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Hanna Kim • Korean-American-British Mom • Dubai

@hannaworldview

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45. Apparently this is midlife.
Rethinking friendship, motherhood & what a full life is
5 countries, 3 daughters, still figuring it out.

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I turn 45 in a few weeks — so technically I’m still 44. 😂

Here are 10 things I wish I could tell my 35-year-old self:

1️⃣ You have more time than you think — and less.

There’s time to change direction, start something new, become someone different. But less time than you think with the people you love. Go see them.

2️⃣ Stop waiting for life to settle down.

After the move. After the kids get older. After I lose weight. After work settles down. There will always be another “after.”

3️⃣ Take the photo. Get in it.

My phone is filled with photos of everyone else. Ten years from now you’ll look at that woman and think: wow, she looked fabulous.

4️⃣ Stop looking for one perfect best friend.

One friend can know your history. Another your ambition. Another motherhood. Another just makes you laugh. One person doesn’t have to be everything.

5️⃣ Your children need a mother with a life of her own.

Love them ridiculously. But let them watch you try things, make mistakes, stay curious and be ambitious too.

6️⃣ Become more interested, not more impressive.

Read widely. Ask questions. Talk to people unlike you. Change your mind. Interesting people are usually interested people.

7️⃣ Some relationships are for a chapter.

An ending doesn’t automatically mean it failed. Some people were exactly right for a particular version of your life.

8️⃣ Build muscle. Wear sunscreen.

Lift weights. Wear the sunscreen. Wear the hat. Who cares if your hair gets messed up?

9️⃣ Don’t confuse expensive with good.

Some of the best things cost a lot. Some cost almost nothing. Learn the difference.

🔟 Stop rushing through the ordinary bits.

The school run. Your parents calling. Your children interrupting you.

You don’t know which ordinary day you’ll someday wish you could have back.

Save this for the decade when you need it. ❤️

And if you’re figuring out friendship, motherhood, identity and what you want the second half of life to look like too, follow along. I am too. by @hannaworldview

People are always surprised when they hear what I used to do.

For years I negotiated for a living. Hard rooms, high stakes, people who did this for a living too.

And the thing nobody warned me: the skills I built in those rooms—reading what someone actually wants, disagreeing without making an enemy, staying calm when I wanted to snap—I use them far more now!! With my husband. My three girls. The mums at school. Rooms where nobody shares a language or culture and everyone still has to get along.

I used to think they were work skills. Turns out they’re life skills.

So I’m starting a series about them. Not politics—the more important things underneath it. I’ll share with you what I know! by @hannaworldview

We all said she’d won. It took me years to see what she’d actually signed up for.

It wasn’t the convertible or the house. It was a life where nobody needed to grow, so nobody did.

Here’s the part I think about now. Drive isn’t a salary or a job title. It’s the person who’s still curious at 45. Who reads the book, takes the class, says “I got that wrong” and changes. Who gets more interesting the longer you know him.

Money can be inherited. Drive can’t. And if you’re the kind of woman who keeps building, you need someone building next to you, not watching from the sofa.

Marry a cheerleader. Then be his.

I write about the choices that make a full life actually feel full. Follow along if that’s you.

Describe your person in one word. 👇 by @hannaworldview

Nobody hands you a village when you land. You find out who’s in it the first time you’re stuck in traffic.

Back home, the village is just there. Grandparents down the road, the aunt who does Tuesdays, the neighbour who’s known you forever. Move countries with kids and a lot of that turns into a video call.

What surprised me is who steps in. Not people with a title. People with a spare minute and a car seat.

The village abroad doesn’t look like the one we grew up with. It’s looser. It changes every time someone gets posted somewhere new. Half of it lives in your phone. It still counts.

I write about raising kids between worlds. Follow along if that’s your life too. Tell me who’s in yours, and I’ll share some of your answers next week.

Who’s in your village? by @hannaworldview

My two best guy friends in high school were Filipino. I didn’t know.

Not because anyone was hiding anything. We were second-generation kids at a very white school, and we’d all gotten very good at fitting in.

What stays with me now is the silence. They never said it. I never asked. And it’s made me wonder who else I’ve sat right next to without ever asking where they’re from.

Happy Filipino American History Month to the funniest, kindest boys from the yearbook office 🇵🇭

I’m collecting the stories of people who grew up between worlds. More of them here. 🌎 by @hannaworldview

I spent years being the person in the room who knew the least.

Countries I’d never visited. Industries I couldn’t have explained to you the day before. Job titles I had to quietly decode in my head while smiling and nodding.

And yet, some of my best conversations happened exactly there.

Because when you can’t impress someone with what you know, you only have one move left. You get genuinely curious about what they know. You listen. Then you ask the next question.

Most of us were taught the opposite. Have something clever ready. Don’t let anyone see you’re out of your depth.

I think about this every time I walk into a new school, a new country, a room full of people who all seem to know each other already.

You don’t need the perfect thing to say. You need the next good question.

This is Episode 7 of What Politics Taught Me — follow for the next one every week. by @hannaworldview

“We should get coffee sometime.” I’ve said it, meant it, and then neither of us sent the message. 😂

After starting over in five countries, I’ve stopped leaving it there.

Not because I’m good at this. Because I’ve had to start over enough times to notice where it breaks. The first coffee is the easy part. Everybody’s friendly at the first coffee.

The second one is where it quietly falls apart — not because anyone didn’t like each other, but because nobody put a day in it.

So these are the five things I actually do now.

One coffee is an introduction.
The second is where friendship starts. ☕️

Save this for the next time you meet someone you like. And follow along — I share what’s actually worked for me, starting over. by @hannaworldview

The comebacks I came up with afterwards were excellent, obviously. 😂

But at the time, I was a new mom who’d spent the morning working up the courage just to leave the house with her baby. One impatient stranger, and I felt like I’d done something wrong by ordering a latte.

If you could go back to one awkward moment and say what you really needed to hear, what would you tell yourself? by @hannaworldview

I worked with an executive who intimidated practically everyone.

Tall. Immaculately dressed. Rarely smiled. Notoriously tough.

Then one day, his driver handed me a piece of homemade birthday cake—and told me something about our boss that I still think about years later.

It’s funny how confidently we decide we know someone, when we’ve only seen one side of them.

Have you ever been completely surprised by someone you thought you’d figured out?

What Politics Taught Me · Ep. 6

#WhatPoliticsTaughtMe #FormerLobbyist #HumanBehavior #HannaWorldView by @hannaworldview

For the record, my husband and I are NOT one of those couples who text each other all day. 😂

There are days when we’re both busy, distracted, or barely communicating beyond who’s picking up which child.

And like every married couple, we have our moments.

But this little text made me realise something.

It’s not really about knowing where the other person is. It’s about including each other in the little, unremarkable parts of our day.

A plane landed. A meeting went well. Someone forgot their instrument. Again.

Nothing exciting. Nothing romantic, really.

Except maybe it is.

I’m curious — do you and your partner send each other these little updates? Or do you barely text until you have a chance to catch up face to face? by @hannaworldview

I used to be a lobbyist.

Which meant spending a lot of time talking to people who didn’t agree with me.

Funny enough, I still use these 5 things all the time — with my husband, kids and friends.

1. Don’t start by explaining why you’re right.

Instead ask:

“What’s the part that doesn’t work for you?”

Sometimes you’re arguing about completely different problems.

2. Listen for what’s underneath the first objection.

“It’s too expensive” might really mean I’m worried about money.

“I don’t want to go” might mean I’m worried I won’t know anyone.

Don’t just argue with the first sentence.

3. Give important ideas time to land.

For bigger decisions, I often say:

“You don’t have to answer now. Just think about it.”

People sometimes need time with an idea before they know what they think.

4. Give people a graceful way to change their mind.

Skip the “See? I told you.”

You don’t need the credit. Let them change their mind without having to admit defeat.

5. When you get the yes, SHUT UP. 😂

Someone finally says:

“Okay. I see what you mean.”

And somehow we still want to give reasons six, seven and eight.

Don’t.

Take the yes.

I learned these professionally.

But I probably use them more now around kitchen tables than I ever did in meeting rooms.

Save this for the next conversation you’re already rehearsing in your head. 😂

Hope this is helpful. ❤️ by @hannaworldview