Chapter 9: "The A-Ha": Self-Development and Trauma; Whole and Complete
"Life is meaningless". In a room of 150 people (obviously pre-pandemic), I'm sitting among the back rows, toward the aisle, taking copious notes, even though the course instructor encouraged us not to take notes. That "bombshell" produced some looks of bewilderment, some people exhaled deeply like the weight of the world was removed from their shoulders, some began laughing at their own absurdities.
Landmark Worldwide is a personal and professional growth, training, and development company focusing on helping achieving success, fulfillment, and greatness. I signed up for "The Landmark Forum", their introductory course in April of 2018 after I made acquaintances with Juls, a woman I gave a Lyft ride to a month prior. I didn't have the disposable income to pay for the course and Juls offered to pay for my tuition. What did I have to lose? K.A.F.E. (Korea Academy for Educators) officially disbanded in the end of 2017 and I trying to figure out what I was going to do next and why it was so hard for me to identify what I was passionate about. I was driving for Lyft and taking freelancing jobs, like when my mentor Helie Lee referred me for a book editing position for a retired Asian American immigrant writing her memoir Waiting for a Miracle (https://www.amazon.com/Waiting-Miracle-Wi-Yol-Pierce/dp/0997582308).
Wait? The course is from 9:00am - 10:00pm Friday through Sunday? Sh*t, this better be worth it. Oh wait, I'm not paying for it.
I'm not going to share every minute detail of what happened at the Landmark Forum or the specific things they covered, I don't want to step on their intellectual property nor do I want to get sued. They spoke about "breakthroughs", that "a-ha" moment (not A-Ha, though I would have been down for a group sing along to "Take On Me") that would bring a fundamental shift in how we viewed our lives and how we viewed ourselves. Over the first two days I observed as people shared their childhood traumas, disappointments as it related to their careers, families, and relationships; all the while I sat back and observed wondering what my breakthrough would be.
I was reminded of an incident when I was 8 years old. It was a Sunday night and my dad was going to meet up with his friend to play "mighty", a card game invented in the 1970's by Korean college students. I asked my mom if I could tag along since the son had a Sega Genesis console. My dad promised my mom that we'd be back by 8:00pm, plenty of time for school the next day. I remembered playing Lakers vs. Celtics and the NBA Playoffs, my first sports video game. At 7:45pm I asked my dad if we should head home but my dad was still fully immersed in his game. He assured me that he'd talk to my mom and everything would be okay, so I tentatively went back to playing video games until we finished his game. When we got home a little after 9pm, I had never seen my mother look so angry. She shouted at me to go to bed and said, "for the rest of the night, you are not my son". I immediately went to my room and cried; not one of those wailing out cries but one of those where a part of your soul dies. My dad never interceded for me, nor did he explain that he was the reason we were late. Granted English is not my mom's first language so I don't believe that it was her intended message either. But for 8 year old me, the story I created from that night was that love was not unconditional and if it was, I was undeserving of it.
That was my "breakthrough" and a real nature vs nurture moment. Was that when I became such a people pleaser, or was I already one? Is that when I developed co-dependency issues or did I already have them? Did that create my fear of failure and rejection or was I simply born with Korean han, a "beauty of sorrow" emotional baggage? Somewhere during the final evening of the Forum, I figured out that none of those traits were inherently me. The people pleasing, the co-dependency, the fears of failure and rejection were all trauma responses. I was convinced this was the person I needed to become in order to gain acceptance and eventually receive unconditional love. That's the paradox though, seeking unconditional love and acceptance from an inauthentic version of myself.
I used the subsequent Landmark courses to slowly strip away all of the aspects of my identity that were survival tools and no longer reflected the person I am (by now I was paying the tuition on my own so I was stripping away my finances too). Feeling the limitations of their pedagogy, which placed an emphasis on masculine energy and extroversion, I enrolled in OneTaste as well to be a counterbalance, learning the practice of "orgasmic meditation" (OM) that focused on feminine energy and intuition to get reconnected with others and with my body and desires. Practicing "orgasmic meditation" got me into the practice of making and responding to communication as requests and not as reflections on my self-worth. A rejection of an OM wasn't the rejection of me as a person, it was a rejection of the request. Though the male is the "stroker" and not the "strokee" receiving stimulation during an OM, the practice re-awakened the "Peter tingle" (Aunt May referring to Spider-man's "Spidey Sense" in the MCU movies) of being empathic while also deprogramming years of porn viewership and personal sexual trauma that reduced my sexual identity to performance and climax. I got to see myself as a full sexual being and not a sexual organ.
"I am whole and complete"
As I completed my final Landmark course in the spring of 2019, I assumed I would be a different person coming out of it. More self-assured, more confident, more decisive, no longer "sitting on the sidelines" but actively "out on the field". And in many ways I did change. I became much more intentional creating the life that I wanted. I ended up finding a career in Domestic Violence that aligned with the person that I was becoming, the empathic intersectional feminist. My relationship with my parents has been much healthier, especially with my mom in how we communicate and relate to one another. My friendship orbit (I like to make the analogy of my social circle as a solar system and compare friend groups to planetary orbits) shuffled and are no longer based on conditional acceptance. I'm dating with intention now I'm finally present to what I specifically desire in a life partner and ignoring all of the "supposed to's".
Everything was moving in alignment with this new version of me, until it wasn't. I had a serious bout of depression in early 2022 and once again I was the 8 year old told by his mother that he was not loved unconditionally. My self-worth was shattered and the suicidal thoughts came right back. I had invested in all this personal growth and self-development, but was it all for naught? Not quite. The fact was I wasn't a different person after all that self-work; I was more myself than I had ever been. I got to acknowledge and face my various traumas, but no longer had to be defined or shape my identity around them. And what was left was me.
I am whole and complete. I thought this was supposed to be some hokey celebration and declaration of victory when we finished the course and created all these new possibilities for ourselves. But it wasn't; it was a statement of purpose. I am whole and complete. The new job, the financial stability, the new friend group, the healthier relationship with my parents were all nice, but I didn't need any of those things to validate me. No, I am whole and complete because I am "fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalms 139:14, hey just because I don't attend a church anymore doesn't mean I didn't read the Bible). There's nothing to change, nothing to fix. I'm fine just the way I am, weird quirks and eccentricities and all. I'm not missing out on anything that is meant for me; if it comes later then wonderful and if it doesn't, then I'm still whole.
There was no specific a-ha moment when it sank in. I began practicing daily gratitudes and began therapy. I carved out time to do things just for me: listening to music and curating playlists, watching films, reading, sketching, and going out for walks. And slowly I began to experience joy again; starting with a second here and there, for the length of a pop song, until I was able to stretch them out for longer moments. I started smiling and laughing at life's absurdities again. I began finding my own quirks endearing. And when I've experienced burn out and social anxiety, I quietly retreated back into my cocoon to remind myself that I'm whole and complete. I owned up to mistakes without being defined by them, nor having them determine my worthiness. Own them without any excuse, take accountability, learn from them, work toward solutions so they don't repeat (by the way: there's no such thing as cancel culture, it's a response of privilege by defensive, entitled motherf*ckers who don't want to take any personal accountability. I reserve the space to get on my soapbox at least once per blog). Learning to love myself and others again with secure attachment instead of anxious attachment.
"I'll be stumbling away, slowly learning that life is okay. Say after me, it's no better to be safe than sorry".
I could never remember the verses, but when that chorus hits? SING THAT SH*T LIKE YOU MEAN IT! A-Ha.
Portrait Photography by: https://www.zacharyleeportrait.com
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