A MEMOIR BY MARCIA LI-LIEN
She dismantled a life that looked perfect.
From the outside, it was untouchable. Private flights, yachts, multiple homes, a life curated to look effortless. I lived it fully, the travel, the luxury, the world that opens up when money is no object. And yet, inside, I was coming undone. A life that looked complete and left me utterly lost.
Until I could no longer continue living it.
The story
This is not a story about wealth. This is a story about the courage to choose an uncertain future over a certain unhappiness.
For years, I held it all together, the image, the expectations, the role I was married into. I learned early that my value was measured by how I looked, what I could produce, maintain, and perform. That love was conditional. That belonging meant disappearing.
But somewhere beneath the surface, the questions I had spent years avoiding were finally rising: Who am I really? What do I want? And why does leaving a life that is making me unhappy and invisible feel more frightening than staying in it?
It is a raw, unflinching account of having everything society told me to want and realising that the life that looked perfect from the outside was quietly consuming me from within. It is about the breaking point that becomes a breakthrough. About the quiet courage it takes to choose truth over image, belonging over performance, and authenticity over approval.
This is a book for anyone who has ever felt trapped by their own life. For those who cannot yet imagine themselves beyond the life they are in. Who stay out of fear, even when staying costs them everything. For readers seeking meaning in a world obsessed with appearance. For anyone brave enough to ask: Is this who I really am?
KEY THEMES
Identity vs. expectation
The world money can buy and what it cannot
Living vs. Surviving
Finding yourself on the other side of fear
"You don't become someone new.
You remember who you've always been."
ABOUT MARCIA
Marcia Li-Liën is a debut author whose life story defies easy categorisation. Born in Belgium to a Dutch father and a Chinese mother, she was educated at the European School before moving to the Netherlands at the age of 21. Her career began as a CEO's assistant, but her life took a dramatic turn when she met and married a multi-millionaire, stepping into a world of yachts, Ferraris, and sprawling estates.
Before she ever met her husband, Marcia had already survived something far less visible: a battle with depression that had begun in her mid-teens and lasted into her early thirties. It was only after that chapter closed, in a way she could never have predicted, that she found herself, almost by accident, stepping into a world of extreme wealth. For years, she lived the life of a "rich white woman", a label that erased her mixed heritage and the complexities of her inner world. As her husband's Owner Personal Assistant (OPA), she was a constant presence in his business and personal life, a role that offered immense privilege at the cost of her own autonomy, her friendships, and ultimately her sense of self. Eventually, Marcia left that life behind too.
Today, at 53, she lives a quiet, self-sufficient life in the Dutch countryside with her three dogs Dribbel, Lucy and Phoebe, in a home she largely renovated with her own hands. A self-taught artist, she practises leather tooling, glass engraving, and painting, and creates intricate paper buildings that double as gift boxes. Diary of a Rich White Woman is her first book, a raw and unflinching account of her journey from state disability benefits to extreme wealth, and back to a life entirely her own.
"I used to think freedom was something I had to earn, through strength, success, or survival.
Now I know it was never something to gain, only something to stop resisting."
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From the Book
"She dismantled a life that looked perfect."
"For the first time in what felt like forever, I wasn't trying to survive something. I was building something."
"And when you finally do, even the smallest moments feel infinite. A quiet morning. A cup of tea. The freedom to be yourself."
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