From the Founder
Why I created naræ
A personal message about cancer, healing, cultural identity, and the question that started it all.
The idea for naræ did not begin as a plan for an organization. It emerged during my own cancer journey and from a growing realization that something important was missing.
Cancer was not unfamiliar in my life. I had sat beside people I loved as they faced it, and some of them did not come back. Even so, I never imagined it would one day become part of my own story. There was no genetic warning. My very first mammogram was a diagnosis, and when cancer returned not long after, I had to endure it all over again.
As I moved through treatment, I searched for understanding through support groups and retreats. Many of these spaces offered kindness and care, and I remain deeply grateful for them. Yet I also noticed how rarely I encountered women who shared a similar immigrant background.
As a Korean immigrant, I understand what it feels like to navigate systems that were not built with you in mind. There is often a quiet habit of managing things alone, of not asking for help, and of not wanting to burden others. I still remember when speaking to a store cashier required real courage. Experiences like that stay with you longer than you expect.
Gradually, a question began to form.
Where were the women like me?In waiting rooms, support groups, and healing spaces, I did not see many of them. Not because they did not exist, but because immigrant and culturally diverse women often remain absent from those environments. Language barriers, cultural expectations, and deeply learned habits of silence can keep them away.
Another realization arrived during chemotherapy. Someone reached out and asked whether I could help with an important volunteer responsibility. I was sick, exhausted, and unsure if I had the strength to say yes. Yet something inside me said: try.
I am grateful that I did. It provided a needed distraction and a renewed sense of purpose. Through that experience, I discovered a strength I had not realized remained.
In that moment, my understanding of healing shifted. Healing is not only about receiving care. It can also grow through connection, contribution, and the knowledge that one's own experience may help someone else feel less alone.
I also came to recognize that support carries a different depth when it comes from someone who has lived through similar moments of fear, uncertainty, and recovery. Physicians and nurses provide essential care, and families offer love, but shared experience creates a kind of understanding that cannot easily be replaced.
naræ grew from these realizations.
It was created as a culturally grounded community for immigrant and culturally diverse women navigating breast and gynecologic cancers. The intention is simple: to foster belonging, understanding, and renewal among women whose experiences may otherwise remain unseen within traditional support spaces.
And there is something else I believe. When women who have long stayed quiet begin to feel supported and seen, their voices carry further than they know. Their experiences — shared, witnessed, counted — can change what healthcare understands about communities like ours. Not all at once. But in ways that matter deeply for the women who come after us.
My hope for naræ is this: that through connection, confidence begins to return. That as strength grows, some women may choose to walk beside another woman facing a similar journey — and discover that walking beside others becomes part of their own healing.
That question. Those realizations. Together, they became naræ.
"In that moment, my understanding of healing shifted. Healing is not only about receiving care. It can also grow through connection, contribution, and the knowledge that one's own experience may help someone else feel less alone."
No genetic warning. First mammogram, a diagnosis. Cancer returned. She endured it twice. Through treatment, she searched for community — and noticed who was missing.
In waiting rooms and healing spaces, she looked for women like her. They existed. But they were not there. Language, culture, the habit of silence kept them away.
During chemotherapy, she said yes when every part of her wanted to say no. In that reaching outward, she found a strength she did not know remained — and her understanding of healing changed.
naræ — built from one question and many realizations, so no woman carries it alone.