A favorite introduction written very creatively for me when I failed to turn one in on time for a reading that took place at a sex club in San Francisco in the go go dancer cages. . .which sounds more exciting than it was.
What I read was a piece I wrote about all the women I’d loved.
And even now I am still trying to understand love—fierce love.
My name is Kelsay, and I am here on this life path to embody myself, to truly accept what arises within me and express it, so I may serve as a healing guide and mirror to help others in becoming free to fully express who they are, what they stand for and what they value in this world.
These days I live in Larkspur Landing where I watch the clouds give shape to new expressions of beauty, admire my large collection of art, artifacts and growing balcony garden overlooking Mt. Tam. Most days. I walk the water’s edge and appreciate the mixture of nature and marketplace as I listen to music, talk with friends and reflect on love along this path I sometimes dance and often tread.
I’ve spent my entire life uncovering more, and more, and more layers and facets of who I am. I look at myself, others and the world and try to create something beautiful from the composition, and sometimes, from the wreckage.
Among my many facets: I am a woman, a lesbian, a millennial, a Korean adoptee, a writer, a mixed media artist, a dreamer and an embodied expressive arts practitioner who works along the edges of the mythic self, trauma resolution and compassionate change.
A little about my beginning. . .
I was born in Busan, South Korea around noon on October 8, 1984, and immediately surrendered at birth. Even though I was adopted by a close and loving family in West Michigan and grew up within a supportive extended family and community, it was still painful having my initial entry into the world be an overwhelming sense of grief and loss: of a mother, a home, a country, and a culture, even of my original name, Jin Jung Mee.
For the first 32 years of my life, I felt fragmented, broken, abandoned, rejected, yearning for love and searching for it in emotionally, sexually, and somewhat physically abusive intimate relationships with older women who mirrored back the original trauma and wounding of my adoption experience. I thought art was found in the shattering of the self, taking it apart and looking at the pieces.
Even more significantly, I was completely disconnected from my grief and from my body, not only due to the trauma around my birth, but also uncovering early life sexual abuse during the first three months I spent in foster care in Korea.
As I mention in The Story of how Dialogical Persona came to be, I don’t know if it’s the peculiar way trauma shapes a quest for understanding, meaning and questioning, my own personality, or my innate love of learning, but I wasn’t content to accept that change and a better life wasn’t possible for me without being reunited with my birth family.
I had felt rootless for much of my life, and it was difficult for me to feel tethered to the messiness in myself and in the world. To find grounding, I had to restore the connection to my heart, body, and natural environment that had been severed at birth. One of the greatest gifts I’ve received from expressive arts, a form of therapy that uses dance, movement, drawing, writing and performance-based ritual, has been the witnessing, mirroring, reflection and integration of my whole self.
As an adoptee, I was able to finally hold my wounds of abandonment and loss with strength, compassion and liberation. I encountered my heart and the stories of love and worthiness that were being held there, and through drawing and dancing them opened myself to love in new forms. I was able to confront my grief, give it shape and expression in my body, and hold it. I wasn’t just using my voice or my mind, but my whole body was engaged in the process.
In my own process of healing, I have come to a place where I no longer feel shattered, abstract, or dissociated in my identity. I am whole. I trust myself. I trust how things unfold in the world and in my life. I want more people who have experienced trauma, disconnection and fragmentation to receive the gifts of wholeness and trust in who they are as well.
My impact on the world is this embodied trust and wholeness at the interpersonal, heart to heart level. It is what I’m most passionate about, and it is why my work is for bold hearts also on the road to transformation, embodiment and expression of who they are free from the wounds of their beginnings.
For Bold Hearts
For Bold Hearts
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