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 I'm not going to put the pressure on myself to do all of the traditional things, like 제사 (jaesa). I will be virtually meeting with my grief group tomorrow, so that will be really good. And I might do something on Saturday — I'll see how I feel. I wish 설날 wasn't something my family and I lost through immigration. Through immigration, we lost so many things. There's a grief in this holiday — there's a grief in building 설날 traditions in my 30s, there's a grief in being separated from my homeland, my family, and my history for the majority of my life, there's a grief in 아빠 not being here anymore, and there's a grief in life being forever, never the same.

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