Stay Soft, Stay Open

We successfully recorded our second song of the year. It went surprisingly well. When I tried to write the newsletter, I started weeping — that was also surprising. Today, Cat Janice died at the age of 31, of a rare and aggressive form of lung cancer. Please keep her family in your thoughts and prayers as they continue to navigate the impossible grief that inevitably comes with the death of a loved one.

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Greg and I will be attempting to record our second song of the year tomorrow. I am going into this second recording expecting a lot of myself, but I want to try to go in with less expectations and more space. My goal is to create a *little* bit of space for hope, a *little* bit of space for joy, a *little* bit of space for fun, and a *little* bit of space for wonder. Here's to another first pancake.

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Today marks 5 months since 아빠 died. It was a hard f*****g day — every monthly death anniversary has been hard, but today caught me off guard. The devastating reality that 아빠 really is gone, he really is dead, and I will never see him again in this life, hit me like a train this morning. It's also the first death anniversary that I've gone through without my mom. We were going to have a regular Monday, but given that I was weeping at 10:00 in the morning, we decided to shift gears today and do something to honor 아빠, by honoring myself and my needs. I left the house for the first time in 2 days today. I need new sneakers, so we went to Brooklyn Running to try on sneakers. We didn't buy any, but trying on shoes magically lifted my mood. We took the train into the city and I tried on some clothes — shopping and trying on clothes, even when I don't buy anything, truly brings me joy. I ate some candy — sour watermelon slices, peach rings, and Trolli Brite Crawler knockoffs — and I was reminded that candy can truly change your life. Greg made us spaghetti and meatballs and garlic bread for dinner. And then, by some f*****g miracle, he found my airpods that have been lost for ONE MONTH! These airpods are like my security blanket — they have provided me an immense amount of safety and comfort over the last year. I also have a memory with 아빠 attached to them, so they're really special to me. And when you lose a person, losing things feels so much harder. Losing things comes with grief. I feel so much more attached to things than I ever have before. Even receipts feel sentimental. That was how I spent 아빠's 5-month death anniversary.

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I changed my mind — I hated yesterday's Death of the Party grief event. It was a very unsafe space for people of color, and more specifically, for me. The space was oppressively white, and I felt incredibly unsafe as the only Asian American attendee. It was not a safe space to have a non-Anglophone name. I automatically reverted back to my high school self, code-switching subconsciously to exist in that space. I hated the somatic experience — I hated touching strangers, and feeling like I had to do it because it was a part of the event. It felt like forced and rushed intimacy, much like my experience at church on most Sundays, and I hated it. The founder of the organization did some white-woman-cover-her-ass-everyone-is-suffering-equally b******t, where she mentioned the immense privilege we have to grieve together, while the people in Gaza, Israel, Ukraine, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, and even the U.S., do not. Saying that the perpetrators of a genocide don't have the space to grieve — just like the Palestinian people of Gaza — is an asinine and completely false thing to say. I didn't feel like I had the space to voice any of my rage, discomfort, or disagreement. It's not my fault. I am not responsible for other people's ignorance. I'm proud of myself for figuring out that this is not a safe space for me. I will not be going back.

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I went to the Death of the Party gathering tonight and I feel mixed about it. It was surprisingly good in some ways, and it was expectedly bad in others. It was good because I was able to connect with other grievers in my city — I felt my heart and mind expanding as I sat with people and held space for their grief, as they held space for mine. You just have no idea what people are carrying and dealing with. It was bad because it was supremely lacking in diversity, which I had anticipated. There were a total of 6 people of color at the event — 2 Asian Americans, 2 Latinos, and 2 black people — out of 25+ people. I wept, which surprised me. I felt so much love for strangers, which also surprised me. I think I'll go to another event. I'm really proud of myself for going and trying this out. I surprise myself in how brave I am.

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Grief is when the things that should be there are no longer there. My mom should be in the kitchen, sitting on the step stool. She should be filling our apartment with smells of food — 미역국, 볶음밥, 부침개, 김치찌개, 된장찌개. She should be folding the clothes that I left on my desk. She should be hanging my jacket in the closet. She should be taking the dog out for walks. She should be doing the dishes. She should be cleaning the floors, crouching down. She should be cutting fruit. She should be going on her morning walks and coming back around 9:00 or 10:00 am. She should be going to the grocery store to pick up bananas or grapes, whatever we're running low on, before we run out. She should be here driving me nuts. She should be here. I've been living with my mom since June 2023 — the longest time I've lived with her since I was a kid — which makes this separation hard. Her leaving has reminded me of what it felt like after 아빠 died — my whole life as I knew it, disintegrated into dust. Everything reminded me of 아빠, of what he should be doing that he will never do again. Everything I did felt like it had a massive hole in it, where 아빠 should be. My mom leaving is triggering a second massive grief. I'm doing better today, but it's still hard.

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Being separated from my mom — her being in Virginia and me being in New York — is causing a compounded grief that has been hard to carry today. On the other side of my anxiety from yesterday, is a heavy depression. They say our grief doesn't shrink — we grow around it. And I believe that to be true. I feel myself growing around it, but it still feels massive. Today, I'm reminded of all that I've lost — the old me, the old 엄마, 아빠, our old life. Our family dog, Sadie. This is an impossible reality to live in, an impossible reality to accept.

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Setting a boundary is hard for the boundary-setter. My mom is alone, for the first time in her 62 years of life, and for the first time in my 35 years of life. Greg drove down to Virginia on Friday, and he drove back to New York on Saturday. When one parent dies, you become exponentially more terrified of your second parent dying. When you're an only child, the thought of your remaining parent dying feels like the scariest thing in the world because they are the only other person remaining in your nuclear family. I've been feeling really anxious since she left on Friday — is she okay? Is she eating? Is she drinking water? Is she going on her morning walks? Is she lost in her depression? Is she taking care of herself? I've always felt like my parents' parent to some extent, but it's become so much more extreme as I've become an adult, since I've become 아빠's caregiver, and since 아빠 died. I'm trying to let go of that fear and control over my mom's life, health, and well-being. But it's really, really hard. Her leaving feels like a second death.

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Greg drove my mom back to Virginia today. Harrie and I stayed back in New York. This was a boundary that I set for myself because her being in New York has not been working — we have been getting into massive fights — and I finally admitted and accepted that this is our current reality. Setting boundaries with my mom has always been hard for me, but it's especially hard right now because 아빠's gone, and she's my only living parent now. When the reality set in that 아빠 was dying, I immediately knew I wanted my mom to live with us — the thought of her living alone gave me anxiety and was not an option for me. But the reality is that we can't live together in the current mental state that she's in. She needs to get help, but there is such a large stigma on getting help for psychological issues, so she keeps refusing. But if she continues to refuse to get help, then our relationship will have to become more distant. As an anxiously-attached only child with only one living parent, this is such a difficult decision for me to make. I feel shitty that my mom is going to be by herself. But I have to remember that this is her choice. And I can't keep being her teacher, therapist, mom, and savior. I have to take care of myself. I matter, too. Greg said this to me today — "You have done enough." I struggle to accept this truth, but I have done enough. I have done more than enough.

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I've been actively, consciously, and intentionally setting boundaries with the people in my life since 2019. My first big boundary-setting moment was when I finally decided to confront my therapist, who I had been seeing for over a year, about how terrible of a job she was doing as my therapist — rolling her eyes, looking at me judgmentally during sessions, and saying wildly inappropriate, invalidating, and harmful things to me. I confronted her passively and fearfully, but I did it. She did not validate my experience. I ended therapy with her. This was huge. I hugged her at the end of our last session, which I feel sad about — I feel sad that I felt like I needed to take care of her and make her feel better, when I was her client, and I was the one who was treated like s**t during my sessions that I had paid for. But this experience was a pivotal moment for me. This experience was a catalyst for me in setting better boundaries, trusting my intuition, and standing up for and protecting myself. I have grown so much in my ability to set boundaries. I often feel like I should be better at setting boundaries than I am, but when I think about this moment of setting my first big boundary, I can see that I have come so incredibly far. And I'm doing a f*****g phenomenal job.

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