If you are a Singaporean who loves a good beauty regime, it is likely you would have heard of homegrown organic skincare brand Kew Organics. The brainchild behind the business, Lily Kew, started her first bespoke facial bar in 2014 and have since developed her own comprehensive range of beauty products and opened three other facial bars.
Lily’s story as a home-grown beauty entrepreneur is inspiring. However, what makes her story truly extraordinary is that she has been married twice – to the same man, once at 32 and again at 42.
During their first marriage, Lily and her husband David were both focused on their careers. Their marriage took a backseat and it led to a lack of communication between the couple. As friction grew and tension mounted over five years of marriage, the couple decided that it is best to get a divorce but continue to remain as friends.
While they were separated, Lily and David rekindled their faith and realised that during their first marriage, they did not truly understand the real meaning of marriage – that it is about sacrificial and unconditional love, that is putting the other’s needs above your own. Four years after their divorce, Lily and David discovered that they still had feelings for each other and was united in marriage once again.
After their second marriage, Lily and David tried to conceive for a baby naturally with the help of traditional Chinese medicine but it was unsuccessful. As time was not on their side due to age, Lily and David decided to try In Vitro fertilization (IVF). The couple conceived their elder child at the first try and then went on to conceive a second one through the same process. Their daughters are now 4 and 7 years old.
With her mum as her role model in life, Lily has learnt to be independent, to be financially prudence, to persevere and to be resilience. “I hope to impart these values to my own daughters as well as to encourage other Mums with my own experiences,” she said.
With the hope that her story could be an inspiration to many more Mums, Lily joined a group of Mum volunteers to launch MUMs for Life – a ground-up movement that celebrates a Mum’s unique identity as a woman and her irreplaceable roles as a daughter, a wife and a mother on Mother’s Day in 2019.
“It is not easy for women to be juggling multiple roles in her career and home front, and many do not have any support. I hope that, through MUMs for Life, I can play a part in supporting other Mums who may be going through different challenges, so that we work together with dads to build stronger families in Singapore.”