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PODCAST

Stay Soft, Stay Open

A podcast about vulnerability, courage, and creativity. I"m your host, Jieun Ko. staysoftstayopen.substack.com

arts mental health

All Episodes

00:10:26

Gajok, Ep. #60: March 1, 2024

Stay Soft, Stay Open ·

2024/03/02

Greg and I are going to learn our lesson from this experience and January's experience — we are not going to plan, record, and release a song in three days. I am exhausted today. I'm meeting with 4 people from my grief group tomorrow in person, and I am so incredibly excited about it. I can't wait to hug them. I can't wait to share the same physical space together. These women, along with the other members of my grief group, have helped me through these last three months of grieving

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00:15:56

Gajok, Ep. #59: February 29, 2024

Stay Soft, Stay Open ·

2024/03/01

We did it! We recorded and released our second song of the year. The song is called "Brooklyn," and it's a song to remind you of your old self, a song to remind you that love is real. Go listen to it now, buy yourself a copy and support the artists (us), and tell us what you think: https://jieunandgreg.bandcamp.com/track/brooklyn.Support the Podcast: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/jieunandgreg⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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00:17:11

Gajok, Ep. #58: February 28, 2024

Stay Soft, Stay Open ·

2024/02/29

We successfully recorded our second song of the year. It went surprisingly well. When I tried to write the newsletter, I started weeping — that was also surprising. Today, Cat Janice died at the age of 31, of a rare and aggressive form of lung cancer. Please keep her family in your thoughts and prayers as they continue to navigate the impossible grief that inevitably comes with the death of a loved one.Support the

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00:13:53

Gajok, Ep. #57: February 27, 2024

Stay Soft, Stay Open ·

2024/02/28

Greg and I will be attempting to record our second song of the year tomorrow. I am going into this second recording expecting a lot of myself, but I want to try to go in with less expectations and more space. My goal is to create a *little* bit of space for hope, a *little* bit of space for joy, a *little* bit of space for fun, and a *little* bit of space for wonder. Here's to another first pancake. Support the

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00:28:02

Gajok, Ep. #56: February 26, 2024

Stay Soft, Stay Open ·

2024/02/27

Today marks 5 months since 아빠 died. It was a hard fucking day — every monthly death anniversary has been hard, but today caught me off guard. The devastating reality that 아빠 really is gone, he really is dead, and I will never see him again in this life, hit me like a train this morning. It's also the first death anniversary that I've gone through without my mom. We were going to have a regular Monday, but given that I was weeping at 10:00 in the morning, we decided to shift gears today and

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00:34:09

Gajok, Ep. #55: February 23, 2024

Stay Soft, Stay Open ·

2024/02/24

I changed my mind — I hated yesterday's Death of the Party grief event. It was a very unsafe space for people of color, and more specifically, for me. The space was oppressively white, and I felt incredibly unsafe as the only Asian American attendee. It was not a safe space to have a non-Anglophone name. I automatically reverted back to my high school self, code-switching subconsciously to exist in that space. I hated the somatic experience — I hated touching strangers, and feeling like I had to

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00:29:37

Gajok, Ep. #54: February 22, 2024

Stay Soft, Stay Open ·

2024/02/23

I went to the Death of the Party gathering tonight and I feel mixed about it. It was surprisingly good in some ways, and it was expectedly bad in others. It was good because I was able to connect with other grievers in my city — I felt my heart and mind expanding as I sat with people and held space for their grief, as they held space for mine. You just have no idea what people are carrying and dealing with. It was bad because it was supremely lacking in diversity, which I had anticipated. There were

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00:11:18

Gajok, Ep. #53: February 21, 2024

Stay Soft, Stay Open ·

2024/02/22

Grief is when the things that should be there are no longer there. My mom should be in the kitchen, sitting on the step stool. She should be filling our apartment with smells of food — 미역국, 볶음밥, 부침개, 김치찌개, 된장찌개. She should be folding the clothes that I left on my desk. She should be hanging my jacket in the closet. She should be taking the dog out for walks. She should be doing the dishes. She should be cleaning the floors, crouching down. She should be cutting fruit. She should be going on her

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00:17:47

Gajok, Ep. #52: February 20, 2024

Stay Soft, Stay Open ·

2024/02/21

Being separated from my mom — her being in Virginia and me being in New York — is causing a compounded grief that has been hard to carry today. On the other side of my anxiety from yesterday, is a heavy depression. They say our grief doesn't shrink — we grow around it. And I believe that to be true. I feel myself growing around it, but it still feels massive. Today, I'm reminded of all that I've lost — the old me, the old 엄마, 아빠, our old life. Our family dog, Sadie. This is an impossible

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00:15:38

Gajok, Ep. #51: February 19, 2024

Stay Soft, Stay Open ·

2024/02/20

Setting a boundary is hard for the boundary-setter. My mom is alone, for the first time in her 62 years of life, and for the first time in my 35 years of life. Greg drove down to Virginia on Friday, and he drove back to New York on Saturday. When one parent dies, you become exponentially more terrified of your second parent dying. When you're an only child, the thought of your remaining parent dying feels like the scariest thing in the world because they are the only other person remaining in

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00:20:50

Gajok, Ep. #50: February 16, 2024

Stay Soft, Stay Open ·

2024/02/17

Greg drove my mom back to Virginia today. Harrie and I stayed back in New York. This was a boundary that I set for myself because her being in New York has not been working — we have been getting into massive fights — and I finally admitted and accepted that this is our current reality. Setting boundaries with my mom has always been hard for me, but it's especially hard right now because 아빠's gone, and she's my only living parent now. When the reality set in that 아빠 was dying, I

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00:23:18

Gajok, Ep. #49: February 15, 2024

Stay Soft, Stay Open ·

2024/02/16

I've been actively, consciously, and intentionally setting boundaries with the people in my life since 2019. My first big boundary-setting moment was when I finally decided to confront my therapist, who I had been seeing for over a year, about how terrible of a job she was doing as my therapist — rolling her eyes, looking at me judgmentally during sessions, and saying wildly inappropriate, invalidating, and harmful things to me. I confronted her passively and fearfully, but I did it. She did not

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00:17:35

Gajok, Ep. #48: February 14, 2024

Stay Soft, Stay Open ·

2024/02/15

Today is Valentine's Day. I cried over 아빠. Greg put up all of our Valentine's Day decorations around our apartment. He bought me flowers. He bought my mom red roses, like 아빠 would. He bought funfetti cake mix, baked a bunch of cupcakes, and we ate them. We ate Thai food at our favorite Thai restaurant in the neighborhood, Nourish Thai. I talked to my grief group about how hard today was, and we swapped stories and memories about our parents. Today was the least shittiest Valentine's Day

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00:15:49

Gajok, Ep. #47: February 13, 2024

Stay Soft, Stay Open ·

2024/02/14

Tomorrow is my first Valentine's Day without 아빠. I would've called him on this day. He would've sent me pictures of the dozen red roses and cake that he got my mom. I would've FaceTimed him and shown him our elementary school chic Valentine's Day paper heart decorations, strung from our ceilings and taped to our walls. He would've laughed. He would've been amazed and amused at my over-the-top-ness. This is one of my favorite holidays, strangely enough. None of that will

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00:16:59

Gajok, Ep. #46: February 12, 2024

Stay Soft, Stay Open ·

2024/02/13

I spent 설날 with 8 strangers, 1 Instagram friend, and Greg, and it was one of the best 설날s I've ever had. It was my first social gathering since 아빠 died, so I was really anxious, nervous, scared, and worried about how to exist in a social space as my new self — Jieun without a dad. I almost didn't go because I was so anxious about it. But I mustered up the courage to go, and it couldn't have gone better or felt safer. It strangely felt like we all knew each other. The night felt like a

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00:15:12

Gajok, Ep. #45: February 9, 2024

Stay Soft, Stay Open ·

2024/02/10

I love my grief group so much. We meet every two weeks on Google Meet, and shockingly, I always laugh my ass off when we get together. I also cry, but there is shockingly a ton of laughter. In the early days of my grief, I joined multiple white-led, white-dominant grief groups because I was desperate for a space to grieve and I could not find any POC grief spaces — so I just settled. But finding my POC, mostly Asian American grief group has been a true gift and a blessing during this impossibly

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00:13:42

Gajok, Ep. #44: February 8, 2024

Stay Soft, Stay Open ·

2024/02/09

It's 설날 (Seollal) on Saturday, February 10, and I've been feeling anxious about the holiday since the beginning of January. In Korean culture, it's customary to honor your ancestors and late loved ones on this day, so I've been feeling this internal pressure to do all of the cultural, traditional things — that I've never done before — in honor of 아빠. But I have next to no capacity to do anything, so I've decided that whatever I end up doing is going to have to be enough, and

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00:16:29

Gajok, Ep. #43: February 7, 2024

Stay Soft, Stay Open ·

2024/02/08

I hate how much anti-Asian racism is casually and blatantly in so many movies and TV shows. Gilmore Girls, Rush Hour, Sister Sister, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, The Santa Clause, The Hangover — the list could go on forever. Even movies made as recently as 2023 include anti-Asian racism, like The Starling. But what's even more erasing is when we are no where to be found on the screen, as if we don't exist. Or if we are present, we are violently stereotyped, hyperfetishized, or demoralized

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00:23:32

Gajok, Ep. #42: February 6, 2024

Stay Soft, Stay Open ·

2024/02/07

I watched, "You Are What You Eat: The Twin Experiment" on Netflix tonight, and I am thoroughly disturbed by how gross, unjust, and unregulated the meat industry is. It has made me want to be more intentional about my food purchases and food consumption. I also learned so much. The Amazon is being continuously burned down to raise cows to feed beef to Americans. Pig excrement is kept in giant "lagoons" and when they get too full, the pig shit sprays out of sprinklers onto the

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00:20:08

Gajok, Ep. #41: February 5, 2024

Stay Soft, Stay Open ·

2024/02/06

This episode is for Cat Janice, a 31-year-old musician, mother, wife, daughter, and friend, from Northern Virginia, who is currently dying. She is in hospice, after battling a rare form of lung cancer called Ewing-Like CIC-Rearranged Non-Small Cell Sarcoma. She was diagnosed in 2022. She just released her final song, "Dance You Outta My Head," and all of the funds that come from streams and purchases of that song, and any of her music, goes directly towards supporting her 7-year-old son,

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