As the story has it, one day I headed to the opposite side of the globe – the Flipside. I arrived in Korea February 16th, 2005 and thought I’d do a year, then leave. I was wrong. I stayed, launched my first company, Flipside Fitness, and then opened Korea's largest boxing club, Hulk's Boxing (now called Hulk's Club).

After 11.5yrs in Korea, I then picked up one day and returned to Toronto, Canada. But then I left again.

Now I live in the Philippines where I am the CEO and head coach of Empowered Clubhouse, the Philippines' first and only boxing clubhouse exclusively just for women. I also am the founder of the Lil' Sistas Project, CEO and designer of Slay Gear and Baa Baa Black Sheep .Ph.

Sunday, February 05, 2017

I'm Growing Up and Out... Sunday, February 5

I talked to Snickers today, on the phone.  The conversation lasted exactly thirty five minutes and nine minutes and it left me honestly wondering how the hell did we get this far, on such polar opposites of where we once stood together. 

He cried.

It was the first time I had ever heard him cry.  Even when his grandfather whom he was extremely close with died he didn't cry.  I remember when immigration threaten to deport me.  I was scared stupid and he thought he was going to lose me.  He didn't cry then either.  

But tonight he cried. 

He cried and I cried, and for the first time it was me telling him not to cry, not the other way around.

I think me being away from him has broken him, has opened his eyes to his wrong doing, but I question whether or not he understands just how alone Korea, he, his family and his friends made me out to be when I was in Korea.  

I was a foreign female, married to a Korean man in Korea, working in an industry (sports and health) that the mast majority of the country either don't consider to be a real job or a respectable one, going through "stuff" that I couldn't exactly proclaim or reveal to anyone because of my social status and my business.  

I lived in a country 100 times smaller than Canada but one that sported the same population and yet I felt so alone.  It's ironic now though, ironic in that Snickers seems to be in exactly the same situation I was in when I lived there -- so alone and with no one that can relate.

I feel for him, I do.  Despite all that's gone down between us, he still is a person.  I do wish him to be happy but I know it won't be with me.  I have found happiness but it's not with him and it's not because I'm not with him either.  I'm happy because I've moved on.  "I traded in my fame and fortune in Korea for safety and sanity in Canada," I joke and tell my friends but they have no idea just how true that is.  I still have the scars from all I've been through and I constantly find myself second guessing myself and cautiously doing things, but I know I'm no where close to where I use to be.  Every day I'm growing stronger and really that's all I can do, all any one of us can do, continue to move forward.  

Forward thinking.  That is progression, that is growth.

The more I grow old, the more I grow out, the more I find myself growing out -- expanding myself and really reaching for my potential.

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