Embracing Existential Realities and Healing Trauma

From a recent SAND Community Gathering (March 2025)

Join mental health clinician Linda Thai and writer Jungwon Kim for an in-depth conversation on intergenerational trauma, historical grief, and healing in community. Together, they explored psychological, spiritual, and communal reverberations of historical violence, framed within the context of U.S. wars in Korea and Vietnam, yet deeply relevant to other conflicts, past and present. They shared their experiences and observations of the complex dynamics of remembering and forgetting—and how they play out across families and communities fragmented by political and militarized violence. Further, they explore modes of restoration that are often overlooked by Western therapeutic approaches: somatic and communal transmutation, cultural ritual, and narrative justice. The pathways they shared honor the deep connections between personal, historical, and communal dimensions of trauma.

A vital conversation for anyone seeking to understand how the profound wisdom held within cultural memory can contribute to intergenerational healing.

Jungwon Kim is an award-winning writer and cultural worker. She is also a communications leader, organizational strategy consultant, and journalist who has dedicated her professional life to human rights and environmental advocacy. As Head of Creative & Editorial at the Rainforest Alliance, she directed a multimedia team of writers, videographers, and graphic designers. Earlier in her career, she served as the editor of Amnesty International USA’s human rights quarterly that featured the work of award-winning journalists and documentary photographers (circulation 300,000). She began her storytelling career as a newspaper reporter, magazine editor, and on-air correspondent for nationally syndicated public radio programs.

Linda Thai, LMSW ERYT-200 is a trauma therapist and educator who specializes in brain and body-based modalities for addressing complex developmental trauma. Linda has worked with thousands of people from all over the world to promote mindfulness, recover from trauma, and tend to grief as a means of self care. Linda’s work centers on healing with a special focus on the experiences of adult children of refugees and immigrants. Her teaching is infused with empathy, storytelling, humor, research, practical tools, applied knowledge, and experiential wisdom. She has assisted internationally renowned psychiatrist and trauma expert, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, with his private small group psychotherapy workshops aimed at healing attachment trauma. She has a Master of Social Work with an emphasis on the neurobiology of attachment and trauma.

Topics

00:00 Introduction and Welcome

00:38 Setting the Context: War and Generational Trauma

01:18 Introducing the Guests: Linda Thai and Jungwon Kim

02:17 Linda Thai's Story: A Journey of Healing

06:48 Jungwon Kim's Story: Bridging Generations

11:12 The Impact of War on Generations

13:08 Collective Trauma and Healing

29:39 Ritualizing Healing: The Concept of Han

34:41 The Role of Community in Healing

49:03 Conclusion and Future Conversations

Resources

• Minds Under Seige (A SAND talk with Dr. Gabor Maté and Naomi Klein, facilitated by Cecilie Surasky). Podcast of this conversation.
• “Violent experiences alter the genome in ways that persist for generations” (Yale News)
• Han (Korean: 한), or haan, is a concept of an emotion, variously described as some form of grief or resentment, among others, that is said to be an essential element of Korean identity by some, and a modern post-colonial identity by others. – 

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