📖 Introduction
Serious illness can completely transform a person’s emotional world. Fear, anxiety, despair, inferiority, hopelessness, and emotional exhaustion often become even more painful than the illness itself. Many people try to appear strong outwardly while silently suffering inside.
This meditation testimonial shares the story of Young-ae K., a school health teacher who faced thyroid cancer, major surgery, loss of her voice, emotional breakdown, and overwhelming fear about her future.
Although she tried to appear cheerful and positive in front of others, internally she felt trapped in darkness, sadness, anger, and despair. Her illness, voice loss, fatigue, weight gain, and emotional suffering gradually made life feel unbearable.
Through meditation and deep self-reflection, however, she began confronting the inferiority, fear, pride, emotional masks, and attachment that had quietly controlled her entire life.
As she learned to let go of those minds, both her emotional state and physical condition gradually transformed. Her fear decreased, her energy returned, her voice unexpectedly recovered, and she eventually rediscovered genuine happiness and peace.
This meditation testimonial beautifully illustrates how emotional healing, self-reflection, inner peace, and letting go of fear can profoundly change one’s relationship with illness, life, and oneself.
💬 Meditation Testimonial: “After Overcoming Thyroid Cancer, I Finally Began Living a Real Life”
By Young-ae K. | School Health Teacher
🌧️ “I Wanted an Eraser That Could Wipe Away My Mind”
“I wish there were an eraser that could erase my mind.
I want to erase the present, the past, and everyone who knows me.
Why did this trial come to me?
Was it because I became too arrogant?
I keep telling myself I’ll be okay.
I pray countless times every day.
But sadness and anger suddenly surge up like waves and overwhelm me.
Why can’t I control my own mind?
Surely people were not born just to live like this.
Is there no way to escape this prison?”
These were words from her journal in early 2005.
At the time, she had recently been diagnosed with thyroid cancer and undergone major surgery that even involved removing part of her vocal cords.
Every day felt heavy, dark, and hopeless.
🌊 Pretending to Be Fine While Living in Inner Hell
Even the concern and kindness of others felt fake to her.
She hated the thought of anyone seeing how broken she truly felt.
So she deliberately acted cheerful in front of others.
“What’s the big deal? Other people have much worse illnesses.”
“I’m fine.”
“I’m okay.”
But while pretending everything was fine, her inner world became darker and darker.
After surgery, she underwent radiation treatment while continuing to work at school.
Eventually, however, the emotional suffering became unbearable and she had to take medical leave.
She says:
“That was when I realized what hell truly was.
My own mind was creating hell.”
Desperate to escape from that suffering, she eventually heard about this meditation through her older sister.
“She told me, ‘They say you can empty your mind there.’”
The moment she heard those words, she felt:
“This place might finally help me solve everything.”
So she immediately began meditation practice.
🌿 A Life Built Around Hiding Inferiority
Until then, she believed she had lived a fairly successful life.
She grew up in a farming family with one older sister and one younger brother.
After graduating college during the difficult economic crisis of 1998, she was fortunate enough to immediately receive a position as a school health teacher.
Most things in her life had gone according to plan.
She carried a strong sense of pride in herself.
But around age thirty, her body began changing.
She constantly felt exhausted.
Her neck swelled.
And eventually she received the devastating diagnosis:
Thyroid cancer.
Doctors told her her voice would gradually recover after surgery.
But it did not.
Her voice became small, rough, and weak.
Meanwhile, thyroid dysfunction caused constant fatigue, swelling, and significant weight gain.
She eventually gained over 70 kilograms.
She became consumed by fear:
- “What if my voice never comes back?”
- “What if my body never recovers?”
She felt as though happiness had been stolen from her without warning.
💧 “I Was Constantly Pretending”
During meditation, she says she finally faced herself honestly for the first time.
And she discovered something surprising:
Deep inferiority had controlled her entire life.
To hide that inferiority, she always tried to appear happy, confident, and successful.
She wanted others to admire and envy her.
As she reflected, many painful memories resurfaced.
Her older sister had always been considered prettier and smarter and had received much love as the family’s first child.
Her parents had originally hoped for a son when she was born.
She even remembered hearing from her grandmother that her father went out drinking immediately after she was born.
One childhood scene remained especially vivid:
Sitting in a first-grade classroom, determined to study harder than anyone else.
Because she believed only achievement would earn her love and recognition.
Although she constantly felt stressed, anxious, and inferior inside, outwardly she spent her entire life covering those feelings with masks.
“I was never even honest with myself.”
As she reflected, she became overwhelmed with regret toward her body, her family, and the people around her.
She cried repeatedly while letting go of feelings such as:
- Inferiority
- Pride
- Arrogance
- Fear
- Attachment to appearances
She describes those emotions as layers of old dirt deeply embedded inside every corner of her being.
And she realized:
“As long as I held onto those minds, I would remain trapped inside them.”
✨ “My Voice Suddenly Returned”
Then one day, something extraordinary happened.
While meditating, she suddenly felt as though something deep inside her throat had broken loose.
The heavy stone-like pressure that had weighed on her chest for so long seemed to dissolve.
At the same time, she felt as though blocked energy throughout her body had opened.
And then —
Her voice came out clearly.
Before that moment, she had been unable to produce notes higher than a very low tone.
But suddenly her full voice returned.
She shouted aloud repeatedly in disbelief:
“Is this really my voice?”
Even doctors had said singing again would likely be impossible.
Today, she sings in a choir.
🌸 Recovery of Both Body and Mind
Gradually, her body also recovered.
She lost weight.
Her stamina returned.
Before meditation, she says she would completely collapse by 10 p.m.
Now she could stay active until late at night and still wake up energized in the morning.
Most importantly, however, she no longer felt imprisoned by fear about illness itself.
She began seeing the body more naturally:
“If something breaks, you repair it and continue living.”
That shift in perspective helped her release much of her obsession and fear surrounding disease.
☀️ “Thyroid Cancer Led Me to My Real Life”
She eventually returned to work in 2006.
Now she often meets many people suffering from thyroid-related illnesses.
She believes stress plays a major role in many thyroid conditions.
She explains:
“Surgery may remove the visible illness.
But if the mind remains trapped in fear and attachment to the disease, people continue suffering internally.”
She believes true healing begins only when people release the mental suffering tied to illness.
Today, she says the greatest gift was not simply recovering physically.
It was discovering her true self.
At her lowest point, she once wondered:
“Why are people born only to suffer?”
But through meditation, she realized the suffering had largely come from the self-centered fears, attachments, and emotional burdens she had created within her own mind.
And when those were released, life itself changed completely.
As a child, whenever someone asked:
“What’s your dream?”
She would always answer:
“I want to live well.”
“How?”
“Happily.”
Now she smiles and says:
“Through meditation, I finally achieved that dream.”
And in a strange way, thyroid cancer itself became the event that guided her toward a truly meaningful life.
