The Safest Place in My Life Was a Costco

[A gentle note before you begin: this piece includes a mention of sexual assault.]

For a long time, my "safe space" was a Costco.

I had left Google and taken a job as a project manager for the Santa Clara County Fire Department. I was in my early twenties. The drive from my home was brutal — 45 minutes with no traffic, 2 hours with traffic, and this was the Bay Area before remote work, so there was always traffic. I'd wait out rush hour by going to Costco. I'd walk the aisles and eat the samples, and sometimes I'd buy a bag of chips to take home.

It's only now, looking back, that I see I wasn't just waiting out traffic. I was sad, burned out, and depressed, and I didn't have words for it yet. Costco was one of the few places I felt safe. It was warm and bright and didn't have too many people, and nobody there needed anything from me. I could just be.

I look back, and I think my love of Costco — that safe space I felt — that's probably where it started.

I didn't know it then, but I was standing in the middle of my future.

The Water I Swam In

I'm the youngest of three, the only girl, with two brothers who are 6 and 9 years older than me. My parents are immigrants, and like a lot of immigrant parents, they held me to very high expectations — the kind that comes from wanting to give your child every possible advantage in a country you've worked hard to build a life in.

When I did well, the message was usually that I could do better. That was the water I swam in. I understand now that it was a form of love and wanting you to be ok. At the time, I mostly felt it as pressure and not being enough. I didn't know it yet, but that feeling — that I had to earn being enough — would follow me into every room I walked into next.

My parents gave me something I'm genuinely grateful for: they let me try everything as a child. Dancing, ice skating, soccer, karate, swimming, basketball, piano — whatever I was curious about, they made room for. I learned later on in life that I'm a somatic, learn-by-doing kind of person, and all that early exposure made me endlessly open. It's maybe part of the reason I've learned I'll never stop reinventing my life.

They also put me on a fast track before I even knew there was a track. I was in private school at 4, forced to memorize things I couldn't understand, crying because it was hard. By sixth grade, I was taking classes at the local community college — piano, art, the kinds of classes that turned into college credits.

At 18, I was sexually assaulted. I didn't have language for it then — so I did what I already knew how to do best: I kept moving. Looking back, that was what started my therapy journey. Not Google. Not living at home. This.

By the time I got to University of California, Davis, half of college was already behind me. I graduated college and started working at Google at the age of 20.

From the outside, I looked like a high achiever. From the inside, I often felt like I was behind — always racing to catch up to brothers a decade older, and carrying something I hadn't told anyone yet.

The Shiny Thing That Cracked

My first job at Google was screening résumés — this was before AI. I talked a lot, and a year in, when the Google X team started hiring for a secret role, someone said, "Claudia talks a lot, she'd be great on that team." That's how I became a brand ambassador for Google Glass, back when it was still under wraps. We wore Glass everywhere and demoed it for all kinds of people — well-funded, surreal, and honestly, pure joy.

And then I got fired.

The whole team was cut — they kept about 10 of us out of 40 — but at 23, it didn't feel like a business decision. It felt like proof that once again, I wasn't enough. The same feeling I felt growing up and at 18.

I was let go on a Friday and by Monday I had a new job — a mentor from my UC Davis days pulled me straight into the fire department role. That's the pattern of my whole 20s: I kept moving, and I assumed that meant I was ok.

Fired Friday, working Monday. Keep moving. Don't stop long enough to feel it. I'd been running like that since I was 18.

So I didn't stop.

Seeking Something Bigger Than Me

Eventually I went back to Google, this time in sales. I was okay at it. I didn't love it. I think that was the moment I finally understood the 9-5 would never fit me. It felt like handcuffs. The same handcuffs and pressure I felt growing up.

So I resigned.

I got into a work-study program down in Big Sur. And then nature intervened. There was an avalanche, the roads closed, and the program shut down. I had already quit Google with no back up plan. I felt hopeless.

Except I don't think it was random. In that open space, I started teaching yoga. I started therapy. I started volunteering. I started exploring different religions. I was seeking something more.

And through a friend I met at a Buddhist temple, I found my way to Karma Kitchen.

Karma Kitchen is a restaurant run by volunteers where, at the end of your meal, the bill comes to zero. It's a pay-it-forward generosity experiment — you're invited to pay it forward for someone after you.

I loved it. I kept going back.

From there I found Awakin Circle, where I learned to sit in silence, sit with myself, and sit in a shared space. For someone who couldn't stop moving, and felt like she was a failure if she did, it was one of the hardest things I've ever done.

"You're Always Here — Do Something"

Then COVID hit, and I couldn't teach yoga the way I liked. Around then, I had found a mentor who found out I was a classically-trained pianist and asked why I didn't teach piano. I told her I had when I was 18, but stopped when I went to college.

In August of 2022, I re-opened Claudia's Music Studio, where I now teach 10 students from the ages of 6-70.

That winter, while my students were all on break, and I found myself going to Costco 4-6 times a week — to the point that I'd gotten to know the staff. One of the managers asked, "Claudia, you're always here — why don't you do something?" I said, "Do what?".

That night, scrolling social media, I came across my favorite comedian, Anjelah Johnson: "I'm approaching the age where I'm going to start getting my clothes the same place I get my groceries. Say I won't. You will catch me at Costco."

I took that audio and filmed myself trying on clothes at Costco. I kept trying things on, and from there Costco Claudia was born.

The Moms I Never Had

When Costco Claudia started growing, I noticed the people on the other side of the screen were showing up for me in ways I'd never felt before. In my earlier days, I shared everything — my mental health struggles, my PMDD, my breakups. I'd post the Costco chips I was eating because I was sad about a breakup, and people would write in asking who broke my heart.

Breakups had always been my trigger — tangled up with a sexual assault at 18 I'd never told anyone, quietly healing in therapy all these years. I didn't expect how healing it would be to have thousands of strangers just want me happy. They didn't know it then, and still don't — but they weren't just healing a breakup. They were reaching all the way back, gently, to a part of me that had been alone for a very long time. And for a moment, she wasn't.

Thousands of them. Kind, protective, funny. I used to say it's like all the moms I never had, and there are ten thousand of them — showing up not because they had to, but because they wanted to. I still respond to every single message. Every DM.

People send me photos of their dogs and their kids; one woman in Idaho even offered to set me up with her son when I was going through my breakup. I have real conversations with strangers who aren't strangers anymore — who feel, some days, more like family than strangers ever should. They were there for me during some of my hardest times. And as someone who knows exactly what it feels like to feel alone, it meant the world. So my DMs stay open. Always. That's the least I can do for the people who helped heal a part of me I didn't even know needed healing.

I Am What I Am, And It's Quite Nice

I couldn't have done any of this without crediting my parents for the ground I've stood on. My dad was an insurance agent and financial advisor, and my mom, a software engineer. Alongside the high standards, they gave me a real foundation — how to save, how to budget, how to invest. Living at home for years after college, I didn't have to think about rent while I figured myself out, and that stability is what allowed me to chase the work I love.

There's a CNBC article about me with a headline that says I saved money living at home for 12 years and I don't regret it. People love that headline, and it's mostly true. But when I asked them to change it, they said no. To me, life isn't that black and white. I saved money, I built freedom AND it also came at a hidden cost I'm still working through in therapy 10 years later. Both are real.

What that CNBC piece couldn't capture is that the therapy was never really about money or independence. It went back to being 18, to something I carried alone for a long time before I had words for it. And in the strangest, most unexpected way, some of the deepest healing has come from my Costco community, thousands of strangers online who just wanted me to be happy, who had no idea they were healing a part of me I never told anyone.

Most days I'm ok. There are nights, off camera, when I'm a little sad. I've stopped thinking that means something is wrong with me. I realize I am just... human.

If you're standing in your own version of the unknown right now — not sure what your purpose is, feeling foreign to yourself, waiting out some traffic in your life — I don't have a tidy answer for you. What I've learned is that life is always changing. The real work is building resilience inside yourself — to keep going, to keep reinventing yourself, and to keep giving yourself the grace you may not have been handed.

Looking back, the drive my parents gave me is the same drive that helped me build the life I live today. They pushed because they wanted me to have everything. In many ways, I do.

But something was also taken from me, at 18, without my consent — and for a long time, I carried that alone, along with a shame and self-blame that was never mine to carry. What I had to teach myself, what I made mine, is that being enough was never something anyone could take. Only something I had to learn to give myself.

If you've been through something like this — whatever "this" looks like for you — I want you to know: it wasn't your fault. You don't owe anyone your story, and there's no timeline for healing. But whenever you're ready — even quietly, even just to yourself — you deserve that grace too.

I didn't find that grace by climbing higher. I found it in a Costco warehouse, trying on clothes I never planned to buy. I found it responding to online DMs to random strangers who became family. I found it in piano lessons with 6 and 70 year olds, in silence at Awakin Circle, in being honest here even when my eyes are blurry from writing this. I found it by being exactly who I already was. And somehow, people have loved me for it. Because I've learned to love myself.

That's what I want you to know, today, more than anything else I've shared here.

You are enough. You are not alone. And my DMs are always open.