Olivia Ong wants you to know she is a proud Singaporean, first and foremost, though she’s held Australian citizenship since 2009.

I suppose I’m half Aussie, half Singaporean, really, she says, but in my heart, I’m Singaporean. I’m a proud Asian woman. That’s just who I am.

It’s a deliberate introduction, especially considering Olivia’s memoir, Back On My Feet, details her healing journey after a devastating accident left her a paraplegic. But it’s very on brand, as it’s clear — both from her book and our conversation — Olivia has always been incredibly driven and firm in her identity. From the accident in 2008 — when a 92-year-old driver mistakenly hit the gas instead of brakes, crashing straight into then Rehabilitation Registrar Olivia and her colleague — it took Olivia a mere five years to regain mobility and learn to walk again, all while finishing her medical training, and eventually becoming a mother of two, professional speaker, and now first-time memoir author.

It’s been over a decade since the events of her memoir took place so why, I ask, did Olivia choose to write her memoir now? I’ve been asked this question a few times, she laughs, before revealing it was thanks to Ed Sheeran — specifically, his song Photograph.By chance, it played on the radio, and Olivia found herself overcome with emotion. All I had of that time were photographs, she explains, deciding in that moment to write a memoir of her experience as a love letter to the people who’d stood by her when she couldn’t stand alone, as well as her younger self.

If it hadn’t been for Ed Sheeran, maybe I never would’ve written this book.

Like many young Asian women, Olivia’s childhood was incredibly academically focused, believing the only way to earn love from her teachers and parents was by consistently achieving, a trait she brought into her early adult life as a trainee doctor. Now, older and wiser, she saw an opportunity to tell her younger self — and others in similar positions — that love didn’t need to be earned, it could be freely given and received.

I want to help people feel less alone and give them permission to be strong and human at the same time, especially other Asians. After my accident, I spent a lot of time feeling very alone, but I also found a quiet resilience in myself.

‘Resilient’ is certainly a word to describe Olivia and her journey towards healing, a description she prefers over ‘recovery’.

In medical practice, recovery is often misunderstood and considered linear, when the lived experience is much more complex, she explains.

Having gone through the healthcare system as a medical professional, Olivia admits it was “scary”, making her more empathetic towards patients without that background, an approach she’s carried into her practice now.

“It’s important to meet patients where they are; medicine has to acknowledge the grief that comes with a medical diagnosis.”

Today, Olivia is a rehab specialist clinician with a sub-specialisation in pain, a career path she pursued after returning from a final stint in California in 2013, where she’d been enrolled on-and-off since 2010 in specialist rehab program Project Walk, whom she credits in her book as being instrumental to her healing journey — both physically and spiritually.

In the early days, I was very angry with God and blamed Him for my accident, as well as myself for being in the wrong place, but in the US, I started practising self-compassion for the first time, and compassion towards others came from there. I truly believe God’s way of helping me find my way back to Him was through people.

I ask Olivia what she hopes readers will get out of her book.

That healing can be integration and you can live a full life with scar tissue, she says immediately.

People can have a non-linear healing journey and live through their wounds. It all starts with work on the self — you need to show yourself the love you deserve.

As we’re wrapping up, I make an off-hand comment that Olivia must be so tired of hearing the words resilient and strong. She shakes her head.

I’m a bit different in that sense — I think my story would actually make a great TV movie. I’m waiting for it. 

I have no doubt if anyone can make it happen, it’s Olivia Ong.

Back On My Feet by Olivia Ong (Harper Collins- $34.ninety nine AUD).

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Jackie Lee Morrison is a British-HK writer and editor based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (New Zealand). She is the founder of Marginalia Lit Fest Live, an online international literary festival, and co-host of the PoC-centred Trans-Tasman podcast Served With Rice. When not writing or editing, you’ll find Jackie petting all the pets and eating all the noods. She is represented by Naomi Eisenbeiss at InkWell Management. www.jackieleemorrison.com