How do you survive when the two most important men in your life die at a tragically young age? The daughter of martial arts hero, Bruce Lee, describes what kept her going – and how she is preserving the family legacy
Shannon Lee is cheerfully recounting the time she went to a darkness retreat in Oregon. For four days, she stayed in an underground cabin in the woods, so dark she couldn’t see her own hands. Most people would find this terrifying. But for Lee, it was liberating, she says. “All you have are your thoughts and feelings, and they start to bubble up. So you get to look at a lot of things and it can be uncomfortable. I came out very energised.”
The 54-year-old daughter of Hong Kong American martial arts icon Bruce Lee has always been a reflective soul. Her father’s death, when she was four and he was 32, and then the death 20 years later of her older brother, Brandon, aged 28, have made her that way. Talking over a video call from her office in Los Angeles, she describes herself as a “seeker”, who has always been interested in different paths to “healing”. She was inspired by her father, who was a philosopher at heart and a prodigious journaler, constantly writing down his thoughts and feelings about life and work in an ever-growing stack of notebooks.
