About Me

Welcome to Rootwork. I created this space because I needed it to exist.

My Story

My name is Kim. Back in 2018, I did the hardest thing I ever had to do. I buried my brother after he took his own life. I was 28 years old, and he was 33. I miss him.

I thought I had a grasp of things back then. I had studied sociology at uni for a year, I did human sciences in high school, and yet I knew nothing. Nothing to help my brother, nothing to help my wife, and nothing to help myself. He was just as lonely as me, as deep in the dark as me, yet he didn't show it. He was the life of the party. He hated talking about his feelings, he hated psychologists and hospitals. He always said you just have to get on with it. This was how it was. Sometimes men need to wear a mask, often women too.

In the context of this website, my brother was very much an emotionally immature person. Not in the way that he was mean or abusive, but in the way that he was unable to handle his emotions. He was deeply sensitive, deeply caring, but unable to show it. He wasn't weak, he wasn't a coward, he wasn't sick in the way that people think of being sick. He just didn't have the tools to deal with his emotions. Because no one taught him, and everyone used him.

It has taken me many years to plow through topics of mental health, understanding unhealthy relationships, depression, suicide, trauma, manipulation and even simple things like feeling your emotions. I have had to relearn many things and grow up emotionally myself. In this process I kept a book and a brain full of everything I wish I had been able to share with him. My conclusion after all this is that if you can really learn, understand and apply emotional maturity, you will be able to shape your life to be a wonderful life. For yourself, and for others.

I can't go back in time and share these notes with my brother. But maybe someone will benefit from my little book of notes & tools I gathered along the way. May you live a good life.

Big Disclaimer

I am not a psychologist or a psychiatrist. I am a person who has done a lot of reading, thinking and learning about mental health and emotional maturity, yet more importantly, I have lived it on both sides of the fence. I have no credentials to my name and I am not qualified to give medical advice. What you read on this website is not a substitute for professional help. If you are struggling with mental health issues, please seek professional help. That said, life has thrown me a lot of curveballs and I've been deep in the pit, but I'm in a much better place now, and I wouldn't have made this site if I didn't think there were at least some useful tidbits here and there.

Why Rootwork?

When you grow up around emotional immaturity, the hardest part isn't just surviving it, it's trying to explain it to yourself and others why things feel off. You feel the impact deeply, but you lack the vocabulary to name what is happening. The invisible wounds of emotional neglect or abuse are difficult to point to because they are often defined by what didn't happen.

I built Rootwork to provide that missing vocabulary. Drawing heavily from the work of Dr. Lindsay C. Gibson and other psychological frameworks (see resources section), this site is designed to be a living, breathing glossary.

The name "Rootwork" refers to the difficult but necessary process of digging beneath the surface to understand the origins of our pain. It's about pulling the weeds by the root, so we can finally plant something new.