When I was 8, my parents’ arranged marriage dissolved. My mother, Mei-Lin, moved to California and into the background of my life. When I was 32, she died of lung cancer, two days before Mother’s Day. Never a smoker, but always an optimist, she passed down a magpie assortment of charms: a smiling ceramic pig, a penny from the year I started college and winning scratch-off tickets she had never cashed in — paper proof of her good fortune worth far more than $20. Now, even when it seems that luck has left, her talismans remind me to believe. — Jean Huang

Positively Purging-I welcome your feedbacks in the comments and your likes and passing the real life wisdom on to others as I embark on this new venture of “positively purging“, as I know each of these pieces represents something…