Hua Dai
MOTHER - POET - EDUCATOR
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HUA
DAI
mother to Wonder Dai, a published poet, a writer, public speaker, a researcher and self-identified feminist, an educator, a blogger, a psychosynthesis counsellor and a life-long learner
Hua is surviving a traumatic severe head injury that put her in a 24-day coma in the
attempted murder of her that murdered her only child, her son Wonder. Hua’s healing
and recovering is miraculous in many levels as she continues her inner work with
psycho-spiritual therapy and through her own training and research. She brings out
her deep learning from her lived experience of coercive control in intimate
relationship that dulled her senses of danger, like many other women who are
affected by intimate partner violence in Aotearoa NZ and all over the world. Hua
writes with deep reflection and insights into the lived experience with the hope that what
she has been gifted in the life-death-life passage can help inspire others and help
save lives of women and children, as her way to honour her son Wonder and keep
alive her memory of Wonder, her baby dragon.
Hua is completing her PhD in the lived experience of bereaved parents of children
murdered in intimate partner violence in Aotearoa NZ. It is her hope that her findings
will join forces with others in the field to reduce murder and bring violence against
women and children to its cessation. Hua intends to use the lessons she has learnt
in the first half of her life to serve women and children in the second half of her life.
Her Baby Dragon, Wonder is with her on this journey from the spiritual realm.
Hello I am Hua Dai,
I am a published poet from my university time in China. I wrote about youth and its inner struggle that comes from the conflict of personal growth and the culture that confined and even vetoed any desire to seek self-understanding and developing and growing into one’s personhood. My latest poems are on the themes of peace and harmony on the planet as well as what the war does to human life. I also explored the effect of modernization or civilization on human life which is not always a progression, but could be seen as hindrance to the evolution of human consciousness on the planet. I begin to understand what my ancestors, my ancient Chinese philosophical teachers are about. I begin learning Tao-Te-Qing, the book of Dao and De, or Tao and Teh as they were presented in the western world. My interest in the interplay or intrinsic relationship between human beings and their natural environment is ever lasting which inspires me to keep writing.
During the first two years of my grieving on Piha beach while being sheltered at Te Wahi Ora Women’s Retreat in Piha, poems came to me everyday. On waking up, a poem is ready to be allowed to flow out of me to the paper on the bedside table. And I would get up and write it up. Day by day, poems helped me express the deepest thoughts, concepts and images that speak to me since when I was little. During my grieving for my son, I was like my young self again, vulnerable and open, with no words to describe what I felt or I was experiencing at any given moment. I was returned to the primal pot to be re-made through the process of grieving. And re-made I was, after eight years staying at the retreat being supported by the women community including the constant flow f women guests at the retreat, and the psycho-spiritual therapy with my spiritual guide and counselor, Beverley Holt, founding manager of the retreat who also appeared to me in my dream in response to my question, about a week before my son and myself were attacked in the rented home in Birkenhead North Shore by the
man who I was manipulated to marry about two years before while holidaying in China, a month after I divorced the husband of ten years due to his betrayal while overseas.
My Memoir Baby Dragon and Me recorded the life lived prior to the attempted murder of me and the murder of my son Wonder by that man who had stalked me for over ten years after he read a poem I had published on a national paper in China as a year two university student. That uninvited fame with my innocent and pure youth saw me try hard to be free from this man’s persistent demand for my attention and affection. I fell into the trap set up by this man when I divorced my unfaithful husband and found myself with no real support in China. My memoir has recorded the lived experience of being deeply loved by my grandmother, who raised me in her village with my loving grandfather and great-grandfather.
The memoir tells my miraculous recovery and my experience in the coma travelling with Wonder till when I returned to the world while Wonder stayed with his white-haired puppy by the brightly-lit house, watching over me. It has recorded the loving friends, and the women communities I have been given along my journey to live again and to publish my Memoir and complete my PhD.
Read for yourself and be inspired by the life my "Baby Dragon and Me" have lived together on this planet.
Some feedback on my Memoir:
"It was beautifully written and so heartfelt, But what I really liked was that I was reading all night and it was like I was just listening to you talking to me and telling me your lifestory was so genuinely the beautiful Hua I know and love." -Shar,
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"I couldn't put your book down -I was captivated- so well written- and so gracefully put together- it's a masterpiece." - Suzanne.
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"Congratulations on your beautiful book that truly does bring honour to your wonderful son and his life, and honour to your love for him and your incredible resilience. So glad to have met you and to have read your story. It is truly enlightening." - Jill
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My poems can be found here.
As a blogger, I wrote about language and human conditions. The language one uses establishes and reaffirms one’s reality. So if one is not conscious of the language they use, one can stay in the reality they have created and maintained unconsciously with their own languaging or language. They can be found here.
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I also paint when I have time. I use painting as another means to express my inner journey and my perspective on life. One can be found here.
A psychosynthesis counsellor. Psychosynthesis is a psycho-spiritual framework that looks at human symptoms as indicators for deep growth and transformation, the look is from bi-focal lens that see human beings with their highest potentials and their lowest unconscious where the early trauma awaits processing. I am a full member of NZ Association of Counselors. At the moment, I am not practicing so I can focus on and complete my PhD.