Kimchi Mamas

To Every Thing There is a Season

Earlier this winter we celebrated warmer, spring-like days here in South Texas. There was so much happiness and hope in our little family – the way spring is supposed to be. What spring is supposed to mean. But as all South Texans know: if you don’t like the weather: stick ‘round, it’ll change.

With a fierce, biting wind reminding me it was still winter, my world became cold and barren.

My daughter confessed to cutting.

 

We are the definition of a normal, modern, blended, American family. We struggle with schedules, negotiate the school-work balance, commute to and from extra-curricular activities, schedule social time among adolescent and adult friends, cope with extended family matter dramas and move through our daily lives as a family living alongside two ‘tweens.

What I had written off as normal ‘tween girl drama I can retroactively see now as warning signs. Stereotypical signs, too! Tumbling grades (check!), increased arguments with us, (check!), a new passion for fighting with her brother (check!), yelling matches and hurling hurtful words (check!), periods of deafening total silence (check!).

As a hip, consciously-aware, educated, socially active mother (certainly not like the old-school Korean mother I grew up with!) I knew and understood the stage of growing up she was going through.  She was in the early stages of adolescent spring! The winter of child childhood fading. I could even empathize with the season of adolescent spring: the bright sunlight moving from family to friends, chores and homework to trips to the mall with friends and PG-13 movies in giggly, awkward groups. 

And yet here I was am trying to understand. I’ve Googled. I’ve read. I’ve Tumblred. I've seen and read things that have broken my heart a million times into a million pieces. I’ve gone to see our family therapist. I’ve cried. I’ve begged. I’ve pleaded. I’ve prayed. I’ve overdosed my daughter with “mommy and me” time(!) not because I particularly enjoy spending countless hours talking about My Little Pony, cats and watching Animal Planet, but because I’m too scared to leave her alone. Too scared what I may find when I come back.

Knowing what I know about Koreans and depression; knowing what I know about my Korean parents, depression and alcoholism; knowing what I know about my own struggles with depression, alcoholism and addiction I wish I knew more about how to help my daughter. 

Sometimes I think we are moving through this season of hurt, but then I am reminded of the very meaning of seasons and that cutting isn’t just a one time thing, a one hundred time thing, or even a one thousand time thing . . . it’s a lifetime thing. 

But like the approaching spring, there is hope.

There has to be hope.

 

Hope springs eternal in Texas.

 

 

Control Freak?

I think I had a break through in my thinking about my relationship with my family.

Just for some background, I do not have close relationships with my sister, mother, or father. There were domestic violence and alcohol issues when I was growing up along with the whole immigrating thing. My dad did his best to provide for us and he did that well enough. My sister was the rebel and I was the obedient one. Currently, I live 400 miles away from my dad and my sister lives on the other coast. My mom lives in the South somewhere.

Intimate Partner Violence

Today I attended a conference about intimate partner violence (IPV), or domestic violence (DV). It was the 10th anniversary celebration of some sorts. I don't work directly in the field but my work partners with the folks who do the work.

Why am I writing this post on the Kimchi Mamas blog? First because it's near and dear to my heart and second because Korean women (and their children, wives of Korean men, women of all color, and even some men) continue to be victims of intimate partner violence. I want to do my part to help it stop.

I learned today that IPV is complicated. I knew that but I think I still had some amount of judgement deep within me. It really is not as simple as "Why don't you just leave?"

The facts are that most women do end abusive relationships. It takes an average of 5 - 7 years and many attempts before she leaves, but still, she does leave. These women are resilient and should be commended for their resiliency.

I also learned that children who witness domestic violence can be scarred for life. I mean, I kind of knew that from personal experience. The worst thing that my dad did was get a knife from the kitchen and threaten to kill my mom and us. I think I partially blocked this from memory but I remember that knife vividly. I was very young. What I didn't know is that children's brain development can actually be affected by witnessing IPV and that they can get post traumatic stress disorder as well. And most of us probably also know that there is a cycle of violence. Children from violent homes grow up to either become abusers or victims themselves. 

At the conference today, one of the speakers shared a training video that all police officers have to watch. They were pictures and voice recordings of actual victims. As soon as they started playing the 911 calls from children, I had to leave the room because I could not control my emotions. As a mom, it just hit a nerve that never was there before.

Why There Needs to be a Different Standard of Depression for Koreans

When I feel depressed, it's hard to tell the cause: is it stress in my life, my mood disorder, or merely because I am Korean?

Talk to any Korean person of my parents' generation about depression, and most likely they will equate it with laziness ("When we don't want to get out of bed or work hard, we don't call it depressed"),  privilege ("They don't have to worry about anything else"), or  insanity ("Are you going to tear up your clothes and put flowers in your hair?").  They just don't view it as a real chronic illness.

But yet, it obviously exists, even for Korean people.  Domestic violence, alcohol and drug abuse, and suicide are major societal problems, and those often are side effects of mood disorders.

I'm starting to wonder if the problem lies in the usual criteria for diagnosis.  If you look at the normal list of symptoms for depression and you knew Korean people at all, it seems like we are ALL depressed!

According to the Mayo Clinic, depression symptoms include:

• Feelings of sadness or unhappiness
• Irritability or frustration, even over small matters
• Frequent thoughts of death, dying or suicide
• Crying spells for no apparent reason

In Korea, these are all considered normal.  We even have a word for it: han.  An excellent article in the LA Times on han can be found here.  We all carry around a sadness and trauma that is so ingrained it might as well be part of our genome.  Suffering and death are recurring themes in our art, our folklore, our history.  Hell, it's even the main philosophy of kimchi: preserve everything you can for the day -- and that day definitely will come -- when there is nothing.  It is the reason why when you piss off your mom, she says things like "Do you want me to die now?  Will that make you happy?"  Sigh.

• Reduced sex drive
• Feelings of worthlessness or guilt, fixating on past failures or blaming yourself when things aren't going right
• Changes in appetite — depression often causes decreased appetite and weight loss, but in some people it causes increased cravings for food and weight gain
• Agitation or restlessness — for example, pacing, hand-wringing or an inability to sit still
• Unexplained physical problems, such as back pain or headaches
• Loss of interest or pleasure in normal activities
• Insomnia or excessive sleeping

These things are also very common...but these I put the blame squarely on nurture, not nature.  I am still convinced that my parents had sex only two times in their lives: that is why my sister and I exist.  And Korean parents are the kings of the extreme guilt complex, unconstructive criticism, harsh-ass punishments, mysterious aches and pains, the neverending war against dust and hair on the floor, and equating food with love...which take care of the rest.  Again, a Korean would look at that list and think, "Yeah, so what?"

• Slowed thinking, speaking or body movements
• Indecisiveness, distractibility and decreased concentration
• Fatigue, tiredness and loss of energy — even small tasks may seem to require a lot of effort
• Trouble thinking, concentrating, making decisions and remembering things

These might be real bellweathers for us, but then again if I told my Korean doctor that I felt these symptoms, he would probably give me some nasty Chinese herbal potion to flush out my liver and reprimand me for being fat (in all seriousness, my childhood doctor's nickname for me was "Cow" and would constantly nag me to take diet pills.  He was a friend of my dad's.).  Maybe some Korean-specific research needs to be done, so we can get an idea of what depression looks like for us, or maybe we are indeed all afflicted with it.

--Julie

Al-Anon

Given how prevalent alcoholism or "drinking problems" are in the Korean American community, I thought I'd get the word out about Al-Anon. It's basically like AA, except it's for people affected by friends or family members that are alcoholic. You know how they say that alcoholism is a family disease?  Well, I didn't really get that until I started going to Al-Anon.

My dad was and is an alcoholic. He can down two bottles of soju with dinner and see no problems driving home. I grew up with him drinking but didn't realize how much it affected me until I started going to Al-Anon. I'm sure my "problems" are not ALL from his alcoholism but I find that many of my behaviors are classic symptoms of having an alcoholic in the family.

It's like group therapy. There are meetings all over the place and probably one not more than 1 mile away from where you live. It's free, anonymous, and tremendously full of hope.