Issue 68: Finding Hope in Hard Times with J.S. Park

Light the way through life's darkest moments together

Jun 24, 2025

Hi KP!

How are you doing? In these times when harrowing news surrounds us daily, leaving many of us struggling to process and respond, I feel deeply relieved to have J.S. Park with us today.

J.S. Park is a hospital chaplain and author of As Long As You Need: Permission to Grieve, which he also narrated for the audiobook. Through his work, he frequently witnesses patients' final moments and has become intimately familiar with death and loss—that inevitable part of life we struggle to accept or grow accustomed to. What makes his writing—both in his books and social media posts—so profoundly comforting is the thread of hope that runs through even his most difficult stories. His accounts of grief are infused with an empathy so deep that readers feel truly seen and understood. And isn't that what we all crave—to be genuinely understood as we are?

I'm grateful for his willingness to share deeply personal experiences in this interview, the kind that prompt us to examine our own lives and hearts. I hope this interview brings you comfort, invites contemplation, and most importantly, helps you feel less alone.

KP Q&A with J.S. Park

J.S. Park is a hospital chaplain, published author, and online educator. For nine years he has been an interfaith chaplain at a 1000+ bed hospital that is designated a Level 1 Trauma Center. His role includes grief counseling, attending every death, every trauma and Code Blue, staff care, and supporting end-of-life care.
J.S. also served for three years as a chaplain at one of the largest nonprofit charities for the homeless on the east coast. J.S. has a MDiv completed in 2010 and a BA in Psychology. He also has a sixth-degree black belt. He is the author of As Long as You Need: Permission to Grieve.
J.S. currently lives in Tampa, Florida with his wife, a nurse practitioner, their daughter and son, and their adopted dog. Find more about his work in his blog and follow him on social media here.

Introduce yourself more personally in 2-3 sentences.

I’m Joon, and online I go by J.S. I’m very lucky and happy to be a husband, dad of two awesome children, and a hospital chaplain where I have tended to patients in the hardest moments of their lives.

Where are you from? No, where are you REALLY from? (Haha!)

I was born and raised in Florida, so I’m a Korean Floridian American. My father is a martial arts instructor so I grew up in his dojo. And for almost fifteen years, I was raised in a multigenerational home, with my parents and uncle and grandmother. So I was basically imported from Korea, assembled in Florida, trained in the dojo, and raised by a village.

How would you describe yourself in five words?

Optimistic (maybe 순진 🙂), Passionate, Playful, Extra-Introverted, Engaged

What do you love about being Komerican?

As a Komerican, I love that I have my own culture that is uniquely my own. It is a third culture, but definitely not third place. I had once believed that I was “split in half.” While there are days I am still seeking grounding, I do not consider myself “between two worlds,” but rather that I have two worlds in one. I am made more whole, not less. There are many Korean traditions that I love, such as baek-il (100 days celebration), doljanchi (one year birthday), jesa (death-day commemoration), and New Year’s in our hanbok. And I can also celebrate this with galbi and grilled hamburgers, pizza and pajeon, in our hanbok and suits and dress pants.

My extended family in Korea find that this is not “watered down,” but rather its own experience. We elevate our Korean heritage while at the same time adding flourish that feels distinctly truthful to the American 1980s era of cassette tapes, neon, hairspray, and if we can, a grill, a pool, and disco lights over a dance floor.

And of course, what are your favorite Korean foods?

Galbi tang, hwe-dupbap, and kimchi chigae.

What was your childhood like and what has it taught you?

Childhood was hard on two levels, and rewarding on one:

I experienced a lot of racism in school in Florida, including being bullied, assaulted, and ostracized. I sat alone at lunch for most of my high school.
I grew up in a tumultuous and abusive home. My parents were surviving the best they could under trauma, historical and current, and though this doesn’t absolve them of how they abused me, it does move me to understand.
I was very, very lucky to have informal mentors along the way, including a kind and passionate youth pastor, martial arts instructors, therapists, and supervisors. It was as if I was always drowning, but managed to find a series of planks in a vast roaring ocean.

What do people underestimate about you?

I am sometimes labeled the “grief guy” or “grief expert” or was once called a “vortex of unrelenting heaviness,” perhaps all due to my work and the way I write. But up close, I love to banter, find the humor in everything, and I love to laugh (so loudly that my friends will not sit next to me in a movie theater). I recently had a public speaking engagement, and one comment that I received after was, “You are very different than you are online, I did not expect to laugh that much.”

Share your proudest moment in the past year.

I was on Good Morning America and I got to speak at the End Well conference. To be truthful, I have a bad case of stage fright. And when I was twelve, I developed a mild stutter that I was able to manage, but have not completely overcome. Any time I engage publicly this way, I am feverish and sweating. Mostly I am very critical of myself; I continually have what the French call l'esprit de l'escalier, the spirit of the staircase, where I keep telling myself, “I should’ve said this and not that.” So to be on a big national platform and then a large stage with a microphone wrapped around my head really felt like a big deal. Both times I was done, I couldn’t feel my legs for several hours.

What was your hardest moment in the past year?

My son was born in February of 2024, and I had a book launch in April 2024. Over the summer, I fell into a deep depression. One of the hardest. I was terrified of raising my second child, wondering how much of my trauma that I would pass onto him. I was scared of putting another book in the world, wondering if my words were meaningless. The ugliest and most terrible thoughts visited me late in the night. I had sharp pains in my stomach for weeks. I managed to get through to the other side of it. My son and my book: I cannot be perfect in raising a child or writing a book. But I am here. I hope I am enough for them.

We’ve all been hurt in some form or fashion. What are you healing from?

I learned from my therapist that I am lonely. It is really no one’s fault.

What’s your favorite dance song?

Right now it’s Apt. by Rosé, my daughter and son love to dance to it for our evening dance times. “Apatuh” is also my son’s first word.

This Q&A was filled out online and edited for length and clarity.