Starting Over in Your 30s After Heartbreak
Have you ever experienced starting over in your 30s too? I left Korea for Europe for love, and three years later, I came back to Korea. Coming back to Korea at 32, knowing that I had to start everything over again, my work, my love, everything, felt scary and overwhelming at first. For the first month after coming back, everything felt like a dream. Even the most ordinary parts of everyday life, like opening my eyes in the morning and going to sleep at night, felt so difficult.
But even though I spent those days crying, I kept reminding myself, “Everything happens for some reasons.” And I think this painful time is eventually becoming an opportunity to face the person I had lost inside myself and find the direction I truly want to go. I am finding my way back to a happy everyday life in many different ways. And I decided to start this Korean wellness vlog because I want to give hope and courage to people who are going through something similar to me. With the feeling of, “You heal, I heal, we all heal.” Would you call it a “healing vlog”? Haha
Finding Myself Again at 32: My Korean Wellness Ritual (Starting Over at 32)
In my first wellness vlog, Starting Over in Your 30s After Heartbreak, you can see the Korean-style wellness routines below. I hope you can find little moments of happiness in your everyday life today and have a day that makes you smile.
Morning Yoga and 5-Minute Meditation to Clear My Mind
I started my day with morning yoga to clear out the dark emotions inside me. Just as important as filling yourself with good energy is learning how to let go of the negative emotions that make you feel heavy. I am a Pilates instructor, but I am actually quite stiff, and since I had taken a break from exercising, I am slowly getting my flexibility back. Anyway. I think what matters is that I started! haha
For Beginners (the yoga video I followed): Aileen Mind Yoga
Is This What Life Tastes Like? Cold-Brewed Omija Tea with Five Flavors
After starting my day with yoga and meditation, I took out some omija to make Omija tea. Omija is one of the traditional Korean tea ingredients, and the name literally comes from “five” and “flavors” because omija is said to have five different tastes. It contains sweet, sour, salty, spicy, and bitter flavors, and somehow, I feel like it really resembles our lives, which also go through so many different ups and downs. Omija tea is said to be helpful not only for recovering from fatigue but also for respiratory and liver health.
How To Make Omija Tea
You can boil omija tea in hot water to brew it much faster, but actually, when omija is boiled in hot water, it can develop a much stronger astringent taste. That is why it is better to slowly infuse it in cold water for 12 hours, a process called cold brewing.
Sometimes in life, you know how rushing can actually make things worse? When things are not going the way you hoped or you feel like luck is not on your side, I think it can also be a good idea to slow down and take some time to sort through your feelings, just like cold-brewed omija tea slowly develops its flavor in cold water. Sometimes, this beauty of waiting gives you a deeper and clearer taste. I recommend cold brewing it for at least 10 hours.
How Koreans Wake Up in the Morning: Iced Americano
Isn’t the smell of freshly brewed coffee drifting past your nose in the morning always so nice? Today’s beans are from Guatemala! Italians, please close your eyes for a moment, but as a Korean, I absolutely love my morning iced Americano. Even in winter.
I buy new coffee beans every week. I feel like that is when the aroma stays the strongest and the coffee tastes the best. Treat yourself to something really good, even from the beginning of your morning. It makes you feel more precious to yourself.
Write 3 Things I’m Grateful For
These days, I have been trying to write something every day, even if it is just a little. I like following the habits of people who are successful in life, and one thing many of them have in common is practicing gratitude. Even for the little things in everyday life.
One thing I have started doing every morning is writing down three things I am grateful for. When I think about the good things that already exist in my life (What’s already good in your life?), I feel a sense of positive abundance filling me up inside. For example, even something as ordinary as having a slow morning after doing morning yoga and starting the day with coffee feels so much happier. The magic of a gratitude note that takes less than a minute! You should try it too!
Taking Care of Myself for Me
In the Vlog of ‘Starting over in your 30s’, the answer is taking care of yourself and one of methods for me is to take care of my outlooking. Even when there is no one watching, I do my skincare and makeup and make an effort to take care of myself. Everyone has a different way of loving themselves, but personally, I feel happier and more confident when I see myself after a little glow-up. This is my own way of showing myself love. How do you show yourself love?
Mindful Eating and Homemade Peach Ade Made with My Mom’s Love
Today’s lunch was a cream cheese soboro! Don’t worry, I wasn’t very hungry that day, so I just cut off a small piece and ate that. Today, I ate the whole thing. I actually used to run a diet channel called “AlohaSunny” that had 100K subscribers. Back then, I followed a very strict diet, cutting down carbohydrates a lot and sometimes eating only one meal a day. But now, I practice mindful eating, enjoying the things I actually want to eat.
Mindful Eating Works!
If you are struggling with dieting, try mindful eating: eat when you are hungry and stop when you are full. As someone who lost 20kg and has maintained it, I strongly recommend this as a healthy way of eating that you can actually maintain for life. Honestly, it sounds more complicated than it is. It just means eating what you want in a reasonable amount.
For my drink, I had a refreshing peach ade made with homemade Korean peach syrup (peach cheong) that my mom made herself with so much love and care. It tasted so fresh and I could really feel my mom’s love in it!! Every sip made me happy.
Korean Peach Syrup (Peach Cheong) & Peach Ade
Cook Healthy Korean Food for My Family: Lotus Leaf Rice
For dinner, I made lotus leaf rice for my family by mixing different grains, wrapping the rice in lotus leaves, and steaming it. It is also well known as a type of temple food. I used glutinous rice, so the sticky rice becomes infused with the delicate fragrance of the lotus leaf, making you feel like you are enjoying nature in the mountains while eating it.
- Lotus leaf rice ingredients: 1 cup glutinous brown rice, 1/2 cup black rice, 1/2 cup white rice, dried jujubes, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, lotus leaves.
I served the neatly steamed, fragrant lotus leaf rice with smoked duck, salted squid, kimchi, and braised eggplant as side dishes. You have no idea how much I missed this kind of Korean-style roasted smoked duck when I was living in Belgium.
Cooking for the people you love, especially cooking healthy food for them and sitting down to enjoy it together, fills your heart with a deep kind of happiness. How about cooking for someone you love today and enjoying it together?
Healing Through Reading with the Scent of Bergamot Aroma
One of my hobbies these days is aromatherapy. Putting a few drops of an aroma oil that matches my mood that day into an oil burner has become one of the little joys of my day.
When I was in Belgium, Pranarôm was affordable, so I always used it, but it is expensive in Korea, so I bought a Korean brand instead. I like that the raw ingredients used to make the aroma oils are from Europe, such as Italy, so the quality feels good!
The aroma oil I used this time was bergamot. It is said to help refresh your mood and gently melt away the tension built up throughout the day. I think you will feel good when you smell bergamot too, because it has such a fresh scent without feeling too heavy.
Finally, I take out the cold-brewed omija tea that I had been waiting for since morning. While drinking the now-deepened omija tea, I read a book I have been loving lately, Haruhiko Shiratori’s [Buddha’s Life Lessons]. I don’t have a religion, but I like this book because it isn’t overly religious and is full of wisdom about quietly managing your emotions and living a more peaceful life.
A quote I want to share: “Just as you make a bouquet from countless flowers, make a bouquet of good deeds.”
- Doesn’t reading this quote make you feel like a beautiful flower is blooming inside your heart?
Since I have mostly shown you cooking through short videos on Blonde Kimchi, I have always felt a little sad that I couldn’t share my real stories and everyday life with you more deeply. Now, I hope the wellness vlogs I upload can bring a little peace, comfort, and courage to start again into your everyday life too.
The healing vibes that I couldn’t fully put into words are all in the video below.
[🪷 Watch the full ‘Starting Over in Your 30s’ Wellness Vlog on YouTube]