"In Asian diasporas, our loss is not just in the people we love or places that we miss; it is the loss of being grounded in a history of people who preceded you and from which you long to draw wisdom and strength." - From "Permission to Come Home" by Jenny T. Wang
While grieving the passing of a family member, I felt a strong urge to return to my motherland in 2022. It would be the first time by my own choice as an adult. I wanted to retrace the streets I knew by memory from walks with my immediate family before we moved to the U.S. when I was 11. On these streets, I drew solace from the presence of the Korean national tree— the Korean red pine. Among their many meanings, Korean red pines symbolize resilience. They successfully adapt in a variety of harsh environments— staying green even through snowstorms, growing abundantly in barren land, seashore, sandy soil, and more. Korean red pines even survived through colonial invasions. Throughout the ages they have been a big part of Korean people's lives from birth to death, and are used to build houses and coffins.To quote Jenny T. Wang again, she says "as we meet members of our community who have greater ties to our heritage, we may ache yet again for what we may have lost in our migration, whether it was by choice or not." I can only hope that whatever grief we may be navigating through, that we can proceed with deep rooted compassions, both for ourselves and for each other.