Before the rain, the hills are like half-stories told. The kind that simmers just beneath the skin of the day, gathering weight in the silence. The grasses stand like sentences waiting for their final word, the rocks like punctuation, full stops held in place by time. The soil is dry but not indifferent. It listens. It remembers. Each root is a bookmark, holding its place in a story that has paused mid-thought. The air thickens with a narrative tension as if the hillside is brewing something wrinkled and unfinished.
The clouds begin to press closer, like readers leaning in. A curly breeze lifts, gentle as a turning page. The sky darkens, setting the mood. And then, just before the first raindrops, the hillside exhales. Not an ending, not a climax. Just a deepening. As if the story, long steeped, is ready to be poured.
For a long time now, words have been brewing on the horizon. Shapes slowly form in mist and clouds. Words collected over years of living and breaking, building and burning, loving and listening. And though I wasn’t sure it would ever be ready to leave the page, it’s finally time.
A memoir has come to be. Unearthed: Building, Breaking, Becoming is here.
This is not a how-to book. It’s not an arrival story.
It’s a story of what lives in the middle. To the unfinished. To anyone who has asked themselves: What if I leap?
A Glimpse Inside
Unearthed is a memoir written in earth and mistakes, in morning light and midnight questions. It traces the journey of uprooting from the known and building something new with bare hands and open hearts—a family home and retreat in the Himalayas, yes, but also something quieter: a way of seeing. A way of holding space for doubt, for unschooling, for rewilding, for letting go. It is often forgotten that they are only continuations in disguise, threads that stretch further still into stars, into roots, into the vast unknowing, into places that neither promise nor explain. What unfolds is not a plan, but an experiment. Uncertain, often absurd. Always human.
I didn’t set out to write a book. I set out to build a home, raise a family, and hold space for something still taking shape inside me. What unfolded across mountains and monsoons, broken walls and broken expectations, was never a journey towards completion, but towards something quieter. Towards what has always been. Unearthed is not a tidy memoir. It offers no blueprints, no answers neatly boxed. Instead, it holds small moments unearthed over time: fragments of a life lived slightly off the map, where the land led us more than we led it. The stories that follow are layered like rammed earth—packed, pressed, weathered. Some arrived with clarity; others revealed themselves only after the dust had settled. This is that imperfect shape.
And because nothing about this journey has been conventional, I’m beginning the book launch in a way that feels true. I’m giving away the first 50 copies. Just story, freely shared. Some will be posted, but hopefully, most handed over with a cuppa. If it calls to you, you’re warmly invited to receive one.
If you’re nearby, let’s meet in Kuala Lumpur, Kathmandu or Pokhara. Let’s share life and coffee, the future, and more books.
If you’re far away, drop me an email at iiling@swararetreat.com and I’ll try to send one your way.
Thank you for walking with me.
