Kayla Kim Votapek

I’m ready for 2026✨
A year of mapping my soul.
Of leading with love, joy, and compassion.
Of building softer connections and honoring the blessings and lessons that invite more abundance, peace, and belonging.

Part of that means doing the scary thing.
Letting myself be fully seen.
Sharing my artistry without masking.
Exploring the in-between—between identities, timelines, and expressions of self.
Offering my heart without trying to control the outcome.

I’m grateful for you, my followers and friends , as I step into this next chapter meeting the “me” I remember, the “me” you know, the “me” I created to speak my truth, and the “me” who learned to protect herself. All of the “me”s that make me human.

A work in progress.

I have always lived in the In-Between. And I’m thankful you’re here with me.

I also started a substack where I will be working on writing some of process through the year! The link to it is in my bio!

There I will archive of my becoming. It’s a soft place to land—where reflections, essays, and creative explorations live at the intersection of identity, art, and connection. Where healing can unfold, grief can be held, and becoming is honored.

It’s for those who are still becoming~

As a fun way to start each year, I like to choose a theme that supports me on my journey. 2025 was inspired by BTS’s song Answer: Love Myself and a bit of Defying Gravity from Wicked.

2025 definitely grounded me in more answers to questions that I been carrying with me. The answers always led me back to coming home to myself.

It reminded me of things that I took for granted and shined a light on old narratives and ways of living that once protected me that is no longer needed. It made me super appreciate of all the “Me” who got me to this moment.

We are forever growing and changing and I am grateful for all the different versions of myself that have protected me, saw me, learned to understand me, saved me, and healed me.

I am in process; always in the in between.
I am all the versions of me.
I am me 💚

This year has been a year of full-circle moments. I felt as though I was closing so many loose ends in my book of life.

I learned more about myself. How deeply I dislike competition and how often I argue simply to be understood. How important it is for me to be fully seen without judgment. How I don’t want to be stronger. How I am aiming to soften. I am learning to be more open, more grounded, to take off my armor and simply exist. To live by my own narrative, one I set for myself, rather than the narratives society or others expect me to live by.

I learned how deeply compassion, authenticity, and groundedness resonate with me. I also learned that emotional depth-ness without stability can lead to trauma bonding and harm - no matter how intense the connection may feel.

I learned how incredibly lucky I am to have an international community of people who don’t just know me, but who are a safe place to land. People who see me in all my complexity - the “me” I was yesterday, the “me” I am today, and the “me” I am tomorrow. They accept all the versions of me and understand that each version of Kayla served a purpose in that given moment.

2025 was a year of wins. Becoming the first ever Executive Director of CAATA, starting my own company In;Between Artistry LLC, traveling to three different continents including working in New Zealand, and hosting workshops for adoptees, something that I have always been afraid to do.

It was also a year of profound loss. I lost friends I thought would never leave. I let go of communities that once meant the world to me. I released narratives that once protected me and made me feel safe.

It was a year of looking deeply into the mirror and learning that the answer to everything is learning how to let go of control and falling deeper into loving myself.

So thank you, 2025, for allowing me to love myself. For the lessons, the closing of portals and timelines, the full-circle moments. For the love, joy, and healing.

And I’m excited for what 2026 will bring✨

We met through the online Korean Adoptee Facebook group and somewhere between sharing our stories and fears of going to Korea for the first time, it began to feel like long lost friends.

Standing here in hanbok beside April reminded me that healing does look like joy! Sometimes it sounds like laughter echoing through the streets of Seoul. It can look like two adoptees exploring Seoul in traditional hanboks. It can feel like a warm hug on a cold day.

Belonging can look like this! And it can be shared between people who don’t have to explain their existence✨

For years, I longed for spaces like this — where adoption wasn’t something I had to explain, but a shared language spoken between hearts.

This November, I show up not just as a Korean adoptee,
but as a storyteller, educator, and artist —to speak, teach, and simply be with community that understands the in-between.

I’m honored to be the guest speaker at this fall’s Adopted Friends event hosted by Yale KASY , a gathering for Korean American adoptees and their families to connect, eat, play, and root into belonging.

Here’s what the day looks like:
🕛 12:00–1:00 PM – Lunch
🎨 1:00–2:00 PM – In;Between Artistry Workshop (led by me, and )
💥 2:00–3:00 PM – Taekwondo for kids / Guest Speaker talk for adults
🎁 3:00–4:00 PM – Games, gifts, and photos

📍 Asian American Cultural Center, Yale University
295 Crown St, New Haven, CT
🗓 Saturday, November 8th, 2025
⏳ RSVP by Oct 25: [email protected]

Whether you’re a little sib, parent, elder, or someone walking your own journey of return — I hope to see you there.

We were never meant to figure out identity alone.
Belonging is something we live into together.

I used to wonder what it would feel like to walk the streets of the place that shaped me.

To breathe the same air my birth mother once did.
To belong — even for a moment — without needing to explain why.

Coming to Korea for the first time wasn’t about finding answers to my adoption story. It was about remembering. About feeling the pulse of a home that’s lived inside me all along.

Can’t believe it has been 4 years since I started my journey of reconnecting with my roots. Each day I’m so grateful for being able to call Korea another home and for all the memories it has given me so far💕

I met this turtle the same day.
It felt like a quiet reminder from the universe —
that home doesn’t always have to be found.
Sometimes, it’s carried within you.

Hiraeth: the homesickness of a place you’ve never been, or maybe never had.

This piece has lived in me for years. As a Korean adoptee, the question of home has always felt complicated.

In my essay, I write about the quiet grief of hiraeth: A longing for a home that lives not on a map but in the marrow.

Read “Hiraeth” on Medium — a reflection on belonging, loss, and what it means to make home from the in-between.

This is for the ones who never had the luxury of staying. The ones who had to begin again. The ones still searching for where they belong.

🔗 Link in bio
medium.com/swlh/hiraeth-9780f24bc6e0

For a while now, I’ve been building something close to my heart.

A space that holds all the contradictions, beauty, and becoming of who we are.

It’s called In;Between Artistry —
a creative and healing practice rooted in the complexity of identity, artistry, and community.

Because before there is art, there is the human being.
And somewhere in between the two…
is where we begin.

Follow to learn more!

For years, this place lived in my adopted parents’ stories —a home I had only heard about but never seen.

They came here every year before they adopted me.
But standing on the same beach they once stood,
I finally understood why this place felt like home to them.

Visiting the Cayman Islands and walking through the places they once described made me feel closer to them. Closer to the people they were before I arrived,
and to the love that would one day make me theirs.

And somehow, that made it feel even more like home.