My Life So Far

A summary of my life so far:

I was born in South Korea.

I had a younger sister born 2 years after me. My birth mother died of cancer and my birth father eventually gave my sister and I up for adoption

I was adopted to the USA at age 3 (almost 4) years old together with my biological sister into a family that is fundamentalist Christian and that has been deemed a cult numerous times and is currently under multiple investigations for widespread Child Sexual Assault and money laundering.

We moved around a lot growing up.

My adopted father traveled a lot and my adopted mother was a stay at home parent.

Our religion dictated that the girls would have extremely long hair (down to our bottoms) and we could not cut it, we could not wear pants, make up, jewelry or anything that would encourage or express worldliness or vanity. We did not have a TV and we could only watch movies when we went to a worldly friend's house.

By the time I was 8 years old I was no longer a virgin. This was not my choice.

I graduated high school and attended University of Wisconsin Madison.

I married my first husband who was from the same religion. He was abusive.

I became a mother and had my first two kids within 18 months of each other. July of 2006 and January of 2008. We had a housefire when my oldest was 11 months old in June of 2007, and I was newly pregnant with my second child. The other half of our duplex had been purchased by new owners and in their process of moving in, they had placed a cardboard box with tupperware and plastic containers on the stove and one of the burners was on.

When my children were 2.5 and almost 1, my first husband was physically abusive in front of the babies. I looked up at their stunned faces as they watched, and I realized that I could not raise them in this environment. I began to secretly save up money and set money aside any chance I could get.

10 months later, I had enough money that I felt I could possibly survive on my own. I was working as a nanny so that I could bring my babies with me. I had almost $10,000 saved and I had an income of $1,400 cash income per month. I subletted a 1 bedroom apartment that was partially furnished as the prior lease holder had moved out of state. I opened a bank account in my name, I purchased a phone via Cricket with the least expensive prepaid plan available. On Saturday September 26, 2009, I dropped my first husband off because he wanted to watch the college football game at a location that had a TV. I called my best friend and we loaded her Ford Flex and my Chrysler Town and Country with all of the absolute minimum necessities that the kids and I would need in order to survive. We moved those belongings into my small new apartment. I called my first husband and told him that I had moved out and that I would not be coming back. The first thing he did was turn off my cell phone (the one that was on his phone plan) and take my name off of the bank account.

I filed for divorce and left the religion that I had belonged to for the entirety of my known life. This was more scary and terrifying than I can ever adequately describe.

The next year, the family I was nannying for would no longer need me, and so I began looking for work and I got a job working for a State Farm Insurance agent. I started off as customer service and became a sales agent.

During this year, my first husband went from no contact with the children to 1-2 overnights per week. This was extremely emotionally brutal for me as the children would scream and cry when leaving me. I missed them more than I can express and I was terrified for their wellbeing.

I was surprisingly good at my job and a year later in 2011, I changed to AAA where I would be able to build my own book of business for property and casualty insurance.

Immediately at 18 months after the divorce was finalized, my ex husband took me back to court with a request for 50/50 placement. I acquiesced. First, because I knew I would not be able to fight it as there was no evidence that he had become abusive toward the children. Secondly, I was just so exhausted in spirit and unable to find the inner strength to try to prevent it. Considering he opened the case the moment he was able to (there is a waiting period of 18 months before you can file to revise child placement in our state), I knew that this would be a constant. I also felt that based upon what I knew of him, his request was likely based in wanting to not pay child support and wanting to be able to claim one of the children as a tax deduction. Because I felt he was not attached or bonded to the children and that this was an action set out to hurt me and improve his finances, I also felt that I would never be able to get him to give up the fight. Even though it hurt my soul when the kids would come back from a weekend with their dad and complain that they had not seen him (that instead they were sent to their grandparents' house) or when there were huge behavioral outbursts from things they had experienced while with him, and one of the therapists that the kids saw reported that my child made awful comments about herself saying things like "I'm so stupid" at age 4. Even with all of that, I knew that I would not be able to prevent 50/50 because the court system is a mess.

In 2014, I married my current husband. In a complete whirlwind, we decided in March of 2014 to get married, we built a house through Veridian Homes, we got married in July of 2014, we found out we were pregnant in September of 2014. We went to Jamaica for a honeymoon, Disney World for a family moon. The pregnancy was a difficult one. I struggled with diabetes, I had a subchorionic hemorrhage, I was diagnosed with preeclampsia at 24 weeks.

My youngest child was born in January of 2015 via emergency classical c section at 26 weeks gestation. She was 1 pound 6 ounces. She spent 92 days in the NICU. I visited her every single day. It was hell. It was hell to juggle my time between the hospital any my elementary school kids at home.

We brought the youngest home from the NICU but we left AMA on April 21, 2015. She was a feed and grow infant on low flow oxygen. I knew that her slow weight gain was because she needed to be home with 24/7 mom care. We brought her home and she THRIVED. Even though our lives were an intense and constant schedule of appointments with every specialist under the sun and every form of therapy invented, we were simply glad to finally be together. It was extremely stressful, trying to play the catch up game because preemies and particularly micro preemies face significant developmental delays. I wish I could go back to past self me and tell them that everything will be ok, that she is currently still thriving and goes to school without special education support. To always listen to my mama gut. That even when the list of diagnoses is growing, that we are on the right path. That early diagnosis and therapy leads to remarkable results. That the late nights on google and the looking up terms that are written in medical journals is all worth it. That my effort will never be properly understood, but that some day when she is in third grade and I am watching her run and jump and spell words and do long division, I will know that I did the right thing so much more often than the wrong thing.

In 2018, we built this house where we currently live. It was an extremely awful process with a lot of challenges that made us appreciate Veridian Homes in retrospect and by comparison. I am so glad that I love the land we are on and that we love the floor plan. The maddening details of the build process is a bad memory that fades and the things that remain, our neighborhood, the view from our windows, the house itself, are all things that we love.

We adopted our beloved Max in 2018. He was a key piece of our lives. He actually helped the youngest potty train. He was my constant companion and in later years would become my running buddy.

In August of 2019 I slipped and fell and broke my butt. I dislocated my coccyx and had a transverse fracture in my sacrum. After healing for 6 weeks, I joined Burn Bootcamp and began a journey to rediscover my fitness and lose some of the weight that I had accumulated caring for my youngest.

I had thought that maybe I would return to work when the youngest started Kindergarten. She was set to begin Kindergarten in the fall of 2020. But that spring, the COVID pandemic began.

In the spring of 2021, my daughter reported numerous concerning things that had been happening at her dad's house. Physical altercations that chilled me to my core because I knew first hand that those altercations will only escalate. Several instances of her being sexually assaulted by adult male friends of her dad. We opened a court case to revise child placement. During this process the kids had two interactions with the police and one in particular was not positive. In fact it was a particularly horrendous interaction that confirmed to them everything they had seen in the media with the Black Lives Matter movement and the abuse of power within the police force culture. We settled the case in February of 2022. My son and daughter have not seen their dad since March of 2022 and have not had contact with him in a very long time. Both have been to extensive individual and family therapy. When I check in with them, my son has no desire for contact stating there is no point because he (their dad) will never change, my daughter wishes things were different but has no desire for contact unless and until her desire to speak to him outweighs her fear of him.

In the fall of 2021, I ran my first half marathon. I loved it. I did so much better than I thought I would. In 2022, I ran 2 full marathons and 4 half marathons aside from my longer runs training for the full marathons. I knew and expected 2023 to be a year that I slowed down, I wasn't expecting to slow down near as much as I did. In April of 2023, I tripped and fell and sprained my ankle quite badly. After hobbling around on it for a couple of days I finally went in. I had torn all three of my ligaments in varying degrees, and I had broken two bones, one in my foot and one in my ankle. I spent 6 weeks in an air cast and then months in physical therapy. While I'm still not back to full running capacity, I am for the most part "healed."

In the summer of 2023, Max broke his back. He was diagnosed with IVDD. After a painful time watching him suffer through his illness and after speaking to several veterinarians, we made the difficult decision to say goodbye. We will forever be grateful to Max. I also thank him for sending us our dog auggie.

And now it is 2024. And I find myself here in an empty house and finally at a point where the universe has given me a moment of reprieve. And I find myself here. Uncertain what the future holds, and absolutely uncertain what to do when I am not in the middle of a crisis.