Practically speaking, birthdays should really be a celebration of the person who gave birth rather than the one who resisted all attempts at being forcibly expelled (and arguably the least helpful participant in the whole affair).

Of course, there was a time when I still loved birthdays, back when they still held the thrill of anticipation—one that compounded year after year as I got another step closer to the ubiquitous world of grown-ups, which to me was defined by getting to wear lipstick instead of lip gloss, being allowed to shave the six leg hairs I had, getting more than an hour of Internet time a day, and kissing with tongue (or rather, getting kissed at all). But the best part of birthdays was arguably the first moment of the morning: when your eyes fluttered open and you were filled with a smug sense of satisfaction realizing that, simply by waking up, you were now an older, and therefore better, version of yourself.

That was how my 14th birthday began. Although fourteen was objectively an insignificant number—thirteen was over and Sweet Sixteen still two years away—I still woke up with the sense that on this day, something great awaited me.

I sat down to breakfast with my parents. Good morning. Good morning. They nodded politely at me. Strange. I ate my breakfast, glancing up every so often to try and catch their eye—Aren’t you forgetting something?

It should be stated now that I am an only child. And only children, by virtue of being only children, are used to being ignored, which I know contradicts popular opinion that we are spoiled and showered with attention. The reality is that our parents quickly tire of being our companions, and with no one else our age to talk or play with, we learn to entertain ourselves. This most often looks like silent solo activities such as drawing or reading, but also manifests as pretend play where we either hop back and forth to act out all the characters, or carry out the scene as if everyone else is invisible. In either case, to the untrained eye, both closely resemble a psychotic episode.

All this to say, I’d long since become white noise to my parents, and thus, they were completely oblivious to the long, dramatic looks I cast their way. Sigh. Just another day in the life of an attention-starved only child seeking a crumb of interest from her austere Korean immigrant parents. Resentment bubbled up inside me. Until it clicked. Aha! This was all part of an elaborate scheme—like that episode of I Love Lucy where everyone drives her to the brink of insanity by pretending they’ve forgotten her birthday. I knew how the episode ended: a blast of confetti and cake in the eleventh hour with everyone yelling, “Did you really think we’d forget?!”

I was in on the secret now, so I held my tongue, knowing it would require patience on my part to allow the surprise to unfold as planned. My dad left for work. My mom and I ate lunch. I read the happy birthday comments on my Myspace. The afternoon passed. Evening came. We ate dinner.

I was genuinely impressed. How much longer were they going to commit to the bit?

I changed for bed, brushed my teeth. I said good night and climbed the stairs to my room as slowly as I could to give them time to call me back—Wait a second, Haley! Come look at this!

I slipped under the covers and waited, listening for the sounds of shushing and footsteps scuffling as they took out the cake and lit the candles. Nothing. My confusion morphed from disbelief into anger into indignance, until reality finally dawned on me. They had really, truly, actually forgotten.

I threw back the covers and stomped back downstairs to my parents watching TV in the living room, tears in my eyes. “Don’t you know what day it is today?”

I’m still torn on how upset one should be allowed to be about this. On the one hand, it’s a birthday. On the other hand, it’s a birthday. And with only one child, my parents had one date—one!—to memorize. I don’t think it’s a leap to conclude this incident was the origin of the birthday-related anxieties that would plague me for the next twenty years. My mother must feel some deeply buried guilt for this too because whenever I bring it up, she responds by telling me I talk too much and to leave her alone. Classic!

But what my mother doesn’t know is that that night, I curled into a ball and cried myself to sleep. What a fool I was! How laughable that I’d imagined the most ideal and absurd scenario playing out when reality couldn’t have been further. And the worst part was all this pain had been preventable. Hoping, wishing, wanting—these were the culprits. So in the dark, clutching my tear-stained pillow, I made a promise to myself: Never hope for anything. If you don’t expect anything, you can never be disappointed.

Call it the death of my innocence or maybe just puberty, but something hardened inside of me that night and the world would never look the same to me again. My life had split in two: B.C. and A.D.—Before Crisis and After Disappointment.

I must pause here to state if it wasn’t already apparent, that fabulous and independent as we are, only children are also prone to a touch of melodrama. Thus, true to my nature, for the next decade of my life, I returned often to this night. After every unrequited love, every rejection, every disappointment, every perceived failure, I remembered the promise I made under the covers, and it taunted me. See? When will you finally learn?

So I decided I would. I folded up my hopes and dreams and tucked them closer in to myself. I learned to want less, ask for less, expect less. And for awhile, it seemed to work. The lows weren’t as low because I was always prepared for them (or at least that’s what I convinced myself). Anything good that happened beyond my self-imposed limitations became truly pleasant and unexpected—the cherry on an invisible sundae. But above all, it made me grateful. Grateful to be noticed, grateful to be chosen, grateful to be included—because I knew it had to be an err in judgment, an oversight no doubt, and best to keep my head down and my presence small in case anyone wised up and realized their mistake.

On its head, being grateful sounds like a good thing. But there’s a subtle difference between gratitude and being grateful. Gratitude is rooted in a feeling of abundance—a conscious recognition that there is much to be thankful for, no matter the circumstance. Being grateful, on the other hand, is a sentiment borne of scarcity. It’s the receiving end of a half-assed apology or an afterthought invite or someone you love’s bare minimum. It’s saying “it’s okay” when it isn’t and denying what you’re deserving of.

I understand now, 21 birthdays later, this is a terrible way to live. But it took me a long time to figure this out and so I wish I could slide under the covers next to my fourteen-year-old self that night and tell her the awful truth: that she’d feel disappointment like this again, a thousand times more, only worse, much, much worse, but that she shouldn’t try and stop it or feel it any less, because this feeling, and the ability to feel it, was the stuff that life was made of. That the same mechanism that allowed her to feel hurt was the same one that let her feel the good. There were no cheat codes. You didn’t get to feel one end of the spectrum without the other, and if you tried to mute the bad you’d muffle the good too.

I wanted to tell her it wasn’t silly or stupid at all for her to dream (even the most ridiculous ones that involved an unsentimental family of 2 throwing a surprise birthday party at midnight). That the engine behind silly little dreams was the same engine that powered the big serious ones. That one day, most people would forget that they could dream and wish that they still could. That she might forget too for a little bit, but that she could start again, any day, any time she wanted—and that she would.

However, I think this might be a lot for fourteen-year-old me to hear in the middle of the night from a strange and mysterious (but strikingly beautiful) woman appearing in her bed, so I’d probably just keep it simple, light a candle on a cupcake and tell her: Make a wish.

When I try to pinpoint where this love first originated, I think of the apartment I grew up in. My mother had 4x6 index cards labeled in thick black Sharpie taped to all the walls and furniture: 책상 / desk. 의자 / chair. 침대 / bed. What is this?, she would point and ask. What is that? One object, seen two different ways, and thus, inside that little apartment, my world expanded, the simple act of naming it making it twice as big.

But as it turns out, there was another language I learned during that time, one whose existence I never saw worthy of acknowledging until recently, when I stumbled across this essay by Amy Tan. Titled “Mother Tongue,” in it, Tan explores two forms of English: the fluent, academic English she learned in school, and the simple, shortened version she used with her Chinese mother. Though I’d never distinguished between them as separate ‘Englishes,’ I immediately recognized both in my own life.

The first time I remember using the latter was in my early twenties. I was traveling southeast Asia with my boyfriend at the time, an Italian-American. We were in Bangkok, at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant bustling with locals.

“Excuse me,” he said, beckoning politely. “Would you by chance be able to bring us an extra plate for sharing?”

The waitress looked at him blankly, her head cocked. He tried again, and received the same response.

Finally I intervened. “Small plate for share!” I smiled widely and cupped my hands.

“Ah!” she nodded and walked off.

“You’re using too many words,” I said to him. “Just say the most important ones.”

He scoffed. “If I did that, it’d be racist.”

This was probably true, as the few times I’d heard it used by a native English speaker were to either mock or patronize non-native English speakers. Historically, westerners have called this “broken English,” but this was not a term I learned until later in life. For me, it was simply the English I grew up with—the English my mother spoke. Should anyone have asked, I myself would have called it efficient over broken, for my mother’s English contained no filler words, no helping verbs, no ‘maybes’ or ‘if you coulds’. Just the skeleton of speech, stripped down to its most essential parts.

Though I’d heard this English growing up, it was not one I ever spoke. I was ashamed of this English. I cringed when my mother used it at the grocery store or with my schoolteachers. I shushed her in public and rolled my eyes when she made a more egregious grammatical mistake. Given all this, it was ironic to me that, decades later, this same English would fall so easily out of my own mouth in a moment of convenience.

As Tan wrote:

My mother’s “limited” English limited my perception of her. I believed that her English reflected the quality of what she had to say. That is, because she expressed them imperfectly her thoughts were imperfect. And I had plenty of empirical evidence to support me: the fact that people in department stores, at banks, and at restaurants did not take her seriously, did not give her good service, pretended not to understand her, or even acted as if they did not hear her.

Even as a young girl, I understood the power of my own English. I saw how it smoothed suspicious brows while hers raised them; the way help came more willingly when it was me who asked instead of her. I could never tell how my mother felt about this. She seemed wholly unaffected by people’s reactions, and in fact seemed not to notice it at all.

It never occurred to me that I might be wrong.

I was thirteen, maybe fourteen, still settling into my new identity as a teenager. I had reluctantly accompanied my mom to the mall, being sure to maintain a distance of at least two clothing racks between us while also keeping an eye out for anyone from school who might recognize me. She approached the register while I twirled a sunglass tower a few steps away.

“I need make return,” I heard her say. “It pass 30 day. But last time I come. They say return okay.”

“What?” I could sense the undercurrent of hostility in the saleswoman’s voice.

My mother unfolded the receipt to show her and repeated herself.

The woman shook her head. “I don’t know what you want. The return window is over.”

I felt my mother look at me, and I turned away, pretending to be engrossed in a pair of oversized frames.

“Haley-ya,” she said in Korean. “You explain.”

Scarlet crept up my neck. If I didn’t respond, I could maintain plausible deniability that we were strangers, despite being the only two Asians in the entire department store. I was desperate to not have to claim her ugly English as my own. But she called my name again, sharper this time. I conceded.

“The salesperson last time said if we came after 30 days you could exchange it for store credit,” I muttered. I looked apologetically at the woman, hoping to convey what I couldn’t say out loud: I’m not like her. I’m one of you.

She processed the exchange. We left.

On the car ride home, I expected my mother to yell at me, but she just stared ahead at the road in silence. Assuming she wasn’t that bothered by the interaction after all, I escaped to my room, grateful for the free pass. But after an hour or so, I noticed that the house, which usually hummed with the sounds of my mother cooking in the kitchen or her slippers padding up and down the stairs, was eerily silent.

“Umma?” I called cautiously, approaching her bedroom door. No answer. I pressed my ear against it and knocked again. Maybe she couldn’t hear me. I let myself in and glanced around. She wasn’t there, or in the adjoining bathroom. The only place left she could be was the small walk-in closet in the back.

Oh, my god. I stopped short when I saw her—slumped over on the floor, a heap of limbs and tears. Was she sick? Should I call an ambulance?

But she made no cry for help, nor gave any indication she’d even noticed me. I grew uneasy, unsure of what to do as the seconds ticked by on the clock above the door. One minute. Then another. Finally she looked up at me with red, wild eyes.

“In a world where everyone looks down on me,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Do I deserve a daughter who looks down on me, too?”

When I was a teacher, there was a game I played with my fourth graders at the start of the school year. One person would come up and squeeze some toothpaste onto a paper towel. Then I’d ask if anyone thought they could get all the toothpaste back in. One by one, they would all try, their fingers getting fresh and sticky in the process, but in the end, they all gave up, declaring it impossible.

“Our words and actions work the same way,” I said, holding up the tube, its mouth smeared with their failed attempts. “Once they come out, we can’t put them back in.” We could only try, as they had, to repair the damage that had been done.

It was my mother I pictured when I said this. That day standing over her was the first time I understood my capacity to hurt someone I loved—that my actions alone could bring my fierce, infallible mother to her knees and expose her as merely human. It frightened me to my core. Never again, I vowed, would I make her feel like this. And never again would I wield my perfect English only on my own behalf.

For it was my mother who made my perfect English possible. Since I was seven, she’d made me write a journal entry every night, and although she couldn’t check it for grammar or mechanics, she monitored my penmanship and word count. She made me keep a reading log, in which every hundred books I read she rewarded me with five brand new Barnes & Noble books instead of checking them out from the library. And every summer, while the neighborhood kids played outside, I had to finish 10 pages from the workbooks she’d bought from the teacher supply store before I could join them.

I could chalk it up to her simply being a tiger mom, but I think it goes much deeper than that. My mother, as it turns out, had been a Korean Literature major, a strange parallel to my own eventual English Literature degree. Because of this, I imagine she understood more than most the power of language as a means to agency, dignity, and respect—the very things she had lost immigrating to America, where her English had to work twice as hard to regain them. Perhaps in the face of that loss, she intended for me to never face a similar one.

So yes, some may call her English broken. Others call it limited. I myself called it efficient. But when I think about my mother’s English—what it has overcome, what it has accomplished—none of these words convey the truth of what it is capable of.

Is there a word that can? I’ve struggled for many months trying to find the perfect one—a word that is precise and poignant and powerful enough to honor all that it’s endured. It frustrates me, that for all my love of words, and the magic of finding the right ones, in this instance, it eludes me. Yet it’s only now, almost a year after I first began writing this, that I finally understand why it’s been such an impossible task: It is not my mother’s English I’ve been trying to describe at all. It is her love.

Maybe this then, is a magic of its own kind—of encountering something so significant in this lifetime that no words, in any language, can explain it.

I loved the way my pink tights hugged me closer into myself and the wraparound skirt fell like a tulip over my leg with one thigh peeking out. I loved how delicate my satin slippers looked held in my hands, and even more so on my pointed feet.

Plie, plie, grand plie. We moved obediently to the beat of Madame’s rhythmic tapping in an almost militaristic uniformity, an angelic army in leotards and hair slicked back in buns. When I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror, I liked who I saw—not the black-haired girl who always stuck out like a sore thumb, but for once, the perfect picture of grace and anonymity.

One day, I would leap and jump and twirl on a stage just like in my favorite book, Nina, Nina Ballerina.

But after a while, my mother pulled me out. She said it was because she couldn’t give me rides anymore, but somehow I knew the real reason: the slippers, the outfits, the recital fees—some dreams came with a price tag we couldn’t afford.

When I was eleven, I thought I would go to Juilliard.

Ms. Julita was a former Polish concert pianist whom I saw twice a week—Tuesdays for practice and Thursdays for music theory. I was a clumsy child, always bruised and bumping into things, but my fingers possessed a grace all their own, dancing across the keys to Handel, Chopin, Mozart, and Mendelssohn. I could feel Ms. Julita was grooming me for greatness, and I relished being one of her best. But as the demands of my schoolwork increased and my time for practice decreased, I saw the dark side of my teacher’s devotion—a pressure so intense it triggered panic attacks when I knew I hadn’t practiced sufficiently.

I loved piano, but I no longer loved the way it made me feel, so I gave up my classical training and learned instead with sweet Ms. Dana down the street, who favored show tunes over Schubert and never, ever raised her voice at me.

When I was thirteen, I wanted to be an artist.

My bookshelves were lined with sketchbooks filled cover to cover with figure drawings and anime and fashion illustrations. Art was my favorite class, and so by extension, Ms. Penny my favorite teacher. But Ms. Penny was extraordinary in her own right—she was one of those people you smelled before you saw, a cloud of sandalwood perfume and turpentine, with a big contagious laugh that followed close behind. At art shows, my paintings started coming home with blue ribbons stuck onto the corners—real-life, satin proof that something I loved doing could also love me back.

But when I got to high school, none of the career guides recommended ‘artist’ or ‘painter’ as a viable career. I was encouraged to make the practical decision to devote my time and energy instead to the sort of extracurriculars admissions officers found objectively impressive: student council, varsity tennis, editor of the school newspaper. So I did, while my tackle box of oil paints sat in the garage collecting dust.

When I was nineteen, I thought I would be a writer.

It was the only other thing I’d enjoyed in school, while anything related to science or math immediately triggered vertigo. The summer after my sophomore year, I cold called a column writer at Time and asked if he would meet with me. Networking, my advisor had said to me, is essential. I drove the three and a half hours to his office in D.C., my old essays in tow. He read all of them in front of me and said solemnly, “You have voice and style, which are the hardest things to teach. Keep practicing.”

But as graduation loomed closer, I found I had more urgent things to do instead, like perseverate on the average starting salaries of English majors, and whether a liberal arts degree from a science & architecture school could possibly compete with graduates of the best writing programs in the country.

And so becoming a writer, I accepted, was not a realistic path for me.

—

Many years later, after I’d moved to New York City and become a teacher, the man I was dating at the time asked me if I would ever move to L.A. with him for this or that career reasons. I’d told him it was unlikely, that I didn’t see myself leaving the city, that I loved it here. This frustrated him—But you don’t have a real reason to stay here, he pressed. It’s not like you have your own dreams.

He didn’t mean it like it sounded, I know, but it was the meanest thing I could remember someone saying to me. I do too have my own dreams, I retorted back, and hated how childish and pleading my voice came out, as though I was begging to be believed. I opened my mouth to rattle off the many dreams I did in fact have—then closed it again when I realized he was right.

His words echoed in my head long after we broke up.

I did have dreams, I did! What had happened to them?

Had they dried up? Festered? Stunk like rotten meat? No, it was much less dramatic than all that. I had simply reasoned them away. At every juncture, I formed a different rationale for why my dreams could be deferred: I’m too poor. I don’t have time. I’m not good enough. I don’t have what it takes.

Over time, I convinced myself that only a small, special class of people were allowed permission to be creative: those with means and time and god-given talent—anointed ones who emerged from the womb wielding a paintbrush or who wailed in perfect pitch—and too bad, so sad for the rest of us who had to swallow our envy and soldier on in favor of more practical pursuits. I learned to call creativity by new names to make myself feel better about my loss: Silly. Indulgent. Impractical. Unreasonable.

I owe the nineteen and thirteen and eleven and eight year-old versions of myself—who at every age, longed to be creative—an apology for this.

I am thirty-four now and conscious of how long I have made them wait. Time is the most finite resource that we have, and mine is running out. I have no more time to make excuses, no more time to consider all the ways that I may fail, no more time to entertain fears that I’m not good enough, or that it won’t lead to a career or that it will all have been a waste.

The only fear I allow myself is the fear of regret—of looking back one day and saying, What if?

I’m thirty-four now and I’m giving myself the gift of being who I’ve always longed to be, only without the pressure I always thought was a requirement, a rite of passage in order to prove myself worthy of doing what I loved to do. This version of me can tell finally tell me what I’ve been waiting all my life to hear: that simply doing it is enough.

I’m not sure what I expected—maybe that I would feel especially seen, or the same sense of cultural camaraderie I get from watching Korean films. But instead, it all fell kind of flat for me. I read three (currently working my way through a fourth), and hoped to feel the catharsis and intimacy that usually comes with finishing a book, after inhabiting another person’s soul and seeing the world through their eyes. But instead, I felt a strange detachment, as though I’d only watched it all happen from afar.

Was it just that I didn’t connect with the characters? The story? Or was there something about the English translation that didn’t click? At various points while reading, I felt too far removed from the author’s intended sentiments and found myself translating certain sentences back into Korean. It had a very satisfying effect, like putting the wrong shoes back onto the right feet—Ah, yes. That’s what you meant. In the past too, I’ve often noted how, despite being my second language, I seem to feel some emotions more deeply in Korean: like how my heart aches watching early 2000s K-dramas; or the way Korean ballads can make me weep; or how my mother’s letters move me in a way that their English translations do not.

It was almost as if a black hole existed between the two languages, and in moving from one into the other, certain sentiments inevitably got swallowed up and lost, no matter how perfect or precise the translation. Did Russians feel the same reading Anna Karenina in English, or Spanish speakers reading Don Quixote? Or was I just being needlessly pedantic?

Perhaps serendipitously, a few weeks later I started The Idiot by Elif Batuman—a slice-of-life story that follows a Turkish-American girl named Selin through her freshman year at Harvard. I was intrigued and pleasantly surprised to find that many of her observations were filtered through a lens of language and linguistics, which were highly relevant to my own most recent musings.

In one of her classes, Selin learns about two common schools of thought regarding language and perception: One, that perception and expression are synonymous, and speech is a product of our thoughts—think first and the words follow. The other, known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, suggests the inverse: that language shapes thought and our speech dictates how we perceive and categorize the world based on our linguistic structure.

But critics argue that this theory overstates language’s power, and that evidence shows humans think, reason, and perceive independently of language.

Selin says this:

We learned that it was wrong. […]

In my heart, I knew that Whorf was right. I knew I thought differently in Turkish and in English—not because thought and language were the same, but because different languages forced you to think about different things. Turkish, for example, had a suffix, miş, that you put on verbs to report anything you didn’t witness personally. You were always stating your degree of subjectivity. You were always thinking about it, every time you opened your mouth.

I agree wholeheartedly with Selin.

Similar to the function of the Turkish miş, Korean adds the suffix -습니다 (seub-ni-da) or-요 (yo) to sentences as a signal of respect. And older friends or siblings are called unni (female to female), oppa (female to male), noona (male to female), or hyung (male to male). Yet the greeting Ahn-young (informal) and ahn-young ha sae yo (formal) still both translate to “Hello.” Hyung becomes “brother” without context. The words themselves are translated, but the respect is not.

What most people also miss is the way these differences affect the way we think. Any time I say unni or oppa, I am reminded of our relationship—that they are older and wiser; I am younger and more naive. I act differently too. I become more childlike, more submissive in their presence because I have the sense that I am safe and cared for. But when it’s me in the role of noona or unni, I become the responsible one: I sit a little taller; I’m more aware of my surroundings; I insist on covering the check.

Within families, we replace names with titles. While in English you call Uncle Joe or Aunt Debbie, Koreans use a different title for each aunt and uncle depending on their birth order, and whether they fall on the maternal or paternal side. In the absence of individual names, one’s identity can only be recovered within the family structure. Every time we call for someone or are called, we must locate ourselves in relation to one another—to consider who we are to them, and who they are to us.

Without each other, we do not exist.

How then, can we claim that Whorf is wrong? That language doesn’t affect the way we process reality?

W. E. B. Du Bois coined the phrase “double consciousness” to describe the effect of racism on Black Americans’ psyches—the fragmented identity caused by seeing oneself through both one’s own eyes and through the eyes of a prejudiced society. As an Asian-American I have certainly experienced a version of this too, but I think about how the idea of a double consciousness can also be applied externally—not just as a perspective of self, but outside of self. Because not only do I see myself through two competing, often hostile lenses, I also learned to navigate the world through two different lenses—one set of rules and way of being amongst Koreans, and another with everybody else. The American consciousness pushes me to be loud and confident and carefree and says things like “Do what you want! Who cares! Let people live!” while my Korean consciousness is instinctively bowing and apologizing and judging people for talking too loudly on the subway.

In Korean, there’s a concept called 눈치 (noonchi), a phrase which (both fittingly and ironically) has no English equivalent, but most closely translates to “situational/social awareness.” 눈치 is what makes Koreans leap out of their seats to accommodate others before having to be asked, or covertly pay the bill for everyone before the meal even arrives. Noonchi is the keen ability to anticipate and act without having to be told or asked. It is an essential quality of a Korean consciousness, but also a mentally and emotionally laborious one—for the failure to notice, anticipate, and act effectively is seen as a marker of bad character. Over time though, I’ve learned to let go of the pressure to act too much on it in American contexts, because when no one else knows is acting on 눈치, the burden of labor falls disproportionately on you.

I feel grateful that I have the latitude to make that choice—to opt for the individualistic lens of an American upbringing, and let go of the conscientiousness of a Korean one as it suits me. From our rules around language to the way we interact with each other, having to be constantly and continuously aware of your surroundings, your status, your existence, is an exhausting way to live. Might this not be partially why suffering and sacrifice are so normalized (and simultaneously glorified) in Korean culture?

Consider too that South Korea has one of the highest suicide rates in the world (20.6 per 100,000 people), nearly double that of the United States. There are a number of contributing factors to this statistic, including extreme academic competition and pressure, stigma around mental health care, and social isolation. Yet I can’t help but wonder if this is also, in part, the cumulative cost of a society whose consciousness is never allowed to rest.

I’m not really sure how I got from reviewing Korean books to here, but all of it is fascinating to me: language and its limitations; the role it plays on our thoughts and perceptions; the parts of ourselves it lets us access. I’m not completely sure what it means to live between two languages, or how to reconcile the distance between them. But after all of this long-winded reflection, I think I may have been too harsh in my initial critique—maybe it’s unfair of me to expect English to do for me the same thing that Korean does. After all, can you really ask the words of one language to carry the heart and soul of another?

Maybe it’s more beautiful, romantic even, to know that every language is holding onto a little bit of its own mystery; that she whispers certain secrets only in the ears of those who know her in her original form.

“If you could go back in time and redo anything,” I asked my mom, “What would it be?”

I had an idea of how she might respond. Not leaving Korea. Staying with her father during the last years of his cancer diagnosis. Not marrying my father, who she divorced shortly after I was born.

But her answer surprised me. she said it would be how she raised me.

Like most immigrant parents, my mother was hellbent on making sure I had everything she didn’t: freedom, choice, opportunity. Yet the irony of it all was she demanded absolute obedience from me in return. I remember her punishments more vividly than anything else from my childhood—standing against the wall, my arms quivering high above my head; or bent over the bathtub, the sparkly baton I played pretend with rising and falling against my bottom. Each time, I bit back tears, knowing what she would say if I dared to let them fall: Why do you deserve to cry?

But my mother was no monster. She could be tender too, though when she expressed herself, it wasn’t with words but with food: the biggest piece of galbi, the most tender pork rib in the batch. Eat the pretty ones, she’d say, leaving the misshapen burnt pieces for herself.

She spoke in code like this often: the extra second she lingered in the doorway after saying good night; the plate of freshly cut pears guarded by saran wrap in the mornings when I came downstairs; or the crumpled bill she slipped in my pocket on my way out the door.

As a child, I didn’t have the patience to interpret the nuances of this language. I wanted the straightforward simplicity of the American moms I met at sleepovers—the casual way they called me names I never knew were mine: honey, sweetie, darling. There was never a trace of shadow in their smiles, which they offered freely and unconditionally. When I said goodbye, I always lingered a second longer than I should have, clinging to a hug that felt more like home than the one I was returning to.

Theirs was the kind of love I craved. One that was warm and loud and obvious. One I wouldn’t have to work so hard to feel.

But college, then living on my own acted as a clean slate. Distance did wonders for us, and served as the bridge between our past and the new, more peaceful relationship we settled into. Yes, my mom had been strict, I reflected, but all Korean moms were. And maybe she was harsher than she needed to be, but she had my best interests at heart. My childhood was fine. It was normal. It was good.

Wasn’t it?

Out of love, or maybe loyalty, it has always felt wrong to even entertain this question. Because if I open the door to admitting that it wasn’t, then I’m forced to question why—to hold my mother under a microscope and examine the role she played in shaping who I am. And that, undoubtedly, is a betrayal.

Because despite the mistakes my mother may have made, I know what it cost her to raise me. Her own dreams and family left behind to start again here, all alone. To find fault in a woman who overcame more by thirty than I ever may in my entire lifetime feels juvenile. Selfish. Small.

So I find myself stuck. How do I heal what has been hurt without reconciling the reasons for that hurt?

The answer, I’ve found, is I can’t.

It’s taken years of reflection and heartbreaking conversations to accept that truth. But what I’ve learned most clearly through that process is this: two things can be true at once. I can be grateful for my mother’s sacrifice while still wishing certain things were different—that she had known how to be softer. That I could have grown up feeling more safety than fear. Or to learn that my feelings mattered too.

But I know now my mother did what she was capable of. She parented how she was parented, because that was all she knew. And as an adult, I look back and see what I couldn’t as a child: the neatly packed lunches she prepared for me every morning; the piano lessons and art classes she carted me to and from on a single mother’s salary; the off-brand Birkenstocks and Abercrombie knockoffs she scavenged from Value City so I could feel like I belonged. As a child, I couldn’t understand that my mother’s love was too big to put into words, so she put it into work.

Life makes it easy to forget that before they were our parents, they were people, just like us—flawed and deeply human. They didn’t stop being people when we came into the world, yet parent is all we’re capable of seeing them as.

So I can hold on to my anger, my bitterness, my resentment. Or I can pretend it isn’t there at all. But the truth is, my mother never set out to hurt me; she simply did—in ways she never meant to, in ways she didn’t imagine. And a harder pill to swallow is that one day, we’ll likely do the same to our children—in new ways we never mean to, in ways we can’t imagine. That’s just how life works.

Unless—

Can we give ourselves permission to say it?

This is what you did. This is what it did to me.

Maybe that’s how we break the cycle, how we truly heal. By confronting what we’ve never named and admitting we weren’t okay. Certainly, it would be easier, vindicating even, to let my mother live with regret and shame, as she says she does. And yet — is it really healing if we’re the only ones that heal? Toni Morrison says the function of freedom is to free someone else. And so this, I think, is how our parents find healing too. Through us, and through our healing. In the knowledge that their mistakes aren’t irredeemable; that perfection never was, nor should have been, the goal; and that they deserve the grace they didn’t know how to give us growing up.

So can we finally say it?

This is what you did. This is what it did to me. And still, here I am, loving you and loved by you, living a life greater than our ancestors ever could have imagined.

Maybe it’s by facing the fractures together that we heal not just our generation, but the ones that came before, and the ones still yet to come.

If I’m being perfectly honest, I’ve been avoiding it.

Bad Korean, I know. I should be the first to celebrate Korean accomplishments, and normally I do—like two years ago when Blackpink became the first K-Pop group to headline Coachella; or two years before that, when Squid Games became the most watched show in the world; or a year before that, when I shed tears as Youn Yuh-jung became the first Korean to win an Oscar and Parasite the first foreign film to win Best Picture.

At first it felt gratifying, and a little vindicating. At long last, our tiny little motherland was getting its moment in the spotlight. And then seemingly overnight, Korea was everywhere: BTS bumping over the speakers in Trader Joe’s; NYT recipes cooking gochujang into everything from caramel cookies to buttered noodles, and influencers (white ones!) on TikTok telling me how to get glass skin and make a banana milk iced latte at GS25.

If Korea were a person, this would be the height of her fame. Global recognition. Mainstream status. It should feel like a triumph.

So why does it feel so strange instead?

—

I suppose a large part of that answer lies in where I grew up. I was born and raised in Yorktown, Virginia, a town known solely for its significance in the Revolutionary War. In 2000, the year I turned nine, the population there was 91.79% white, 6.67% Black, and 0.51% Asian. One of my earliest memories of childhood is being chased home from the bus stop by a freckle-faced terror taunting, “Ching chong!” with his fingers pulling at the corners of his eyes.

By middle school I heard the message loud and clear: being Asian was undesirable, and even, I learned, unsettling. Why do they all hang out together? kids would ask me, referring to the dozen or so Koreans who always sat at one long lunch table. It never dawned on me to retort back, How come all the white kids sit together and nobody asks why?

But even my own parents reinforced this sense that we were out of place. They had a rule: no doenjang, kimchi, or garlic 24 hours before any event. The smell, my mom explained, was offensive to Americans. It seeps out of our skin. I pictured orange kimchi juice sloshing out of my pores like some sick sci-fi scene. We had to be extra careful, she complained, because of those “other” Koreans—the ajummas who yelled loudly in Korean across the aisles of Costco and their husbands who smacked their food with open mouths and never said “Excuse me.” My mom was convinced these Koreans gave the rest of us a bad name. I didn’t know how to tell her that to white people, we all looked and sounded the same.

It wasn’t until college, when I met NoVa Asians (short for Northern Virginia) for the first time, that I realized this racial pecking order wasn’t the default everywhere. These kids had grown up in communities full of other Asians—so many in fact, that there was a variety. Not just Korean or Chinese, but Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian. They had been class presidents, cheerleaders, football players, and homecoming queens. The discovery that in other places, Asians weren’t simply tolerated, but fully accepted into the fold both amazed and unsettled me. The only way I knew how to fit into white spaces was as a token, and I’d spent all my time in high school perfecting how to play that role.

Despite this new discovery, it was difficult to undo years of conditioning that had convinced me white friends had more value than Asian ones. So I rushed a white sorority, and slipped into the part I’d always known to play: I made self-deprecating jokes about filling their diversity quota; I co-opted the nickname “Harey” and took it as a compliment when frat boys told me I was hot “for an Asian.” Regardless of what I had to compromise, I reveled in feeling like I finally belonged.

—

My entire adolescence had been one long negotiation for acceptance: shrinking, tokenizing, trying on and discarding different versions of myself well into my twenties, until I finally stopped measuring my worth by my proximity to whiteness and learned to love myself on my own terms.

Maybe that’s why this mainstreaming feel so jarring.

To think I used to eat with my lunchbox hidden under the table so the smell of seaweed in my kimbap wouldn’t offend my classmates. Now Trader Joe’s sells a frozen version that sells out in minutes.

To think I used to pray to god I’d wake up with a better face, a more angular one—and to help him along, I’d pinch my nose bridge until I fell asleep (a trick a girl at church told me could make our flat noses taller). Now K-beauty is the golden standard.

Seeing my culture in the hands of a world who made me feel like less than for so long, I feel a childish impulse to snatch it back and cry, “You said you didn’t like it!” Because the thing I once had to be simultaneously protective and ashamed of has suddenly been claimed by the very people I felt I had to hide it from.

And if it can be theirs now, can I still call it mine?

We’ve seen this phenomenon before. Hip-hop rose from block parties in the Bronx, a language of survival and resistance in Black and Latino neighborhoods, only to become the most consumed genre in the world. Today it drives billion-dollar industries—fashion, advertising, global streaming charts—yet as Michelle Alexander reminds us in The New Jim Crow, the U.S. imprisons more Black men today than were enslaved in 1850. The same country that claims hip-hop as its cultural export also cages the largest population of Black people in the world.

I don’t find this parallel extreme. History has shown time and time again that under the white gaze, cultures are extracted from their creators—exoticized, commodified, and discarded when they are no longer of use. Case in point: when COVID-19 hit, Asians in America became targets overnight, and we saw just how conditional the West’s acceptance of us really was. Public figures and news outlets invoked labels like “China virus” and “kung flu,” and hate crimes against Asians increased by 145% in a single year. We became a monolith of sickness, painted with a single brush stroke regardless of where we were really “from.”

I’m aware of how bitter I sound, which is why I’ve also interrogated the possibility that my uneasiness is simply a vestige of that little girl who never felt accepted—that this is a reaction borne out of resentment, a sign I have more to heal when it comes to my inner child.

Or maybe my concerns are valid. Because despite how widely Korean food and art and media and culture is celebrated and adored, I can’t help but worry what will still remain as ours when the world is done consuming us.

Father’s Day has passed. In Korea we call it Parents’ Day, but after spending 30 years here, I’ve grown accustomed to the American way of celebrating mothers and fathers separately… and yet in all my time since coming to America I never had the chance to spend Father’s Day with my father. It was April when I said my final goodbye to him, and July when I made my way here…

There were many nights I looked up at the full moon and saw my father’s face in it and wept. Why, in those hardest of times, was it not my mother’s face I saw but my father’s? Perhaps it was because the longing for someone who no longer existed in this world was so much greater than anything else in those moments.

Both my husband’s parents are gone. When you’re young, the pain and despair of losing a parent feels like losing your entire world. But as an adult their absence is a sad fact of life we come to accept. Yet as time passes, the longing for them leaves you with regret and the faintest of memories. I once read a book about the feelings a child had when he encountered his parents’ younger selves. I myself have only ever glimpsed my father’s youth in a handful of old photographs. Until I reached a certain age, I never had the slightest interest in his life or who he was—my father was simply my father, and that was enough for me. What would it have been like if my father and I had met as children of the same age? Would we have fallen in love? Become best friends? Or maybe we would have been absolute nobodies to each other.

On Father’s Day, these are the sorts of thoughts I imagine. Today, I let myself miss him as much as I want.

아버지의 날이 지났다. 한국에선 어버이날이었지만 30여년을 미국에선 따로 지내다 보니 엄마, 아빠의 날이 더 익숙하지만 미국에 와서 한번도 내 아버지의 날을 함께 해보지 못했다. 아버지와 4월에 이별을 하고 그해 7월에 미국에 왔으니….

보름달 속에 비치던 아버지의 얼굴을 보며 얼마나 울었던가… 왜 그 힘든 시간에 엄마의 얼굴이 아닌 아버지의 모습이 보인걸까? 아마도 나와 같은 세상에 존재하지 않는 막연한 그리움이 더 컷을 것이다.

남편에겐 이제 부모님이 안계신다. 어려서 부모님의 부재는 세상을 모두 잃은 것 같은 아픔과 절망이지만 어른인 우리에게 부모님의 부재는 잠깐의 슬픔과 당연함으로 받아들여지는 것이다. 그러나 시간이 지날수록 그 그리움은 아련한 추억과 함께 늘 후회를 남긴다. 어느 책에서 부모님의 젊은 시절과 마주하는 자식의 마음을 읽은 적이 있다. 내 아버지의 젊은 시절은 몇장의 사진으로만 볼 수 있다. 내가 태어나 어느 정도의 나이가 들때까지 어버지의 삶에 대한 관심이 전혀 없었다. 아버지는 그냥 네게 아버지로 족했으니까… 나와 아버지가 같은 나이의 아이로 만난다면 어떨까? 서로 사랑에 빠질수도 있겠고 베스트 프렌드가 될 수도 있겠고 완전 관심없는 노바디가 될수도 있겠지.
아버지 날에 이런저런 상상을 해보며
아버지를 맘껏 그리워 해보았다.

These are the Letters From My Mother: her story, told in her voice, translated by me, and sent from my inbox to yours. I hope sharing them brings you a little closer to the loved ones in your life—and helps you rediscover the humanity within the people we call our parents.

Thank you for reading and subscribing <3

How did one person come to know so much, I wondered? And when I grew up, would I have all the answers like she did?

She was my safe place. During thunderstorms I’d crawl into bed with her, petrified, and rub her earlobes between my fingers, their soft fleshiness comforting to me for some reason. She held me close and made me laugh, asking, don’t you know thunder is just God farting?

Over time, my mom grew smaller—or was it me who grew bigger? Too big to fit inside her arms, and instead she fits in mine. Now it’s my mom who calls me for advice, asks what she should have said in a squabble with her friend, frets about her trip abroad. How do I get WiFi? A SIM card? I show her. When she forgets the recipe to the salmon I made her last month, she texts me. Was it olive oil or sesame in the marinade?

Somewhere along the way in life, my mom started coming to me for answers. I don’t always have them, but then I’ve come to realize, neither did she—she did her best, just as I’m doing now—and after being my safe place for all these years, there’s something beautiful in knowing I’ve become hers too.

I press backspace and click the lock button on my phone. Maybe another day.

I imagine this is how it begins.

—

Soon we’ll go on lunch dates where she’ll update me on her life. I’ll nod and empathize as though I know what she is going through—how the baby’s sleep schedule keeps her awake 20 out of 24 hours, the brand of diapers that gives him rashes, their plan to switch from soft to solids—I will hem and haw like a fool, scrambling to offer her something useful, some advice, some wisdom, anything, and hate myself for coming up empty.

Suddenly she’ll feel guilty and worry she’s talked too long about the baby and say brightly, Enough about me. What’s new with you?

I do not want her or I to feel that our lives have become so different, so I tuck away the story of my weekend in Vegas, the man-child I’ve been texting out of boredom, the thirty-five auditions I didn’t book this month—all of which suddenly seems so trivial in the face of my friend who has been caring for a human life.

I’m good! I’m good, I reply, and hurriedly rifle through my Rolodex of memories from the past few weeks, something I can hold up for her to say, We still have things in common, don’t we? But again, I come up empty.

The food arrives, but by the end of the meal, I’ve bitten my tongue more than my toast and hoped she hasn’t noticed.

Later that week she will meet with her other mommy friends from Baby & Me Pilates. They will fill the two hours of brunch with endless chatter, swapping childcare tips and venting about their husbands without a single second’s lull in the conversation.

I will meet my childless girlfriends for drinks downtown and we’ll compare notes on the laser treatments we’ve had done, their ski weekend in Aspen, whether we should book those flights to Europe, and oh, has anyone tried the new spot on Spring?

Meanwhile, the texts between us grow fewer, my hesitations grow longer, and I see her less and less.

A little voice whispers to me that I am doing her a favor by staying away. That she has sisters and aunties and fellow mommy friends who can give her better advice than I can, who can relate to the changes in her body, who understand the ups and downs of her five to twelve AM. I tell myself I am just helping her make room for more of what really matters in her life now.

After all, the voice says, how long can a best friend stay a best friend when you stop being useful to them? When the wisdom you once offered them is no longer the kind of wisdom that they need? When the stories you tell become too unlike the stories that they’re living?

But the other voice, the one that’s harder to admit to is saying, I’m worried you don’t need me anymore. I’m scared this is the beginning of the end. I’m worried we won’t find our way back to each other. I’m terrified you’ll leave me behind.

I feel selfish, crass, childish for feeling even a hint of sadness while my friend begins the happiest chapter of her life. But still, it’s there, as much as I’m embarrassed to acknowledge it. Not sadness, but grief. Grief for a version of us that has always felt easy, synced, inseparable.

Yet I’ve always believed that while at first love might be a feeling you fall into, eventually it becomes a choice you keep on making. Maybe it’s time I start seeing friendship the same way. What is friendship if not the most steadfast, lasting form of love? A commitment, not to sameness, but to showing up. To learning each other again in new seasons.

Yes, some things will change. Maybe we’ll eat at six instead of eight. I’ll stop by with emergency diapers instead of wine. We’ll talk over lullabies instead of pop songs playing in the background. We’ll walk a little slower through the park so the stroller can keep up.

Maybe we don’t have to live the same lives to love each other well. Yes, the shape of things might shift, but the center holds. I’ll still help her pick out outfits and tell her she looks beautiful, even on two hours of sleep. She’ll still laugh at my tired stories, the ones I forget I’ve already told. We’ll still finish each other’s sentences, know when to break out the box of Kleenex, or when it’s time to call an ice cream break.

There’s a new voice I’m listening to, the one I know is right—that change doesn’t break true friendships. It stretches them. Expanding, shifting, changing shape, but never losing its weight. And that, I remind myself, is its own special kind of forever.

There’s a bridge I walk across often, one where the water beneath it looks different every day. Each time, I’m reminded of how powerful the wind can be.

On days when the water is calm and peaceful, I feel the urge to lie on top of it—its surface seemingly solid.

But yesterday and today, the water looked fierce. Frightening. The blue waves turned murky, like clay stirred into paint, swelling and thrashing as if they intended to swallow everything whole.

I quickened my steps across the bridge, unsettled by the chaos below me.

How would the water look on my way back home? The wind had yet to die down, so surely it would still be restless…

In life, we meet many rains and winds.

There were times I could avoid them—but many times I couldn’t.
And that will be true in the future, too.
I’ve weathered those storms, grown from them, and at the same time, been scarred by them too.

There were many things that became my umbrella—parents, siblings, friends, education, material things, common sense, morals, humility, arrogance, persistence, conviction...

Yet sometimes the very things that protected me also caused me pain.

I wonder—what kind of umbrella was I to you?

Did I shield you from the winds that came your way? Or did I leave you colder, more tired and worn?

Reading what you wrote me on Mother’s Day, I felt grateful—again and yet again—that you came and found me in this life.

I know I wasn’t the strongest umbrella,
but because we stood together beneath it,
we’ve become who we are today.

The winds and the rain will always come,
but as long as we walk together,
we can weather any storm—sheltering and comforting each other along the way.

The May breeze is unseasonably chilly,
but its sharpness feels oddly good. Thinking of our spring trip out west warms me even more. Time spent with you always turns into something beautiful—like a scene from a wonderful, unforgettable drama.
And the main character… is you. ❣️

자주 다니는 다리 위에서 보이는 물이 매일 다르게 보인다. 바람의 힘이 이리도 대단한지 매번 느낀다. 한없이 잔잔하고 평화로워 보이는 날엔 그 위에 누워 보고 싶은 충동을 느끼기도 했다.

어제, 오늘의 물은 두려움을 느낄 정도로 사나워 보인다. 푸르고 파란 물이 황토의 진흙을 섞어놓은 것처럼 출렁인다. 모든 것을 집어 삼킬것 같은 요동에 속력을 내어 다리 위를 벗어난다.

돌아가는 길에 만나게 될 그 물은 어떠할까? 바람은 잔잔해지지 않고 있으니 여전히 여동치리라…. 살아가며 수많은 비와 바람을 만난다. 피할수 있을 때도 있었지만 그렇지 못한때도 많았다. 앞으로도 그러겠지만. 그 비와 바람을 겪어 내며 나는 살아왔고 그러면서 성장했고 동시에 상처도 받았다. 나의 우산이 되었던 많은 것들, 부모, 형제, 친구, 교육, 물질, 상식, 도덕, 양보, 오만, 고집, 신념….. 종이 한장의 차이로 나를 보호하기도 했고 상처를 입기도 했다. 나는 너에게 어떤 우산이 되었을까?

네 앞에 불어오는 비바람을 온전히 막아주었을까? 너를 더 춥고 힘들게 했을까? Mother’s day 에 올라온 너의 글을 읽으며 나에게 찾아와 준 소중한 너에게 감사하고 또 감사한다🥰

튼튼한 우산은 아니었지만 그 우산 밑에서 함께 버텼기에 지금의 너와 내가있는 것이겠지.

계속 비도 오고 바람이 불겠지만 함께 하기에 좀 힘들어도 서로를 감싸고 위로하며 걸어갈 수 있을거야!

5월의 바람치곤 조금 쌀쌀하지만

그 싸한 느낌마져 묘하게 기분이 좋다.

봄에 함께한 서부의 여행을 생각하니 기분이 더 좋다. 너와 함께한 시간은 늘 멋지고 근사한 한편의 드라마가 된다.

주인공은 바로 너❣️

These are the Letters From My Mother: her story, told in her voice, translated by me, and sent from my inbox to yours each week. I hope sharing them brings you a little closer to the loved ones in your life—and helps you rediscover the humanity within the people we call our parents.

Thank you for reading and subscribing <3

I’m eating breakfast when I hear the news of the war in Ukraine. I am hungry.

My heart aches at the devastation, yet at the same time, I find myself quietly grateful for my own safety. No matter how chaotic the world may be, if it hasn’t reached my doorstep…

Last week, my leg suddenly hurt so badly I couldn’t walk. It consumed me, even though it was a small thing, a mere day of discomfort and unease. Yet it reminded me again how much I take for granted—the ease of daily life, the gift of good health. I thought back to the words I’d heard from a pastor just the day before my leg started hurting: ‘God does 30,000 things for me every day, but I only notice and give thanks for 3 of those things.’

When war broke out in one corner of the world, I thought of my daughter’s safety first and prayed. That’s how it is—the safety of ourselves and our family matters most… Only then can we begin to think of others, think of what’s next.

February has ended, and March begins.
Spring will come soon.
And life goes on.

On this first day of March, I miss my daughter—safe at home in New York.

Sent from my iPhone

유크레인의 전쟁 뉴스를 보며 나는 밥을 먹는다. 배가 고프다. 전쟁의 참상을 보며 안타까운 마음이 들면서도 나의 안전함에 감사한다. 세상이 아무리 어지러워도 나에게 닥친 일이 아니면….

지난주 갑자기 다리가 아파서 걸을수가 없었다. 그것이 나에게는 큰 일이었다.

하루의 불편함과 불안함이었을 뿐인데도 말이다. 일상의 편안함과 건강함에 새삼 감사했다. 다리가 아프기 전 날에 들었던 어떤 목사님의 말씀이 다시 생각났다. ‘하나님은 나를 위해 매일 30,000개의 보살핌을 하시지만 내가 알고 감사하는 건 겨우 3가지 정도라고….’

세상 한 쪽에서 전쟁이 났을때 나는 딸의 안전을 생각하고 기도했다. 그런거다. 나와 내 가족의 안전이 제일 중요하니까… 그 다음에 다음을 생각할 수 있으니까.

2월은 끝났고 3월을 만난다. 봄이 곧 올 것이고 그렇게 또 우리는 살아간다.

안전하게 뉴욕으로 돌아온 딸이 보고싶은 3월의 첫 날이다.

Sent from my iPhone

These are the Letters From My Mother: her story, told in her voice, translated by me, and sent from my inbox to yours each week. I hope sharing them brings you a little closer to the loved ones in your life—and helps you rediscover the humanity within the people we call our parents.

Thank you for reading and subscribing <3

5:43:00 AM

Suddenly I remember when I was young. At the slightest pain I would cry and cry and my mother would berate me, “Why do you cry so much?” 

But even I didn’t know why I cried. 

Somehow even as a child, I must have known that getting hurt, no matter how small, was bad; that getting hurt meant pain. What I didn’t know then was that pain is inevitable—it’s suffering that is optional. 

Today though, I’m not in pain and they tell me the surgery went well. But still I cry. As the morning light floods through the window, my tears keep falling. I assume they’re tears of happiness and comfort, cheering me on.

I’m happy simply to sit here alone and cry. I think of little me who cried these same tears. I wish I could wipe them from her face, pat her back, and tell her, You were strong. You lived well. You don’t have to try so hard anymore.

You’ve done more than enough, I say, as I hold myself tight. 

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갑지기 어릴적 생각이 났다. 조금만 아파도 왜그리 눈물이 났는지 왜 그렇게 우냐는 엄마가 야속했다. 눈물이 그냥 난다고 나도 모르게… 아마도 어린 마음에도 아픈건 슬픈거라고  아픈건 안좋은거란걸 그냥 알았나보다. 지금은 아프지도 않고 수술도 잘된거 같은데 그냥 눈물이 난다. 어슴프레 밝아오는 아침을 맞으며 그냥 눈물이 흐른다.

맑은 눈물이겠지. 잘 견뎌냈다고 나를 위로하는 눈물이겠지. 혼자서 울 수 있어서 행복해 그냥. 어린 나를 기억하며 토닥여 주고싶어. 잘 버텨내고 잘 살았다고  더 잘살려고 너무 애쓰지 말라고

지금까지도 충분히 잘했다고 내가 나를 꼬옥 안아준다.

These are the Letters From My Mother: her story, told in her voice, translated by me, and sent from my inbox to yours each week. I hope sharing them brings you a little closer to the loved ones in your life—and helps you rediscover the humanity within the people we call our parents.

Thank you for reading and subscribing <3

4:18:00 AM

I slip off the few earrings and rings I have on, then strip down, even my underclothes, and wipe my body clean with alcohol. Carefully, deliberately—like a ritual of purification. As I clean every crevice, the image of a body before death comes to me. In the end, this is all we have. Just this body. And even that will turn into a handful of ash someday.

…And yet knowing this, I still keep buying, dressing, decorating to hide my true form.

All day, I lay in the hospital, my body no longer my own, even the act of relieving myself out of my control.

I saw in a way I hadn't before, how much I had taken my ordinary, uneventful days for granted.

Everyone at the hospital is so kind. I didn’t think my condition was so serious, but I hear the quiet sobs in nearby rooms, the somber tension of families waiting. If not for the kindness of these nurses and doctors, how much heavier would this place feel? Though it may just be a job to them, I could feel their sincerity, even in the early hours of dawn, when they rushed in to ease my discomfort before leaving again.

When I woke from anesthesia, dazed, I felt grateful—grateful simply to have opened my eyes again.

It felt like meeting the world as if for the first time.

My daughter who thought of me and shed tears for me, I love you. To have someone who weeps for you, who fears losing you—what a blessing, what a happiness that is.

May we cry for each other often, but only out of joy. More and more, from now on.

Though we couldn’t meet one another at the end of May, in this quiet dawn, I think of you. And in this precious time, I ask myself again—about life, about death, about family, about the long road we walk.

Let’s live with care, cherish each moment, and be kind to everyone we meet. Who knows how the smallest kindness could become someone’s hope...

To live is to be happy❣️

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몇 안되는 내 몸에 걸쳤던 귀걸이와 반지를 빼고 속옷까지 다 벗고 온 몸을 알콜로 내 손으로 닦아냈다.  성결한 의식을 치르듯 구석구석 닦으며 죽음 앞의 인간의 모습이 떠올랐다. 결국엔 이 몸뚱이 하나밖에 남는게 없는거라는거…. 그것마져도 한줌의 재로 변할거라는거

…. 그런줄 알면서도 자꾸 사고 걸치고 꾸미며 나를 감춘다. 

하루종일 병원에 누워 아무것도 스스로 결정하지 못하고 소변마져도 내가 원하지 않아도 봐야했다. 

건강하게 아무일 없이 지내는 일상의 감사를 너무 잊고 살아왔음에 돌아보게 되었다. 

병원의 모든 사람들이 참 친절하다. 나는 큰병이 아니라고 생각했지만 주위에서 들리는 울음소리와 심각한 가족들의 분위기에서 이들이 친절하지 않다면 얼마나 마음이 상할까…  직업으로 하는 일이지만 그들의 친절과 성실함이  느껴졌다. 새벽에도 달려와 불편함을 해결해주고 간다.

마취에서 깨어나 몽롱하면서도 무사히 깨어나게 해주심에 감사했다.

다시 세상과 만나는 것 같은 새로움

엄마를 생각하며 눈물 흘린 너를 사랑해! 나를 위해 울어주는 이가 곁에 있다는건 축복이고 행복이아.

서로를 위해 흘리는 기쁨의 눈물이 넘쳐나길… 앞으로 더 많이😅

5월의 끝에 함께 만나진 못했어도 이 새벽에 너를 생각하며 삶을, 죽음을, 가족을, 인생의 길을, 다시 묻게 되는 소중한 시간을 갖는다.

건강하게 소중하게 순간순간 최선을 다하고 내가 만나는 어떤 사람에게도.친절하게 대하자. 나의 조그만 친절이 누구에게는 희망이 될 수도 있으니까…

사는건 행복이라고❣️

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These are the Letters From My Mother: her story, told in her voice, translated by me, and sent from my inbox to yours each week. I hope sharing them brings you a little closer to the loved ones in your life—and helps you rediscover the humanity within the people we call our parents.

Thank you for reading and subscribing <3

Today I turned 58. 

At this same age, my father passed away. So today, a mix of emotions flickers inside me. 

Year after year, another birthday finds me. But it’s not just the numbers of my age that change, so much else changes with it… Am I living a life worth the years I’ve lived?

The candles on my cake grow in number, their flames burning brighter with each passing year, yet it seems my eyes only grow dimmer and my thoughts more narrow. 

Before today slips away, I wanted to leave behind even just a few words.

I long for my father who has passed, and miss my mother, who is far away—

Another day fades into dark. 

I hope sleep finds me easily tonight.  

Sent from my iPhone

58세가 되었다.  이 젊은(?) 나이에 나의 아버지는 돌아가셨다.  그래서 오늘 여러가지 감정들이 어른거렸다.

생일은 매년 찾아오고 나이가 들지만 한해 한해 숫자만 바뀌는게 아니라  많은 것들이 달라진다.나이에 걸맞게  살고 있는 걸까….

케익에 꽂히는 초가 늘어나고 그 초의 불빛은 점점 밝아지지만 눈은 점점 흐려지고 생각은 좁아지는것 같다.

오늘이 가기전에 몇자라도 남기고 싶었다.  돌아가신 아버지도 보고싶고 살아계신 엄마도 그립고…

그런 하루가 이제 다 저물어간다.

오늘은 푹 잠이 잘오면 좋겠다.

These are the Letters From My Mother: her story, told in her voice, translated by me, and sent from my inbox to yours each week. I hope sharing them brings you a little closer to the loved ones in your life, and that it helps you discover the humanity within the people we call our parents.

Thank you for reading and subscribing <3

At some point, I started to feel burdened by the plants on my windowsill. I wanted to get rid of them one by one, but when the moment came, I hesitated. Using my laziness as an excuse to discard these little lives that had been growing so well—somehow, it didn’t feel right.

Instead, I gave some away to those I knew who loved plants, while others I left outside with a “Free” sign. They vanished quickly. I felt a sense of relief, but at the same time, felt sorry too. In an effort to ease my guilt, I made a small but earnest promise to take good care of the few plants that still remained.

Just as my guilt was beginning to fade, a package arrived—a Mother’s Day gift from my daughter. My god! Not another plant! A flood of emotions washed over me all at once—gratitude, affection, and, I must admit, a bit of exasperation. But then, I read her message: she had carefully chosen a slow-growing plant after discussing it with her dad. The thoughtfulness of it made me smile.

I unwrapped the carefully packaged pot and found a beautiful green life inside. I decided I would nurture this plant with all the love I couldn’t give my daughter, and placed it in the sun-drenched piano room, where it would get the most light. Though I quickly forgot the plant’s exact name, I found myself glancing at it each time I went up and down the stairs, quietly pleased with how well it was growing. True to my daughter’s word, it seemed to grow so slowly that I hardly noticed—until, a few years later, it had become a sturdy, thriving plant. This spring, it will finally need a bigger pot.

There was a time when there was distance between my daughter and I. I was so caught up in my own struggles that I failed to understand how difficult and lonely it must have been for her. Looking back, I ache thinking of the times when my love, in the name of being a mother, was not as gentle or warm as it should have been.

But now, when I look at this evergreen plant she sent me, my heart feels full. Though unseen, our love—yours and mine—continues to grow, lush and strong, just like this plant.

I love you, my daughter. ❣️

언젠가부터 집 창가에 자리잡은 화분을 관리 하기가 귀찮아지기 시작해서 하나 둘 없애고 싶었다. 막상 없애려하니 잘 자라고 있는 생명을 나의 게으름을 핑계로 처분하려하니 선뜻 행동으로 옮겨지기가 쉽지 않았다. 주변에 화초를 좋아하는 분에게 주고 집 앞에 내놓고 Free 싸인을 붙여 놓았더니 금새 사라졌다. 속이 시원하면서도 미안한 맘이 들었다. 나의 책임을 슬그머니 내려놓은 죄책감에 남아있는 화초를 잘 돌봐야겠다는 앙증맞은 다짐을 했다.

나의 죄책감이 사라질 무렵, Mother’s day 선물로 딸이 보낸 화초가 배달되었다. 맙소사! 어머나! 고맙지만 고맙지 않은 갖가지의 감정들이 한꺼번에 밀려들었다. 아빠와 상의해서 아주 천천히 자라는 것으로 골라보냈다는 딸의 사랑스러움에 이내 미소가 지어졌다.

정성스럽게 포장된 화분을 꺼내보니 초록의 생명이 아름다웠다. 딸에게 못다한 사랑을 다해 키워야겠다는 작은 다짐을 하며 햇볕 잘 드는 피아노룸에 모셔 놓았다. 화초의 정확한 이름은 이내 잊었지만 아래 위층을 오르내릴때마다

쳐다보며 잘 자라고 있음에 흐뭇해한다. 천천히 자라는 화초라더니 정말 표가 나지 않는 것 같더니 몇년새 튼실한 화초가 되어서 올 봄엔 좀 더 큰 화분으로 이사해야 할것 같다.

한때 소원했던 딸과 나의 시간이 있었다. 얼마나 힘들고 외로웠을지 그땐 나의 마음 하나 추스리느라 미쳐 헤아리지 못했다. 엄마의 사랑이라는 이름으로 너그럽지 못했던 그때가 많이 아프다. 늘 푸른, 딸이 보낸 화초를 보면 마음이 따스해진다. 눈에 보이진 않지만 그렇게 너와 나의 사랑은 푸르게 빛나고 있구나! 사랑해 엄마 딸❣️

These are the Letters From My Mother: her story, told in her voice, translated by me, and sent from my inbox to yours each week. I hope sharing them brings you a little closer to the loved ones in your life—and helps you rediscover the humanity within the people we call our parents.

Thank you for reading and subscribing <3

It’s been so long since I felt this way. When was the last time…? This rush of immersion, the pure exhilaration of being completely lost in a book—not just in its story, but in something beyond it, a joy that’s mine alone. I had forgotten this feeling, what was once my favorite hobby, buried somewhere in my youth. And now, my daughter has brought it back to me. I’m so grateful for that.

The second volume won’t arrive for over a week. I’m trying to slow myself down, to stretch out the final pages of the first because I know I’ll want to dive straight into the next.

There was a time when I read alongside friends, when we shared books like secrets, deepening our friendships through the thoughts we told one another. But those friends are no longer close. They are far now, so far that even missing them feels impossible.

And yet, as I turn each page, I think of them.

Maybe they wouldn’t even like this book. Maybe the years have taken us too far apart, our lives now tending to different trees, growing in different soils. But still, no matter the shape or color of the trees we tend, we love and admire each other’s, different as they may be from our own—just as we’ve always done.

“A little life.”

Even if our lives seem small, invisible to others, we know the truth of them. We know how much we’ve given, how much we’ve endured, how much we have tried.

Reading this book, I think of my daughter, of my friends, of all our small but precious lives.

I hope the rest of my time is filled with more moments like this—books, memories, quiet reflections.

And I pray that my daughter, who indulges in books and travel, finds a life that is anything but small—one filled with richness, depth, and light.

참으로 오랫만에 느끼는 감정이다. 언제 였던가…. 책을 읽으며 완전히 몰입되는 이 희열- 책의 줄거리와 상관없이 나만의 기쁨을 느낀다. 오랫동안 잊고 살았던 내 젊은 시절의 취미를 일깨워준 딸의 마음이 너무 고맙다. 2 권이 도착하려면 일주일 이상을 기다려야 한다. 1권을 끝내지 않으려고 애쓰고 있다.  바로 이어서 읽고 싶다. 그러고 싶다.  같은 책을 읽고 서로의 생각을 나누며 우정을 나누었던 친구들은 이제 더 이상 가까이엔 없다. 너무 멀리 있어 그리워하기에도 너무 멀다.  그럼에도 책을 읽는 내내 친구들 생각이 많이 났다.

아마도 지금 내가 읽는 책을 좋아하지 않을 수도 있다. 그만큼 우리 각자의 인생은 서로 다른 나무를 심고 키우고 있을 것이다. 그럼에도 우린  서로의 나무가 어떤 모양 어떤 색이든  그 나무를 사랑 할 것이다. 지금까지 그래왔듯이… 

“A little life”

우리의 인생이 비록 누군가에겐 아주 작아 눈에 띄지 않아도 우린 알 수있다. 그 인생을 위해 얼마나 최선을 다하며 애쎴는지를….

책을 읽으며 딸 생각, 친구 생각, 우리의 작은 인생을 자꾸 생각나게 한다.

내 인생의 남은 시간이 더  많이 이러하기를…..

책과 여행을 즐기는 딸의 인생이 작지않은 풍요로운 인생이 되기를 기도한다. 

These are the Letters From My Mother: her story, told in her voice, translated by me, and sent from my inbox to yours each week. I hope sharing them brings you a little closer to the loved ones in your life—and that it helps you rediscover the humanity within the people we call our parents.

Thank you for reading and subscribing <3

Half-asleep, I lay in the dark, the sharp edges of my parents’ voices rising and falling in the next room, keeping me from sleep.

Morning came, heavy with exhaustion. At breakfast, I picked at my food, barely eating, aware of the tension thick in the air, until I left for school, where the gloom followed me throughout the day.

When I came home, my mother was gone.

I still don’t know how to put that feeling into words. Something like standing alone on a cold winter night, no coat, no place to go—a fear and loneliness that left me hollow inside.

Some time later, my mother returned. I was so happy I could barely hold it in, but I didn’t know how to show it. Instead, I followed her around like a puppy, filling the air with stories from school—small, trivial things. I wanted her to know how good I had been, how hard I had studied, and for that to be enough to soothe whatever hurt she still carried from fighting with my father.

Did she notice then how hard I tried? Did she know how carefully I watched her, how much her every mood affected me?

Probably not. Because it’s only now I realize how much my own daughter must have watched us, waiting, worrying, on edge.

It breaks my heart. I feel so sorry and such regret. Was there a way I could have spared her from the same feelings I felt? I’m certain that your daughter won’t ever have to live on eggshells like that—because her grandmother will spoil her too much to let that happen. 😆

Forgive your mother, who loved you but never quite knew how to show it.

From now on, I’ll love you out loud, without hesitation.

I love you.

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잠결에 엄마 아버지의 다투는 소리를들으면서 깊이 잠들지 못하고  피곤한 아침을 맞았다. 눈치를 보며 밥을 먹는둥 마는둥 집을 나섰다. 학교에서도 내내 우울했다 그런날엔…  집에 왔는데 엄마가 없었다. 그때의 그 마음을 어떻게   표현해야될지 모르겠다.  추운 겨울날 밤, 외투도 없이 갈 곳도 없이 혼자 남겨진 공포와 외로움이랄까…

얼마 후  엄마가  돌아왔다. 너무 기뻐 좋았지만  표현할 수 없었다. 그냥 엄마 뒤를 졸졸 따라다니며 학교에서의 시시한 일들을 얘기하고 내가 얼마나  숙제를 열심히 했으며 얼마나 착한 아이인지를 알게 하고 싶었다. 그래서 엄마가 아버지와의 다툼 때문에 상한 마음을 달래고 싶었었다. 그때의 나의 애씀을 엄마는 알았을까? 그때 내가 얼마나 엄마의 눈치를 봤는지 짐작했었을까?

아마도 모르셨을 것이다. 나도 내 딸이 우리의 눈치를 보며 마음 졸였을 시간을 이제가 알 것 같으니까

너무 마음 아프고 미안하고 후회스럽다. 나같은 마음을 겪지 않았을 수는 없었을까?  아마도 너의 딸은 절대 그런 눈치를 보지 않으리라 믿는다. 할머니가 엄청 스포일 시킬거니까😆

사랑하면서도 그 사랑을 다 표현하지 못했던 엄마를 용서하렴🥲

이젠 눈치없이 맘껏 표현할께👌

사랑해 🥰

2023년 1월의 끝날에 엄마가

These are the Letters From My Mother: her story, told in her voice, translated by me, and sent from my inbox to yours each week. I hope sharing them brings you a little closer to the loved ones in your life—and that it helps you rediscover the humanity within the people we call our parents.

Thank you for reading and subscribing <3

For the first time in years, it snowed—as if 2025 was beginning with a clean slate.

My daughter, who spent her time here constantly complaining of the cold, has now returned to an even colder New York. Spending a long stretch of time together reminded me of what it means to share a life with someone—to care for one another, to consider each other, to want to do even just one more thing for them. This is what it means to be a family, after all.

As I watch her challenge herself and work hard in her new endeavors, I send her my prayers and applause. To do something with passion, and to find joy in it—that is a special kind of happiness. I, too, once had so many things I wanted to do, but how many of those dreams did I leave untouched, buried under excuses and circumstances? And how much time have I spent since then regretting all that I never did?

As a child, I remember how snow brought only joy and excitement. I couldn’t understand the adults who, at the sight of falling snow, would sigh with worry. I often miss that younger version of myself—so carefree and full of wonder.

Yet here I am, looking at the snow-covered landscape outside my window, and I feel that same old thrill. Is it the comfort of watching it from a warm home that makes it so enchanting now? Or is it the echo of that childhood wonder, still alive and well inside me?

Whatever the reason, what’s undeniable is that same joy at finally seeing snow again. Even sitting in the driveway, keys in the ignition waiting for the car to melt, doesn’t feel like a chore—but like a little gift from time gone by.

I love this version of me whose heart still flutters at the sight of the first snow. I hope 2025 brings many more moments like this one.

몇년만에 눈이 왔다. 2025년의 시작이 깨끗하게 시작되는 것 같았다.

춥다 춥다를 입에 달았던 딸은 더 추운 뉴욕으로 다시 돌아갔다.

오랫만에 함께 긴 시간을 보내며 함께 한다는게 이런 거였구나… 서로를 배려하고(주로 부모의 몫이지만)

하나라도 더 해주고 싶은거, 이런게 가족이지…

새로운 일에 도전해서 열심히 노력하는 딸의 삶에 기도와 박수를 보낸다.무언가에 열중하며 즐길수 있다는건 얼마나 큰 행복이던가. 나도 참 하고 싶은게 많았던것 같은데 이런저런 핑계와 사정으로 하지 못한 것들이 더 많다고 후회하던 시간은 또 얼마나 많은가.

눈이 내리면 설레고 기쁨만 가득했던 어린시절, 내리는 눈을 보며 걱정부터 하던 어른들이 이해되지 않았던 그 시절의 내가 그리울때가 많다.

눈쌓인 창밖의 풍경만으로도 다시설레는 것은 왜일까? 따뜻한 집안에서만 지켜보는 여유일까? 아님 어린 시절의 그 설레임이 진하게 느껴져서 일까?

뭐든 몇년만의 눈을 만난 것만으로도 충분히 설레고 행복한 것만은 틀림없다. 드라이브 웨이에 있는 차의 시동을 켜서 눈을 녹이고 기다리는 시간조차 오랫만이라 싫지않다.

첫눈이 내려서 아직 설레는 나를 사랑한다. 더 많이 설레는 일들이 생기는 2025년이 되길 소망한다!

These are the Letters From My Mother: her story, told in her voice, translated by me, and sent from my inbox to yours each week. I hope sharing them brings you a little closer to the loved ones in your life—that it helps you see the humanity within the people we call our parents.

Thank you for reading and subscribing <3

Everyone has a hometown in their heart – No matter where you live now, there’s a place you call home.

Three years ago I turned 54. The symmetry of 27 + 27 held a deep significance for me—27 years ago I left Korea, the only home I’d ever known, and an equal 27 years have passed in my new home, America. For 3 years now, I haven't known which to call my hometown anymore. Because just as many beloved friends and family I have here, so too are there in Seoul that I miss every day.

The time gone by hasn’t always been beautiful. The scars of my past, now cleverly disguised in the name of a memory, still come back to haunt me now and again. With a little more time, I hope I can look back at the pages of my life with fondness—that I’ll read them and think, “It was a good life, after all.” This is what I hope…

Should someone follow in the footsteps I’ve traveled, I would find some comfort. For even if the road grows difficult at times—we won’t stop!

Sent from my iPhone

누구에게나 마음의 고향이 있다. 지금 어디에 살고 있던 상관없이…

3년전 내가 54살이 되었을때 27+27 은 나에게 큰 의미가 되었던 해였다.

27년전 한국을 떠나 그만큼의 시간을 미국에서 채웠던 해였다. 그리고 벌써 3년이 지난 지금 내 고향이 어디라고 해야할지 모르겠다. 사랑하는 소중한 가족과 친구가 있는 이곳만큼 서울에도 내겐 보고픈 가족과 친구들이 있다.

지나간 시간이 모두 아름다운 시간은 아니었다. 추억이라는 이름으로 포장된 과거의 상처는 한번씩 나를 아프게 한다. 조금 더 시간이 지나 내 인생의 책장을 하나씩 넘기며 그래도 이만하면 괜찮은 삶 이었다고 할 수 있으면 좋겠다. 그랬으면 좋겠다….

내가 지나온 발자국을 따라서 누군가 따라와 준다면 그 또한 행복하리라.

내 가는 길이 조금 힘들더라도 멈추지 않으리라!

These are the Letters From My Mother: her story, told in her voice, translated by me, and sent from my inbox to yours each week. I hope sharing them brings you a little closer to the loved ones in your life—that it helps you see the humanity within the people we call our parents.

Thank you for reading and subscribing <3

Raised by a war-torn generation before them, my parents never heard those words said aloud to them. They were taught that love lived in work; that the past was a burden meant to be carried alone; and that suffering in silence was the true signal of strength. Love was something buried beneath layers of heartache and hardship, making it that much harder for them to find, let alone articulate.

And so for most of my childhood, I pieced together my parents’ love the best I could, through rare moments of affection and hard-won words of praise. I never felt like I understood them, or that they understood me.

But as I grew older, the distance between us began to close. The words that once felt impossible slowly found their way to the surface (you can follow that journey here). And my mom discovered her own special way to share the parts of her she’d kept guarded for so long.

What began as short, unassuming notes—like fragments of a diary—became something more: a space where she entrusted me with her thoughts, her reflections, and long-hidden pieces of her past.

Through her writing, I began to discover the woman within her—the sister, the daughter, the person she was before she became my mother. And in that process, I’ve come to think of the many mothers like her, with their own hopes and hardships, who have never had the space to tell their stories.

So much of our parents’ history is a shared history, their pain and struggles echoes of similar scars and trauma passed down through generations. Perhaps in reading my mother’s words, you’ll hear echoes of what your own families still find it hard to say.

These are the Letters From My Mother: her story, told in her voice, translated by me, and sent from my inbox to yours each week. I hope that sharing them brings you a little closer to the loved ones in your life—and helps you to hear their love a little more clearly.

<3