My Mental Health at Startups vs. Growing Up as an Asian Daughter

I finished my usual 10-hour shift at my local HMart and with slumped shoulders and the smell of produce on me. I waited outside for my father to pick me up. I opened the car door, formally greeted him in Korean, and slid myself into the passenger seat.

He drives like such an old man, going 35 on a 40mph road.

As we were about midway home, he gets a call from the house landline. It’s my Hami (grandmother) on the other end. I couldn’t hear anything through his phone but my father began to shout saying he was almost home.

“I think she fell down!!!! Let’s get home fast,” he said in Korean.

He stepped on it and drove somewhere close to 65, swerving between cars and getting us there in about 5 minutes.

He parked the car and ran inside.

I was worried. I was also mentally jaded over the years of living in his house. I was borderline apathetic to a lot that went on in our family.

After I got out of the car, I did my usual Sunday night routine and dragged the garbage bins to the curb, checked the mailbox, and picked up any newspapers from the porch. Then, I carried my weight into the house.

Hami was crying hysterically. My father was on the landline shouting to someone on the other end, all in Korean.

She caught me on my way out of the bathroom– “Your uncle died! He died!”

I stood there in front of her. I held eye contact for a while which is rude to do with elders but I never saw my Hami upclose when she cried. What I saw in her eyes was tremendous pain.

My father is the oldest of three sons. The two uncles both lived and worked in Seoul. On that day, the youngest one passed away. He was the baby of the family– unmarried, financially successful, and very organized. Too organized.

We booked her the next flight out of JFK to Incheon and my father stayed back for work.

A day later, we found out that my uncle committed suicide. Hami fell into a depression for months, years, really.

She lost a lot of weight and looked different after he passed. What was really shitty about this is that her ex-husband, my grandfather, had also committed suicide. I was a young child when that happened and while they didn’t have much of a relationship, I imagine it was still painful for our family.

Over the next couple of years, blame was forcefully passed between my father and my uncle, the middle son.

Having spent my summers in Seoul growing up, I got the general feeling that my late uncle was sad. He typically locked himself in his bedroom, didn’t enjoy the outdoors much, and liked everything very, very clean. For years after it happened, I often wondered if he was lonely. Was he feeling isolated? Why didn't he try to talk to his brothers? Or did he and were they dismissive about his depressive emotions?

My father’s generation of Koreans grew up in a country that was dirt poor. His ribcage shows through in his childhood photos. The idea of mental health was foreign when you’re working yourself to the bone to get food on the table and get a decent education.

The political leaders of Korea at the time realized that the way out of national poverty was through education and industrialism. My aunts share stories about how they were forced to study through the night. They would put buckets of ice water under the desks to prevent themselves from falling asleep. They would stick their feet in the buckets to essentially shock themselves awake and continue mathematics.

The priority was to work very hard at all costs. I don’t know many Korean families who prioritized emotional wellbeing or positive feelings in the household.

In my house and my Asian friends’ houses, I never heard words like “mental health” or “emotional health” or was ever encouraged to do what makes me happy. I was not taught self-reflection or self-awareness or how to process emotions in general.

As I grew, I went through high school focused on getting into a good college.

Then, I went through college focused on getting a great job.

I have no photos of our meditation classes but here’s us happy as a clam at the 5th floor happy hours :’)

And so I began my startup journey at Sprinklr

At Sprinklr, mental wellness was consciously introduced to me through my People team and the overall employee experience. Tony, who ran the NYC office at the time, would bring in people to speak about mental health and host meditation sessions. I also sat next to Lynze, the then Head of People, who participated in her meditation classes outside of the office and had her desk decorated with crystals for good energy.

As the company continued to grow exponentially and my role became a bit of a hybrid between multiple roles, I quickly got overwhelmed with the amount of work.

I had a panic attack sitting at my desk 2 times because I could feel the stress that there weren’t enough hours in the day for me to finish everything.

The first time it happened, my boss gave me the day off and told me to rest.

The second time it happened, I went to go talk to someone about it and I began my meditation habit, doing 10 minutes everyday. Meditating consistently brought me into a whole new part of self discovery.

Looking back today, there are many lessons in what I should have done knowing everything I know now– ie. communicate and re-manage the workload.

And breathe, for f’s sake, it’s just a job.

But anyway, my first therapist experience was a flop. The therapist felt shallow and I wasn’t mentally ready to open up. I wrote it off that therapy was not for me.

Later, I moved to Santa Barbara for Procore

Procore took immense care of its people and I felt that through my manager, Alex, and again, the employee experience.

One of the best things a manager can do for their team is build a life they love outside of work. I remember at the time Alex was on a massive health bend with gym training sessions and forever eating healthy greens and protein, etc. He took his professional growth very seriously through books and gathered Sales Enablement professionals together in the local area. Being around all of this had an indirect, massive impact on me and my wellbeing.

The California weather was also beneficial for my all around health, damn it was gorgeous there.

Procore also had a full yoga studio on campus where they often hosted classes and helped people foam roll.

Relationships have a great impact on mental health and the company gave plenty of opportunities for us to form them with colleagues. They catered lunch outside on the lawn and provided “GTKY Lunches” where lunch is on the company when you and another teammate you haven’t met go out for lunch together.

I often went deep in conversations about life and wellness with my colleagues who later on became close friends to this day.

Then I got recruited to CreatorIQ and returned to NYC

Kojo and I facilitating a workshop at the company kick off in LA!

A few months after joining, our team went through BLM and the pandemic together.

I compartmentalized a lot of it because that’s how I know how to deal. It’s how I taught myself to cope.

It all caught up in months and I processed it.

Our sales team stretched across London, New York, and LA. I was still building out the sales enablement strategy and leading our sales team meetings throughout such a weird time.

In every 1:1 with my manager, Kojo, he would always check in on me as a person, knowing I lived in Hell's Kitchen and was mainly by myself. The best thing was when he approved my move to Seoul, where I got to be closer to family and friends and didn’t feel so alone.

Being a part of Seoul Startups helped me feel closer to my ideal self, therefore boosting my mental health

I quarantined in Korea twice.

Do you have any idea what it’s like to be by yourself in a room for 14 days straight? 28 days total. I joke that I came out of quarantine a different person each time (kidding but not really, I generally love being with my own thoughts but 28 days is a lot.)

Due to COVID, a lot of the businesses and arts hunkered down in Seoul rather than going abroad to build. I’m grateful to have joined the eclectic international group of Seoul Startups, a community founded by Marta that consists of builders, designers, investors, founders, and storytellers.

I made some of my closest friends today from getting to serve in this community.

I got to step up as a hybrid events facilitator and help bring people together to learn from each other and also just hangout and build authentic relationships. Everything I did in this community felt incredibly natural to who I was as a person – hosting, facilitating, supporting my founder friends, communicating, creating content, storytelling and in general, bringing high energy to things.

On the topic of mental health, Korea’s work culture has a long way to go before they recognize mental and emotional wellbeing in the workplace. I’d say a lot of corporate leaders are still about the work grind and long work hours over everything.

Building community at The Org required me to show up at my healthiest

If you are a serious community builder, you are pouring yourself into other people. That’s the job. I believe to be called to serve others in this way, to uplift and take care of them is one of the best jobs you can have.

This was the first kind of work where I could not compartmentalize my life anymore. Building community was me and I was building community.

A month after moving into the new office, The Org turned 4. :)

In order to show up as the best community person I can be, I built a system for myself that allowed me to maintain my mental health, my physical health, my relationships and essentially everything I felt like I needed to keep a full cup so I could take care of The Org community full heartedly:

I signed up for my local Barry’s classes because sweating does wonders
I went to other NYC community gatherings, letting other hosts take care of me, too
I started attending weekly therapy with an Asian American woman as my doctor
I intentionally made friends with other community builders so I can always keep learning and sharing what I learned
I hired a 1:1 boxing coach because sometimes work pissed me off and that anger had to go somewhere
I spent every morning writing in my journal, praying, and meditating to center myself before each day in the office

When the system didn’t work because life would take over, my team was always there to catch me. Cirkeline and Maria brought their natural life-before-work Danish culture into our relationship as I observed how they promoted balance in their own lives. Maria embraced the flexible work schedule to always make time for her family, whether that means leaving in the afternoon or WFH. Cirkeline kept her mornings sacred and meeting-free so she always showed up for herself at the gym.

As I mentioned, the best thing a leader can do for their team is build a life they love. Nate continued to build just that for himself and I was always inspired by how he created it— a life full of travel, hosting friends upstate, and holding the space for me to let down weight.

I scratched the surface on how working at these companies had a significant impact on me and my mental health

Building a life over building a career. I try to bring a lot of what I learned in the workplace into my home. We still don’t talk about mental and emotional wellbeing at the dinner table but I have become a lot more gentle with myself and with my father.

When I think about what it's like to be Asian American, I think about the sacrifice our parents made to immigrate here.

It is a massive privilege to get to decide where I want to work and what kind of work culture I want to help build. My family didn’t entertain such questions or have the space to focus on mental health and as much as I detested growing up with my father, my life was built on his shoulders.

It took years and difficult conversation but today, most of my family arrived on my uncle’s passing being due to his depression. We mourn on his death date anniversary and I think of him when I’m back in Seoul. That is a massive step for us to acknowledge what he was feeling and experiencing and how it drove him. My heart breaks still.

Today, my middle uncle sets time on the weekends on things that bring him joy, like riding dirt bikes with his friends and building model airplanes in his wood shop.

My father takes a nature walk every single day, rain, snow or shine.

I often wonder how they are doing mental health-wise and if we will have that conversation one day together, as a family.