Healing comes from Gardening

Working in the soil, planting seeds, and connecting to mother earth have given me a chance of reconnecting to memories and lessons from my grandmother and my mother who lived in hope on the land based cultures despite of suffering and despite of ordeal from violence and wars.

My way of gardening requires no short-cut and no free-rides.  Since this is a way of healing, I want to enjoy the fullness of growing something in my own garden starting from the seeds, allowing them to germinate, watching them growing, sending my love and care to the plants to get a good start in their life.  I talk to plants and soil and ask how they are doing.  I greet whenever I can see them.

Mysteriously, gardening provides a universal spiritual energy back to me.  Their life get happy in my garden, where attract more birds, butterfies, and bees. I hear beautiful songs and happy singings from birds and watch my happy plants and flowers.  This makes my life happier and happier with  fullnes and completeness.   Magically, I feel wonderful!  I have never been  happier than this before.  I have created my own utopia in my yard, where I can breathe freely and experience peace and love, and the fifth dimension, which perceives and understands our physical universe into the sense of being whole.  We are one!  We are all connected each other.

These are a happy couple of sesame plants. I was going to separate them to give room to grow. Since they are so cute together, I decided to leave the way they were. They will grow together.

This is my eggplant.  She is so tiny.

These are acorn squash seedlings.  When I harvest them, I will bake them with brown sugar and cinnamon. Yum!

Three year-old woman from the East

On February 23, 2007, I woke up in the critical ICU at Albany Medical Center due to a brain aneurysm rupture. The first surgery consisted of a neurosurgeons’ drilling on my head in order to drain the blood. My neurosurgeon explained that I should think of my brain as having had bombing attack. So it was a war against my body. Hospital showed extra care when draining the fluid from my ruptured brain, taking a long time to drain the blood. When I wanted to change my body positions, I had to let the nurse know so that the nurses and patient assistants had to move all the monitoring wires and draining equipment to the other side. They had to make sure the draining equipment and my eyes were parallel, otherwise I would suffer a terrible headache or increase my brain pressure, which could cause death. From this procedure, I learned that I had been taking for granted so many things without realizing. So I have learned to be humbled. So I have learned not to take things for granted. After more than one month of hospitalization in both the critical ICU and the regular ICU, I came home, but I was very weak-- I could not even walk properly, and I could not sit or stand more than one hour. I was only allowed to go upstairs in my house with an adult’s supervision. Visiting nurses and visiting physical therapists were assigned to teach me how to dress, how to walk, how to go upstairs, and how to take a shower.

The first thing I did was turn my backyard into an organic vegetable garden. By working in the soil, planting seeds, and connecting to mother earth, I recovered and reconnected to memories and lessons from (1) my mom— a “food alchemist” who said that love is the most important ingredient in both the cooking and sharing of food; (2) my grandmother—a “peace warrior,” who converted, into compassion, her resentment and the pain of losing everything from multiple wars, and from (3) the land of my birth, Korea— the “mo(u)rning land” full of crying souls, and filled with wisdom and determination through gathered from hardship and suffering . This recultivation of my roots has been one of the blessings of my sickness. I did not have any intention of seeking spiritual growth, but found that it came naturally through my healing journey.

During healing, I have reconnected to nature and mother earth, using back-to-basics and back-to-nature gardening, cooking and healing methods. As I write this, I approached 3 years anniversary since the day I woke up in the hospital. To this date, I have had only four brain-related surgeries, and I have only some setbacks. The biggest change in my life after my life being near-death experience would not take things for granted, which make me appreciate my life more and live every day to the fullest. My healing journey has made me live everyday as if it were my last day. I am not the same person prior to my sickness. I am different as search for underlying causes and look deeper and deeper to find truth in a logical way. My healing journey has been beautiful. Overall, I feel wonderful! I have created my own utopia in my home and my yard, where I can breathe freely and experience peace and love, and the fifth dimension, which perceives and understands our physical universe into the sense of being whole.

Since the rupture, I consider my self “three year-old woman from the East” who has been gifted a second life. I honor the dead people and their souls to heal them through the themes of nourishment, love, and compassion.

Root (Yang) energy Tea

"Root (Yang) energy Tea contains the roots of ginger, garlic, and scallion. This was one of the healing teas my grandma made for my dad during his beating recovery done by Japanese police. Japanese policemen realized that my dad was too weak to be drafted into the Japanese army to be used in the frontline as human bullet barricades for Japanese soldiers. Instead sending him to the war, they had beaten my dad until near death.  All the terrible atrocities were done in the name of Heavenly Emperor.  My grandma thought that she lost her only son, only son remaining out of the four she delivered. My grandma was crrrrrrrrrying for losing her only son. My grandma was crrrrrrrrrying for her only remaining hope. My grandma was crrrrrrrrrying for her only remaining root of our family, which could carry for the next generations and the next.

While she was crrrrrrrrrying, surprisingly she found that my dad was still breathing, still alive.  She could hear weak breathing.  My dad was still alive. He was in and out of conscious. My dad wasn’t dead.

My dad was breathing—Alive!

My grandma recalled that she thought that she lost my dad--only remaining son she had left. My grandma did everything she could to save my dad.. This was the healing tea to give my dada special power to stand up because ingredients of this Ginger, Scallion root and Garlic Tea are all ‘Yang’ vegetables, which have the tendencies to grow into the soil, going downward, pushed by the sun and therefore help you to ground and warm the body.

Influence by my grandma, this is the tea I drank to be grounded when I discharged from hospital, where I had stayed more than one month in both ciritical ICU and regular ICU.  When I came home, I was very weak-- I could not even walk properly, and I could not sit or stand more than one hour.
I made the Root (Yang) energy Tea for myself and I drank.
This is the tea I drank when I had no hope because some doctors were very skeptical about my prognosis. This is the tea I drank before I turned my backyard into an organic vegetable garden in order to be connected to mother earth.

One Kidney Bean’s Destiny‏

One Kidney Bean’s Destiny


One morning in the early Spring of 2009, I saw a kidney bean on my kitchen floor while I was cleaning.



A few days before, I had made “Pumpkin Soup with 108 Kidney Beans”



Had this one fallen on the kitchen floor so as not to be cooked? It got my attention.



I knelt and asked the kidney bean,



“What are you doing here?”

“Why are you here?”

“What do you have to say to me?”



There was No response from the bean.

It made no answer.

For some moments, I stared at it with curiosity and asked.



“What do you want me to do for you?”



A kidney bean cannot answer. And, I don't have an answer either.



Out of curiosity, I kept the kidney bean in my pocket and wondered about its significance for two days. One thing for sure was that this bean had a message for me. And I needed to figure out: It was left uncooked and unconsumed, unlike the rest of the kidney beans in my soup.



It was different from the rest. It was unlike the rest of the kidney beans in my soup.



I remembered the phrase; 'To Stand In Someone Else's Shoes.'



I asked myself: What would you like to do if you were a kidney bean? What would you like to do if you were chosen to fall to the kitchen floor?



The answer came instantaneously. This kidney bean must have a destiny to share with me.



After the speculation of two days, I concluded that this kidney bean had been given a second life. It must have a chance to live in the best way and to die peacefully. This was my answer to the kidney bean.



In April 2009, I planted this kidney bean in my backyard garden, along with other kidney beans, but I marked its spot with a pink ribbon so that I could recognize it later. I am not sure if I provided extra care and tenderness to this kidney bean –because it grew to be much stronger than the others. This bean produced many more kidney beans than the other bean did.



I learned that this kidney bean’s destiny was with me, to be given a second life, to live well by receiving my love and end productively and peacefully. That’s one kidney bean’s destiny!



What about my destiny?

What about your destiny?

What about our destiny?

What about the world’s destiny?