Dear Monica:

I believe that the greatest freedom a human can achieve is to be “making all these big decisions by me without anyone believing and supporting me”-

To make the right choices for you based on your own correct, reality congruent thinking, taking your feelings, your own well-being seriously, without others’ acceptance, approval or support is the highest form of freedom.

The need for others’ understanding and support is … well, understandable. We are born with the need to be understood, to be supported, to be accepted, approved. But we are also born with the potential, as adults, to choose courageously to do the right thing without the understanding and support of others.

You asked: “How can I make them understand?” Perhaps the wrong question. How about asking this: How can I make them do the right thing for me and for them?

If you stay in Korea and you get chronically sick as a result, that wouldn’t benefit your parents, would it? When you choose to move university and country, you are not doing only what is right for you, you are doing what is right for them.

It is time, Monica, to be courageous, and taking one small step at a time, do what is right for you without family’s support.

* From your previous post I thought your mother did consider you moving to Singapore, that she was open to the idea. Is she not?

anita