Jen’s Beauty Life

A Cross-Border Love Story Across Two Generations.

My husband and I are one of those couples whose relationship began across borders and eventually grew into a life together.

In 1998, after years of preparation, I finally took a long-awaited trip to Australia.
On August 15, Korea’s Liberation Day, I met my husband for the very first time at Sydney International Airport. He was a 1.5-generation migrant, having moved to Australia with his parents at the age of ten.
At the time, I was working as a creative director at an advertising agency in Korea and had managed to take just one week of leave to travel to Sydney.

Back then, I never imagined that this man would become my life partner.

This was long before video calls or instant messaging existed. International phone calls were painfully expensive, and month after month, our salaries disappeared into phone bills. Eventually, I made a decision that felt both reckless and inevitable: I left a stable job and moved to Sydney.

Nearly twenty-six years have passed since then.

And now, life has quietly placed a familiar scene in front of me once again.

My eldest son’s girlfriend is Canadian. She came to Sydney on a trip with a friend, met my son, and what began as a brief encounter slowly became something more.
They maintained a long-distance relationship for two years, and on December 30, 2025, she moved to Sydney.

It feels strangely ironic.

Even moving cities within the same country can be challenging.
Relocating to another country demands far more—courage, responsibility, and a willingness to begin again from a completely different starting line.

Fortunately, my son’s girlfriend does not face a language barrier.
For me, language was the first and biggest wall I had to climb. In those early years, there were countless moments when I had no choice but to rely on my husband just to find my footing.

As a parent, the heart is complicated.
Of course, there is a part of me that wishes my child had met someone closer to home. But because I know how difficult the road my husband and I walked truly was, when I look at this young couple, my feelings are filled with tenderness—and a quiet ache.

Sometimes I ask myself:
” Can choices like these be inherited?”
” Does life really move in circles? “

Because I know how difficult the path my husband and I walked truly was,
my hope for them is different.

Not that they avoid every challenge, but that they are spared the unnecessary ones. That they don’t have to carry the same loneliness or uncertainty we once did.

This time, I want to stand behind them with more generosity, more patience, and more love than we were able to give ourselves back then.

If love can be passed down from one generation to the next, I hope it’s not the hardship that gets inherited, but the understanding, the quiet encouragement,
and the ability to stay beside someone who has chosen a difficult path.

Not simply crossing borders,
but learning how to hold another person’s life with care.

If that kind of love continues—
softly, steadily—
across generations, then perhaps that, too, is a legacy worth passing on.