This is my second column for The Hawai’i Review of Books! It’s called The Doctor Is In and in this space I will answer all questions regarding writing, process, creativity, and literature. Go ahead: shoot me a question! Email me at word@drstephaniehan.com or go to my CONNECT page on my website.
My father’s cousin was Kang Rhee, the founder of Pa Sa Ryu and the Kang Rhee studio in Memphis. Kang Rhee is known by many for having taught Elvis Presley. If you ever see a picture of Elvis with an Asian man in front of a Cadillac–that’s him! Elvis Presley gave him a Cadillac. What’s interesting about Memphis is that nearly every person has some tale about Elvis or Elvis proximity. For example, my dentist was asked to be the Graceland dentist and he told me, forget it, he didn’t want to be called to do teeth cleaning at midnight! With Kang Rhee, my family has an Elvis story too.
Yet there is a story about Kang Rhee that I think is broader than the Elvis story. This is about how culture moves across communities and the merits of small businesses and how they influence and change lives. Kang Rhee had a studio in Memphis near downtown. Legend had it when he first arrived in Memphis, around 1964 at the invitation of a US military person he had trained in Korea, he knew only two words: “Follow me.” And follow the people did. He told me coming to the US was a dream. He had to leave the mud. The mud was everywhere, he said, shaking his head. Post war Korea. He arrived in the US and drank a whole quart of milk in one go. He ate fried chicken. He rode a bicycle as he didn’t have money for a car. He began to train people in his Korean style that he established as Pa Sa Ryu.
He was on the martial arts circuit with Bruce Lee and one of the first to bring the art to the West from Korea. He performed in Madison Square Garden. Back in the early days, I heard his studio was racially integrated but mostly men. By the time I went, it was a family operation with all kinds of people — men, women, kids, of various shapes, sizes, shades and whatever. It had moved from downtown Memphis to a Collierville mall. Tourists from all over the world would come to buy pictures of Elvis and take photos of Kang Rhee.
There was a period of time when I lived back in Memphis, took some classes, and the only thing that kept me going was Kang Rhee’s classes. I was deeply depressed, but going to the studio once, sometimes twice a day helped me get better. Kang Rhee gave me a new narrative about how to approach life. To pass the tests we had to memorize sayings and practice with others; we had to feel purposeful in our craft and respect the art.
Significantly, this was an environment that was Asian in nature–of course! It was led by a Korean American and while he was a deeply devout Baptist, the fact is that his students understood that they were studying a Korean art form.
I know at one point, when he brought back the study of Tae Guk from Korea, 101 moves to enlightenment as taught to him by a monk practitioner, and encouraged his students to study this–to learn breathing and flexibility, many of his black belts defected! This to me, was a terrible example of what can go wrong when people fail to respect cultural art forms. Kang Rhee never asked anyone to worship in any particular fashion, ever. Those people lost out. Not sure how they are breathing and what their flexibility is like, but that is their loss. So yeah, heads up people, hate to break it to you, but Christianity is relatively new in East Asian terms–try several hundred years, and mostly in the 20th century, not a few thousand like various indigenous spiritual practices. You need to calm down and remember, that no one is asking you to worship a particular god if you practice a martial art, but such forms cannot trace their roots to Christianity! I think we need to have better history education in the schools…
To conclude, Memphis remains in so many ways, a racially divided city, but within the context of these classes, this was not so. There are still martial arts instructors with schools, black and white, who studied with him that run businesses in Memphis.
He was one of the most important teachers I ever studied under. Do you remember any of your teachers? Why? Who were they? What do you remember? Thank you, Master Kang Rhee, my uncle, my cousin. Thank you.
I try to wear my glasses as much as possible in photos to encourage girls to wear glasses. I’ve been wearing glasses since I was 8 years old in the 3rd grade. I distinctly remember excitedly telling my friend that I was going to get glasses; she did not share my enthusiasm. I was so happy to get glasses! My 4th grade picture is me in gold wire frame glasses with tape. Dad did this for me. Years later Mom laughed and I said how could you let me walk around with this tape on my glasses. Dad said it was perfectly fine and good that I made do with those glasses. At the time, I was pleased he fixed my glasses in this way. I had no idea I was living out the Asian nerd social misfit stereotype. Both Mom and Dad wore glasses. I think to some degree, we were a family of nerds, so no one cared and it was about fitting in with each other rather than the outside world, which is often what close family dynamics are like.
The summer of 7th grade I got soft contact lenses. It’s a miracle I didn’t develop a massive eye infection. Every now and then my mom would ask if I was sterilizing them, which for me at the time was throwing the entire case with saline it it into a big pot of boiling water. I said to her, oh yeah, I did it. Haha. You know, like I kept up with all of my grooming, like washing my hair. I will not describe in detail the day the flakes of dandruff came out from my comb, but it would be fair to say that I was not the nicely groomed 7th grade girl all the time. Yes, there were times when I went through some greasy haired grubby moments. I wore a hat on those days. Ick. But telling the truth here…
The thing that I enjoy about NOT wearing glasses is feeling free of the sweat on your nose, which is why, even if I have and wear sunglasses, I’m not always keen to do so. I’m at the point where I need glasses over my contacts, and with the prescription this or prescription that I have a lot of different kinds of glasses that I am circulating between for near and far sightedness, for sun or not in sun. I have terrible vision.
Many young women students refuse to wear glasses in my classes. They squint, they simply feel too self-conscious to wear them. I reveal to them what a friend who wears glasses told me: women who wear glasses usually fare better when asking for raises or negotiating financially. After I heard that one I wore my glasses all the time. Not sure what study there is on this, but hey, it can’t hurt. I also told the girls this. Can’t say that more of them wore glasses, but maybe in the future.
To those who teach young girls and wear glasses: Wear them! With pride! With joy!
I don’t always fill out the ole Panda Journal, but I like to kick off my day with a bit of thinking about the good stuff. I got these Panda journals for myself and The Kid. For a minute we both did them. I’d say, “Hey, let’s Panda this morning.” But now, alas, it’s just me. Anyway, I realize I had done self-talk like this on and off during my life. But what divorce taught me was that there’s a lot to be grateful for. I will always remember the ways that people helped out and remain very grateful for this.
You are burning to the ground when you divorce–your entire life turns to ash. You cannot do anything about this destruction emotionally, in the sense that you have to accept this death of who you were.
What I learned is that you can rebuild and you do this by thinking about what’s great in life. I’ll be honest. It’s pretty easy to be thankful where I live now, even if I am aware that yes, this is the place with the highest cost of living and the lowest wages.
Because I wake up thinking the air I breathe is CLEAN. The water is CLEAN. If you think that’s ridiculous you never lived in a polluted place before! Those two things are enough to get me started. Be grateful and thankful. It can shift your mood. Try it!
Aloha,
This is me three years ago. I had boarded a plane from Hong Kong utterly shattered. In fact, I had missed my layover flight from Seoul to the US despite being right at the gate — they were calling my name over and over on the loudspeaker (I found out later) and I was on the phone completely thrashed and talking to a friend and didn’t hear anything. I had to spend the night in the airport. Everything was shut. I finally found the overnite hotel there and checked in for about 5 hours. I took this picture when I got on the plane and sent it to my mom saying, “Mom, I deserve more out of life.”
I landed in Hawai’i, called around and talked to a few lawyers and my ex was served papers when he stepped off the plane about a month later.
This is me a few weeks ago. I just got out of the water near Waikiki. Three years is a lifetime.
If you would have told me I would feel this good back then, I would never have believed you. I am not the same person. I went through a massive transition. One of my old friends said that obviously, my entire system got rewired when I divorced and she was right. I really do like my life so very much.
Life is not problem free, but the big problem (the ex) is GONE. And I came to see that he was, in fact, the physical real-life manifestation of my doubt, fear, insecurity, and anxiety. I had married my nemesis. Yep.
Worries do come up. Like about 3 months ago I was worried. OH no, the Kid XYZ. My business XYZ. My family XYZ. Will I…Should I…Will I…
You know once you start that train of doubt it gets really crazy.
Then I thought about it very deeply and said this: STEPH SNAP OUT OF IT.
And weirdly, I did within a day or two. Why?
Because the person who would keep Steph in that old zone of bad vibes and fear is no longer around!
So I said to myself: STEPH, YOU GOT THIS. No need to feel that doubt because why should you? The person who exemplified doubt and made you feel it every second of the day is no longer around.
I stopped doubting.
This kind of bossing myself around worked really well when I went out surfing because I was just trying to stand up and hesitated and then I yelled out to myself: STAND UP NOW!
And then I stood up!
There are days when I am just thinking WOW. I feel awesome. Because for the most part, I do. I am not going back to that old picture ever again. EVER. I realized over the past year that what started this change was not simply the divorce itself legally, but it was rewriting my narrative and writing down the story of what I believed. When you write your truth to power you change your life.
Inserting my story in my legal file affected all aspects of my divorce process, most importantly, my emotional well-being.
#writeyourdivorce #drstephaniehan #womanwarriorwriter
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~empowering women through narrative~
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