Growing up among crystals

I was born in China in 1990. My father’s mother, an accountant, collected natural jade. My mother collected crystals, Tibetan dzi beads, amber and beeswax amber. When I was five or six she would take me to the biggest shopping centre in our city, and I would stand in front of the crystals for as long as she let me.

My mother and her mother took me to temples, where flowers, gems and amber were offered to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. From childhood these stones felt sacred. Amethyst was the first one I loved. I had no idea then that crystals would one day become my work.

Diagnosed at thirteen

At 13 I was diagnosed with vasculitis, an autoimmune condition. I couldn’t do PE, and standing for more than a few minutes could open wounds on my legs that took months to heal. Much of my youth was spent recovering at home, in my parents’ care.

I studied mostly from my bed, teaching myself. I was quietly proud of that, and quietly ashamed of how fragile I was. I hid it from almost everyone.

A scholarship, and a small green crystal

In 2013 a scholarship brought me to the UK for my degree. I graduated with a first-class degree and an award, then a master’s with merit.

On one of those long flights between China and the UK, a flight attendant handed me a small gift, the only one on the plane. Inside was a natural green fluorite. I still have it. It isn’t rare or expensive, but to me it felt like being looked after by something bigger: a small light at a turning point.

At Christmas markets I skipped the mulled wine and went straight to the crystal stalls (and the garlic mushrooms). In little vintage shops I always found my way to the crystals. Around graduation, I began collecting properly: pieces I simply felt I had to have.

My first start-up

I worked on investment banking projects first, and in the trading room I felt like a machine. In July 2016, once my father had finished chemotherapy for his first cancer, I came back to the UK and founded a start-up: a platform joining HR and education, where anyone could take on real projects and discover what they love and are good at. Angel investors backed the first phase, but the developers never delivered it. It was my first failure.

Later, projects with universities, the UN and governments earned me a Global Talent visa for digital technology.

From the outside, everything was going well.

Losing my father

My father died of lung cancer, his second cancer, in the second year of my start-up. After the funeral I flew straight back to the UK and kept busy. I couldn’t cry. Everything looked successful, and everything felt wrong.

I tried many kinds of help. Nothing seemed to reach me. I felt alive on the outside and closed on the inside.

A window opens

In the pandemic I lived alone, and I finally admitted my tech career had been for my father. A well-known tarot reader who stayed at my Airbnb for a month taught me to read cards, and for the first time I found a way to talk with myself.

Every morning I made hot cacao, lit incense and meditated with a crystal in each hand, sometimes for an hour or two without moving. Crystals were grounding me. I began, quite seriously, to talk to them.

Then Shaman Durek kept appearing on my screen. I booked a session over Skype. He named something I had never said out loud: that I had pulled away from everyone because I didn’t want to be a burden. Afterwards I released tears for more than a month. Slowly, I could feel again.

A fresh start in Manchester

I moved to Manchester alone, knowing no one. When I first walked into my flat I held on to the kitchen island and wanted to cry; it felt like home.

At weekends I took the train to a Buddhist temple in the Lake District to volunteer. I tried working as a pastry chef in a café, but my body couldn’t manage standing all day, and I knew my life wasn’t meant to be one spot, one task, repeated.

My Gem Closet literally started in a closet

In the summer of 2022 the temple, a converted chapel, asked me to help in its gift shop: sorting the crystals, putting them out, arranging the displays. I sat at an old window in the dining room, daydreaming and writing in my journal, still searching for my direction. That’s where I decided to open my own crystal shop. It was a summer full of light and gratitude.

I closed my tech company and settled everyone’s accounts. All I had left was the credit limit on a card my father had opened for me years before. I decided to try one more time, with the thing I loved.

I’d made energy bracelets and crystal candles as a hobby in 2021. In November 2022 I bought my first real batch of crystals. In December I photographed them on my phone, building little backdrops in my hallway and on my dining table, and on 9 December 2022 the shop opened. The name is literal: I’d had a wardrobe built, and its shelves were full of my crystals.

I still run My Gem Closet from my one-bedroom flat in Manchester. Through it I’ve met so many people, healed myself and helped others heal, with ups and downs along the way.

Crystals brought me friends, teachers and connections I could never have planned. Retreats in Peru and Mexico showed me that life can be much bigger than the textbooks: everything is energy, and everything keeps changing.

Running, after 22 years

I met the healing teacher I still learn from. I was sceptical, and went to two of his healings within three weeks. Soon after, an intuition told me to try the treadmill, the machine I’d been told all my life never to use. I ran. I went back every day for a month, and my legs held. I could stand, walk and work like everyone else.

I can’t explain it, and I don’t offer it as a promise for anyone else’s health. It is simply what happened to me, in the 22nd year of living with vasculitis.

Energy healing is complementary, spiritual support. It isn’t a substitute for medical care, and experiences vary.

I put my savings into a year of healing training, and I’ve completed Level 3 of four. While I studied, I offered free healings to many of my crystal customers.

Why I share this

“When you’re used to tending your wounds alone in the dark, and one day the wound heals and the sun comes up — that’s the feeling I want to share.”

Through crystals, energy work, readings, healing and my own stories, I hope you’ll see hope, see your own light, and maybe become a light for someone else.

I’m still growing and still healing. Every connection, easy or hard, has helped make me who I am, and I’m grateful for all of it.