(gentle music) - I always knew that everything that I was going through was happening for a reason.

I just didn't know it at that point in my life.

My mom and dad, they are both immigrants from Laos.

They migrated to the US when they were in their early 20s.

They settled in Sacramento, California, where they had six of us kids.

My mom and dad got divorced, and so my mom became a single mother.

It was never a great neighborhood.

We were a victim to a drive-by.

I witnessed my first murder when I was in elementary.

I just remember being a little girl and just having a very difficult life.

Having a mom that doesn't speak English, read or write, and then just having PTSD from her migration from Laos to America, it was just very emotionally hard, like I kind of carried my mom's traumas and then my own traumas, and when I became a mom, it was just like, you know, I have a life growing inside me now.

I know my mom said she wanted a better life for me, and now I really wanted a better life for my daughter.

So I was a single mother for about a year until I met my husband.

Like, we had the typical, you know, white picket fence, bought a home, have a dog, have kids, and one day, we both were like, "We're not happy."

So we sold our home, left my career, then he joined the military, and then we ended up here.

We're here today in Virginia Beach.

Now, I knew I have a purpose, and now I'm gonna take the time to find it.

So I took a six-week pottery class and I instantly fell in love.

I've been hooked on it ever since.

So when I take a ball of clay, I don't plan anything.

It's whatever comes to mind, and where my imagination and my hands lead me is what I make.

You take a ball of clay and you put it on the wheel and you have to center it.

Basically, you have to make the clay right in the middle so it doesn't wobble.

If it wobbles, then you're gonna have a very difficult time.

You then open the clay in the center where you have your space.

So if I were to make a mug, I would have to make the distance of how wide I want my mug to be, and then the next process is pulling the walls up, which requires your fingers to be very steady and consistent, and once you pull up the walls, then you basically form the shape of the product that you wanna make, and then comes the patience part, which is the drying process, which can take up to one week or even a a few months, depending on how big the piece is, and then once it's dried, it goes through two firings.

So the first firing is called the bisque firing.

With the bisque firing, you have to make sure that it's completely dried or it's gonna explode inside your kiln.

The firing can go up to 2,000 degrees for a glaze firing, so it gets very hot.

After a successful bisque firing, you take the piece and you have to sand it down so that it's smooth, and then basically cosmetic touch-up.

So this is the brush stroke glaze.

So there's dipping glaze and there's brush strokes.

I did three layers, and then I put it through the kiln for the glaze firing.

Yeah.

This is one of my favorite glazes.

You do the second firing, which is the glaze firing, and then you get your final product.

In between, you just hope and pray that it doesn't mess up, and then I take it to my markets and I sell it.

With the markets, it's very tedious.

I have to reach out to these markets and reserve a spot.

I have to pretty much pack all of my items into the car, so tables, chairs, tents, and I go and I just set everything up.

Then enjoy the best part of it, which is interacting with the customers and the people that I get to meet.

It's very rewarding.

A lot of my pieces are inspired by the Japanese aesthetic called wabisabi, which essentially means imperfectly perfect, which is a resemblance of my life, basically.

As I become older, I'm getting to know myself a little bit more each day, the person that I am meant to be or I am.

Growing up, I didn't really have much head space or the emotional ability to discover who I was as a person or even as a child, and now as an adult, I feel like I'm learning to walk again.

(uplifting music)