My inspiration for pursuing a career in mental health counseling is from my own personal healing and growth journey. Ten years ago I was in a state of confusion, stuck in a violent relationship and my own mental health crisis. Over the past 10+ years I’ve done a lot of work with mental health professionals in unpacking childhood issues, growing in self-awareness, and healing from past trauma. As a Christian Korean American woman, I had to unpack the religious and ethnic cultural beliefs that were keeping me stuck in a very unhealthy psychological state of mind. Through this journey, I’ve come to understand God’s heart of compassion and healing for those who are suffering. I am so grateful for the ways I was liberated from shame-based thinking and the pressure to live out other people’s narratives. Today I am an empowered woman who feels called to support others in doing the work of being empowered and finding psychological freedom. My desire is to be part of the work of bringing hope and healing to others – to hold hope for those who may be struggling to hold it for themselves in their current season of life. I see the way that systems have encouraged us to disconnect from ourselves and each other and the ripple effect this has on individuals, families, communities, workplaces, and society as a whole. I have also seen many people who have the desire to learn and grow in their sense of self and be more relational, but are lost or stuck and need support and guidance to get there. My life experiences and sensibilities line up well to equip me in being that support for those who are looking for care and in need of hope. One of the driving forces for me in pursuing a doctoral degree in counselor education and supervision is to be part of the work in training up more competent and caring mental health clinicians. As stated in the prompt for this essay, the mental health needs of our world are great. I recently completed a Master’s in Clinical Mental Health and work as a mental health clinician in the city of Chicago. I enjoy working with clients individually, but also feel a great need to support others in learning how to fish and becoming “fishers of men'', as we are called to in Matthew 4:19. I look forward to finishing my doctoral degree so I can teach and support the work of growth in new mental health clinicians so our efforts can collectively have a greater reach for God’s kingdom. Note for Tatyana: I’m so sorry for the loss of your brother Dmitriy. He sounds like a wonderful person and can only imagine the grief you and your family feel about this loss. Thank you for taking the time to read my essay and for this amazing opportunity. Please let me know if you have any additional questions.

I left my then-husband with our less-than-one-year-old baby when he was in the hospital for several days receiving chemotreatment. I was riddled with guilt and doubts about if I was doing the right thing. The cancer and chemo made this a more dramatic situation, but even if those factors were not part of the equation I believe I would have felt the same fear, confusion, and doubt. How would he eat, do laundry, and all the other household duties that were part of my role as wife? Was I “allowed” to leave or would I be abandoning him and not upholding my marriage vows? I was emotionally battered, physically threatened, verbally assaulted, and psychologically manipulated and all I could think about when I was leaving was how he would take care of himself after I left. But at the time, my rights as a person and the role I had taken on in that marriage left me with a diminished sense of value for myself and confusion about what was happening in our marriage. Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a pervasive yet often invisible phenomenon that impacts communities in dangerously subtle ways. The reasons it exists, the confusion and denial around it, the difficulty in prosecuting it, the shame and secrecy around it, and the subtlety of it are all reasons that this topic is often misunderstood by those in and around the relationship (Cho & Kim, 2012; Midlarsky et al., 2006; Nason-Clark, 2009). These misunderstandings lead to increased harm for victims as communities are unable to empathize and know how to care for those who desperately need support. IPV invades communities with no regard for race, socio-economic status, locale, or other extraneous factors. My inspiration for pursuing a career in mental health counseling is from my own personal healing and growth journey. Ten years ago I was in a state of confusion, stuck in a violent relationship and my own mental health crisis. Over the past 10+ years I’ve done a lot of work with mental health professionals in unpacking childhood issues, growing in self-awareness, and healing from past trauma. I am so grateful for the ways I was liberated from shame-based thinking and the pressure to live out other people’s narratives. Today I am an empowered woman who feels called to support others in doing the work of being empowered and finding psychological freedom from violence. My desire is to be part of the work of bringing hope and healing to others – to hold hope for those who may be struggling to hold it for themselves in their current season of life. I see the way that systems have encouraged us to disconnect from ourselves and each other and the ripple effect this has on individuals, families, communities, workplaces, and society as a whole. I have also seen many people who have the desire to learn and grow in their sense of self and be more relational, but are lost or stuck and need support and guidance to get there. My life experiences and sensibilities line up well to equip me in being that support for those who are looking for care and in need of hope. My personal and professional goal is to be a socially responsible and competent clinician. To me this means caring for those who are suffering (present-oriented) and advocating for change (future-oriented), led by a posture of humility and curiosity. I see and have experienced suffering and oppression as a result of the patriarchal beliefs and systems that our world operates in. My dream is to bring awareness of the harmful effects of patriarchy and to offer a more relational way of living – to support people in finding psychological freedom from oppression. In addition to working with individuals in need of mental health support, I also plan to work with community leaders in equipping them to care for those who are suffering from violence and oppression in a culturally competent way. I am targeting community leaders because they are natural points of contact and communication with those who are in their communities. Training leaders to be well versed in caring for those with mental health concerns is important because this allows a greater number of people to be helped by meeting them in their natural settings and points of connection in their own communities. One of the driving forces for me in pursuing a doctoral degree in counselor education and supervision is to be part of the work in training more mental health clinicians and to be an advocate in removing barriers that discourage professionals from entering or staying in the field. As stated in the prompt and in an article published by the American Counseling Association, there is a huge need for competent mental health providers to address the mental health crisis in the United States. The reason for the shortage of providers is multifaceted and complex, but one big reason is the lack of funding and low reimbursement rates for services that make the profession a hard one to sustain and attract providers. I plan to be part of the advocacy work in raising awareness around the need and effectiveness of mental health counseling so that payors will see the benefits of providing greater coverage and more funds to the counseling field to make mental health a more feasible and desirable career pursuit for future generations. In addition to the shortage of mental health providers, I have heard horror stories about clinicians in the field who cause harm to their clients and operate from questionable ethical grounds. As a client, to be hurt by the very professional who is meant to help you is unacceptable and unethical. One way of harming those in need of help is when clinicians are unaware of their own biases and how that plays into the work they do with their clients. As a future faculty member in academia, I hope to inspire and train mental health clinicians who operate ethically and are agents of healing in their communities. I believe a stance of kindness, humility, care, compassion, curiosity, and self-reflection is critical for clinicians in the mental health space. The reason I chose counseling as a field of practice is because the strength-based and wholeness model of working with clients resonated with me. Our culture of consumerism and patriarchy tells us that we need external sources of worth and value to validate our own value. This belief sets us up on shaky ground and is ripe to cause mental health crises because we cannot control our external environments. I am a firm believer that every person is of great worth, value, and dignity. I believe each person has it within themselves to be whole. As a clinician, this belief impacts the way I work with clients. I believe that clients are the experts in their lives and I am there to support, guide, and be a witness to the work of change in their journey to find meaning in their lives and to make life worthwhile. Another goal of mine is to continue advancing knowledge around culturally competent mental health care for the Asian community, a population that has historically been excluded from research in the mental health field. I hope to accomplish this through research and also by showing up as an Asian woman in academic spaces, to teach and facilitate conversations that include the Asian experience. In my academic career as a Master's student, I was encouraged by my advisor who is a Korean woman like me. To see someone who looks like me as a leader in the mental health field gave me hope and permission to imagine that I can make an impact in the counseling field as well. When I enter the world of teaching as a faculty, I hope to encourage other Asian people who are interested in being mental health counselors that they too have a place in this field, so more people can be served by compassionate and competent counselors. Additionally, during my master’s program I had the opportunity to research the experience of intimate partner violence for Asian American Christian women for my Masters’ thesis. I really enjoyed the process of collecting people’s stories and telling them to a broader audience with the purpose of healing and empowering those who have suffered from oppression, both on the side of storytellers who get to narrate their stories and readers who can find pieces of their own story in what they’re reading. I hope to do more of this kind of research in my career as a doctoral student and beyond. References Cho, H., & Kim, W. J. (2012). Intimate partner violence among Asian Americans and their use of mental health services: Comparisons with White, Black, and Latino victims. Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health, 14(5), 809–815. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10903-012-9625-3 Midlarsky, E., Venkataramani, K. A., & Plante, M. (2006). Domestic Violence in the Chinese and South Asian Immigrant Communities. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1087(1), 279–300. https://doi.org/10.1196/annals.1385.003 Nason-Clark, N. (2009). Christianity and the Experience of Domestic Violence: What Does Faith Have to Do with It? Journal of the North American Association of Christians in Social Work, (36 (4), 379-393