beaten up. I would just sit there, thinking – this is my ending.”
Navigating family – and finding peace
Coming from a Cambodian-Chinese family who eventually settled in San Francisco, USA, Lim found Islam as a university student, and then met her ex-husband, who was also a Muslim revert from Turkey. They married, and then moved to Malaysia with their young family. But the marriage was deeply unhappy and turned abusive, and she finally left her husband and had to parent her children on her own for years.
Lim details these difficult years in her book, including the problem of becoming financially independent after 12 years of total reliance on her ex-husband. Eventually, due to challenging co-parenting and custody issues, her children moved to Turkey to be with their father, with holidays and other periods spent with Lim. Now a popular social media personality and fitness maven, she has found peace and contentment despite more than a few challenging decades.
There is still heartbreak though, as she misses her children a lot. People tell her all the time that she now has time for herself, she said, but it is a painful thing to not see them everyday. “I see them every quarter and we really catch up, but it’s not the same with Zoom. When they saw me during the summer they would tell me everything – their friends, challenges they faced at school, learning a new language. They never told me all this on the phone, how much they struggled. They told me they didn’t want me to know because they didn’t want me to feel sad or worry,” she said. However, she has learnt to accept the situation as she knows that it is best for her children, who have an ‘amazing life’ and a ‘good educational environment’ in Turkey.
Onwards and upwards
Her focus now is to thrive and be resilient through it all, and share some lessons she has learned a long the way. Her book is filled with moving notes on topics like adversity and perseverance. Lim is known for her hilarious, confident and witty posts and videos on social media, but she said she went through many years with the weight of self-doubt and low self-esteem.
“I doubted myself a lot in the relationship, and I was never known to my friends as the type of person with low self-esteem.”
But that’s a big red flag, she said, when a partner makes one feel like they are inadequate and inferior. “It happens bit by bit. One thing was that my friends and family also started disappearing. I thought they disappeared because they were the problem, but he was actually isolating me. I was told that they did not love or care for me, that I didn’t need them.” She said she was also a vulnerable people-pleaser who was easily manipulated, and who had to eventually learn how to co-parent with a narcissist, no easy thing. “It is not my job to tell them what their father is or is not. My job is to teach them what a narcissist is, what these characteristics are,” she said simply when asked how she navigates this with her children.
Life in the public eye
There were other problems too with her rise as a social media influencer, with adoration and admiration quickly turning into venomous attacks on her character. After she came to fame as a Chinese-Muslim Pilates instructor, many followers were unhappy when she took her hijab off last year. “It was tough because a lot of people felt like I dropped the religion,” she said, even though she had not.
“I want to say everyone goes through their own journey and at the end of the day, putting on or taking off the hijab doesn’t define who you are. Everybody is going through their own thing, and it’s none of my business. I feel it’s very honourable to wear the hijab, and I was going through a stage where I couldn’t wear it anymore because it wasn’t really me anymore. It’s not because I didn’t love the religion.”
The comments after her decision were harsh and hurtful, and she lost followers and also clients who backed away. Lim realised however, that she did not want to be a people-pleaser anymore, and that her journey was her own to decide on. After all, she found Islam as a young adult, of her own accord, and her book details how her commitment to a new religion was tested and challenged by family and friends, long before marriage or Malaysia.
“God knows what I went through for the twenty-odd years, and I’m not saying what I do is right or wrong. I’m just saying this is what I wanted to do, and you know, it’s my own journey with God.” Lim said she has grown a ‘thicker skin’ along the years, learned to keep her inner circle small, and focus on the people who are happy for her growth and transition.
Her hard-earned words of wisdom
What would Lim’s message be to other women who may be in toxic or abusive relationships? She has a lot of sympathy and understanding for women who are in a dark hole, and acknowledges how hard it was for her to fight her way out of it. “There were times I really was feeling so suicidal and I just didn’t want to go through another day. But my advice is that honestly, nobody can help you unless you help yourself. I had friends telling me I needed to get out of (the relationship), and I blocked them. I think it happens a lot to people in an abusive relationship,” she said.
She also urges women to make sure they do not lose themselves when they get married or start a family. Before her marriage, she was a successful real estate agent who ended up giving her all to her family. “One of the reasons it took me so long to leave was the fact that I had been in this marriage for 12 years and depended 1000 per cent on this man. I had no money, no savings, not even the people skills (I had) anymore.
“I had helpers, even a driver, and I thought I didn’t have to work – why work? I have to say that was one of my biggest mistakes – that I dropped everything when I got married. I didn’t even have a single piece of myself anymore, I completely lost myself,” she said.
Thankfully she managed to ensure she obtained a Pilates teaching certification before she got a divorce, and this allowed her to gain some income after she parted ways with her ex-husband. She said she had to let go of her ego and start afresh again, handing out resumes and taking on multiple jobs to make ends meet. “I told myself that if I had to clean toilets, I would clean toilets. At one point, I had three full-time jobs; one was being a tuition teacher, and I would work 9 to 5pm, and then do Pilates classes after,” she said.
Eventually she earned enough money to become a full-time Pilates instructor, and that was when she also discovered Instagram, which became another source of income. The irony? Lim said she was actually camera shy. “But it paid the bills! It is work. I didn’t like the part where I had to expose myself or take photos of myself, but I loved the creative side of things – writing scripts, making people laugh.”
Finding love and hope again
Lim said she was in a really happy place now, and in a wonderful relationship with a new husband. Her husband, Marc Le, is a gym owner and fellow fitness influencer who – as clearly evident from her social media posts – shares her humour and enthusiasm for the positive things in life. She said the best thing about living life with her best friend was that they communicate well together and both appreciate all the small things in their relationship. “We have a lot of fun, and we are not too serious about everything. We learned that we had to talk about everything, big or small, petty or not. And he will say ‘thank you for cooking’, even if it happens every day. He will say it without fail. We are always ready to take on the day together, life together. I love doing life with him.”
She even jokes that people say she is ‘boring now’, without the dramatic past. “I’m okay with being boring! I am very happy being boring and in a routine, it is actually an amazing feeling,” she said with a laugh.
She’s considered an influencer living a comfortable and content life, but she said she thinks of her family’s history when she considers life lessons. “My parents were enslaved for 7 years under Pol Pot’s rule and were rescued, going to a country not knowing a single word of English. From that, they managed to buy a house, make investments and are now fine, retired, happy and safe.”
“But here’s the thing, they came from nothing. That taught me resilience – that if my parents could do that – surviving a war and coming to a country with just a suitcase, I can survive and I want to stay strong. There is no other choice, you have to stay strong.”
She also hopes that Malaysians will consider this when thinking about refugees in this country, who are not given the same opportunities as other people. “There are always superstars out there. Everyone in this world needs a chance, they need to believe and have hope. If you can give someone hope, there are so many things they can do with that little bit of hope they have.”
‘Reborn – My Journey of Personal Transformation’ is Siu Lim’s memoir, published in July 2024, and available for purchase on Shopee. To learn more about Siu Lim’s journey, follow her on Instagram.
The contents of this interview have been shortened and edited for clarity and brevity. All photos are from Siu Lim and/or Marc Le’s Instagram pages, or from Siu Lim’s personal collection.
