We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Tahn Bae Park. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Tahn Bae below.
Tahn Bae , thank you so much for joining us and offering your lessons and wisdom for our readers. One of the things we most admire about you is your generosity and so we’d love if you could talk to us about where you think your generosity comes from.
Growing up in a farmhouse off an old highway in backcountry Indiana, USA, surrounded by crops and the woods for hunting wild game, you learn how small you are compared to the world in peripheral. My family taught me two very hard lessons in generosity:
One: the hunger for adventure meant escaping our comforts and safety. My family (bless their hearts) loved me so much they never wanted me to leave; go to college, meet new people, expand my worldly thinking. They never left the town I grew up in. I have seen my classmates go to college just to come back and take their parents’ old jobs at the local family restaurant or as the high school math teacher for 6th grade. I didn’t want that life. Adventure required experiencing the discomfort and the ‘unsafe’ moments dysregulated from the familiar. I never had a clear path ahead, but I always knew I wanted to help people explore their potential.
It was never about ‘fixing’ people but about peeling back the exteriors for people to find themselves. Fixing is easy. What’s hard about people is the time, diligence, and genuine care to listen for the ailments. If I did it for them (which still happens), then their life isn’t theirs. I don’t want to ‘own’ the hard part. It would be just like staying in my hometown; my life would have belonged to my family by staying safe vs. doing the hard part of leaving comfort behind.
Two: we all just want to be acknowledged while learning how to save ourselves. As much as my family wanted certain wishes from me (kids, marriage, working at the local Wal-Mart) they also did very little to make me feel seen and understood. I was the kid they “didn’t need to worry about” because I stayed quiet, got good grades, and didn’t yell at my parents. Having worked with college students and professionals in higher education for over a decade, the very least we can do is hear someone out. I know how it feels to be forgotten.
Once you’ve acknowledged a person though, the next step is for them to move forward. It is okay for a person to need help along the way AND they need to able to stand on their own. If we are constantly doing the hard part (the healing, the pandering, the forgiveness) for someone else we are enabling their stagnant condition. This practice allows me to help more people by focusing on the issue, helping them resolve it as best we can, and to move on without me. The cycle of detachment and attachment is not meant to be everlasting. It’s meant to have impact.
So, for me, generosity is not giving over and over again. It is about seeing the humanity of the whole person by listening, providing stability, helping them grow, challenging them to move forward, and preparing them to save themselves.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
This question is so hard for me. I consider myself to be a nomadic, wisdom-hoarding, philosophical, productivity junkie that loves art, form, and design.
On one part, I life coach. I am the person who listens to the frustrations in a private environment. As I’m not confidential, it actually gives me the capacity to call out my clients. Once that is out of the way the work begins. We transform our anxiety and avoidance into exploration and rebellion. Our dreams and obligations propels us to act. There are strategies I can teach. There are concepts I can introduce. We can even talk through all the ideas and isolate the one or two that makes the most sense. It really depends on the person and the situation to provide that individualized support.
On another part, I tell stories. Our lived experiences are our lessons. I’ve learned over the years (and from astrologers) that I collect stories stumbling upon the hidden in order to have a different ending. It brings the really difficult stuff to the surface to be examined. It can help recognize there’s community vs. being isolated. Helping people navigate what they do with hidden information is important.
On last part, I love to learn and exercise what I learn. I have the opportunity right now to plant myself in one of the most active, creative, and historically profound cities of our time; the duality of stability with the discomfort of learning to invest in my artistic loves of textiles, home design, and sharing my life lessons with others. It’s a new challenge and I’m taking it slow. I am grateful for what I’ve learned, what I am bringing with me, and what I get to do from here onward.
Right now I am rebranding SpeakOpenly.co in the new year to The Velveteen. I want this work to be sustainable and to have the flexibility to evolve and change as I do. Both from the children’s book The Velveteen Rabbit and from my own best friend, Latte the Velveteen, has been my inspiration for growth, acceptance, transformation, and rebirth. Latte is my ESA rabbit who has been with me through very difficult times. As his time starts to draw to a close, I want to honor his resiliency to stay with me beyond our collective time together. This will become various projects such as LA cafe and bakery list to sharing epiphanies through writing or podcasting, potentially. I remain open to individual coaching, but would like to support whole groups and organizations.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
1. Life is sometimes on Hard Mode. Video game players select the mode or difficulty they wanted to experience. The privilege to choose was interesting to me having felt I have lived life on hard mode in order to gain different, nuance experiences. In other cases where I was in supportive environments life felt easier with an elevated sense of belonging. If lived experiences are lessons then our life mode can translate to how the experiences feel. Everyone’s life mode is different. Sometimes life mode can be chosen. As we each carry different identities, privileged and marginalized, our life mode is not available to choose as we wish. Point being, each person is going through their own experiences. What feels hard for us may not feel the same for them and vice versa. Maintain that open perspective for yourself as well as for others because we truly don’t know sometimes.
2. You should always be evolving. I was talking with a student whose grandfather continued to learn about people and ideas. He created innovative textile machinery that brought massive change to that industry building lifelong wealth for his descendants. What was iconic was instilling in his grandchildren the endless desire to learn and be humbled by what we learn. There will also be someone smarter, better, stronger, more good looking than you and what an opportunity to keep reaching. What do we get to discover when we ignore the limit? We don’t need to be a set of expectations to live fully. Have cool stories for strangers and your children. Share factoids and random wisdom with nosy kids.
3. Don’t hold on to people too tightly. I haven’t been to my childhood home since 2013. After I stopped going home my mom would say how proud she was of me. It was nice, but it didn’t matter what she thought about me anymore. I let them go to focus on my career in student affairs and figure out who I was becoming. Through all my life transitions different people would come in, leave a blessing or a lesson, then depart. We evolve, for better or worse, and the shifting of people I interact with changed. It normalized detachment and being grateful for the time. Even in very negative, traumatizing experiences, letting go lets in so much more like healing, acceptance, and growth. You don’t need to throw people away to change, but you may have to let them go.
What’s been one of your main areas of growth this year?
I mentioned before I am looking to rebrand to The Velveteen across different platforms to centralize my ideas and creative outlets. My work was one-on-one focused but I hope to work with groups, organizations, and teams to create a custom support plan/solutions. I would love to collaborate but with reciprocal partnerships. Getting out there and promoting or putting out content is still new for me. I can be shy at times, but a cup of coffee and a cute pastry will always bring out the more extroverted side of me! We are social, community oriented creatures. Even as an introvert I need to interact with people and have those social connections throughout my week. I’ve recently gone back to a 9 to 5 job for financial stability and connect with students. It was timely to pause, work on rebranding, and review my offerings in order to establish better boundaries and goals. I want it to be service and support based, offering experiences for self improvement. I am taking it slow to figure out what this business looks like, means to me, and to others.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vlvetean?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tahnbaepark
- Other: Linktree: https://buymeacoffee.com/tahnbaepark
BuyMeaCoffee:
Threads: https://www.threads.com/@vlvetean
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