Dressing Up as My Korean Ancestor!

These are the photographs of my grandmother. I didn’t get a chance to know her much because when I was born, she was paralyzed and couldn’t speak and then passed away when I was about 8 years old. Several years prior to me being born, she was hit by a semi-truck on her way home from church on a Sunday and was in a coma for over a year. The truck driver took her to the hospital but since she was unconscious and without any form of I.D, they had no idea of knowing her identity so there wasn’t much they could do.

My family having no clue what happened to her or where she was, looked for her for over two years until she was conscious and coherent enough to one day tell the nurse her name when the nurse was more talking to herself and saying something to the lines of, “Oh, you poor lady, you can’t even say your name or know what’s going on.” Then she was startled when my grandmother suddenly said, “I know who I am! My name is Jung-Su Ok!”

I still remember driving around everywhere for hours looking for her, my mom and my grandfather lifting the newspapers of the homeless people who were sleeping on benches, to see if it was my grandmother under it. I was too young to understand then but now looking back, I cannot fathom the devastation or the fear my mom and my grandfather must have felt! But they never lost faith or hope and eventually, found her and brought her home. I saw my grandfather take such gentle care of her and saw how much my mom sacrificed to be her caretaker.

I am in awe of the strength my family had and the excellent care they gave her until her passing. I learned a lot about family values, loyalty and the immense love we should have for our families, through my family and I am so grateful for their amazing example.

I had the chance to work with Relative Race, a great family show about finding their long-last relatives while on a race across the country and are given clues and challenges along the way, to help promote season 4. They had the idea of dressing each of us as one of our ancestors and talk about our memories of them and I chose my grandmother. I had to rummage through some old boxes to find photographers of her and two days after I found the photos and sent it to BYUtv, they had the set ready and my wardrobe picked out and MUA’s waiting for me and I was so impressed!

Would you like to see the photos from the photoshoot?

Each one of us were transformed into our ancestors, what do you think?

The day I went into set to receive a transformation was the day my dad passed away exactly one year ago. So as you can imagine, I was very emotional when talking about my grandmother who has also passed away, and I just kept crying. If you watch the second video, you’ll be able to tell by my shaky voice. But it was a great experience and I believe our ancestors are very involved in our daily lives, more than we realize, and I felt close to my grandmother and also my dad that day. It was a special day for me.

Relative Race just aired their premier of season 4, if you’ve never watched it, it is very entertaining, heartfelt and uplifting. So you are definitely missing out and you should check it out! You can watch all of their past episodes for free here: http://relativerace.com/sarah

Watch this video below for behind the scenes of the photo shoot