Abraham Kim
Welcome back to Season Two of the Korean American Perspectives, a podcast by the Council of Korean Americans. My name is Abraham Kim and I’ll be the host for this podcast, which seeks to share the inspirational life stories of Korean American leaders and explore complex issues that shaped this community. Today we’re pleased to interview Julia Park, Founder of Relationship365, a family and marriage counseling firm in Huntsville, Alabama. She works with people and organizations based on the research work of Dr. Brené Brown, a renowned author and scholar at the university of Houston who has written extensively on vulnerability, courage, authenticity and shame.

Abraham Kim
Julia is a licensed marriage and family therapist who has worked with people from all walks of life, ethnicities, gender, and religious backgrounds. As you’ll see from this interview, Julia talks about how Asians and particularly Asian women deal with perfectionism. She addresses the question of how perfectionism and shame are connected. She talks to us also on the importance of showing love for yourself and never take at face value. The first draft narratives about ourselves when bad things happen. These are “stormy first drafts”, as she calls it, and plus we need to practice a little self-compassion. Finally, why is being vulnerable so important for our wellbeing, especially among Asian Americans. We’ll be covering these issues and more so. Without further ado, let’s jump right into the interview.

Abraham Kim
So, welcome Julia to the Korean American Perspectives. We’re so excited to speak with you today and learn more about your life and the work that you’re doing in mental health. Let’s start from the beginning! Share a little bit about your immigration story. Were you born here in the United States or did you immigrate to the United States as a young child?

Julia Park
I wasn’t born here. I was born in Korea and when I was 12, so right after sixth grade, we moved to the States, we moved to be near my mom’s family cause her family was in Boston. So we moved there initially just to learn English. And my parents were separated for three years and then yeah, after three years my dad was kinda like, I can’t, I can’t do this anymore. So he ended up moving to the States and yeah. It was definitely harder for me cause I have a younger sibling and he’s three years younger than me, so it was a lot easier for him to make friends and adjust to the new lifestyle. And for me, you know, right after sixth grade, the preteen years, it was a struggle. I remember like every morning I really didn’t want to go to school. I was really having a hard time. But I mean, my mom was a single parent at the time, you know, cause they were separated so I didn’t want to add that pressure to her. So I remember just kind of, you know, holding all that to myself and feeling that pressure of being an older sister, having to play multiple roles. Like I was like my mom’s partner. When my mom wasn’t at home and she was working, I would have to take care of my brother at the same time struggling at school. So it was a really rough time.

Abraham Kim
At the time, you didn’t speak English either?

Julia Park
No, not at all. Yeah. So it was the early nineties, so that’s when I didn’t learn English. So in the early nineties, nobody.. you know, now they’re teaching English when kids are really little, but at the time it wasn’t very common. So I spoke no English when I first arrived. Yeah.

Abraham Kim
Were you the only Asian kid in your school or was it a predominantly White school that you went to?

Julia Park
Yeah, predominantly White and I had a couple of cousins, but they had their own friends and cliques. So this feeling kind of, I didn’t want to be in their way, you know, I didn’t want to bother them. So yeah, it was predominantly White.

Abraham Kim
So share with me about.. How was it when maybe when your father finally came, did your life change? Did your family life change when he arrived?

Julia Park
Oh, absolutely. I think while they were separated, it was really, I mean, obviously it was really hard not having a father for three years. And when he finally decided to come and live with us, I was so thrilled that I was trying to do whatever I can to hold onto that family unit. You know, I didn’t wanna.. I remember just being really excited and thrilled and at the same time like I don’t want to go back to that, you know. I really have to do whatever I need to do to, you know, make this work for our family. Yeah.

Abraham Kim
Well, it’s interesting that you as a child are trying to have this burden or this responsibility of trying to create this bonding within your family and as the older child, oldest child, I think maybe a lot of elder children feel that way. I felt the same way too in some ways. And so did you live most of your childhood in the Boston area? Is that where you spent most of your upbringing?

Julia Park
Yeah, mostly. Mostly over there, yeah.

Abraham Kim
Okay. And then from, from high school how was your adjustment in high school? I mean, you came as a middle schooler and you mention it was a tough transition, but how was your high school years?

Julia Park
After my father came, I remember feeling a little bit more stable and my English was getting better and things were getting better. But at the same time, I think my parents wanted to just kind of break away from my mom’s side of the family. Just kind of start fresh. So we moved again. We relocated to Alabama.

Abraham Kim
I see, wow.

Julia Park
Well that’s like a whole like, it was a culture shock coming from Boston. I was really well adjusted. I had a lot of friends there, finally feeling like fit in and then having to, you know, move to the South. And I remember my mom told me to call the bank and set up their account and I was on the phone and I had no idea what the other person was saying on the phone because I wasn’t accustomed to that, the different accent and it was really like kind of starting all over again.

Abraham Kim
Yeah. So how was it as a Korean American living in Alabama. I imagine you were the one of the few Asian families where you moved to, correct?

Julia Park
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It was really challenging for me. It really felt like starting all over again and it wasn’t as inclusive as it was in Boston. So just kind of feeling a little bit puzzled and not understanding, you know, what’s going on. So it was a really big adjustment for me.

Abraham Kim
Yeah. And your parents moved there because of work? I mean, obviously you had mentioned about your moving away from the family, but did your father have a new job in Alabama area?

Julia Park
Yeah. So he ultimately started working for the Korean company, LG. Ultimately he started working at LG, but before then they wanted to start a new business and they came and it didn’t work out. And my mom tried to open a restaurant and I was helping out. So yeah, it was just us trying to survive, you know, make it work.

Abraham Kim
Mm. And, from there you went to college and you went to college?

Julia Park
So I went to Auburn. It’s in Alabama. And I went to Auburn partly because I wanted to stay near my family. It’s about four hours away from my parents. And I remember, you know, freshman year, you want to enjoy your college life. And I remember driving home every week, you know, so I would like come, you know, I’m getting the car, you know, Friday afternoon right after class, and I would drive four hours and come home and spend time with family on Sunday. I would drive back to school, you know. So looking back, like I kind of see the pattern, but at the time I just, I had no awareness why I was doing that. I think looking back, I did it because I think that three year period when my parents were separated, it was very traumatic looking back. So subconsciously, I was always trying to stay near them and that gave me that certain level of control.

Abraham Kim
Wow. So that separation in your family, your early years really shaped your adult life as well as you were getting older and older. Could you share with me how your upbringing, your immigration experience influenced who you are today as a person and as a leader?

Julia Park
I mean, I think it kind of tells you why I chose this profession, you know, marriage and family therapy. I don’t think I went to college thinking that I’m going to be a therapist or a counselor, you know. I just kept trying to focus on.. The things that I was kind of questioning myself, like what does it mean to be married? And I started having more interest in that and just one thing led to another, and I ended up, you know, doing what I’m doing. Trying to understand the struggle of immigrant family where the roles are all enmeshed and, you know, mumbo jumbo. Just being a little bit more sensitive to people and what they’re going through, especially coming from Korea or a different country and how hard it is to make it work. And we talked about how being the oldest or how we’re just putting so much pressure on ourselves. And I just wish that if my parents knew that there were resources and if they took me to a counselor or a therapist where I could have a safe space to talk about like, “Geez, I’m having a lot of anxiety and now I’m having a really hard time, I’m putting a lot of pressure on myself” and somebody told me that is not your responsibility to keep your family together or keep your parents’ marriage, you know, intact. I just wish looking back, somebody gave me that opportunity to have that talk.

Abraham Kim
So did you know from your college years that you would go into the field of marriage therapy and counseling? Were you a psychology major when you went to Auburn?

Julia Park
No. So, you know, I was good at two things when I came to the States. I was good at math and I was good at music cause I took piano lessons when I was little and I grew up in church and I was in choir. So I really wanted to major in music and obviously, to my dad especially, it wasn’t acceptable, right? Cause he made this total shift. He left everything he had in Korea and you know, I remember him telling you that you’re good but you’re not good enough to make it. So I wanted to study music, but I wanted to make my parents happy and thinking that if I make them happy somehow, we can have a happy family, right? So I was pre-med but on the side, secretly I was taking piano lessons and minoring in piano. And after college I had to make the decision, what am I going to do? Am I going to go to the next school or what are we going to do? And I started talking to a friend in Korea who wanted to come to the States and study music therapy. So I thought that was a cool combination, you know, the science and music. So without telling my father, I went into music therapy and I wanted to work with kids with autism and Asperger’s and I know music has, you know. It just helps them so much with being able to express themselves and you just see like a whole, like another side of them. And I just fell in love with that work. And then as I was working with them, I realized that it’s really about working with the family cause when there’s one child with special needs, it’s not about treating the one person, one child. It impacts the entire family. So I thought, I’m going to go back to school. And initially wanting to like do music therapy with autistic children and wanting to help the family. But then that awareness, like why I had chosen certain paths or my journey, just that awareness came in later when I was doing my own personal therapy. So, yeah.

Abraham Kim
So after college, you went back to grad school to study music therapy as your kind of focus of research. interesting. So how did you get involved with Brené Brown’s work? is that something that you encountered as you were going through grad school and you came across her research?

Julia Park
I think we talked about it last time, about her Ted Talk. So you know, she has a Ted Talk on vulnerability and shame and somebody recommended me to listen to it and I did. And it was really mind blowing. I never thought that vulnerability can be a powerful tool for connection. I was taught not to show vulnerability, right? So I was introduced to her work and it was a real shock for me when I listened to her Ted Talk and thought that, “Oh my gosh, like, this is completely different from what I’ve been, what I’ve been taught, what I’ve been conditioned to.” So yeah.

Abraham Kim
How has I guess encountering her work changed you personally as well as, especially as you shared with us about your family life. But also how it shaped you personally, your family life and also in your professional life.

Julia Park
We talked briefly in the beginning about offloading her strategies. So that’s when we don’t sit with difficult emotions, right? We don’t know how to get curious about it. We don’t want to sit with this. So we just end up offloading that onto someone. I mean growing up, I personally saw a lot of that from my parents and I started recognizing that I do that too, you know. And there was one thing that Brené taught me during training called SFC. So it stands for Stormy First Draft. So we all make up a story when something happens, right? And whenever we make up that story, our brain rewards us for creating a story because by having that story, it kind of protects us, right? Then we know what to do when something, something bad happens. But unfortunately, first drafts are not always true. It’s just something that we make up to protect ourselves. So you know, my husband, Mat, which you know, and I, after learning about that, whenever we get into this really tense place we started saying, you know, what’s your SFD?

Julia Park
Right? So, you know, my first stormy draft is— and it’s supposed to be very childish. It’s supposed to be possibly unshareable. It’s supposed to be embarrassing. So kind of giving each other that permission that your first draft is supposed to be really like terrible, but you know, because I care about you, I’m willing to listen to your story and not judge you. You know? And that’s vulnerable, that’s very vulnerable because it’s a risk that you’re taking, you know, vulnerabilities about taking risks and there’s uncertainty. The level of uncertainty, not knowing how the other person’s gonna respond to that, and emotional exposure. Like I’m exposing myself and feeling super vulnerable, but it’s just in my personal relationship and my marriage, which I, for me, it’s the most important thing. I’m practicing that and it’s not something that I was taught. I see my parents doing, you know, offloading hurt. So yeah, it definitely changed myself, my relationships with my family and my husband and my daughter and my friends. It’s giving that person that permission to, you know, share their first draft.

Abraham Kim
So how about in your parenting? Has it changed your parenting in terms of how you relate to your child?

Julia Park
Definitely. I think women, Asian women especially, deal with perfectionism, right? And people don’t know that perfectionism comes from shame. Shame is the root of perfectionism. I didn’t know that either, so I kind of use that as, you know, like I’m a perfectionist. But I’m being really hard on myself. I’m being really hard on other people, right? And with parenting too, I mean, there are so many moments where I would have a lot of shame about not being the perfect parent. Like for example, if I blew up on my daughter. If she did something, like if she made a mess or like I missed a parent teacher meeting or I’m working a lot and I feel like I’m not spending enough time with her. You know, it just brings up a lot of shame and going through Brené’s work, I realized that, you know, no matter how much I get done at the end of the day, it doesn’t change how much I love my daughter. It doesn’t change that I am a good mother. I might not be perfect, but it doesn’t change the fact that I care about her and I’m trying my best. Instead of beating myself up, you know?

Abraham Kim
Yeah, no, I think as a parent myself, I completely understand. But understanding, I mean, I guess as a father, I go through similar kinds of emotions as well. I mean, since we’re on the topic of shame and Brené Brown’s work, could you share with us a little bit about the difference between shame and guilt and how they’re different?

Julia Park
So shame is focusing on the person, on the self, and guilt is focusing on behavior. So after learning that, I started catching myself. How often I use shame, you know, if I fail or if I make a mistake instead of saying that you made a mistake, I would sometimes tell myself “You’re such a failure.” For me, if I made a certain goal and I didn’t reach that goal, instead of saying that, “Oh, I could have done this better” and trying to focus on the behavior, I’ve been like telling myself that I am a disappointment, that I’m a failure, thinking that that was a motivator, but it wasn’t. And shame makes you feel lonely because when you’re telling yourself that you’re a mistake, you’re a disappointment, then what happens is that we don’t wanna make connections with other people when we’re feeling bad and we isolate. So I remember dealing with perfectionism and catching myself using a lot of shame language and I noticed that I would, whenever I felt that way, instead of reaching out to other people and talking about it, like, are you struggling with that too? And trying to gain some empathy or working on self-compassion, I would just kind of isolate myself and suffer silently.

Abraham Kim
So how do most people, especially Asian Americans, Korean Americans for that matter, respond to shame?

Julia Park
Culturally, Asian Americans stockpile. It’s one of the offloading strategies. You let things just like pile up on top of each other to the point where you are having physical manifestation of psychological and emotional distress. And I personally, in the past in college, I deal with a lot of indigestion. And looking back it was, I had a lot of anxiety and panic attacks before a really important exam, or really bad headache migraine and I don’t know why I’m having this really intense migraine and headache. So I felt a lot of like physical manifestation of my emotional and psychological stress. And I think the research shows that Asian Americans tend to do that. There’s so much shame in having emotional and psychological stress. They think that you should be able to get over it with willpower or something.

Abraham Kim
So I’m sure you a lot of your patients are Asian Asian Americans. And if you do experience these kinds of shame or you see one of your patients stockpiling, how do we as an individual, if I’m realizing I’m experiencing this, how do I deal with it? What would you suggest?

Julia Park
So a lot of people come to therapy because the doctor told the, I don’t think anything’s wrong with you, right? Like the test result and everything comes back normal and you know, you might want to go talk to somebody so they end up coming to, you know, therapy. So I think they are kind of aware of that. But the opposite of shame is empathy. Empathy is being able to connect to somebody else’s feelings. For example, if somebody is dealing with death in the family or illness, I might not have somebody in my family who’s dealing with that but I can connect to the feelings. I think connect to the fear, I can connect to feeling lonely, feeling overwhelmed and out of control, right? So empathy is antidote to shame and I think I can be that person to empathize with people who are struggling at the same time. You can’t have a therapist and counselor 24/7 and they’re not available all the time. And there’s a new concept that I recently was exposed to. Kristin Neff at UT Austin started studying self-compassion versus self esteem and self-compassion is always there for you. It’s not about spoiling yourself. It’s about when we’re struggling, when things are really bad, how do you relate to yourself? So kind of teaching myself how to be my own therapist when I’m struggling.

Julia Park
You know, she has a son who has autism and her husband wrote a book called Horse Boy and I remember reading it. She shared about one time, they were flying to England to see her son’s grandparents and her son had a total meltdown on the plane and obviously he looks normal outside, but people are like talking and making gestures, so annoyed and why isn’t this mom doing anything about it? And her feeling this rush of shame. And she quickly took her son and she tried to tame him, somehow try to comprehend him the bathroom and the bathroom was locked. It was already occupied and she was just kind of in a shock. Like, I don’t know what to do with it. And she’d remember that, you know, I can use self-compassion here. And she started talking to herself like, “No, Kirsten, this is really hard. I know you’re having really hard time, but this is going to pass. It’s not forever.” And the moment she started kind of coaching herself, you know, being very compassionate, understanding your pain and suffering and acknowledging, that she noticed that herself talking to her son, like, Roland, it’s okay, I know you’re struggling. I know you’re having a hard time, we’ll get through it. So self-compassion is something that I recently learned and it’s something that I started teaching my clients. You know, it’s great that we talk about this in our office, but I really want you to practice this outside. Whenever you have that shame talk, you know, we have this exercise where you have to write it down and then kind of convert that into using self-compassion. And how would you convert that from shame to self-compassion.

Abraham Kim
Self-compassion. Is that,I’m assuming that’s a little bit different from shame resilience. I know we’ve talked a little bit about shame resilience. Is that another tool or is that similar to what you’re talking about?

Julia Park
Yeah that’s a great question. Shame resilience is about speaking out cause shame grows when you add three things: secrecy, silence and judgment. So shame resilient people from Neff’s research, she noticed that they’re very critically aware and mindful when it happens.They try to sit with it and feel it right and get curious about it. And then you have to reach out, not just to anybody, but you know, people that you trust— and you have to talk about it, right? And I think self-compassion is something like that exercise that I was talking about. It’s about talking to yourself and being able to be your own therapist and changing that dialogue into something that’s more compassionate. So for example, you know, a lot of people have anxiety, panic attacks in the middle of the night because there’s nothing for us to distract ourselves with cause at night, things are quieter, and a lot of, you know, Asian Americans are very hard workers and you don’t really have anything to distract yourself with anymore. That’s when the shame, Brené Brown calls it gremlin, that the voice comes in and tells you things like you’re unworthy or not good enough and those terrible things. I kind of coach my clients, like, write it down. Just look at it and see how terrible it sounds. Would you ever tell this to somebody that you really care about, your friend who’s struggling. So let’s change that.

Abraham Kim
So do you see shame manifest differently between men and women and how they go about handling the shame different between men and women? Or is it similar between both genders?
Julia Park

The way it feels, it’s the same. We have that rush of shame would feel it physically right. And immediately we want to just shut it down, right? But the triggers are different. The triggers for women are about, like, I have to do everything perfectly and not show that I’m struggling. I have to look like I’m doing all of these and I’m not even sweating. I can just, you know, magically—

Abraham Kim
Like superwoman.

Julia Park
Superwoman, yeah! And for men, they don’t struggle with that. They don’t feel that pressure as intensely as women. But it’s really about not appearing weak. There’s a lot of shame about not feeling like I can handle this. I can kick butt. Being emotional, it’s a sign of, for men, they see that as weakness, right? Or when they’re going through marital issues, it’s a shame. You should be able to kick butt. Or not making enough money for the family, right? That shows that you’re weak, right? You can’t handle this, you should be able to kick butt and not show that you’re emotional, not showing that you’re feeling sad. But it’s more for men, what’s more acceptable in society— probably not from your wives and children, but from our society, anger is more normalized than being vulnerable.

Abraham Kim
That’s an interesting point. So do you see a lot of people maybe manifesting itself, this underlying shame, as anger, as rage or as just this feeling of resentment that there, maybe perhaps for men, they’re not providing for their family or they feel like they’re not providing stability. So they feel resentment for the conditions that they’re under and that it creates, I guess, stress in their lives. Or for women, if they don’t have this level of control over their entire universe, right? And so it comes out as anger. is that, is that what you see as you’re talking with the people who are facing these kinds of challenges?

Julia Park
Mhmm, I think you just summarize it beautifully. So anger is a secondary emotion a lot of times. So one of the things that I do with my patients, my clients, is that we try to look at what’s underneath the anger. So anger, if you see an iceberg, on the tip of the iceberg, what you feel on the surface, it’s just very little. But let’s say that’s anger. But underneath the water, there is this huge mass and kind of uncovering like, “Hey, what’s underneath anger? Is there, you mentioned about resentment, grief, disappointment, disappointment in myself” perhaps. But if you think about it, when we are able to get in touch with our primary emotions, it’s a lot easier to connect with other people than anger. Growing up, I never understood when my dad would get angry, you know, but I don’t know why he was angry. And he probably wasn’t taught how to go underneath the water and explore like, “Hey, what’s really there?” I know he lost his dad when he was in college and he had to take care of his mom and his sister and you know, feeling like he had to take care of all these people when he’s just, you know, this young adult and he doesn’t know what he’s doing. And I’m just guessing that there was a lot of grief and disappointment and sadness, but you know, he wasn’t allowed to talk about that culturally. So all you see is anger. So it’s all about uncovering what’s, what’s really there.

Abraham Kim
So if you did see maybe a spouse or a friend or a partner or a loved one kind of experiencing this, what would you recommend and how we would respond just to help them get in touch with some of these things that we’ve talked about it?

Julia Park
I don’t think there is the right platform for people to talk about this. You know, unless you’re in therapy and in a safe like space. Unfortunately the things that we’re talking about, people don’t know. So they see vulnerability like myself in the past, see that as weakness. Don’t show it, don’t share those primary, more vulnerable feelings. Hide it. So unfortunately, I think that’s like homework. That’s homework for us to figure out and just, kind of like what you’re doing, spreading that awareness, that vulnerability is not weakness. Yeah. Especially in a very intimate relationship. So I think unfortunately, I don’t think people are aware of that and because of that, they’re not comfortable with sharing that.

Abraham Kim
Yeah. I think like you said, obviously growing up in a Korean American family, any kind of vulnerability is a sign of weakness and we’ve often been taught, you know, get over it. Dry your tears and, you know, just try harder, right? But not allowing to grieve when we’re hurt, not allowing to speak your feelings when you know, you feel hurt or violated in some way, or even just being able to just connect with people when you need help, right? And so I think in many ways, what we were taught was not good. It was actually the things that we actually needed, right? And so to really deal with some of these issues and yeah, just coming back to kind of the Asian cultures that, you know, both you and I have lived in, there seems to be a struggle between one of the questions— and one of the things that I see is there’s a struggle between who we are versus what we’re supposed to be, right? And there’s that what we’ve just talked about is like, we’re supposed to be strong. We are supposed to be resilient. We’re supposed to be, you know, being able to conquer anything, you know. And as Koreans say, “If you just do it’ll happen,” right? Can you share some of your thoughts on that and that kind of culture that you see within the Asian American community?

Julia Park
It’s really bad. It’s really bad! That just sounds so dismissive and disapproving of your experience. And going back to that rage, anger issue that the research shows men typically have a really hard time with not knowing how to manage that. Culturally you know, I mean it’s not good, but it’s more acceptable than vulnerability, right? And there was a really interesting research and there’s a neuroscientist, Dan Siegel, he talks about how whenever we are able to name the primary emotions, what happens that requires us to use the pre-frontal cortex part of the brain, the thinking brain. And it’s supposed to help us manage feelings, difficult emotions. He called it, “Name it to tame it.” So I’m going back to your question about the struggle between what we’re supposed to be versus who we are. Brené Brown talks about wholehearted living and wholehearted is embracing good and bad. So it’s about integrating both. And I think by not integrating both good and bad, you’re not being yourself. You’re being a version of yourself, but you’re not fully embracing who we are, where you are. And if we can’t do that, then we can’t really, you know, for me that was a block. Focusing on perfectionism and focusing on who I’m supposed to be. And I remember my personal therapy work, my therapist was listening in the beginning and I would go into her office thinking like, you know, I started seeing no point in this, I’m just talking. And but at the time, she was listening and trying to collect data and you know, one day she asked me, “Julia, what’s your definition of success?” And I remember that was a pivotal moment for me cause I couldn’t answer that question. And I said, “Well, I guess whatever my mom or my dad, whatever they want me to be. I don’t know.” Because I wasn’t embracing my strength and my vulnerable side. I wasn’t embracing both of that and I wasn’t living, wholehearted living. So I think, you know, at our conference in November, I remember listening to a lot of people share their personal story— and these people are very successful, obviously including yourself, and noticing that at one point in their lives, at one point in their career, they all have that question. I’ve been doing what I was told to do, but then there was that pivotal moment where they were able to kind of integrate both and become who they are. Not being very authentic, like knowing yourself fully.

Abraham Kim
So I’ll ask a couple of questions. One is if you wish one thing that the Korean American community would do better. Especially, you know, 1.5 and 2nd generation, what would that be? To change our culture and our frame of reference in terms of some of the issues that we’ve been talking about related to shame and coming in touch with our feelings and our emotions.

Julia Park
Hmm. That’s hard cause I gotta narrow it down to one.

Abraham Kim
You could do two or three.

Julia Park
I just want to end with this story that I really resonated with because of the stage I’m in. I’m a parent of a young child and, you know, we all want to give them what we didn’t have. For me, I really want to teach her how to be able to not use that shame language. So I remember there was a story that Brené Brown shared when her daughter was in class. And she was really young and they’re doing some kind of art project and making a lot of mess, you know, playing with glitters and things like that. And the teacher told Ellen, “Ellen, you’re a mess!” And Ellen looked up at her and she said, “I might be making a mess, but I’m not a mess.”

Abraham Kim
It took her mother’s research to heart. Wonderful. So one final question. If you could speak to your 18 year old self, what would you advise your 18 year old self?

Julia Park
I would tell my 18 year old self that you are enough. You’re enough. And you’re still worthy of belonging, and love. And you’re worthy. You don’t have to be perfect.

Abraham Kim
Julia, you’re amazing and your work is amazing and thank you very much for sharing your life and what you’ve learned in your life’s journey and being an inspiration. So we appreciate the time you shared with us today. Thank you, Julia.

Julia Park
Thank you, Abe.

Abraham Kim
I hope you enjoyed this interview with Julia Park. Julia dug deeply on issues that we rarely talk about as a community such as shame, vulnerability, courage, and perfectionism. One of my favorite parts of this interview is that particular challenge that she gave to Korean American families specifically. Well, growing up in a Korean American family, vulnerability is seen as a weakness. Well, we need to unlearn that and come to terms with vulnerability and be able to address our issues with openness. If you like this conversation about mental health in the Korean American community, you’ll like some of our future episodes with people like sports psychologist, Matt Park and family counselor and executive coach Jeanie Chang. I hope you tune in.

Abraham Kim
Well, thank you again for listening to this episode of our second season of the Korean American Perspectives. We have a lot more interviews to showcase, so please subscribe to our podcast and visit our at councilka.org for more interviews, episode show notes, and more. We welcome your thoughts and feedback on our social media channels on Facebook and LinkedIn. Or feel free to send us an email at podcast@councilka.org. Well, thank you again and hope you tune in next time for the Korean American Perspectives.