Moral Injury & Sex Work as an Ethnic Urban Single Mother & Christian

Photo by Alicia Quan on Unsplash

One of the things I don’t talk about often, perhaps if ever, is the moral injury I experience because of how I made money as a single Mom in Chicago.

I am religiously and morally conservative and have been most of my life. I sometimes vote split ticket because I believe it is important to advocate for the State to provide equitable access to all peoples’ human rights. It doesn’t matter whether I morally believe in someone’s choices for their personal or health care matters. Rather, it is sufficient to ensure access is not limited by religious imposition on the State.

When my son was a toddler, I became very injured and could no longer perform nor accept contracts as a professional athlete. I had gone to college but never held a traditional job because I was a professional athlete and artist since age 17.

The money I made on the road had been absorbed by my child’s father because he had been my manager while I was an athlete. We were common law married for 5 years so the State did not recognize us differently than a legally married couple. Without financial access, and no child support, no professional work experience outside my beloved sport, I did what I had to do for my son and me. I entered the night life.

For 4 years, I subverted my core values, my faith, my religious beliefs, and my morals. The toll it took on me spiritually is something I continue to process and reckon with today.

It’s been very hard to shed that part of my life. I still have a hard time going to church in person because I get very embarrassed and sometimes struggle with shame for showing my face at such a holy place.

It’s hard for me to accept people who have upstanding reputations in the community when they show me grace and mercy. When my sunbae took me and my son out for a congratulatory breakfast after I was accepted to a doctorate program and won a scholarship, I could hardly look her in the eye one time. I felt terribly ashamed of myself. I guess the way I liken it is one might compare moral injury to a very pronounced version of Imposter Syndrome.

I remember weeping profusely at the table, and she reached out her hand to mine and held it. I looked down with deep embarrassment and my tears rained down on our intertwined fingertips.

My whole life, I was very embarrassed about also being adopted. When I was a teenager, I worked at the university library with my son’s father for work study. A Korean graduate student threw his books at me and angrily told me I didn’t behave well for a Korean girl. He stormed off in a rage. My son’s dad laughed it off and told me the student must have been jealous because he felt maybe it was “one more gone to the Americans,” that he didn’t stand a chance.

I remember thinking it had nothing to do with sex. It must have been more about the student’s perceived masculinity or ability for us as a people to care for our own.

“Why are you helping me?” I asked my sunbae one night on the phone after she lovingly tore apart another version of an essay I wrote to apply for school.

“I just think you’re a really interesting person, Bree.”

I cried myself to sleep so many nights that summer, just as I had so many nights I danced for men for 18 hours straight in a room with no windows and no access to the outside world.

My favorite house mom at my home club used to tell us girls, don’t worry about what you do in those rooms.

“If you can get up tomorrow and look at yourself in the mirror, that’s all that matters.”

I felt like it was her way of saying, “This too shall pass.”

In those years.

I felt as alone as I did the little isolated Korean girl in an all White family growing up in the US.

No windows. No access to light. Figuratively or literally.

In those years. I didn’t dream at night.

I didn’t have dreams. I didn’t have visions.

When I looked at my son, my heart would break. I taught him basic addition and subtraction with single dollar bills and pipe cleaners in a studio apartment on North Avenue.

I tried to remind myself we had a city zip code but we were technically over the border of the West Side dividing line.

After four years of bartending and stripping, I effectively left that world and never looked back.

I have entertained the idea of going back just to bartend here and there. One summer I went back for a few weeks to get a new car after the AC went out in mine and it was dangerously hot for my little boy to ride around like that.

I can look myself in the mirror.

But I think.

When your life starts out as human trafficking. And then it doesn’t formally come out until 2024. But the president of our country did apologize when I was in middle school. Well.

I want to assert that I take accountability for my future. I take responsibility for the fact that I got in a bad way. I wish I could say I could have done it differently back then but to be honest. All I knew was that when I was a kid and I found out how poor my Mom was. And that she never came back for my school pictures or report cards or the letters I sent her to the orphanage. I just realized then and as a 13 year old girl. I was gonna be there for my son no matter what.

So when I got in a bad way. I just put everything to the side and I remember feeling like God was getting further and further away from me. But in reality He wasn’t. I know without a shadow of a doubt that He protected me and my son.

I know He forgives me. He shows me grace and mercy and loves me. Words will fail me if I try to describe that part.

But I still struggle to let the consequences of my actions and those years fall off me.

I remember in late 2023, I met a kind hearted man who was very wealthy and successful as a professional athlete himself. For those who are less aware, the NFL has been a conduit for human trafficking because its events are such a huge draw for the masses. Sometimes players do get involved, however inadvertently. Most of the time players don’t realize or they don’t know they may be dealing with a girl who is being trafficked or manipulated.

This person struck up a friendship with me and helped me with a lot of things in my spiritual life. One night, he asked me. “Bree. Tell me what it is. What is it? Tell me. From your soul.”

His voice hung in the air. His dark eyes looked at me with a deep conviction and stability I had never known in all my life.

I sat for a moment and then stumbled over my words.

“Well I. I just. Never had someone I could be truly vulnerable with.”

“Aahhhhh.” He said knowingly.

A few weeks passed, and he called me one night.

“I’m having a hard time in life and I think we should stop communicating.” I started crying.

“Why? Please don’t go.”

I was surprised at how vulnerable I was now being.

He called me back later on that day.

“Ok Bree. You can call me. If you need me.”

One night I told him how I had been subjected to a trafficker for over 2 years when I was still in nightlife. I shared with him how the man who did so was an NFL agent and often sent girls to players.

“I know some guys who do that. I thought those girls were all prostitutes,” he said.

We looked at one another for a moment. I said nothing.

“I’m not a prostitute.”

A few weeks later, I called him up. “I think I’m gonna have to go work at the club temporarily. Just till this semester passes at law school.”

He nodded. “Ok. I gotchu.”

“You want me to be your boyfriend so I can take care of you?”

I shook my head vehemently.

“I can take care of myself.” My voice was solid. Inside I felt like I was screaming at the top of my lungs. I wanted to jump through the phone into his arms, and beg him to protect me forever. How strangely safe I felt with him. This man who had been a player in an industry from whom I had long been terrified of.

I eventually found the guts to tell him how embarrassed I was of being in his presence. He was such a good man, and had such good character. He was nothing like some of the other players in the industry who I was petrified of.

“I probably have like, a half dozen NFL players in my phone right now. Out of all them, out of all these years, you’re the only one I would ever think about actually hanging out with.”

One night. He called me up and we went for a late night drive. He pulled up and said, “Come here and give me a hug.”

He gave me a cup of hot coffee and we went on a drive together.

We went to a parking lot and I drank my coffee. Here and there he would take it from me and sip on it. He pulled out some weed and we sat in the car and smoked and talked.

I noticed he was a little bit of a strange person. He seemed to have a great deal of unresolved pain sitting on his spirit. His energy was good, but not yet fully formed. Still. More of his vibe than not was safe. I leaned in toward him. I remember he has a beard and at some point it touched my face. I remember laying on his shoulder and he kind of took a deep breath and froze for a second, but he didn’t pull away.

I used to call him oppa, which is like a Korean slang for a handsome older man type in a girl’s life.

I leaned on his chest and sat up abruptly. I could hear myself laughing. “You have a bathrobe on and no shirt?” He threw his head back and started to laugh.

“We should dress up and go out for dinner sometime. You didn’t even get to see me swagged out.”

“What?” Now it was my turn to throw my head back. I had jeans and a blazer on, thinking I would need to go to the office in a couple hours anyway. I started to giggle profusely. “Dinner? It’s 3 o’clock in the morning. What do you mean?”

“Don’t you usually get off work around this time?”

I couldn’t stop laughing.

“I’m not a stripper anymore!”

“Coulda fooled me,” he joked. “Why’d you come to see me so late then?” We rolled uncontrollably, smoke filled his expensive sports car as our laughter broke up the silent night sky. I caught my breath, and remembered for a second I was alone with him.

“Why are you shaking like that? Are you scared?”

I nodded.

I told him I was scared of NFL players because of what I had gone through as a stripper, and that my ex (a pimp) was also an agent. At times I took a slap in the face or a punch in the stomach and paid him out to not have to sleep with players. I had heard stories about how wild some pro athletes could get and how it insane those types of encounters could be for girls. I did everything I could to just appease people and stay away, get out of having to actually give my body up to them. All I was trying to do in those days was stick to the dancing and get my money to take care of my son and tuition and get the hell up out of there. It was no world for me. I remember being terrified every day. Sometimes I would shake but I think my background as a professional athlete and artist helped me cover it up and fake it.

“I don’t give a fuck about your past. It’s part of your journey.”

“Okay,” was all I could say.

Before the Sun came up, he put me in a taxi and I went home. “It was amazing to see you.”

“You too.”

“What was your favorite part about last night?”

“Just being in your presence.”

***

We don’t talk and haven’t seen each other again.

I later got (common law) married again. I loved my man but never forgot about him.

In fact. I still think about that night often. I started having dreams again. Sometimes I still wake up out of my sleep around 3 or 4 am and I sit straight up, thinking about him.

As my faith returns to me, I realize it’s just a sign he’s still with me, his timing in my life was for a purpose to help me heal.

So whenever I get woken up from a dream and he comes to mind first. I just bow my head, and pray for God’s protection over his life.

He helped me start healing from this moral injury and helped me feel like I could start to let that chapter of my life go. He came into and out of my life quickly. But he left an impact that has stayed with me and helped me return to my faith in invaluable ways.

I’m very grateful.