Oftentimes, the process of healing isn’t so simple.
Local actress Kayly Loh took to Instagram on June 26 to share what she’s learnt over five years after a fire destroyed her floral studio Bucket Full of Roses (BFOR).
Reflecting on the incident, she wrote in her caption: “I’m still finding pieces of myself I thought I’d lost. The smile comes a little easier. Inspiration feels a little more familiar. And while some losses never fully leave us, they no longer define us.
“Instead, I discovered that my identity was never in my work or my ‘successes’ to begin with. It was always in the person capable of building it.”
According to a Today report published in June 2021, the fire happened before midnight in an industrial building at Ubi Road . It did not start in her unit but the BFOR studio was covered in smoke and soot.
BFOR was founded in 2016 and initially began operations in a tiny discussion room in an office belonging to Kayly’s father. She had saved for years for the studio and saw it as her pride and second home.
What prompted the 38-year-old’s recollection was a screenshot from her husband – commercial director Jonathan Chong – of a Facebook post from five years ago where he wrote he was excited to “see her smile and [be] inspired again”.
“I had completely forgotten about it. But seeing it again brought me straight back to one of the lowest points of my life,” said Kayly in her recent post. She shared a portrait of herself posing in her studio, revealing that the photo was her WhatsApp profile picture for years as it remains her last memory of the place.
“Even writing those words today still feels heavy. I grieved this for a very, very long time. Longer than I thought was ‘normal’,” wrote Kayly, attaching a video of firefighters attending to the aftermath of the disaster.
She got married and BFOR moved into a better space. However, she remarked that every time someone mentioned the incident, she would cry. She continued to grieve, unable to understand why she couldn’t move on from the fire.
With therapy, Kayly came to the realisation that she hadn’t simply lost a studio, but a part of her identity – having poured dreams, sacrifices and late nights into the place.
“When it burnt down, it felt like a part of me burnt with it. And maybe most painfully, I’d lost the version of myself that believed I could be successful,” she wrote. “We don’t just grieve people. We grieve versions of ourselves.”
She added that she had been grieving the version of herself that existed before the fire: An ambitious go-getter who believed that hard work always paid off and that she was going to “finally make it”.
Pensive, Kayly recalled falling into a state of despair where she stopped creating, posting and doing things for fun, even questioning her capabilities and the longevity of her business. For years, she convinced herself she was a failure whose prior success was on borrowed time.
In moments of clarity, Kayly ruminated: “For the longest time, I thought healing meant the pain had to disappear. I thought enough happy moments would eventually outweigh the sad ones.
“But that’s just not how grief works. It doesn’t leave just because life gets better. Sometimes, they simply learn to exist together. Success doesn’t cancel grief.”
Concluding her post with a picture of her studio in mint condition before the fire, she felt the loss was one of the biggest building blocks of her life, begging the critical question: “Who are you when everything you’ve built is gone?”
Fellow celebrities, including actors Cynthia Koh, Priscelia Chan, Jojo Goh and Hazelle Teo took to the comments to voice their support.
“You are always so cool and amazing Kayly, blooming elegantly like orchids. This post is so intuitively put together too, beautiful,” wrote Priscelia, 47.
Kayly made her showbiz debut in 2015 after winning Channel 5’s The 5 Search, going on to appear in series like Tanglin the same year and Fix My Life (2023). After meeting Chong through a Carousell deal, she married him in 2021, and they are currently expecting a child.
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kristy.chua@asiaone.com
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