A MEMOIR BY MARCIA LI-LIËN
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 of fear
"You don't become someone new.
You remember who you've always been."
ABOUT MARCIA
Marcia Li-Liën is a writer and thinker who lived the life almost everyone wants and is chasing. She lived it fully, lost herself inside it, and found the courage to walk away. She realised that having it all was not the same as living happily and truthfully.
She married into extraordinary wealth, entering a world built on image, wealth, and expectation. For thirteen years, she lived within that world, one of privilege and endless possibility. But the life that looked extraordinary from the outside came with a cost she had not anticipated: a relationship that left her feeling invisible, despite everything surrounding her. Through years of doubt, fear, and the growing realisation that something had to change, she found the courage to leave and build a life that felt real and truly hers. She now lives in the Netherlands with her dogs, surrounded by the quiet beauty of a life stripped of illusion.
Diary of a Rich White Woman is her debut memoir. It's an invitation to anyone ready to choose an uncertain future over a certain unhappiness.
"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."
Get Your Copy
Available in hardcover, paperback, and Ebook.
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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