[Gollum] Busy 300: The child, I have grown up too!.. Jinyoung Oh's 'Stepmom Parenting Diary'
The story I want to tell the 20-year-old me the most is not “run more and more passionately towards your dreams.
Rather, "don't hate yourself too much if you don't get what you want."
In my mid-20s to mid-30s, in my once-in-a-lifetime, dazzling youth, I was so sad and desperate that everything went wrong to become a university professor in Korea. want.
You don't have to be so unhappy, so I want to tell you to get up and go shopping.
The middle of summer and the middle of this year are passing now. In my entire life, where am I now? Is it the '100-year-old era', is it not yet the first half, or is it not too long to finish... 40% of your entire life? Or 70%? It would be pretty interesting to know that. It is also natural to look back on your past life. It's like looking back on the first half of this year. How I've lived so far, what to do with the rest of my life, I want to sort out the things I want to do from my bucket list and organize it in that way.
The book I want to read together today is a book about organizing. As the title suggests, this is a childcare diary, but it is actually a diary of my life looking back through the prism of 'parenting' -
<Stepmom Parenting Diary>
by
writer Oh Jinyoung
Writer Oh is a Portuguese translator and has translated several Poe novels. This book is not a translation, but the first collection of essays. If the book were summed up in one sentence, it would be "a diary of a child who was brought up by her husband when she remarried at the age of forty, and became a stepmother of an eight-year-old child that her husband brought with him for 17 years." ..." and the explanation that goes beyond that.
I got married at the age of thirty-nine and became the mother of an eight-year-old boy. After marriage, when I said to my friends, "I'm a mother now. My son is eight years old," most people would look embarrassed because they didn't know how to react.
But there was only one friend who told me this.
"Oh my God, you have a windfall! You ate it raw!"
... When my
son called me mom for the first time, I was so happy that my heart was pounding and it felt like a flutter.
The moment the word mother came out of my son's mouth that day, I suddenly felt like I knew everything.
... The
son only knew with his instinctive wisdom that if he wanted to be loved by someone, he had to make an effort to be loved. He knew with his innate wisdom that if he wanted to be loved, he had to strive to be a lovable person. Knowing how to make an effort to become a lovely person is a valuable asset in life.
- <One day I suddenly became a mother>
I was in my late 20s at the time.
If I think about it now, it would not have been too late if I had returned to Korea and found another way, but at that time, the world was over and there seemed to be no future.
I was an idiot who came to Brazil to study while pretending not to be, and threw my whole life in the trash, and was an incompetent person who couldn’t get a doctorate with everyone else returning home.
I was so embarrassed and ashamed that I could hardly raise my face and return to the land of the Republic of Korea.
-<Returning from a divorce in Brazil>
There are some things that you can guess even if you have not experienced it exactly as you have lived to a certain extent.
For example, the experiences of setbacks the artist experienced as a young man are the same.
With my version, I might be able to unravel the story by saying, "I mean, latte...".
However, the realm of parenting is not at that level, and moreover, I was a little surprised, saying, 'I am not the child I gave birth to..'
On the one hand, I thought this would be a bias.
Some stereotypes about stepmothers, stepchildren, and remarried families.
If you say you fell in love with someone at first sight, you don't have to ask why, right?
It's just that.
What was even more surprising were the wounds from childhood that the artist confesses.
We know from direct or indirect experience that there are many parents who negatively project their experiences of hurt and frustration on their children.
It is quite common in narratives where conflicts escalate while trying to make a dream come true through a child.
However, the author's experience is different.
My mother, reflected in my eyes, seemed to be a person who pointed out loudly if I could forget, "I have to take responsibility for putting you out in the world, but I work hard to raise you, but raising children is like a kind of punishment that I want to escape from."
...
I didn't understand it when I was in my thirties when I first got married.
The fact that raising children is by no means so unfortunate.
rather the opposite.
It was only when I suddenly became the mother of an eight-year-old that I realized that my mother was never unhappy, and that she must have been very happy raising us.
...
I take for granted the nine things I cared for and forget them all, but I remember only one thing that I failed to take care of, and I realize it again as I watch the angry child.
I would have too
He said that he had put aside the nine things that his mother gave him and lived with only one thing for a long time.
-<The son who made me know the love of a mother I did not know>
I don't want anything from you and I don't ask for anything from you.
I will do my best not to reveal the anxiety and anxiety about the harsh world you will live in, and I will handle it alone in my mind.
Mom will always love, praise and brag about you for who you are.
Because that's what mom wants you to love for who you are and to be proud of yourself.
-<First Mother's Day Flower Basket>
I do not know it well, but I think parenting is a process of raising a child and changing and growing yourself at the same time.
It's going to be an interaction anyway.
At first, I learned, scolded, and experienced only as a junior or a junior employee in the company, but as my position increased and responsibilities increased, I learned the position of seniors, team leaders, and managers. As the child grew up, I would not have grown up as a parent.
In this book, you can read an eight-year-old child growing into a twenty-five-year-old young man over seventeen years, but also the process of a thirty-nine young man maturing into a fifty-six-year-old man with him.
I think that was the point where non-parents, including myself, could empathize more with.
Not only when I was 20, maybe for the rest of my life, maybe I was spending time waiting for the perfect timing, thinking that in order to start something I want to do, I need to have perfect conditions to do it.
The perfect timing with perfect conditions will never come, so if you go back to your twenties, you'll decide that if there's anything you want to do, you should start right now.
-<Don't try to be me other than me>
In our world, there are many negative stigmas that highlight the strife and conflict that can arise for people who are not in perfect conditions.
However, there are also many positive emotions such as warmth and consideration for the weak and fragile beings, and affectionate compassion and empathy.
I hope that the world will become a world where we diligently put down negative stigma and encourage and lift up positive emotions.
I hope that this book will be a small gesture that opens the way to such a world wider.
-<Conclusion>
*Reading permission has been obtained from the publisher Nullmin.
▶ You can listen to the <Gollum: Newsroom to listen to> podcast on 'Podbong', 'Naver Audio Clip', and 'Apple Podcast'.
- Connect to 'Podbang'
-
Connect to
'Naver Audio Clip'
-
Connect to
'Apple Podcast'