Today we’d like to introduce you to Angela Kim.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
My story really began long before I understood what I was going to do with my life.
I grew up in a family where depression, anxiety, and emotional overwhelm were part of everyday life. My father became disabled after multiple brain surgeries for a brain tumor, while my mother was trying to manage a restaurant, a marriage, two children, and an enormous amount of responsibility. There were times when she felt so overwhelmed that she would talk about taking her own life.
As a child, I didn’t have the language to understand what was happening around me. I simply knew that life could feel very heavy.
I also struggled in school. I wasn’t the stereotypical Asian American student who was always on the honor roll. I often wondered why I seemed to take longer than other students to understand certain concepts. What I didn’t understand at the time was that when a child is living with chronic stress or trauma, it can affect the way they process information, concentrate, learn, and respond to the world.
I was also someone who questioned everything. I wouldn’t just answer a question—I would question the question itself. As an adult, I realized that what I once thought was a weakness was actually part of the way my mind worked. I was naturally curious about the why behind people’s thoughts, behaviors, and emotions.
That curiosity eventually became my life’s work.
While I was living in Hawaii, I started my coaching business while my then-husband was deployed. A close friend who had gone through multiple cancer relapses had experienced some incredibly dark moments. I had spent a great deal of time helping her find hope, challenging the thoughts that were telling her she couldn’t continue, and simply being someone who could sit with her when life felt unbearable. Eventually, she told me, “You should be doing this professionally.”
That stayed with me.
I began pursuing my education in Clinical Mental Health Counseling while also expanding my understanding of holistic approaches to healing. In Hawaii, I studied Reiki and became a Reiki Master, and I also studied hypnotherapy and became an ordained minister.
Over the years, my work evolved into what is now Illumines Core. I work with adults, children, couples, and families, depending on what they are navigating. I’ve had the privilege of working with people from incredibly diverse backgrounds, including an Olympic wrestler and even coaching another coach.
I also became fascinated with real estate. I had worked with my aunt and uncle in their construction and architecture firm, and I became interested in how buildings, design, space, and ultimately real estate affect people’s lives and create wealth. I explored architecture in college because I loved the creative side of it, and eventually I obtained my real estate license.
Today, I have two very different businesses that actually have more in common than people might initially think: empowerment coaching and real estate.
One is about helping people transform their internal world. The other is about helping people transform their external world and build a foundation for their future.
And through both, I’ve learned that transformation begins when someone starts believing that something different is possible.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
No. It has absolutely not been a smooth road.
I’ve experienced things that forced me to confront parts of myself I didn’t even realize were wounded. I went through difficult experiences repeatedly throughout my life, but I didn’t always recognize them as trauma. I became very good at adapting, functioning, and moving forward.
One of the experiences that profoundly changed my perspective was experiencing a miscarriage just days before the COVID-19 shutdown in 2020.
That period forced me to slow down and confront emotions that I had spent years moving through rather than truly processing. It made me realize that sometimes we can survive something without ever actually healing from it.
Looking back, I recognize that I had been overcoming trauma over and over again without necessarily having the vocabulary to understand what was happening.
My childhood experiences also shaped the questions that drive my work today. I spent so much of my life wondering why parents and children could love each other so deeply and yet misunderstand each other so profoundly.
I saw that dynamic in my own family.
As I grew older and learned more about trauma, development, counseling, and human behavior, I began to understand that what looks like defiance, laziness, anger, overthinking, or even poor academic performance can sometimes be a person’s response to experiences they don’t yet know how to process.
That realization completely changed the way I see people.
My struggles didn’t disappear. But they became part of my education.
And I think that’s one of the reasons I can sit across from someone who is struggling and not immediately judge what I’m seeing on the surface. I’m always asking, “What happened? Where did it come from? What are you carrying? What are you trying to communicate? And what might be underneath this behavior?”
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
At the heart of my work is empowerment.
Through Illumines Core, I help people understand themselves more deeply so they can change the patterns that are keeping them stuck. My work incorporates principles from my education in Clinical Mental Health Counseling along with coaching, mindfulness, visualization, breathwork, emotional awareness, spiritual practices, and the holistic work I learned through Reiki.
I work with adults, children, couples, and families because I don’t believe that emotional struggles exist in isolation. Sometimes the person sitting in front of me is struggling because of something happening internally. Sometimes it’s a relationship. Sometimes it’s family dynamics. Sometimes it’s unresolved experiences from childhood. Sometimes it’s simply that they have never been given the tools to understand what they’re feeling.
I’m particularly passionate about the space between parents and children because I know firsthand how easily two people can love each other tremendously and still completely misunderstand one another.
One of the things I’m most proud of is the number of people I’ve been able to reach during some of the darkest moments of their lives. I’ve been present for people experiencing suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, and moments when they genuinely didn’t believe they had a reason to continue. I have been fortunate to help more than a dozen people step back from that edge and find enough hope to keep going and seek help.
I don’t take that lightly.
I don’t claim that I “saved” someone by myself, because people’s lives are bigger than one conversation and professional support can be incredibly important. But knowing that something I said, something I helped them see differently, or simply my willingness to stay present with them may have helped them choose another moment, another day, or another possibility—that means more to me than almost anything.
What sets me apart is that I don’t believe people are problems to be fixed.
I believe people are human beings who are trying to make sense of their experiences.
My approach is very much about getting beneath the surface. I want to understand the story behind the behavior, the emotion behind the reaction, and the belief underneath the thought.
I also bring a combination of perspectives that isn’t necessarily common: clinical mental health education, coaching, spiritual exploration, Reiki, hypnotherapy, lived experience, and my own continual process of growth.
I’m not interested in telling people, “Just think positive.”
Sometimes you have to acknowledge the pain before you can transform it.
Sometimes empowerment doesn’t look like being stronger. Sometimes it looks like finally admitting that you’re tired.
And sometimes the paradigm shift is realizing that the version of yourself you created to survive is not necessarily the version of yourself you have to remain.
That is really the heart of Illumines Core.
How do you think about happiness?
What makes me happiest is seeing transformation.
Not necessarily huge, dramatic transformation. Sometimes it’s something incredibly small—a person finally setting a boundary, a parent understanding their child differently, someone learning to speak kindly to themselves, a person realizing that they aren’t broken, or someone who once couldn’t see a future beginning to imagine one again.
Those moments mean a tremendous amount to me.
Outside of my coaching work, I’m also very creative. I love decorating, and transforming spaces. I love interior decorating because I’m fascinated by how an environment can completely change how a person feels.
That actually connects to another part of my life: real estate.
I became fascinated with real estate after working with my aunt and uncle at their construction and architecture firm. I even explored architecture in college because I loved the idea that the design of a space could influence how people move, interact, and experience their environment.
Eventually, I realized I was equally fascinated by the business and wealth-building side of real estate, so I listened to my uncle’s advice, obtained my real estate license, and became an active real estate agent in Houston.
Today, I have these two very different businesses—empowerment coaching and real estate—but to me, they’re not as disconnected as they might seem.
One is about helping people transform their internal environment.
The other is often about helping people transform their external environment.
And I think that’s ultimately what makes me happy: transformation.
Whether I’m helping someone change the way they see themselves, helping a family communicate differently, helping someone envision a different future, helping a client find a home, or transforming a physical space through creativity, I love taking something that doesn’t feel right and helping create the possibility of something better.
At the end of the day, I want my life to demonstrate one simple belief:
What makes me happiest is seeing transformation—especially when someone begins to see something in themselves that they couldn’t see before.
There is something incredibly rewarding about watching a person go from “I can’t” to “Maybe I can.”
From “This is just who I am” to “Maybe I can change.”
From “Nobody understands me” to “I finally understand myself.”
Those moments are what make my work meaningful.
But I’m also happiest when I’m creating.
I love art. I love crafting. I love putting together thoughtful goodie bags. I love interior decorating and transforming a space so that it feels completely different when you’re standing in it. I love taking something ordinary and imagining what it could become.
I think that creativity is actually connected to my work more than I realized for a long time.
Whether I’m helping someone transform their mindset or transforming a physical space, I’m fascinated by possibility.
I love asking, “What could this become?”
And ultimately, that’s what I want my son to see in me.
I want him to grow up knowing that your circumstances don’t have to dictate your future. Your trauma doesn’t have to become your identity. Struggling doesn’t mean you’re broken. And having to start over doesn’t mean you failed.
I’m not trying to show him that life is always easy.
I’m trying to show him that even when life is incredibly difficult, you can still choose to grow, to learn, to create, to help others, and to become better than you were yesterday.
I think that is what happiness means to me—not a life without pain, but a life where the pain I’ve experienced can be transformed into something meaningful.
If I can take the things that once made me wonder, “Why is this happening to me?” and turn them into, “Where is this coming from?” then into “How can I use this to help someone else?”—that’s what makes me happy.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://illumines-core.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/angelakim.111/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/angelakim.111/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelakim-realtor-coach1124
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@deliciously.benevolent
- Other: https://www.har.com/angela-kim/agent_illumines
