195 - Mia Park - Challenging What It Means To Be Whole
“If we keep making these shifts towards wholeness, the kind of careers where we can serve ourselves and the larger universe better just kind of happen.” – Mia Park
The longest, most important, and, let’s be honest, most frustrating relationship of our lives is the one we have with ourselves. How amazing, then, to connect with someone who gets the struggle and sits alongside us in that space. Mia Park is one of those people for me. For a lot of folks. A talented, multidimensional artist based in Chicago, she’s fueled by a boundless enthusiasm for community engagement through acting, producing events, teaching yoga, and more. Through these myriad pursuits, Mia cultivates kinship with others while deepening her relationship with herself.
“I work hard on relationships because they're fearful for me in many ways.” The admission acts as a preface to Mia’s challenging backstory. Perhaps it’s because of her difficult childhood that she’s so committed to making connections across different communities in multifaceted ways. “I ain't no five-year planner. I don't do finances as well. I don't do life planning. I just kind of get an idea and an instinct, and then I jump in with every cell in my body,” she says. “It's an intense way to live. It's an exhausting way to live, but I don't know if I have a choice.”
Mia's already reconsidered her statement in the space of those two thoughts. “We have choices.” As in our willingness to shift outdated survival patterns formed in childhood toward something that better serves us (and the universe) in adulthood. She calls this the process of “wholeness.”Mia’s definition of wholeness is nothing like the commercialized ideal of completeness. “The body is never balanced. We’re never gonna be whole, and that's part of the struggle and the acceptance of the struggle––and I think that's okay.” Again, she pauses to offer an addendum. “I believe we are 100% whole.” Even amid our failures, redirects, and mulligans. Even when we opt not to forgive those who’ve caused us harm. “I stopped putting pressure on myself to forgive a long time ago,” Mia says. “The ability to make peace with and accept yourself, forgive yourself, I think that's a byproduct of becoming whole.”
Wherever we go, there we are, already in our wholeness.
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
NARM - NeuroAffective Relational Model
GUEST CONTACT INFO & BIO
Mia Park is a multi-dimensional artist based in Chicago. Boundless enthusiasm fuels her community engagement through acting, producing events, teaching yoga, and more.