How I found my purpose (part 1)
"Niche strategy", how to fight dementia, love letter to my halmoni
“Why “career coaching for creatives”? How did you decide on your niche, Kat?” my friend Melissa asked recently, with her signature gentle directness.
It was a fall Friday, the day of our monthly phone catchup slash coaches tête-à-tête. Niche strategy1 was on the brain.
“I don’t know. I did work in art museums before…” I ventured lamely.
First thought, but not best thought.
"When I was young, halmoni (grandmother) wanted to be a nurse," she confided, skinning the peel off a fat Gala apple in one long, red coil. "I wanted to take care of people, make them feel better. As a strong student, I think I could have done it. But my uncle insisted I learn to cook and be a good wife instead.”
She cut the white round into eight blemish-free slices. “I should have tried when I could. Why did I obey?"
Even though I’m family, she hunted for a guest fruit fork, planted it into a slice like a moon flag, then presented the plated array.
I didn't know it then, but Grandma would recount her dashed dream to me seven times over the next ten years. The third time I said with some irritation, “Yes, Halmoni, I remember this from last time.” Then I realized she herself did not.
Same Story Syndrome is an early symptom of Alzheimer’s. A loved one starts repeating stories and asking the same questions. They do this often with the same energy as before, and without the self-awareness to preface with “I mentioned this already but…”
Whereas most seniors begin settling down in their sixties, she and my grandfather uprooted from Seoul to immigrate to the United States. Maybe that’s cake if you survived the Japanese occupation and Korean War.
Her mother tongue had its downsides, anyway. The limits of language aside, social protocols in Korea prevented her from fully expressing her effusive and loving nature.
Now with the Korean Americans in San Gabriel Valley, it was not much different. Here too, she had to save face and avoid giving anyone a reason to gossip.
So Grandma’s real first language was fashion. She power-clashed splashy floral prints, turquoise linen pants, hot magenta button-up shirts, and Easter chick yellow purses. Her hair was a short crop of lavender waves, from decades-long use of Clairol Shimmer Lights purple shampoo. She gave herself red “French tip manicures” by carefully painting the crescent moon ends of her nails.
She did all this for herself but also to connect with others. A compliment at the grocery store made her giggle with glee.
To her surprise, broken English could convey her soul better than expected. People felt crackling warmth and well wishes in her "Hullo! Berry nice to-meet you!" She chose "I love you!" as standard farewell to non-Koreans. English as a Second Language for Seniors textbook be damned.
After my grandfather died, her devotion to him pooled inside with nowhere to go. Ever the survivor, she dressed herself and walked to church to pray. She found the choir there already, rehearsing for Sunday.
She joined. At last, a place where emitting love and healing hearts was the point. Her lilting voice left people awe-struck. She became a daily fixture at church, practicing the hymns with or without the others. Her ivory and green choir robe hung pressed and steamed at the front of her closet. Sunday never came fast enough.
Fifteen years later, the star soprano's voice wavered, wobbled and cracked. The gasps, from weakening breath support, were painful for everyone. Yet another ending.
Without singing — a vessel to pour her love into — Same Story Syndrome descended full force. Soon, she needed 24-hour supervision.
Dementia is many things. People often discuss it in cognitive, neurobiological terms, with lists of symptoms. But Same Story Syndrome is also a deep spiritual grief that hounds its keeper. And maybe just part of growing old and reckoning with the people, places, and pursuits we were too scared to try.
She just turned ninety-five. That’s a long time to remember and forget one’s unlived lives.
"I should have tried when I could” sears the soul.
In this way, dementia could also be a stroke of mercy, the universe doing a ruthless edit of the heavy chronicle.
These days when my sister Audrey and I visit her, she is wearing someone else’s clothes. Shabby browns, muted pinks, faded blacks. Crewneck sweatshirts and oversized graphic tees she would never choose for herself.
After a few visits, I finally asked someone. The petite, round-eyed nurse paused, trained in de-escalating this very question. She sing-songed that the memory care facility washes everyone’s laundry together, once a week. They then sort it by gender and size before doling out stacks to the elders, randomly. I froze.
But love finds a way. Audrey had been peering into Grandma’s face. In a spark of instinctive genius, she reached over and put her own black sunglasses and my raffia sun hat on Grandma’s head. I followed suit by wriggling off my jade ring, once hers, and reuniting it with her finger.
Something inside her flickered on, slowly replacing the dim. Suddenly, there it was. Radiating again from a face now thin and toothless, a bit of her essence.
The title of this piece is a white lie. I did not find my purpose — it found me.
I used to work with artists in the museum world. Then I quit and hostessed for a while after a close call with death. I got fired from a gallery after only three months, taught at an after-school program, scraped up the courage to coach part-time, and managed an online community before doing what I do now.
Those dots aren’t why I do what I do. They’re chapter summaries, one version of how I got here. Thankfully, Melissa’s question had long aftershocks. Sitting with it has brought me closer to the truth:
Like you, I’m a tiny branch growing off of a giant sequoia of people. Their joy and sorrow has shaped me in ways known and mysterious. It’s too easy to forget I’m part of a great, unstoppable unfolding.
Purpose is something that has you in its grip — you can’t help but do it, be it.
Thanks to my grandma, mine is conveying my soul to the hilt. It’s helping others look, see, tell the truth, and live authentically. It’s fighting Same Story Syndrome.
Here’s the bad news. I enjoy privileges and insane opportunity thanks to our age and the sheer gall of my ancestors to survive, such that it’s possible — nay, rewarded — to be bold, make mistakes, follow my nose, seek what is exquisitely mine to do and keep living the burning questions.
And after all that, I might get Alzheimer’s anyway.
But it won’t matter. If it comes for me, I hope to thank my mind for its service and let it go. I have a hunch my soul will be smiling. As will yours.
Grandma’s treasured Korean medicine cabinet is now in my care. Like her, it communicates volumes simply through presence:
Don’t make yourself sick, dear.
Listen to your soul.
Don’t let others decide your life.
Forget Should. Be what you Must.2 Share that Must with others.
💐 Happy 95th birthday, Halmoni. I love you forever. Thank you for every moment.
This piece exists thanks to the insights, time, and generosity of: My sister Audrey,
, Diana Monzón, , Maria Jose Rodriguez, , Vipul Devluk, , , , , , Mandell Conway, , and Yu. Incredible to ride the last cohort of Write of Passage with you.(She wanted to be a two-parter. More thanks coming in part 2 :)
The credited images in Quiet Confetti by Kat Koh were made by humans who got paid for their work.
Shoutout to Elle Luna who wrote and illustrated Crossroads of Should and Must (2015) right when I badly needed it.
As I clean up my mom’s house, two years after her dementia and stroke, finally became too much to handle, this piece resonates with me in so many different ways.
Such a beautiful description of something so hard to explain.
The visceral descriptions of holding and trapping emotion is gorgeous – “After my grandfather died, her devotion to him pooled inside with nowhere to go.” That part came with feelings.