As a young twenty year old in a continental philosophy class on existentialism and film, I fell in love with the existentialist thinkers we read from Søren Kierkiegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche to Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre; with a much later theory that came out of The Netherlands in the 1990’s called Dialogical Self Theory; and with the movie based on Milan Kundera’s novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being and its four main characters Tomáš, Sabina, Tereza, and Franz who ponder the lightness and heaviness in their lives as refugees and become entangled in love, the meaning of freedom, existence and artistic expression. It is an inquiry into the nature of the soul, loss, human relationships and exile. It is also where my own self inquiry began to emerge with the simple object of the black felt bowler hat Sabina wore on top of her head.

These images, scenes and theories stayed with me, and when I was 24, I took my first bowler hat to my favorite coffee shop in Kalamazoo, Michigan and sat with it on my head for five hours hoping to experience for myself some of what it meant in the novel: an inheritance, a masculine symbol made feminine by a woman artist, a playful flirtation, an emblem of power, a memory of past relationships, and a leitmotif for an entire life. It captured my own sense of being, and when I drove home that night, a poem poured forth from my consciousness. 

At the time, I thought it was the birth of my new writing method using persona, objects and enactment, but I now realize it was the birth of my whole self. I believe in the power of metaphor to give birth to love, especially self-love.

I don’t know if it’s the peculiar way trauma shapes a quest for understanding, meaning and questioning, my own personality, or my innate love of learning, but I wasn’t content to live my life as I had been or to accept that change and transformation wasn’t possible.

As a transnational Korean adoptee, I grew up without any genetic mirrors, so I decided to create them for myself using these metaphors, objects, and symbols as a way of understanding myself, the world, and my place within it. In studying creative writing, aesthetics, deconstruction and literary theory, integrative somatic trauma healing, personality theories, and expressive arts therapies, I’ve gained (and am continuously learning more) valuable tools and skills, but I was still not satisfied. I felt like there was something more that I was missing.

Because I felt rootless for much of my life, it was difficult for me to feel tethered to the messiness in myself and in the world. To find grounding, I had to restore the connection to my heart, body, and natural environment that had been severed at birth. One of the greatest gifts I’ve received from somatic-based expressive arts, a form of therapy that uses dance, movement, drawing, writing and performance-based ritual, has been the witnessing, mirroring, reflection and integration of my whole self.

As an adoptee, I was able to finally hold the primal wounds of abandonment and loss with strength, compassion and liberation. I encountered my heart and the stories of love and worthiness that were being held there. I was able to draw and move these stories in self-portraits, encountering more objects beyond the bowler hat to help guide me in my process, and through dancing with my many different colored wings, I opened myself to love in new forms. I was able to confront my grief, give it shape and expression in my body, and hold it.

Now, I have come to a place where I no longer feel shattered, abstract, or dissociated from my body or any aspect of my identity. I embody all of who I am without shame, restriction, or holding back. I have become The Spiritual Monarch I saw myself as internally to the external world, and I’m able to open and spread my wings.