One of the most devastating experiences that people have been sharing with me is the loss of the space of their memories and history. It is not necessarily the physical structure, the objects, or the things. It is the space and storytelling these homes held for them.
While we of course carry memories and history within ourselves, they are often more distinctly activated by the spaces, people, and objects around us. And our home is one of those primary spaces.
From time to time, I visit the apartment complex I grew up in as a child in Korea. My family hasn’t lived there in decades because we had to move to a different neighborhood. But I still visit the old playground, the path I walked to TaeKwonDo every
day, and the store where I got my school supplies.
I visit it because it holds my history and is a part of a few places for my memories. To be able to visit it is a privilege, it is grace.
So when I think about how my parents’ childhood homes were destroyed because the U.S., during their war on Korea carpet bombed the peninsula, and I think about Seneca Village, Lahaina, Gaza, and now LA, I think about how those repositories are gone. Yes, people rebuild and make new memories. But I think about how we have to fight to keep our collective histories.
We must build multiple places of history for our selves.
History is not just the past, it is also the future. The only way we get a future is by holding space for our past.
So now, where for so many there is a loss of space and in its place a different empty space, I hope you get the space to mourn, too.
And may you carry with you to your next place many more spaces to hold all of your memories and histories past, present, and future. Space, place, grace.
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