This new journey also demanded reinvention of identity. Names we carry from childhood can feel like suits stitched for different weather. Eng tried on different selves — the experimental artist, the steady neighbor, the furious advocate — until one fit well enough to move in. Reinvention was less about erasing the past and more about translating it: ancestral stories reframed as sources of resilience, past failures recast as lessons with texture. These translated parts did not always cohere neatly. Sometimes they clashed in public: a gentle apology collided with a stubborn refusal; a civic duty bumped into personal boundaries. Yet coherence was never the point. Complexity was. The courage to present a self that was both tender and stubborn drew people in.