Stay Soft, Stay Open

Today is Valentine's Day. I cried over 아빠. Greg put up all of our Valentine's Day decorations around our apartment. He bought me flowers. He bought my mom red roses, like 아빠 would. He bought funfetti cake mix, baked a bunch of cupcakes, and we ate them. We ate Thai food at our favorite Thai restaurant in the neighborhood, Nourish Thai. I talked to my grief group about how hard today was, and we swapped stories and memories about our parents. Today was the least shittiest Valentine's Day I could've had. This was Greg's and my 12th Valentine's Day together. This was my first Valentine's Day without 아빠. I survived the day. That's a victory.

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Tomorrow is my first Valentine's Day without 아빠. I would've called him on this day. He would've sent me pictures of the dozen red roses and cake that he got my mom. I would've FaceTimed him and shown him our elementary school chic Valentine's Day paper heart decorations, strung from our ceilings and taped to our walls. He would've laughed. He would've been amazed and amused at my over-the-top-ness. This is one of my favorite holidays, strangely enough. None of that will be happening this year. These holidays come so fast, without any time to prepare for them, or recover from the last one. The grief waves that come with these holidays as a package deal are unpredictable, but they predictably always come. I miss my dad. I miss 아빠 so much.

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I spent 설날 with 8 strangers, 1 Instagram friend, and Greg, and it was one of the best 설날s I've ever had. It was my first social gathering since 아빠 died, so I was really anxious, nervous, scared, and worried about how to exist in a social space as my new self — Jieun without a dad. I almost didn't go because I was so anxious about it. But I mustered up the courage to go, and it couldn't have gone better or felt safer. It strangely felt like we all knew each other. The night felt like a giant hug. My friend Meeja was the one who put the gathering together — everyone who came was Korean American and interested in deepening their connection with their cultural identity. I felt filled with hope, joy, love, and laughter — things that I haven't felt much of in the last year.

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I love my grief group so much. We meet every two weeks on Google Meet, and shockingly, I always laugh my ass off when we get together. I also cry, but there is shockingly a ton of laughter. In the early days of my grief, I joined multiple white-led, white-dominant grief groups because I was desperate for a space to grieve and I could not find any POC grief spaces — so I just settled. But finding my POC, mostly Asian American grief group has been a true gift and a blessing during this impossibly difficult time in my life. I have never met these people in person, but I have so much love for them. When I'm with them, I don't have to pretend or mask. I feel comfortable and safe. I can just be my full self. They are one of the few good things that have come from losing 아빠, and for that, I am grateful.

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It's 설날 (Seollal) on Saturday, February 10, and I've been feeling anxious about the holiday since the beginning of January. In Korean culture, it's customary to honor your ancestors and late loved ones on this day, so I've been feeling this internal pressure to do all of the cultural, traditional things — that I've never done before — in honor of 아빠. But I have next to no capacity to do anything, so I've decided that whatever I end up doing is going to have to be enough, and I'm not going to put the pressure on myself to do all of the traditional things, like 제사 (jaesa). I will be virtually meeting with my grief group tomorrow, so that will be really good. And I might do something on Saturday — I'll see how I feel. I wish 설날 wasn't something my family and I lost through immigration. Through immigration, we lost so many things. There's a grief in this holiday — there's a grief in building 설날 traditions in my 30s, there's a grief in being separated from my homeland, my family, and my history for the majority of my life, there's a grief in 아빠 not being here anymore, and there's a grief in life being forever, never the same.

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I hate how much anti-Asian racism is casually and blatantly in so many movies and TV shows. Gilmore Girls, Rush Hour, Sister Sister, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, The Santa Clause, The Hangover — the list could go on forever. Even movies made as recently as 2023 include anti-Asian racism, like The Starling. But what's even more erasing is when we are no where to be found on the screen, as if we don't exist. Or if we are present, we are violently stereotyped, hyperfetishized, or demoralized. There is so much media where all the main characters are white, and every side character is a person of color (mechanic, plumber, grocery store clerk, barista). It's a slow brainwashing, where Asian Americans are taught to hate ourselves, make fun of ourselves, and feel embarrassed of ourselves. I see it all over music, too — Phoebe Bridgers (songs called Tokyo and Chinese Spaceship), The Japanese House (a 100% white woman), Carl Douglas (Kung Fu Fighting). Asian Americans have made huge strides in media. And yet, Hollywood has such a long way to go.

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I watched, "You Are What You Eat: The Twin Experiment" on Netflix tonight, and I am thoroughly disturbed by how gross, unjust, and unregulated the meat industry is. It has made me want to be more intentional about my food purchases and food consumption. I also learned so much. The Amazon is being continuously burned down to raise cows to feed beef to Americans. Pig excrement is kept in giant "lagoons" and when they get too full, the pig s**t sprays out of sprinklers onto the farm, and onto their neighbors' homes, bodies, and land. Farm-raised fish are swimming in their s**t all day, in overcrowded farms. It's so easy to not think about where our food comes from because we just pick it up at the grocery store. Also, it's hard to change our diets because culture is so intertwined into the food we eat. But I want to think about the pig-s**t-sprinklers and the Amazon rainforest that's on fire the next time I want to eat pig or cow meat. And I want to find ways to keep culture while also taking care of my body and our planet.

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This episode is for Cat Janice, a 31-year-old musician, mother, wife, daughter, and friend, from Northern Virginia, who is currently dying. She is in hospice, after battling a rare form of lung cancer called Ewing-Like CIC-Rearranged Non-Small Cell Sarcoma. She was diagnosed in 2022. She just released her final song, "Dance You Outta My Head," and all of the funds that come from streams and purchases of that song, and any of her music, goes directly towards supporting her 7-year-old son, Loren, after she dies. People are streaming her music all around the world. It's a dream come true for her — but it's bittersweet. I feel so connected to her story. I just went through this with 아빠. Watching her die is reminding me that life is a gift. I think life after death, for the ones who remain, can feel more like a curse than a gift. Watching her hold onto hope, joy, and faith, even in the midst of her final days — on oxygen, on painkillers, in a hospital bed — is giving me the will to keep fighting, to keep living, to keep going. I wish this wasn't the end for her. I wish she could have kept on living.

Listen to Cat Janice's Music: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7kNpF2nj7eVgcVo8k6pWkz?si=ThRHJWpkR82TqRt9gRmwzg

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Today was an anxiety-filled, grief-heavy day. There is so much death language embedded in our colloquial, day-to-day language. If we compare the pervasiveness of death colloquialism to how deathphobic our society is, it's incredibly ironic and strange. I want to be a part of shifting our culture to using death language more intentionally — like when people are dying. I want to shift our culture away from using death language to describe extremities of emotions or experiences. Death is as universal as birth — yet, birth is talked about a million times more often than death. Birth is celebrated, while death is swept under the rug. Let's talk about death. Let's talk about grief. Let's normalize it, so we don't have to feel like aliens.

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I have a habit of tying the way others perceive me to my sense of self-worth and identity. I get anxious when I don't get a lot of external validation, after I do something incredibly vulnerable. I have a habit of changing my mind about a decision I felt confident about, if the way other people respond is not overwhelmingly positive. And even if the reception is overwhelmingly positive, whenever that external validation starts to wane, then the doubts start flooding in. I have come a long way in being able to self-validate and self-regulate, but it's still something I struggle with. And my anxious attachment and C-PTSD made their appearances after we released our first song of the year yesterday. Who I am does not change based on other people's opinions of me. The value of my art does not change based on other people's opinions of it. If I'm proud of it, I can remain proud of it. If I'm proud of myself, I can remain proud of myself.

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