Kimchi Mamas

Produce! Produce! Produce!

Imagine a night when the family is fed, the house is clean, the children aren't bickering, and you have the rest of the night to relax. You draw a hot bath, you even use your "good" bath salts. You enter the bliss, let the water envelope you, you slowly begin to feel the world's weight come off your shoulders. Ahhhhhh...

Then a teeny tiny thought crosses your mind: 'I've been in the bath long enough that I could pumice my feet. It's summer, I want my feet to be summer ready.'

And then another thought enters your head: 'I should put on one of those beauty masks. My skin has been terrible lately...'

And then another: 'Gee, I should get ahead and starting outlining for that upcoming project.'

And then before you know it, the weight of the world is back on your shoulders, Atlas. Well done.

How many of us do this? How many of us finally eek out some "me" time only to have it sabotaged by "me?" 

There's this feeling, this need, that compels us to productivity. Every moment of our lives must be towards something. Some end goal. Ironically we just keep moving the damn goal the closer we get to it.

We see it on our social media. We all have that friend who is a mother to 4, a partner at her firm, and a great cook especially with her-urban-chicken-coop-producing-eggs, who also volunteers at the local food bank. We see it in our communities. When was the last time you saw a bunch of kids riding their bikes to the woods/creek/river/lake/beach/playground to play freely or just hanging out at the 7-11/ice house/arcade/mall/plaza on a regular basis?

That fateful night in the bath? I missed a real opportunity to appreciate all of the things I did do! I worked a full day at the office. I fed my family. I picked up around the house. There were no dishes in the sink. The family had on clean clothes. All the pets were alive. And the house did not burn down. 

Somewhere along the way, we stopped giving ourselves permission to relax, to slow down and enjoy our day. Starting from today, I'm giving myself permission. Instead of focusing on what I think I should be doing, I'm going to appreciate more what I have done. And that not every second of my day has to be productive.

 

 

 

Midlife?

Hi there Kimchi Mamas!!! How are things going?

Things are going alright here in the Choi family. I turned 40 this year and I kind of am really liking the older me. I feel so mature! Can you tell?

 

 

So mature! Right? =)

In all seriousness, I actually do feel like I am just barely starting to get this thing called life. And by "get" I don't mean that I have figured it out and have the solution to all of life's problems and have unlocked the secret to happiness. No. I do not have any keys to happiness here. And yet, I do feel a smidgen of self confidence and maybe a sprinkle of faith and a sliver of hope, that no matter what happens, that I will be ok.

And I know shit happens.

Dari: The First Bilingual Anthology of LGBTQ Korean American Stories and Art

May is dear to me for several reasons: it is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, and it is also Mental Health Awareness Month!  

In those veins, I present to you a book released today by the Dari Project, a New York-based all-volunteer consortium that aims to increase awareness and acceptance of LGBTQ people of Korean descent in Korean American communities.  They develop resources to share the experiences of LGBTQ Korean Americans, ranging from homophobia in their KA communities, coming out, building relationships with family, and membership in faith communities.

On May 2, the Dari Project will be unveiling a bilingual publication that contains a collection of personal stories written by LGBT Korean Americans. The book contains 25 personal essays covering a variety of themes -- coming out to immigrant parents, responding to homophobia/transphobia in the Korean church, organizing the community after a gay bashing in NYC's Koreatown, etc. The contributors live across the US and South Korea, and include a diverse array of identities within the Korean American community -- biracial Koreans, adoptees and trans people.

I love their name, because dari means both legs and bridge, and this anthology seeks to provide both: support for the LGBTQ community, and a way to bridge Korean Americans from different generations, ideologies, and languages.

Check out their gorgeous logo:

Copies of the book can be requested on the Dari Project's website.

h/t to my friend and heroine, Andy Marra

The Software Doesn't Match the Hardware

As a parent of a ‘tween I found myself at the mall with my daughter the other day. It was right after school and she was still in her all-girls school uniform.

As we walked by one of the kiosks, a young man stopped her and asked if she went to ABC Private School – he recognized the uniform as the uniform of his all-boys high school alma mater’s sister school. He was indeed correct – except my daughter is in the sister school’s middle school. 

Maybe it’s the “Asians don’t look their age” stereotype or maybe it’s because she was in uniform or maybe because she’s tall for her age but as she said yes and I gave my best KDS (Korean Death Stare) to this young man and gently guided her down the hall, I had a mix of remembering the feelings of being mistaken as older at that age and what it may mean for my daughter..and me as her mom.

With the faster-than-the-speed-of-light economic growth in China, and young people flooding in from rural areas to the bustling cities in search of jobs and opportunities, a saying has developed about this group of new-to-the-city young women: The software doesn’t match the hardware. Kind of creepy when you think about it. Here’s a young woman in search of opportunity and she has been reduced to an electronic, a cliché, because she’s attractive but innocent/naïve.

We here in the United States are guilty of perpetuating some of that concept, too. Look around: magazine covers, tv shows, music . . . Have you tried shopping for “cute” girl clothes recently? Listened to the actual lyrics of some popular songs. Next time you’re at the grocery store take the time to glance over the covers of magazines specifically designed for your teen!

My fellow moms and I complain about the lack of appropriate clothing, the pressures our girls face to wear make-up, shave their legs and have first dates/first kisses, etc. And because many of these concepts were foreign to my mother, the "right" way to navigate through them are in many ways foreign to me.

Do you remember the first time you were mistaken as being older than you really were (as a 'tween/teen)?

 

Angie in Texas is practicing her KDS for all future boys...

 

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.

 

 

Bay Area! Go Watch the APA Vagina Monologues on May 17!

Although I love vaginas and enjoy talking about them, I have yet to go see a Vagina Monologues show.  Oh, how I wish I can go to this one!  The cast is all Asian/Pacific Islander, and I bet this will be a transformative experience.

From their website:

NAPAWF Bay Area proudly presents an Asian Pacific American women's production of the Vagina Monologues. Set in the historic Castro Theater of San Francisco, we'd like to invite you to an evening celebrating community visibility, the stories of women, and Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. 

This production is directed by Gabrielle Patacsil and features an all Asian Pacific American women-identified cast. Proceeds benefit the local Bay Area chapter of the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum, the nation's only multi-issue women's organization for Asian Pacific American women and girls. 

And here are the performers introducing themselves in an awe-inspiring, irreverent, hilarious, and poignant video:

The APA Vagina Monologues
Thursday, May 17, 2012 7:30 PM
Castro Theatre
429 Castro Street (at Market)
San Francisco, CA 94114
United States

Tickets are $15-65 and can be purchased here.

You Know You Grew Up Korean/Korean American/Korean Candadian If . . .

The local Sunday paper had a fun article today that got me thinking about growing up Korean in the US. So I've come up with a list of "You know you grew up *Korean/Korean American/Korean Canadian if..." of my own. 

Please add your "you know . . . " in the comments.  =)

--Your mother ever gave you guilt about . . . well anything... (Bonus if she pounded her chest with a fist while doing so!)

--You had 2 fridges: one for food and another for kimchi (or else ALL your food tasted like kimchi).

--You ever had to translate a school note, explain a holiday project and/or had a hard time completing the 3rd grade family tree project because there were some family secrets/shame involved and/or there were a lot of branches on that tree with "eemo and samchun".

--Your friends NEVER spent the night.

--Roasting ghim over the flame on the stove.

--You roasted that ghim for ghimbap - which you ate on day-long, car trips, got out, took a look around, ate the ghimbap and got back in the car. You always returned the same night.

--You were a hobo, a clown or a ghost for Halloween more than once.

--You got hit on the back of the head (a lot).

--Your aunt or uncle would pass you a $5 bill and tell your parents "te-sah, te-sah." He or she was your favorite aunt or uncle.

--Your mom made you sweep the carpet, told you you would DIE if you slept with the fan on pointed in your direction and/or were told that women should never sit directly on the floor.

--Threw up from having "han yak". It was usually dark brown, liquidy and has been boiling for hours...Or your mom smeared honey on a piece of boiled ginseng - like it would make it taste better.

--"Fought" for the dinner bill or insisted on paying while out with your non-Korean friends and then was SHOCKED when they were like "ok!"

--Your dad would get drunk, sing sad Korean folksongs and reminsce about the "good times."

--Thanksgiving dinner included the turkey and mashed potatoes, but also yakimandu, kimchi and japchae.

--Your parents scheduled long distance calls to relatives in Seoul and Busan/Pusan/Busan/Pusan.

--Hotdogs have always been a part of jampong.

--You would rather go to school than be sick at home where your mom would make you clean the house.

--Dad smoked Marlboros or Camels and drank Coors light or Budweiser. Mom never smoked or drank, to your knowledge.

--You had a used station wagon or Buick.

--Going to college was NOT an option.

--There's a random collection of blue produce rubberbands in the house.

--Beef jerky was your parents' favorite American snack food.

--You couldn't have a dog (or a cat).

--Hated eating kimchi with almost every meal as a child, but craved it when you went to college.

--You've heard your mom say "why would I ___ for that? I can ___ that!"

--Two words: Korean School. After church lunch in the Fellowship Hall on Sundays.

So what's YOUR "you know if..."

Laughing about childhood because crying isn't as much fun!

--Angie in Texas

*The side note I'd like to add is that this will mostly apply to those of us who grew up Stateside in the 70's, 80's and 90's.

 

Houston, We Have a Problem...and a Confession

To my beloved Kimchi Mamas,

Please do me and our community a favor by reading this short article on self-harm and violence in the Korean American community

I know this seems like a big bummer to post this during the holiday season, but 'tis also the season for a spike in suicides, suicide attempts, and domestic violence.

Does this ring a bell for you at all?  It definitely did for me:

Grace Yoon, executive director of the Korean American Family Service Center in New York, told The Huffington Post that Koreans come to America with high hopes of acquiring wealth and providing a good education for their children. When their expectations are not met, some feel like they have let their families down. Yoon commented that the problem has gotten worse since the recession, "especially with Korean fathers and heads of households whose small businesses are not doing well."

The article goes on to say that the intergenerational language barrier as well as the cultural taboo against seeking mental health services may contribute to the higher-than-average suicide rate in Korean Americans.

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If this helps anyone at all, I'll just put myself out there as someone who did try to kill herself when she was in the throes of what she now recognizes as a major depressive episode.  

I was 21, feeling exhausted and beaten down, not doing well in school, but instead of seeking help, I just ignored my health and soldiered on, terrified of delaying my graduation by yet another quarter or year.  It got to the point where I stopped talking to my friends and stopped checking in with my parents, unable to keep up the lies when I claimed I was okay.  As I got more and more insular, my whole world consisted of my classes and my inability to attend them, my lack of focus, my inevitable failure.  So a few days before my first finals, hating myself for letting my parents down, they who worked so hard and sacrificed so much so that I could go to a top-notch school, and I couldn't even repay them with simply succeeding, I tried to take my own life.  I honestly thought I was doing them a favor, relieving a burden.

I was so, so lucky that my attempt was feeble at best, and my roommate was in the apartment.

After that, I was hospitalized for a week.  For some reason, I had this stereotype against psychiatry and didn't consider it a fully-valid field of medicine.  I could not have been more wrong.  Thanks to the medication, counseling, and support I received then and afterwards, I finally graduated from university.  My grade point average was barely enough to scrape past, and my department might or might not have overlooked a single missing requirement, but I did it.  And my life instantly became easier once I stepped foot outside that damn campus and moved on with my life.

Did I at 21 have even the tiniest correct inkling about how life after college would be like?  Absolutely not!  My instincts and intuition that I relied on so heavily turned out to be completely off; I think it was because I was completely biased to see only the negative.  That's what depression does; it skews your outlook on everything to just remember the negative and completely ignore the positive, and that small shift in perspective is what makes depression so dangerous.  It was actually quite a relief to discover that my "lenses" were off and needed readjusting.  

The turning point for me was my dad tearfully telling me that he would rather have a non-college-graduate daughter than no daughter at all.  That he would have let me crash at home for as long as I needed in order to get back on my feet again.  And that he was truly sorry that it had to come to this for him to tell me that, that this was completely uncharted territory for him, that we would get through this together.  My mom was too overcome with emotion to speak to me then, but as time went on, I came to realize that she felt the same way.  And believe me when I tell you that my parents made the Tiger Mom look like a kitten; that I was pushed very hard all my childhood; and if you had asked me before all this if I truly believed they loved me, I would have a hearty laugh at the mere notion.

But it turned out that my Korean parents, as stoic and strict and cruel and physically punitive as they were, were still parents.  And now they are very demonstrative, nurturing, giving, loving grandparents.  

And now, daily I think to myself, "I'm so relieved I'm not dead.  All the fun I would have missed out on!"

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If you at any point feel as hopeless as I did that summer, please know that you aren't "crazy," that you are struggling alongside countless others, that there are other solutions besides death, that people love you and are rooting for you, that honest-to-goodness there is light at the end of the tunnel.  Or at the very least, there are enough points of light inside the tunnel to make it worth sticking around to observe.  DO NOT MISS OUT ON THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.

Call a friend and tell them you need help, call 1-800-273-8255, go to the emergency room, connect with people online, just don't leave yourself alone with the thoughts you are thinking, the same way you would try to save your friend who is trapped in a house with someone who is trying to kill them.

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If you got this far, thanks so much for reading.  This was difficult to write.

--Julie

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