Readers Write In #787: When Love Passes by

By formerlygrievingspouse

There’s a scene in the K-Drama She Would Never Know when Song-a (Won Jin-A) rushes to Hyeon-Sung (Rowoon) after a hard & overwhelming day with her mom. Hyeon-Sung envelops her in a bear hug and tells her gently that he can’t hear anything, and no one can see her so she can cry. Song-A just leans into him and cries. I recorded this scene on my phone and played it on a loop. Imagining myself in a similar bear hug, I cried freely, letting go of the weight I carried.

It was September 2023. Barely a month had passed since I signed the divorce papers and a few weeks since I had moved into our new rental townhouse. Every morning, I woke up and walked into a wall where my bathroom used to be. I reached for light switches that didn’t exist, and I felt betrayed by my own hands. Muscle memory, once my ally, now betrayed me at every turn. Nothing felt like my own, not even my instincts. Disorientation wasn’t just a feeling; it was the very air I breathed.

Of all the losses a divorce brings, the loss of familiarity hits hardest.

The music I grew up with & loved stopped being the healing balm. For nineteen years, Ilaiyaraja and Rahman had been the soundtrack of our immigrant lives, weaving their melodies through birthdays, anniversaries, road trips and even quiet nights at home.  But now, those very songs were traitors – treacherous instigators digging up memories I had carefully buried and dropping them on my lap, laying them bare in the silence of my new home and daring me to look away.

I tried to avoid the Tamizh music apps, but silence was unbearable. I missed Amma & Appa who were an ocean away and unable to fill this void with their chatter. During a night of doom-scrolling I chanced upon Hometown Cha Cha Cha. I didn’t understand the language, but the lilting sounds calmed my turbulent mind. So, I opened my doors to Korean Ommas and Appas – stern yet familiar presences – who filled my home with their unwavering love and care for their children. Most days I fell asleep on the couch to the soothing sound of K-Drama OSTs.

 In a world where there is so much importance in being strong & resilient, my need to just sit with my broken heart & grieve remains unmet. Or rather I had no time on my calendar to do just that. There were bills to be paid, kids to be schlepped across towns, meals to be cooked, a dog to be walked, a divorce battle to be waged in court and amidst all this mundanity my emotions had to be kept under wraps all the time, lest they spill and scorch tiny little hearts trying to make sense of the hubris the adults caused.

My support network reached out in person or online to cast rejuvenation spells so I can face another day. Yet what I truly longed for was to just completely disappear, to sink into my own sadness and maybe- just maybe -sleep uninterrupted because I was so utterly drained.

You see, my ex and I had very different parenting philosophies, and he often questioned my decision to swim against the tide, to avoid the blueprint of every immigrant family who had come before us. Those doubts became a constant shadow, leaving me to wonder if I was meeting the standards of an ideal mom.

A year since moving out I wrestled with a persistent inner critic, second-guessing my decisions as a parent and a person. Every decision I make feels like a test I must pass, as though I am trying to prove to myself – and to the world – that I’m a good parent. And I did not totally ruin my kids with this divorce. Did I do enough? Did I say the right thing to my child today? Did I equip my kids with tools to face a harsh world? The questions are endless, and so is self-doubt. This parenting gig was exhausting even before it became a constant quest to prove my worth.

My Liberation Notes is a slice-of-life drama of three siblings trying to find purpose and escape the monotony of their lives. Each sibling has their own growth, but it is the youngest sibling Yeom Mi-Jeong (a stellar Kim Ji-Won) struggling with an unspoken pressure to be nice who speaks to me. In a quiet scene towards the end, Mi-Jeong says what I cannot: “I exist to prove how terrible a person my ex was.” Like Mi-Jeong, I felt the pressure to prove that I was doing everything right, as though I had to justify every decision I made in this new chapter. I saw myself in Mi-Jeong’s eyes: weary, yet still clinging to the hope that one day I wouldn’t have to prove anything to anyone – not even myself,

In Rain or Shine, three people who each lose their loved one to a building collapse, try to learn to live their lives in the aftermath of that tragedy. The protagonist Lee Gang-Du (a raw and visceral performance by Lee Junho) showed me trauma lingers in your nervous system long after the event has passed and sometimes something nonsensical can trip you up. But how does one heal from echoes of a challenging past? How do I help the children navigate this new unfamiliar road we now share?

And just when I am ready to collapse, to declare defeat, Yong-Pil (darling Ji Chang Wook) of Welcome to Samdalri looks into the camera – no, at me – and asks softly, “Gwenchana?” (Are you okay?). It is the kind of question that doesn’t demand anything more than a nod or a hollow “Yes”, yet my chest tightens with the weight of everything I want to say. I am not okay, Yong-Pil, and haven’t been for a long time. But you’ve given me permission not to pretend, at least not here, not within these walls. Not to you, my Korean TV therapist.

Crying has been cathartic. Yet unless it is with your therapist, crying makes folks uncomfortable. Grief is not linear, so I have been told. Even as I embraced the courage it took to walk away; I mourned the end of a nineteen-year chapter of my life and the memories of love that once were. I struggled to make sense of this loss and still be there for the kids.

 In It is Okay to Not be Okay, Gang-Tae’s ( an amazing Kim Soo-Hyun) exhaustion as he took care of his autistic older sibling felt like my own. His quiet tears mirrored the ones I’d hidden from my children, and in watching him heal, I found the strength to believe I could too.

Healing is not the absence of trauma but learning to live without your circumstances defining who you are, and maybe finding joy along the way.

Over the past eighteen months I have seen nearly seventy K-dramas. They became my refuge when reality became unbearable, my therapist when grief overwhelmed me, and my lullaby when exhaustion claimed me. They helped me keep moving forward slowly, even as I stumbled back on hard days.

 One day I will look in the mirror and see myself – whole and unburdened. Until then I will live amongst these fictional green-flag waving characters. Just because. Or as they say in K-drama world, Guenyang.