Turning sorrow into service: Taiwanese-Filipina expat offers free sound therapy to UAE residents navigating grief

Dubai: What do you do when the life you spent years building no longer exists? For Taiwanese-Filipina expatriate Joanne Tan, the answer was to begin again.

Today, Tan uses sound, breathwork, and somatic practices to create spaces where people navigating grief and difficult periods can pause, reconnect, and be still.

Her journey towards helping others began with her own struggle to find herself.

When loss changes everything

By 2022, many of the things Tan built her identity around have been changing or disappearing. Businesses she worked hard to establish have been gone. Relationships have drifted apart and her financial and material security have been disrupted. Even the future she has imagined for herself no longer looked certain.

But the deepest loss was not the loss of a business or a relationship. It has been the feeling that she lost herself.

“For years, I had associated so much of my identity with what I could build, achieve, provide, and accomplish. Suddenly, I had to learn who I was underneath all of that,” Tan told Gulf News.

She has then asked herself, “Who am I when the things I used to define myself are no longer there?”

Tan has realised that grief is not only about losing a person.

“We can grieve a former version of ourselves. We can grieve a dream, a relationship, a business, a home, a sense of security, or the life we thought we were going to have.”

That realisation has become the starting point for rebuilding her life from the inside out.

Journey across three countries

Tan grew up in the Philippines while her parents have worked overseas. She has learned independence at an early age and her childhood was not always easy or emotionally safe. Those experiences have taught her resilience and gave her a deep appreciation for family, connection, and belonging.

She has received a university scholarship and worked while studying. After graduating, she moved to Taiwan, where her parents have been living and working. She has started her career as an English teacher before shifting into food and hospitality and eventually building businesses of her own.

She has later spent time in Australia. Then the pandemic has changed the course of her life.  In 2023, she has moved to Dubai.

“I didn't arrive feeling that I had everything figured out. I arrived willing to begin again,” recalled Tan.

Dubai and the power of a pause

Starting again in the UAE has meant building a new community, establishing herself professionally, and learning how to belong in a new environment. Dubai's fast paced environment has also made her rethink how she measured success.

“It can be easy to measure yourself by achievement, status, or how quickly you are progressing,” described Tan.

Over time, however, she has understood that she did not need to become a different person. She could bring every version of herself along with her, including the teacher, hospitality worker, entrepreneur, and woman who experienced loss.

“Sometimes transformation is simply integration. I could bring all of those versions of myself with me. That realisation changed the way I understood healing.”

Turning healing into service

Tan's interest in sound therapy has grown from her own curiosity about how the mind and body process difficult experiences. She has explored sound, breathwork, somatic practices, meditation, and nervous-system regulation. 

Moreover, she has been interested in how people can intellectually understand what happened to them while their bodies may still be carrying the effects of stress, grief, and emotions. What helped her reconnect with herself has been something she wanted to share with others.

Through her work as an integrative wellness practitioner and sound healing facilitator, she has offered sessions, workshops, wellness experiences, and community efforts in the UAE.

One initiative particularly close to her heart is the “Together We Pause” programme, which has been developed in partnership with a hotel during the unprecedented regional situation. The intention has been to create a free space where people could pause, regulate their nervous systems, reconnect with themselves, and feel supported.

“Giving back does not always have to mean creating something enormous. Sometimes service is creating a room where somebody feels safe enough to be still,” explained Tan.

‘Bring your past with you’

Tan believes many expats in the UAE have been carrying invisible stories. Some may have left behind families, careers, businesses, relationships, or entire versions of themselves. Others may be quietly rebuilding their lives while those around them see only the progress they are making.

Her message is not to be afraid of starting over.

“Starting again does not mean you have failed at the life you had before. Bring the lessons. Bring the skills. Bring the mistakes. Bring the courage you developed from surviving things you thought you couldn't survive,” advised Tan.

For her, purpose is not always about finding one grand calling. Sometimes, it can be found in showing up for someone, doing your work well, calling your family, helping a stranger, creating something meaningful, resting, or praying. And sometimes, it can simply mean beginning again.

Finding her way back

The UAE has given Tan exposure to people from different countries, cultures, and walks of life. It has allowed her to bring together the different lessons she has learned throughout her life. Her own healing has taught her the importance of listening to the body.

“I came here thinking I needed to find my way. In many ways, I discovered that finding my way was really about finding my way back to myself and trusting God enough to surrender where that path would lead next,” said Tan.

For someone who once wondered who she was without the life she had built, Tan now sees starting over differently. It is not about becoming someone new rather about recognising that every version of yourself, including the one shaped by loss, still has something to give.