Kimchi Mamas

How am I supposed to teach my daughter to love her body when I hate mine?

My daughter is this smart, funny, angry, beautiful ‘tween. Too young to be an adult and too old to be a child. She plays soccer and games online. She is as comfortable alone in her room reading her latest manga book as she is giggling with her gaggle of gal pals in the living room. But as most moms know – and sadly can relate to – she struggles with her ever-changing body.

What fit yesterday is too tight today. What she loved about one blouse she hates the next. Day to day (hell hour to hour) her mind shifts, changes, adapts and back again.

But the body she inhabits now is the body she will have for the rest of her life. It is the vessel that will carry her in this world through adventure and learning, victory and loss. It is a fine balance teaching our girls about healthy eating and healthy living without accidentally seeding a paranoia about what is “wrong” with their bodies. . .

And as a half Korean child, she sees and is aware of the “ideal” body and face types strewn all over the Tumblrs and Instagrams of K Pop girl groups. The lithe bodies of creamy white skin will never be hers. And that’s ok. With me.

How do I make it ok with her?

How am I supposed to teach her that her strong thighs and calves are what propel her forward in a physical match against someone she is guarding in a game when I obsess over the size of my calves in high boots?

How am I supposed to be an example of body happiness/contentment when almost every night and morning I look in the mirror and turn my face to the left and right to see the wrinkles (laugh lines) more clearly and suck in my #mombod gut to remember what 15 pounds ago looks like?

How do you do it?

*Angie in Texas is ALL about the #mombod right now...

The Sea Women

I have never been to Cheju-Do, but am looking forward to finally seeing "Korea's Hawaii" this summer when my family goes. It has been a longtime dream to bring my mixed race children to see where their mother comes from. I had almost given up on dragging my reluctant teens, when one of them actually expressed interest in going. I signed us faster than he could finish wrapping his seaweed around his rice!

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/sea-women-of-south-korea?intcid=mod-most-popular

--Jomama

RIP Paul J. Kim

Let us take a moment to keep in mind the family of Rutgers student, Paul J. Kim. IAmKoream.com is reporting Paul's body was recovered earlier this month from the Hudson River. His death has been ruled a suicide.

Though I did not personally know Paul, I do know that suicide is a real problem in the Korean/Korean American population. Too many times we read about the deaths of our Kimchi Brothers and Sisters. There have been posts right here on KM about feelings of despair, depression, and considerations of suicide. 

Let us not forget Paul as "just another suicide" but instead honor him by openly speaking about Koreans/Korean Americans and suicide. 

"In memory of his brother, Christopher Kim created a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for his brother’s memorial."

RIP Paul J. Kim.


--Angie in Texas

Mystery Arms

The BBC is reporting a 50 year dinosaur mystery has finally  been solved . . . And it's weird!

Korean and British researchers have come up with what appears to be one of the WEIRDEST dinosaurs ever reconstructed. Part of the mystery stemmed from the HUGE, long arms of this bad "...the long forearms with giant claws may have been used for digging and gathering herbaceous plants in freshwater habitats."

Two words: 물 김치!

 

Hello Kimchi Mama Readers! I'm baaaaaaaaaaack!!!

--Angie in Texas is BACK 

 

 

Hello!

Hello Kimchi Mama Readers!

It's me... Mary! Long time no see. I am not sure why I haven't blogged in a while... I just haven't. But today I got to thinking about Kimchi Mamas and felt like I should write a post.

What have I been up to? Mostly just the usual... working, mothering, you know.

My younger son started kindergarden yesterday. Whoohoo! Both kids in school! Less childcare expenses!

I start a new job in a couple days so I am a little excited/anxious about that... and also sad to leave my current job.

Oh, I did have to make a quick trip to the Motherland earlier this year. I hadn't been to Korea since 2012 so yeah, there were a lot of changes. I noticed a lot of changes in the subway. The subway trains themselves had electronic maps and lots of other electronic signage. Also everyone had metro cards that they swiped to get in and out (like Clipper in the Bay Area) instead of paper tickets. When I was living in Korea, everyone was still using physical paper ticket stubs. Sadly, it was a very short trip and I didn't get to eat a lot... sniff sniff.

I feel a bit out of touch with our readers. What have you been up to? What's new with you? What's been on your mind lately?

- Mary

Condolences

Our deepest condolences to the family of Paul Lee, the victim of the shooting this past Thursday at Seattle Pacific University. If anyone has any connection to the family or their friends, please share so that we can help however we can. 

Be the true hero that you are!

Watching your child going through something painful is extremely difficult for any parent.  We often wish we could take the pain away.  We wish we could feel it for them instead.

Watching our children go through their first heartbreaks can be torturous.

Seeing them experience life’s disappointments is not easy.

The good news is that we can help!  We can teach them how to be proactive.

We can teach our children how to handle disappointments, challenges, and heartbreaks in ways that prevents them from feeling defeated.  In fact, we can teach them how to turn a bad thing into something good for them.

How do we do that?

We model it for them.

When we have difficult and heartbreaking moments in our lives, because we certainly will have them, we have a golden opportunity to show our children how it is done.  This is difficult because in those moments we feel weak.

Go through the feelings, feel them, and be most compassionate toward yourself.  Don’t beat yourself up for the bad thing that happened, no matter what it is.  Assess it correctly.  Be very careful not to see it as a catastrophe.  It is not, no matter what you might want to feel.  Make sure to learn from your mistakes to avoid them in the future.

It is most important to learn to forgive yourself for whatever happened.

Don’t simply waste a bad situation through getting over it, though.  Use this opportunity to improve yourself!  Get better!

When you handle your mistake, bad situation, heartbreak, or challenge like the true hero that you are, you will teach your child/children to do the same.

What better motivation do you have to be the best that you can?

It is not going to be easy, but it is worth the effort!  And… can you do it?  Of course you can,  I guarantee it!

Once you are on the other side, you will see everything so clearly, and before you know it you’ll be back on the track of your life!

To quote one of my favorite writers, Dr. Seuss, “Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting.  So get on your way!”

 - Nancy

Asking ourselves the right question...

 

"What's next?"

Liz Murray, the author of Breaking Night, talks about how she taught herself to make positive choices when she was tempted to make destructive ones.

She talks about the times when she would wake up amongst many other homeless kids who were sleeping on the floor, and having to walk over their bodies toward the door. She explains how she experienced the desire to stay home and sleep as all the other homeless kids were doing, but did not do so.

She recalls thinking about her past, all the bad things that had happen to her, being homeless, and her deep and deserved sense of self pity. All of this made her want to stay home, go back to sleep, and wallow. However, she found that to make the choice that would take her to her goal of finishing school and going to college, making something good out of her life, she would ask herself the question, “what’s next?”  

She sensed that the empowered choice was about the future, and that the action that she needed to take to get to the positive future was heading out the door to school; this was the positive change that she wanted.  It started with a simple question.

I have been struggling with a speech writing project for the past month or so.  I have written many drafts of it, and have been happy with none of them. I had never really written a real speech before, and certainly not one with the weight that this speech has on it.

While feeling discouraged and sorry for myself for not being an instantly prolific speech writer, I followed Liz Murray’s advice and asked myself, “What’s next?”  I put my two hands on my keyboard and began typing.

I broke it down in the format of the five paragraph essay structure that I had taught my students to do in the past, and began filling in the ideas.

Every time I felt self-doubt, I asked, “what’s next?”  Then, I wrote the next point, the next point, and the point after that.

I am proud to say that I wrote my first draft of a speech that finally looks and sounds like the speech I want it to be.

I am sincerely grateful to Liz Murray for the question that she thought of as an amazing teenager, “What’s next?”  

What’s next for me?  The second draft!

“What’s next” for you?

 

- nancy

Tomorrow is another day…

As moms, we can easily feel like failures.  All from what we do with/to our children and our lives.  We can self punish all we want, but it might not always pay off in terms of helping ourselves do better.

I have been on that road for a bit.  I have been feeling as if I was not being my best.  Today, I began a new chapter.  I broke through part of a writing project, though I was dealing with mild depression, and as I got further and further into my work, I felt stronger and stronger.  But there were still moments of fragility.  

I wrote a poem that my son does not want me to post here, but called my writing mentor and spoke with her about what I have been going through, and she suggested an idea. She said that I should stop putting myself down with words, and that this would be the beginning of succeeding at my current project.  Her thoughts: positive self-talk attracts the successful achievement of one’s goals

So I want to say to myself, and to all the moms here that feel as if they are failing their kids at times, tomorrow is another day.

Lets all have a great one tomorrow, and know that we are good moms!

 

- Nancy

Falling out...

of  synch. of time. of love. of perceived hate. of lust. of excitement. of  motivation. of ambiguity. of clarity. of want. of anything.

Confession: Hello, my name is Rikki and I'm an addict of  procrastination and anxiety, I've been clean now for... about 13 hours,  thank you.