CATCHING BUTTERFLIES
MARY ANNE LIM
CATCHING BUTTERFLIES
MARY ANNE LIM
Notes from a life still in progress
I’m not writing from the other side of any of it.
I’m Anne . I’ve been writing here since 2008 – through typhoon, a relationship that ended, years of raising my children mostly on my own, and a long stretch where I wasn’t okay and didn’t say so.
I’m writing from inside it, which is the only place I’ve ever been able to write from honestly. If you’re carrying something you haven’t named yet, you’re in the right place.
LATEST
Love and Free Will
This is one of those times that I need to write down what I feel. I know I am a good writer, if only I could write a damn good love story for myself, wouldn't that be awesome! But no matter how good a writer we are, there is somebody else who has our best interest at...
Love and Free Will
This is one of those times that I need to write down what I feel. I know I am a good writer, if only I could write a damn good love story for myself, wouldn't that be awesome! But no matter how good a writer we are, there is somebody else who has our best interest at...
[Year-End Reflection] What I Missed and What‘s in My List for the Coming Year
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How to Get What You Want and Get It Fast
I had my first coaching call today (not as a coach, but me on a call with my coach). Yes, I finally said yes to the idea of getting a coach. Coaches have mentors too. Most of the successful people I know have mentors whom they look up to and learn things from. ...
ALL BLOG POST
The archive · 2008–2025
216 posts across seventeen years. 2013 and 2014 were the loud ones. Two years are empty and I’ve left them that way.
Select a year above.
PUBLISHED WRITING
My writing has appeared in
Thrive Global & Prime Influencers
Personal & Mental Health
Thrive Global · 2018
How I Made Friends With Depression
On being diagnosed, the medication no one explained, and choosing to stay.
business & productivity
Thrive Global · 2018
Finding the Balance in Your Career & Health in the Digital Age
Why staying plugged in is costing us — and how to reconnect to what matters.
prime influencers · 2018
6 Simple Ways to Reach Potential Clients for Your Consulting Business
Practical, field-tested ways to find the people who need what you do.
BOOKS
The Quiet Powers
The Quiet Powers is a reflective memoir for women rebuilding after separation — especially mothers rediscovering who they are beyond the roles they once held.
In seasons marked by uncertainty, emotional exhaustion, and quiet grief, strength does not always arrive loudly. Sometimes it steadies. Sometimes it softens. Sometimes it simply helps you breathe again.
Through deeply personal reflection, Mary Anne T. Lim explores the inner shifts that carried her through life’s hardest chapters — stillness, acceptance, surrender, forgiveness, gratitude, love, and authenticity. This is not a dramatic story of triumph. It is a calm and honest journey toward peace within.
If you are rebuilding your life quietly — choosing steadiness over chaos and peace over performance — this book is a companion for your becoming.
COMING OUT SOON !
Days of Terror (Working Title)
A memoir of Typhoon Haiyan · in progress
On 8 November 2013, one of the strongest storms ever recorded at landfall came through Tacloban City. I was there with my children.
I wrote about it twice that December. I ended both posts with to be continued — and then said nothing for eleven months. On the first anniversary I sat down and wrote a third of this book in a single day.
Days of Terror puts those pieces back in the order the events happened, rather than the order I could bear to write them. The day before. The storm. Five days in a city with no power and bodies on the sidewalk. The decision to leave.
The eleven months of silence are still sitting in the middle of it. I’ve left them there.
Outside, nothing can be heard. There was an eerie calm, no sound of the wind that was supposed to come with the storm. Now this is what they call the calm before the storm, I said to myself.
Then my helper said to me, “I think I can hear the sound of the sea.”
I told her, the sea is far from where we are.
— from Chapter 1, written 24 November 2013
I’ll post here when it’s finished.
— Anne
I also write for women rebuilding on their own, at She Thrives Solo.
I also write for people wanting to get out of a toxic relationship, at Keep the Narc Away.
© Catching Butterflies 2008 & Beyond | Mary Anne Lim
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