love yourself

Over the last 10-15 years, I have really struggled with my identity and with imposter syndrome. This is still something I struggle with, but I also think this is the case for most millennials because we have been forced to spend our lives adapting to nonstop global crises along with having to constantly learn new technology changing at a breakneck pace. We went from playing outside, to learning how to use computers, to using the internet, to cell phones, and then social media happened. Social media started out as a way to stay connected with the people we cared about, but it has become such a performative space. We are constantly force fed influencer content, highly toxic and frankly factually incorrect and dangerous misinformation all for clicks and money. In some ways, I think I’m lucky because I grew up watching these spaces gradually shift into what they are now. For the younger generations, this is the world they are growing up in. I can’t imagine not knowing life before this.

In my 20s and 30s, I spent so much time trying to be what other people expected me to be. There came a point where I started to feel like I didn’t even know who I was. This was in part due to social media and also frankly due to my personality. I’m such a people pleaser. It took discovering K-pop and K-drama for me to find my way back to myself; back to embracing the things about myself that make me unique rather than hiding them away. It isn’t a surprise that I found my way to K-pop through the person that has been by my side supporting me and encouraging me to love what I love for almost 20 years now.

Early in our relationship, Dean tested the waters showing me some anime series that he thought I might like. We watched quite a bit of anime on Crunchyroll and I honestly really enjoyed it. In 2010, we were working retail jobs in Michigan at two different stores, both in the same complex. We commuted to work together because we only had one car. Sometimes our schedules lined up, sometimes they didn’t. On nights where we both closed, he would get out of work later than me. I would sit in the parking lot, close enough to use the free wi-fi.

On those nights that I waited for him in the parking lot, I would pull up random shows and watch whatever seemed interesting. One evening, I stumbled on a Korean drama called The 1st Shop of Coffee Prince. There weren’t many dramas on Crunchyroll, so this stood out in the listings. I had never watched a Korean drama, but I decided to give it a try. I became completely hooked. I was completely enamored with the language, the culture, just everything really.

I started to seek out ways to consume as much Korean content as I could. K-dramas led me to discover Super Junior, a Korean boy band, and all of my work as a kid fangirling over N*SYNC and New Kids on the Block just came right back. When we moved to Korea in 2015, my love and appreciation for the K-media became even stronger, but only because I truly saw how beautiful Korea and its people are. Dean and I made lifelong friends in that first year being in Korea, and those people were some of the first to welcome us back when we returned in 2026.

K-pop has also connected me with some of the dearest people in my life. I’ve found that the people that I’ve met through K-pop are incredibly kind and genuine. They are truly the people who I am my most authentic self with (besides Dean of course), and I can’t even begin to explain how freeing that is.

I hope that if you read this, that you take a step back from your daily life and truly think about the things that make you happy; the things that make you smile the brightest; the things you can’t wait to do. I hope that you make time for those things. Embrace them as part of who you are. You won’t regret it.

I’ll end this with a few photos from the last couple of K-pop concerts that I went to, BTS and Jay Park.