February 11, 2025
Pushing Through Your Obstacles:
Self-Leadership Strategies to Empower Your Life and Achieve Your Dreams
Julie Chiya
Aviva Publishing (2025)
ISBN: 978-1-63618-361-9
New Teaching Memoir Explores How to Overcome Obstacles
Julie Chiya has not had an easy life, but in her new book Pushing Through Your Obstacles: Self-Leadership Strategies to Empower Your Life and Achieve Your Dreams, she reveals how she overcame all the obstacles others might use as excuses to keep them from making positive changes in their lives and succeeding.
Designed as both a memoir and a personal development book, Pushing Through Your Obstacles is divided into twenty-four chapters that chronicle Julie’s life from her early childhood to the present when, at age thirty-one, she has now become an educational administrator, wife, mother, homeowner, and published author. Each chapter ends with a discussion of what she learned from the life experiences she shares, plus tips for the reader when handling similar situations, and exercise questions so the reader can reflect upon what they learned in the chapter and apply it to their own life.
Julie is truly someone who doesn’t let problems stand in her way. And problems began in her childhood. She begins the book by stating, “Looking back at my beginnings, I recognized how deeply my mother loved me.” She goes on to describe life with her single mother, brother, and grandmother. She was happy and loved and didn’t even realize they were poor. She says of her mom, “She was my favorite person in the world. Life with her felt complete and safe. Nothing could come between us, and nothing could change.”
Things did change, however. First they got better. Her mom got a better job and they got their own place, separate from her grandmother. But then her mom met the wrong person at work, a person who was violent and abusive and introduced her mom to a life-altering drug. Before she knew it, Julie found herself living in shelters with her mother, her mother was stealing money from her, and she had to live in a foster home.
Julie’s love for her mother didn’t lessen, but it became marked by anger and confusion. She states, “The memories of my mother stayed with me, but as I understood more, I got angry about the poor choices she made that put me in danger and changed my life. I didn’t get over being mad at her until years after she died.”
While her mother’s life did not improve, Julie became determined to make her life better. For a while she went to live with her father, whom she did not know until she was a teenager, but that didn’t work out. Fortunately, her brother was considerably older than her and able to help her until she could stand on her own. She also had an uncle who supported her.
Julie was determined to find a better life. She went to college, first earning an associate degree while working constantly at service jobs to make ends meet. Eventually, she entered an education program, but by that point, she had also had a child, only to be abandoned by the child’s father. She had to put her son in daycare while she was a student teacher. In time, to make ends meet, she quit teaching and became a hostess at a nightclub. In two nights, she could make more than what she made in a week teaching, but the late hours and the clientele with their drama and addictions began to wear on her, so she decided to return to teaching.
Today, Julie is a school administrator. And at thirty-one, she has gained a ton of wisdom. While the story of her success is impressive, so also is the advice and understanding she offers to readers. She discusses how her research into early childhood development has made her realize a child’s success is dependent on how much love they receive by the time they are eight. She attributes much of her success to the love she received in her early years before her mom’s troubles began.
She has also learned some very hard truths. As a teenager, Julie spent summers sitting in shelters for battered women and children while other kids played sports, and she found herself asking, “What did I do to deserve this?” At first, she blamed herself for how her life was, but she realized she had no control over it at that time. She learned how to gain control when she was older.
She also learned that her mother, whom she had loved and trusted the most, could no longer be trusted. She accepted that she had to protect herself. Even harder, she realized she could not help her mother because her mother was not willing to change.
Having known a chaotic childhood, Julie recommends giving children a sense of control. We can do that by allowing them to make choices, even something as simple as which socks to wear or which story to read at bedtime. At the same time, Julie has learned not to be controlling herself. She realizes that controlling behavior is a coping strategy children develop when they grow up in a dysfunctional family environment. Unfortunately, that behavior can have detrimental effects on our relationships when we get older. She also challenges us to be understanding toward people who are controlling because they likely had difficult childhoods of their own.
Today, Julie firmly believes her focus on education and her willingness to take a chance on new opportunities has helped her break the cycle of generational poverty in her family. And she’s not done yet. She has big plans for the future, from earning a doctorate to owning rental properties.
Anyone who is struggling needs to read Pushing Through Your Obstacles. As I read, I couldn’t believe everything Julie went through, and I also found myself cheering her on at the end. She is a true example that the American Dream works with a little perseverance and making the right choices. I would recommend this book especially for high school students—and really anyone—who find themselves in difficult life situations because it will give them hope that a better future can be found.
For more information about Julie Chiya and Pushing Through Your Obstacles, visit www.PushingThroughYourObstacles.com.
— Tyler R. Tichelaar, PhD and award-winning author of The Mysteries of Marquette
