Stay Soft, Stay Open

This is a pregnancy rant. I am 29 weeks and 1 day pregnant — I am 204 days pregnant. Whoa, I was 100 days off in the episode. This is how much pregnancy messes with your brain, haha. I'm massive, I'm running incredibly hot, I'm experiencing constant jolts, kicks, and punches, and my feet and hands are so swollen and in pain. To anyone who has ever said they loved pregnancy and hated zero aspects of it, I don't believe you. Pregnancy is a wild experience, but it's also a painful, inconvenient, and annoying one. As a society, let's be honest about these experiences — it doesn't benefit us women to pretend like we're magically and perfectly floating through creating human life out of our own freaking bodies. This s**t is hard. Women deserve everything and more for this literal labor of love.

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We released our 6th song of the year yesterday, on 아빠's 64th birthday. The song is called "Show Me Love" and it's about how love lives on. You can read the newsletter on Substack: https://jieunandgreg.substack.com/p/june-2024-show-me-love. And you can listen to the song on bandcamp: https://jieunandgreg.bandcamp.com/track/show-me-love.

Thank you to all 59 of our Patreon Members for funding our June recording project! If you're not a Patreon Member yet, will you subscribe today? Go to our Patreon page, select a membership tier, and hit subscribe. Thank you so much! Subscribe: https://patreon.com/jieunandgreg

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This Sunday, June 30, is 아빠's 64th birthday. Would you join me on Sunday in doing something really fun? 아빠 embodied joy, and he was able to find a way to have fun and make people laugh, even in the worst of times. I want to honor 아빠 by having some fun on Sunday. Please join me.

Today was a wild day. Greg and and our incredible Taskrabbit mover moved a sofa into our apartment. Greg and I went to an ultrasound appointment and we got to see our child's face for the first time ever! It was a surreal and insane experience. And to top it all off, Greg and I picked up a brand new mattress off of Facebook Marketplace and had multiple people help us carry it up and down the stairs. New York can be really amazing sometimes. I'm really starting to understand the idea of, "It takes a village."

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Getting scammed on TaskRabbit by pieces of s**t is a thing. Thankfully, I handled it, but damn, this pregnant woman has ZERO patience for getting scammed on a Thursday!

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Today marks the 9-month anniversary of 아빠's death. These death anniversaries are always hard. I didn't cry today, but I did feel the quiet devastation that inevitably comes with these heavy days. I went on a walk to the park and back, we went to H-Mart, ate some food, fought for some kimchi, bought some groceries, and came home. Plans to hang out with my friends fell through, which I was totally fine with because I was exhausted by the end of the day. I felt depressed when I got home, so I made some art, and that helped. I think just having some solitude was also really helpful. I survived the day, and that is the victory.

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Tomorrow, Wednesday, June 26, marks 9 months without
아빠. We're going to go to H-Mart, eat some Korean food in the food court, buy some groceries, get in the car, drink our special drink while eating 떡 and snacks. And I'm also going to hang out with my Return to 정 friends at a Korean bar-restaurant.

I am in disbelief that it's been nine months, and I absolutely feel like it's been nine months. How has it been nine months?

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아빠’s 64th birthday is coming up this Sunday, June 30, and I’m feeling a lot of fear, dread, and anxiety. Sunday, June 16, was Father's Day. Wednesday, June 26, is the 9-month anniversary of 아빠's death. Sunday, June 30, is 아빠's 64th birthday. Last year, on his 63rd birthday, we met with his neuro-oncologist and found out that the cancer had spread to critical parts of his brain. His 63rd birthday was basically when we found out he was going to die. June was the beginning of the end. I would really appreciate it if you would send me a message, with words of encouragement, love, and kindness this week. I really struggle to ask for help. I'm trying to be better about that.

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People smile at me on the street way more as a pregnant woman than they did when I wasn't pregnant. I also rarely get sexually harassed by strange men on the street as a pregnant woman. Continuing to go on dates with your partner when you've been in a really long relationship is so important. The swelling of my hands, feet, wrists, and ankles is painful and uncomfortable, but it also reminds me of 아빠. He had edema in the same areas because he was taking a targeted chemotherapy treatment medication called Capmatinib that caused edema for him. By feeling the pain that he physically felt, I feel both comforted and devastated. This is grief.

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I'm still feeling the residual grief of Father's Day. I think I'm also feeling the anticipatory grief of the nine-month anniversary of 아빠's death, and his 64th birthday. The grief never goes away, but I feel like it has scabbed over, over the last nine months. And as these special days come up, the scab gets ripped off, and I start bleeding again. I'm not bleeding like I did last September, but I'm still bleeding, and I'm still in pain.

In this episode, I read the second half of my Substack newsletter, "Stories of Appa: Part 1."

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Writing has always been my friend. Since I was a little girl, writing has been my way of making sense of the clutter of thoughts and feelings in my head. It's been my way of making sense of myself, my life, and the world. Writing is a lot like cleaning your apartment — your brain can get cluttered, and writing helps to get all of the thoughts and feelings out so you can see them, clean them up, organize them, rearrange them, and throw certain things away.

In this episode, I read the first part of the Father's Day newsletter I sent out on Substack on Sunday, which was Father's Day.

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