On Classical Music, Tea Ceremonies, and Reclaiming the Sacred Feminine Within Me

When I was a little girl, I used to imagine the woman I would one day become.

She moved with grace.

She spoke softly, but her presence lingered in the room like music.

She wore long dresses, listened to classical music, and brewed tea as if it were poetry.

She was tender. Feminine.

Flowing like water.

A woman of depth and softness, elegance and light.

But somehow, in the noise of growing up,

I lost her.

The Woman I Became Was a Survival Story

Life taught me to be practical.

To protect myself.

To achieve, to push, to perform.

And somewhere along the way, I stopped moving like her.

Stopped dreaming like her.

Stopped being her.

I forgot how to walk with grace.

How to savor slowness.

How to feel comfortable in my own skin.

Bit by bit, I lost the fluidity in my body, the softness in my heart.

And I began to move like someone who wasn’t fully alive.

Like someone who was trying to be efficient rather than enchanted.

It was like my body was no longer my own.

Like I had become a version of myself that didn’t belong to my original dream.

But Now—Now I Am Returning

I’m returning to her.

Not the girl I was, but the woman I imagined—

the most feminine version of myself.

The one I dreamed of becoming before the world taught me to forget.

I’ve begun to reclaim her

in quiet, sacred ways.

By sitting in concert halls and letting the sound of violins crack something open inside me.

By taking Chinese tea ceremony classes—not for a title or a purpose,

but because 茶道 (chá dào) teaches me how to live with reverence.

Because it reminds me how sacred it is to pour water slowly, to hold a cup gently, to appreciate the present moment as a work of art.

I’ve started dreaming of learning pastry making—not because I need to,

but because creating sweetness with my hands makes me feel soft again.

Whole again.

I’ve started choosing beauty not as decoration,

but as devotion.

And in doing so, I can feel myself flowing again.

Not in the way the world moves—fast, hard, linear—

but in the way that feels natural to me:

curved, graceful, and full of heart.

The Power of the Forgotten Arts

For so long, the world dismissed these things:

music, tea, soft arts, domestic rituals, sensual expression.

They were labeled as frivolous, impractical, unnecessary.

Even my own mother, with love in her voice, would say:

“Those things won’t help you in life.”

But now I see it clearly:

they are not a waste.

They are wisdom.

The tea, the music, the movement—

they are how I remember myself.

They are how I slow down and return to my body.

They are how I soften the sharp edges the world gave me.

They are how I heal.

Because what the world calls “useless,”

I now understand as essential.

This Is My Feminine Reclamation

This is not just a glow-up.

This is a sacred return.

To softness.

To sensuality.

To presence.

To the sacred rhythm of my own body.

To the flow that once lived in my spirit and now asks to live in my skin again.

I’m learning to express myself—not through volume, but through feeling.

Not through perfection, but through presence.

Because I am no longer trying to become someone else’s version of a woman.

I am simply becoming my own.

With love,

Seraphine Duong

This chapter of my life is not about reinventing who I am.

It’s about returning to the woman I always hoped I would become.

The one I used to daydream about—

soft, radiant, poetic, alive.

And through every ritual, every slow moment, every sacred art I once dismissed,

I feel her stepping back into me.

Not with force,

but with grace.

I am remembering that beauty is not performance.

It is presence.

That femininity is not weakness.

It is wisdom.

And that to move through the world with softness is a radical, holy choice.

This is Inside Out Beauty.

This is Reclamation.

This is Me.