When Home is Out of Reach …

More than two years ago, I fell off the webverse … a self-preservation measure. During this time, I was able to push my pain deep within my soul. I concentrated on creating things with my hands.

 

The ceramics studio is closed, non-essential. Normally sitting at home quietly is a luxury. Most often, I go into a mindful nap. It’s the fourth week now.

Watching the numbers of deaths rise, brings me so much sorrow. I take comfort in knowing my adoptive parents are not here to weather this horrific scene. Both would have been at high risk, my mother with her heart disease and my father with his respiratory issues. While I can rest in this fact, the death toll reminds me that no one is exempt from loss.

Someday, my children will need to face their parents’ passing. I began this blog as a record of my life where many essential details had been erased. I wanted my children to know as much as I knew about myself.

With the current pandemic, I find myself thinking about how my life might close and where that might occur. As an unsolved mystery, my beginnings were erased, and I find myself wanting to close my life where it began.

While most would say, “Do it!” It is far more complicated. As an American citizen with no dual citizenship and no known relatives in Korea, I do not have the birthright to be buried or have my remains left in Korea. I hope that in my lifetime, I might either be able to find my Korean relatives or that the laws will change to allow me to die in Seoul.

When my thoughts attempted to drown me in sorrow, my fellow adoptees recommended I watch “Itaewon Class” on Netflix. What a ride … to see the streets of Seoul as I remember them! It’s bittersweet; I want to be in Seoul, but for now, my place is here where my husband and children are.

Sadly, I discovered this show has a character who was also abandoned by her mother (Episode 6, the first 5 minutes). Each time a scene like that plays, I am reminded of the loss that I have ignored but still sits in the pit of my stomach.



When I want a few laughs, I watch my nighttime comedy shows. It was here that I met the boys of BTS through Jimmy Fallon and James Corden. I found their performance in Grand Central to be incredibly breathtaking.



Their antics as they play water games made me laugh until I cried. The older boys, Jin and Yoongi, remind me of myself when they are walking around the water obstacle course (that Old Man wide, cautious walk).

Today, I found a fictional story about the seven boys of BTS that spoke to the 80s teen in me who fell in love with the boys of the book and film, “The Outsiders.” The BTS storyline is based on their song, “Save Me.” In it, Ho-seok plays a character who’s abandoned by his mother at a fair. Again, the imagery brought back the pain in the center of my soul. 

All this brings not only sorrow but hope … hope that someday, it will be a person’s right to know the details of their beginnings. I guess I will just wait …

Credit for last video to YouTube channel SUGA & spice.

Please … just don’t ask.

The last leg of my Korean journey is coming to a close. The emotions are more than I could ever express in words, but I’ll give it a try …

frustration …

excitement …

confusion …

anticipation …

disappointment …

anger …

regret …

loss …

sorrow …

grief …

resignation …

numbness.

These are my initial feelings in the moment, but I anticipate more feelings once my feet touch US soil. I am processing. I ask friends and family to be tender with me.

Please do not ask me about the search. If you want to know about my trip, ask me about the food, the toilets, the people, my run-in with a young woman who believed Baby Boxes were a good thing and G.O.A.’L.

The one feeling I am very happy to express is my extreme gratitude to Global Overseas Adoptees’ Link (G.O.A.’L.). After years of being told I should be grateful, I do not freely extend that feeling of gratitude to anyone or any organization. But in this instance, G.O.A.’L. has more than supported me through all these emotions.

Thank you, G.O.A.’L.

Two Little Words

Yes, I let the anniversary of my mother’s death (February 2) pass without blogging.

The loss of my adoptive mother, the only one I call “mother” in this blog, was expected. She had had a stroke, been rehabilitated, but not offered the by-pass surgery she needed to survive the heart disease her family claimed as its own. But while we knew my mother’s days were numbered, the shock of her death came as a surprise, and I still suffer from it.

Since the beginning of my adoption, I had always been told the story my parents were told by the adoption agency. My parents never hid any letters or papers they had received; they were up front and honest. I knew that I had been found on May 24, 1968, that an investigation had uncovered nothing, and that I had been given a name and a birthdate.

This narrative is branded into my brain.

I have never owned a birth certificate. My proof of being is my US naturalization papers at age five and my Korean adoption papers at age 13 months. On them, my fake birthday and my fake Korean name are repeated numerous times.

So in the same vein as the moment I received the call about my mother’s death, I experienced a similar shock as I read through my US adoption file which arrived on January 29.

To add to my fake birthday and my fake Korean name were these two little words:

“No Record”

Reading them in black and white, shot pains throughout my body. It was as if every cell was devastated.

These words, “No Record,” repeated, over and over, on what is the equivalent of a birth certificate in Korea, the Ho Juk Deung Bon or Family Registration. It continued to say that my “family” of one (just me) was established on August 8, 1968, and that my name had been given to me on July 19. Interestingly enough, I wondered, “So, what did they call me between May 24 and July 19? Just #5596?

Some really poignant words in my progress reports:

“When she came at first, she had a little hardship adjusting herself, but now she is a different girl. … She is loved a lot by her foster family …and [has] a good relationship between her and her foster mother. … Is attached to her foster mother, [sic] and not shy of strangers.”

I am reminded of that frightened little one in this first photograph.

The “hardship”?!?! The pain I felt reading all these words. My body, my being, my soul were aching for my biological family. The sliver of hope for another family vaporized and vanished.

I am still looking, but in the meantime, a movie trailer has haunted me. (Trust me, I really hate putting this trailer here. If you have seen it, don’t grant it another view, please.)

"The Drop Box" - Documentary Trailer from Arbella Studios on Vimeo.


My daughter watched it with me. Her response? “The mom doesn’t identify herself because people would judge her.” This, from a ten-year-old. The simplest idea was seen by my daughter despite all the feel-good fluff in the movie.

In the trailer, a man says, “These children are helpless … voiceless. Who will speak for them?”

And I am screaming, “Me!! Let me!!”

Please arm yourself with the facts. I have researched them, and you can find them at the Lost Daughters website in the post, “I was the baby in the box.” If you would like to help adult adoptees in their search, consider donating to KoRoot on their site.

The Power of Language

Adopted just three days apart, my friend Miya and I decided to read each other’s adoption letters. Strikingly, the language and tone of the letters were on opposite sides of an emotional spectrum.

Miya’s read, “As this child was an abandoned child, her background information about her birth, parents and family are unknown. She was named and her birthdate was estimated by the Seoul City Babies Home.” 

The word, “abandoned” has stayed with Miya her entire life. She struggles with this word. That word cuts me when I hear it. My other adopted friend, Amy M., pointed out the two uses of this word in the film Somewhere Between, and it angered her. One was spoken by an audience member at a panel discussion, and the other was said by the adoptive mother to her daughter’s birth mother.

My adoption introduction letter is written in this way:

“We are pleased to tell you that we have selected a child for you who we think will fit nicely into your family. She is from the Chong Yang Ri police station on 24 May 1968 and admitted to us and placed at our Korean Foster Home on that day.

Naturally, you are anxious to meet Kim, Sook Hyun. We have found that it is more helpful to the adoptive couples if they think of this first meeting as a time to get acquainted, and not as a time to decide whether or not this is the right child for you. It is a strain on both adoptive parents and child when their first meeting is interwoven with this question of acceptance or rejection, but this strain is removed if the parents have already made up their minds to accept the child, based on the picture and the information we provide and relying on Holt’s experienced professional judgment. 

May we therefore suggest that you too think of your coming trip to Korea in this light. In the meantime, we should appreciate your writing us about your acceptance of this child we have chosen.”

“Chosen” is a word my mother used often. She never used the word “abandoned.” She said, “You were dropped off at the police station, and we were fortunate to be chosen as your parents.”

Here is the first picture of me that was attached to the letter; it is dated June 7, 1968. I look a bit frightened.

Later, pictures show me happier, and all the pictures of me with my family show me at my happiest (until the teen angst set in).

Words can hurt or nurture. In the recent WISE Up Conference that I described in an earlier blog post, I noticed that some of the younger children chose the “Walk Away” or “It’s private,” option quite often, even when the question was simply, “Hey, are you adopted?” That sent signals to me that they felt that it was something they should be ashamed of, or something others would interpret as negative. One youngster even said that she was jealous of the other kids who lived with their birth parents and who never had to answer ridiculous questions.

Linda Goldstein Knowlton, the filmmaker of Somewhere Between, says she hopes it will spark a conservation that will begin “normalizing our language about adoption. Adoption is changing the face of the country, creating these complicated family trees — we need a way to address that.”

In the following clip by Knowlton, Adam Pertman, Executive Director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, explains the adoption language barrier in this way: 

“We don’t have words for this [adoption]. When we don’t have words for something, it makes it more difficult. It creates the aura of something ‘otherly,’ and maybe something negative, something lesser. And none of that is true. We need the language to catch up to the reality.”

Beyond Somewhere Between-The Language of Adoption from Linda Knowlton on Vimeo.

Associate Professor of Child Development at Tufts University, Ellen Pinderhughes in this segment describes our families beautifully.

 “Until we as a society can value that there are all these different ways to become parents, to become a family, that they’re all positive, they’re all important, we may continue to contend with some of this issue with the  language of adoption not getting into the mainstream.”

So, let’s not only continue this conversation, but please post your ideas in altering the language of adoption. There are children all over the world being discovered everyday. Let’s make them feel like the treasures they are!

The Road Taken

The film, Adopted, was loaned to me to start me on a journey …

The problem is, I don’t want the angry journey portrayed in this movie through the adult adoptee, Jennifer. I am not her, nor do I feel as she does. I have never felt abandoned.

I identify more with her adoptive mother who says, “I think I probably remember a lot more details about picking Jenny up from the airport than I do about giving birth to Eric.”

Yet in search of her “core validation,” this young woman continues to lash out at her parents through snide comments and hurtful rejection. She forces a journey on her parents that they have made and are ending. Both her mother and father are dying of cancer.

I understand her recollections of racism outside of the home; I lived through those same racial jokes (see examples in this post). Unlike her, I experienced these moments with my family. When children chanted racial insults, my mother rushed up and confronted them. She faced their hurtful words as they shouted, “Come get us you big, fat hippopotamus!”

From day one, we all were a part of the journey. My mother was my best friend. I shared all the hurt with her. We talked through it. The adoptee, Jennifer, did not share, and now all the pent-up 9-year-old anger has surfaced in a thirty-something young woman.

She talks of “being authentic and real,” but I pose that your reality is what you make of it. I pose that individuals are different. While every adoption story does not end like Jennifer’s or mine, there are varying degrees of acceptance, abandonment and unconditional love.

The adoption story isn’t just about the well-being of the adoptee, as Jennifer would like us to believe. If it is, in fact, as Jennifer wishes, a journey they all take together, there should be some sensitivity for the adoptive parent.

Recently I have spoken of starting an adoptee’s journey, but more precisely, it is just a new chapter in my life … one of sharing parallel experiences, laughing at similarities (like all the vacuuming and couponing), and learning new stories.

I appreciate the different stories, but my life is full of wonderful things.

My daughter recently summed it up, saying, “If you weren’t adopted, I wouldn’t be here and we wouldn’t be with Daddy.”

I am content with the road I have taken.