I was born in South Korea and adopted. I spent my first years of life on the streets and in the orphanage of Busan. In that early period I learned that safety is not something to be taken for granted. Continuing where others stopped became my way of surviving.
I survived on willpower. I had an international corporate career, travelled the world and created a life in which apparent freedom was central. And yet underneath everything there was something that would not go away. An emptiness that could not be filled, no matter how much I achieved.
At a certain point I could no longer continue as I always had. What felt like a burnout turned out to be a turning point: my system forced me to come to a standstill. In that stillness came what I had long been unable or unwilling to feel: exhaustion, accumulated grief, loneliness and the deep traces of adoption trauma.
Slowly it became clear that real strength does not come from control, but from the willingness to remain present with what truly lives inside you.