Adoption: The Fairytale

Fairytales. Everyone has one. Mine has changed and morphed over time. In its current form, it haunts me.

During the last four years, mine has focused solely on developing my origin story. If you have followed me for a while, you know it has changed with every visit to Seoul.

This year, I invited you all on my journey via my facebook page. I posted live videos that show my raw emotions as I walked the streets that I now want to call home.

My trips to Seoul, always include a visit to my agency, Holt Korea. Every time, they reiterate that they only have my two sheets of paper. They tell me over and over that they have no record of my foster mother, and yet they send this to donors …

They boast 4,481 foster mothers since 1966, yet no record of mine. These donors are funding not only Holt Korea’s shiny multilevel building, but also the cost of placing their name on subway stop signs (at a cost of around $186,584 over three years). Enter our hotel, the Somerset Palace, one could find a collection box for my agency.

Now, I can no longer enjoy even a short visit. The reminders of the secrets that surround my beginnings are everywhere … hotels and Hapjeong Station. In all this time searching, the main emotion I have felt has been utter sorrow … perhaps the closest thing to Korean Han.

But my sadness is turning into something very destructive. The injustice of being denied my identity … well, it consumes me right now.

So, if you read my last post, you know I chose to stay in Seoul, baptizing myself in all that is Korean … the food, the drink and sparkling contact lenses.

My new eye color. Wicked. #eyecontacts #coloredcontacts #Korean #cutieeyes

A post shared by mothermade (@mothermade) on Feb 10, 2018 at 11:16am PST

After a little blooming jasmine tea and a massive waffle at The Nature Cafe (sheep cafe) near Hongik University, my friend and I walked up toward the university campus. Just up the hill, we found Cutie Eyes, a contact store.

Once inside, I chose a few sets and as the owner accepted my credit card, he said, “Rosita Gonzalez?”

In the US, this is always followed by so much explanation. I did not anticipate this in Korea as I am often anonymous, safely blending in. I looked to my friend and asked, “Should I?” In a split second decision, I blurted out, “I am adopted.”

His face lit up. He said, “My older brother is adopted!” The other side of the fairytale unfolded … in Grimm style.

When his brother was four, his mother lost him in a train station; she was traveling with four small children. By the time they tracked him down, he had been sent to Belgium as a Holt adoptee.

Since that time, the family has queried Holt Korea for information. His mother is still stricken with grief of the loss of her son. He said his mother is getting older and would love the closure of seeing her lost son. Holt told the family that the adoptee was contacted and refused contact.

The shopkeeper, Bo Gyeol Kim, still searches via Facebook and other means to find his brother. He wants him to know that he has two older brothers and an older sister who also miss him and want to see him.

Bo Gyeol then asked me what I knew of my past. I showed him my photographs of my foster mother and me.

His words would change my fairytale …

“This is not your foster mother; this is your mother. You look just like her.”

All these years, I have stared at her photograph. Never did I see my own face looking back. How could I know? I was surrounded by faces they did not reflect mine. Now, I look at my past pictures, and I see her. This would also lend some truth to Holt Korea’s claim that they have no record of my foster mother.

Bo Gyeol has offered his help to try and garner attention to my search in South Korea. I am so thankful for this time and connection with him. He told me more … based on the photographs and the time (1968), my mother was well-off. She wore a ring and a watch. Photographs were hanging on the walls of the home.

So, on this the US Seollol, I hold my hanbok, and I know she chose it for me. She wore hers to help me celebrate that very important birthday, the last we would spend together. Our happily ever after will be her touching this hanbok once more and allowing me to hold her as she so tenderly held me once. 

No Fragility Here

A powerful guest post by Melanie Chung-Sherman.

This is where I'm at tonight, and frankly, where I have been for the last several days. It has been somewhere between grief, denial and rage. 

I’ve stayed off social media, but after word of Adam Crasper's deportation (Though his deportation is separate from the events of last week — I want to be careful not to conflate.) and the countless stories of fear and heartache I have heard all week, my silence does nothing. 

If you want to unfriend, unfollow or dismiss, that is your choice. But understand I will not do that to you. I'm trying very hard to listen and learn. But unless we can sit in the pain of marginalized groups without reproach, guilt or defense … very little will change. 

To some extent, I understand the angle of the “safety pin” movement. Frankly, I want to see intentional action, not a stinkin’ pin. 

When someone comes at me with “Go back to your country, chink!” Your safety pin symbolism is useless. First, I can’t see your safety pin when I’m being assaulted verbally (God forbid physically.) because my brain goes into survival mode everytime I experience overt and covert racism. (And, BTW, that really did happen to my dear friend last week in Dallas while she was doing her job … going about her day). 

Secondly, I find that pin is more about you feeling better. 

I'm not looking for safety pins … lately, I’m looking over my shoulder in large, public places so that the renegade, white nationalist doesn’t feel too bold, especially when I'm alone with my boys. 

Where were these “safety pins” as the level of hate-filled rhetoric rose over the last 18+ months? Now this man has risen to power – so give me space and grace if I don't immediately fall into rank and file. Especially after some jackwagon spray-painted a swastika on a public venue with the words “Trump won” to remind me and other minority groups, where we stand. (And, yes, that happened last week, too.) Yeah, that’s painful and scary. 

This level of bigotry and intolerance has been legitimized, unleashed and emboldened over months of saturated fervor — and it is not normal. It is not okay. For those attempting to justify his actions — Do not tell me that you did not know this. Just don't. You did. Where was your safety pin? 

And, no, I get it, not every single person who cast their vote for him believed THAT part of his rhetoric.

But here’s the thing … diet racism and xenophobia is just as complicit. Fragility is exhausting. 

And, yes, I know other people of color who voted for him — my arguments and curiosity remains — because we all have unchecked bias. All of us — including me. Marginalized groups marginalize, too — and we are all accountable. If you did not have to worry about the potential impacts related to your physical safety, race, religion, sexual identity, gender or immigration status after this election, lean in first. 

The fact that I have to reassure my children that I will not be deported should not be a conversation following any U.S. election. As much as I would have liked to shield my kids from that toxicity, they hear it at school, church and on the playground. Where was your safety pin? 

Professionally, I sit across from adoptees, particularly transracial adoptees, who are genuinely scared because they have been already removed from their birth families – so the possibility is real for them. The fact that they have already experienced the trauma of separation and many have experienced the stress of direct racism — this is a real issue for them. Wearing a safety pin does nothing to quell body memory, nor does dismissing their fears. 

Consider what your safety pin will be.

Will you contact your state legislatures to ensure citizenship for all adoptees, under the Adoptee Citizenship Act, particularly minority adoptees? ACLU? Trevor project? Foster care organizations helping youth transition out? 

Will you sit across the table from the disenfranchised and listen without judgment? Will you extend your talents outside your bubble? Will you denounce rehoming? Will you speak out against intolerance beyond social media — speak truth in love to your own family, friends and circles? Will you educate yourself on the historical context of marginalization? Will you learn about what is a vetted journalism/research article source? 

Let's get to work together. There’s a lot to do.

Melanie Chung-Sherman, LCSW-S, LCPAA, CTS is a licensed psychotherapist who specializes in adoption-focused issues. She has worked in child welfare since 1999. A Korean adoptee, she is a mom to two kids, married, and lives in Dallas, Texas.

This is what my silence wrought.

Thirty-four years ago, I was called a swamp rat.

Thirty-four years ago, I was told to get back on the boat.

Thirty-four years ago, my church harbored racists who spoke these words.

And I was silent. I protected my white family from the ugliness.

Twenty-nine years ago, I lay half dressed on a bed.

Twenty-nine years ago, I felt dirty and used.

Twenty-nine years ago, the frat house I thought was a haven held sexual predators.

And I was silent. I protected the white men who I thought loved me like a little sis.

Four years ago, a studio mate told an inappropriate joke.

Four years ago, a studio mate slapped my butt in the empty studio.

Four years ago, the space that I saw as my solace became tainted.

And I was silent. I protected a white man I had thought was a friend.

Two years ago, at a gala, a man sat next to me and my husband.

Two years ago, this white man reached over and touched my cheek with his palm.

Two years ago, a nice evening turned sour.

And we were silent. We decided this white donor was too important to humiliate.

Four months ago, my son walked the two blocks from the bus stop to our home.

Four months ago, my son was stopped in his neighborhood.

Four months ago, a white man walking his dog asked my son what he was doing here.

And he was silent. He walked with his head down and picked up the pace.

Every school day, my son faces bullying.

Every school day, my son hears words like “rice fag.”

Every school day, my son dreads facing these white oppressors alone.

And he is silent. 

Now, I am no longer silent. We tried to be good, kind, quiet … the model minority.

We have watched our Black brothers and sisters die in front of our eyes, and we have walked beside them in protest. I hoped a white woman would save us, but white supremacy is stronger than we realized. The hold that racism has on the United States has taken my church, my white adoptive family and the public places we once thought safe.

So for now, we huddle at home. I hold my children close as they call America the land of Jim Crow and The Purge. What else can we do?

The Fragility of Return

Home.

That word conjures so many emotions. Some feel the warmth of a family quilt, smell homemade baked goods or hear the consoling purr of a kitten.

Since returning to my home in Wisconsin after our life in Seoul, I feel more lost. Our mid-century modern house is my home. It is filled with the things that remind me of who I am.

All the art by friends and potters surrounds me. I have foster kittens demanding my care. I even installed two Korean conveniences … the water cooler and a bidet.

But I still feel that void. I try to shake it. Inside my head, I repeat “THIS is your home; YOU belong here.”

Yet, as I begin to feel more at ease, the gun violence, Brock Turner, Pulse Nightclub, Black men dying, Black women assaulted by police … and Donald Trump flood my life. I cannot hide from these injustices, nor the cold glare of a man in the red “Make America Great Again” cap. I fight them as best I can. Then, I retreat. I stay at home, out of sight.

When I do venture out, the usual question by those who haven’t seen me in a while … “How was Korea?!” The questioner is excited. Yes, I love my country … but which one? How do I respond? The best I can do? Take all the emotions you have ever experienced in your entire life … and roll them into five months.

My quiet longing and safe life in Seoul beckons. Ambivalence.

Winter in Wisconsin was kind. A newborn niece was born in April. There is joy.

I can leave you with this recent performance. Only a few months after returning, I was given the opportunity to perform a blog post I never intended to read aloud. Luckily, the crew of Listen to Your Mother recognized the importance of my words. They encouraged and supported me. Now, I give you me as a blubbering mess, but perfectly authentic.

Korea: I’m shattered.

Dated January 23, 2016, on flight KE037 …

I am fragments.
The First maternal fragment,
Is my flesh and blood —
A round ass, dark hair —
Slant eyes.

I imagine her now as an “Ajumma”
Peeling chestnuts for sale in the streets
Of Cheongnyangni in Seoul.

The Second recorded my firsts.
Steps, words and that crucial first birthday.
She was a photography professor’s wife.
I was attached to her, they said.
But that is all I’m allowed to know.

The Third called me hers.
She was love wrapped
In the sweet smell of perfume.
She believed I would grow
To bear a red-headed child —
With the auburn curls of her youth.

She took insults like
“Big Fat Hippopotamus”
As she rescued me
From my third grade racist tormentors.

She would lay a dark chocolate almond bar
On my pillow in anticipation
Of her college girl’s return.

When it came my time to be mother,
I realized my flaws.
I felt my first’s tiny hand trace mine
Through my hot, stretched belly bump.

I shut my eyes,
Imagining my small hand doing the same
In Post Korean War Seoul.

And here I realized the significance of my First
Somewhat forgotten
Pushed to the recesses of my mind —
Mom, Omma.

Just as the Third watched this new
“Oriental” baby reach a stage she knew …
She was gone.

I was left to ponder.
Wonder again what it was like to be mother,
Without the guidance of another.

In my son’s development,
I noticed the crucial stages left to my imagination.
Solids at six months —
A time when my breastmilk could no longer
Keep up with a growing child’s insatiable appetite.

I have an insatiable appetite.
Did I need too much?
I was left at six months …
Somewhere …
A police station?
Yes, of course. Like all the others.

Let the records show —
But not too much.
They cannot.
They are hidden, trashed,
lost in the shame of a country that sent me away.

That shame is mine.
I rejected Korea for so long.
My son’s questions prompting more.
Our five-month stay was a gift.
A hope to show them their country.

But I realize it is no longer mine,
And they cannot claim it.
We are 미국 … American.

What mother takes her children
To a place she says they belong,
While she uses silence to blend in?

In crowds, they panic when they cannot find her.
She is not yellow in a sea of white like home.
What wrong is she trying to right?
What mother fragments her children?
I do.

Twinkie Chronicles: The China Doll has Children.

“Ain’t she just the cutest ‘China doll’! You’ns must be mighty proud of her.”

My mother’s face would mangle and turn blood red, no matter who said it. “She’s my daughter, and she’s Korean, not Chinese.”

This was the dialogue when we would return to my mother’s hometown in the 1970s. She actually never wanted to return to that small town but wanted a life in a larger community. My parents had lived in Yokohama, Japan, for three years, and my mother longed to have those days back.

Yet, in 1976, my father, thinking it would be nice for his wife to have her mother nearby, pursued a job in my mother’s hometown. And thusly, my life progressed there, amidst the racism and ignorance of the small-town mentality. It pains me to even type this, as I still have relatives there who I love dearly and would do anything to protect. Their love for me is unconditional, and here, I leave it at that.

After escaping my hometown, I moved to the city that started my parents’ romance … Knoxville. It was bigger and brighter; there was more dialogue, and I relished the “changes” I hoped to see for my home state during the 1992 election.

Much of that optimism fell as I returned pregnant in the late 1990s. My husband and I stayed with a friend that holiday season in Knoxville. During our dinner, my friend’s husband said something that froze me to the core … “You guys will make a beautiful baby. Hybrids are attractive and robust genetically.”

We were shocked. Our marriage and our family planning was never an experiment in procreation. If I had had the words then, WHAT. THE. FUCK.

Our planning did include communities with larger populations of people of color. We wanted our children to not feel the isolation I had as a child. But even the best intentions never prepare you for the reality of racism and race comparisons.

Now that my children are growing taller than me, I find myself gushing over all infants and toddlers. I long for those days. My daughter, the youngest, has a difficult time watching this crazy behavior where I smile at strangers’ children and hold and then sniff our friends’ infants.

Since coming to Korea, her disgust of babies has changed to fear. My daughter now senses my complete connection to the little ones here. Where I see little versions of what I could have been, my daughter sees versions of what she thinks I want.

Difficult to tease out with her, she and I only talk briefly. She talks mostly to her father about her fear that I will remain in Korea and marry a Korean man to have Korean children. She does not see the complexities. All I can do is reassure her.

The worst struggles come when other Korean adoptees gush over her and her brother. They compliment them on how beautiful and handsome they are. And one well-meaning person once said, “I guess I would have to marry a white man to get beautiful children like that.”

Though the person did not realize my daughter was listening (she and her brother tend to keep ear buds in and eyes on screen) her ears were burning. She wanted reassurance that my motives were pure. She wanted reassurance that I loved her father.

I assured her, but I also elaborated on why a Korean adoptee looks at her with such longing.

“Before you and your brother, I had no other person that shared my appearance, my mannerisms and my genetics. Korean adoptees who have yet to have children of their own are curious. They long to see themselves reflected in another human being. That does not excuse the comment or how it makes you feel. Your father and I love one another, and we love you and your brother. We are a family.”

Somebody Else’s Past: Growing up in the Shadow of Adoption

Dear readers, below you will find the words of one I call “the second generation of adoptees.” These words are poignant as they may be echoed by my children one day. Read and respect them, because adoption is more than just birth parents, adoptive parents and adoptees. Our lives and adoptee experiences reverberate to those we now call family … our children.

By CS Brown

It makes me a little uneasy to write about the experience of being the child of an adult adoptee.  I feel like I’m stepping into a war zone. There seem to be two camps — adoptees and adoptive parents — and both seem fierce and unforgiving. Whose side am I on?

Mostly my mom’s. She was born in a government hospital in Bombay, India, into a culture and time where poverty and female infanticide went hand-in-hand. Instead of being poisoned or starved, she was taken to a Catholic orphanage, where she lived for two years until she was adopted by a Portuguese Catholic Indian from Goa, which was at the time a Portuguese colony but is now an Indian state.

In the 1930s, under the Indian and Portuguese laws of the time, the legal rights of the Indian adoptee were neither specified nor protected. Foreign adoptions were infrequent; unwanted children were most often adopted by upper and upper-middle class Indians as servants. As she grew, Mom was raised not as a daughter, but as a housekeeper, farm laborer, and nursemaid; an older female servant physically and emotionally abused her.

She bore the paralyzing cultural stigma of being adopted, or poskem. Regarded as socially inferior, most poskem existed on the margins of society. Many remained unmarried, continuing to serve their adoptive families. At the death of her parents, the poskem received no inheritance, but would continue in service to her parents’ biological children. If they wed, it was usually to another poskem. 

It’s a lot of backstory, but I needed to explain that my mother’s ongoing emotional pain at her abandonment and adoption is complicated by cultural, social and other issues, and I write this with a (mostly) complete understanding of them.

Through some miracle of God, lucky twist of fate, wormhole in the Universe, or whatever else you choose to believe, she and my North Carolina-born father were in the same strange place at the same time, looking for something different than what they had always known. They found it, got married, and came to the States together in 1964.

I can’t remember ever not knowing that Mom was adopted and understanding that it was a source of enormous pain. Her sorrow, anxiety and controlling nature dominated my childhood. When she talked about her biological parents, it was always the mother, never the father. “I still don’t understand how she could just give away her baby,” she says. “How could she do that? What kind of person could do that?”

I’ve always felt kind of sorry for my Indian ajji — I’m sure she had a horrible, horrible life before and after my mother was born — and I always make excuses for her. Maybe she lived in a slum and already had too many children, I speculated. Or her husband made her give away the girl-baby, or she was young and unmarried and her parents made her take the child to the nuns.  “Mom, you hear these stories on the news all the time,” I say. “It doesn’t mean she was a bad person.”

Usually she answers my theories with tears, or as she’s gotten older, silence. As she approaches her 80^th birthday, I’ve learned to keep my big mouth shut when she wonders out loud about her mother. At this point, the best response is “I’m sorry, Mom,” and a big hug.

She has a single snapshot of herself as a child, taken when she was ten years old at her first Communion. Her birth certificate is a piece of cut-in-half letterhead from St. Joseph’s Orphanage in Byculla, Bombay, with a few typed lines indicating the days of her birth and baptism. She cried when she showed it to me. She was ashamed of its paucity, especially when compared to the elaborate footprinted and notarized birth certificates of her American-born children. “It’s nothing but a few lines, but I needed to have it,” she said.

She once told me that even though she had a full and happy life, she felt there something missing —  a little hole deep inside that she would never be able to fill. This was too much for the teenage me. Why was she always so sad? Why did I have to spend so much time comforting her?

Why wasn’t she grateful?

She had us, after all. Daddy would have done anything for her. His mother treated her like a daughter. She had two boys and two girls, exactly what she told Daddy she wanted when they got married. We weren’t rich, but we had a three-bedroom house in a decent neighborhood, a big yard, two cars, a phone, and two TVs. It was a lot better than living in a Byculla slum, pissing in an open ditch, fetching water from public taps, and working as the servant of a wealthy Brahmin.

Wasn’t that enough?

What disturbed my 13-year-old self the most was that if Mom hadn’t been abandoned and adopted, she wouldn’t have eventually met Daddy. I wouldn’t be here. She hated the fate that allowed me to be alive?! Even though it was awful, it led her to Daddy and to us.

Weren’t we enough?

Like most teenagers do, I took it personally. Trying to work through it at a young age, I decided there must be “bad” adoptions and “good” ones, and reckoned that my mom’s psychic pain was the result of her “bad adoption.” Adoptees with “good adoptions” were lucky, and probably grateful and happy. A nice and tidy explanation that helped lessen my teenage cognitive dissonance.

Beyond that, it was too difficult to understand or deal with, especially since I was also busy juggling race-related issues. At that time, a chocolate-brown, sari-wearing Indian woman, a white American man, and their four little biracial kids didn’t exactly fade into the woodwork of a small Southern town. I spent most of my time and energy dodging rednecks on the school bus, avoiding racists in the hallways, trying to fit in with anybody who didn’t call me a half-breed, and studying hard enough to be able to get away from the walnut-minded people in our stupid little town.

I only became curious about Mom’s background in my late twenties, after I left the South. Away from my mother, the overtly hostile stares and behind-the-back glances at our freaky mestiço family, and the rest of the South’s creepy racial baggage, I traded in my anger and frustration for sympathy. I began to grow closer to her.

Life happened — career, money, marriage, sickness, suffering, death — the ten thousand joys and sorrows of growing older. In between, I imagined the lives of ajji and ajjo. I dreamed of dozens of aunties and uncles and cousins, and had the staggering realization that I will never know them, ever. I was born in an abundance of inherited sadness, sings Ryan Adams. You're born into this life paying for the sins of somebody else's past, says Bruce Springsteen. I wanted to know: What sadness? What sins? Whose past?

I realized that my emotional needs and longings were so similar to my mother’s. Her sense of loss had become mine, although hers was much deeper and more painful. With a sense of shared experience, my feelings towards her then evolved from sympathy (feeling sorry for her) to empathy (being able to put myself in her shoes). It was a turning point in my understanding.

How could she not be controlling, anxious, and depressed? Much research has been done on the psychological issues of the adoptee. The neglect and loneliness experienced by children institutionalized in orphanages is well documented, as are the feelings of shock, trauma, rejection and loss experienced by many adopted children. Research has shown that fetuses respond and adapt to stimulus in the womb, including elevated stress hormones. Scientists think that the fetus permanently conditions itself to deal with elevated stress hormones, putting it at a higher risk for stress-related conditions as an adult.

Wouldn’t carrying an unwanted pregnancy to full-term, knowing that you’re going to give up the child at birth, be a pretty major source of stress? That would make adoptees biologically more susceptible to anxiety, depression, and other emotional issues from birth. I’m not a scientist, but through the lens of mental illness, it seems kind of obvious.

Adoption itself can be a blessing — but abandonment is a curse. Being adopted is never going to erase the trauma of being abandoned, whether or not the adoptive relationship is “good.” So to my teenage self: yes, adoption saved Mom from life in a Bombay tenement. It brought together two people that loved each other, and many beautiful people exist because of it. But, dear teenage me, adoption by definition is preceded by an abandonment that can have a devastating impact on the adoptee.

I would hope this would be Adoption 101 for prospective adoptive parents, and that they have a reserve of intelligence, compassion and common sense to draw from as their children grow, ask questions, deal with race problems, seek answers about their background, experience emotional issues and setbacks, and perhaps eventually search for their birth parents. But sadly, the online anger of adoptive parents directed at supposedly “ungrateful” adoptees tells me that this is not the case. (In the reaction of many white adoptive parents to their non-white children’s feelings of loss and curiosity about their background, I detect more than a whiff of that toxic-but-so-familiar combination of white privilege and white man’s burden — but I digress.)

And so since the adoption industry, and I use that word fairly pointedly, can’t even seem to properly instruct adoptive parents on how to deal with their child’s potential emotional problems, it has certainly not gone the extra mile to develop guidelines for adult adoptees and their children. We need empathy, understanding, love and maturity to figure out for ourselves how to navigate these rocky shoals.

Infinite Loss

“It’s like Papito is on a trip. I miss him. 
It’s different when you are traveling, you have the hope of seeing them again.”

These sorrowful words came from my 11-year-old daughter as we waited for our plane to Tennessee. So much wisdom comes from my children. I wanted her with me that day. Traveling alone seemed too daunting.

Less than two days earlier, my father collapsed on his way into work; he was 76.

As we waited, we jotted down the things that we would miss about him …

How he loved the Iced Lemon Pound Cake at Starbucks …

How he could sleep just about anywhere …

How he used his fart machine to bring us to tears …

How he loved Halloween …

He brought us our piano so that my children could learn to play. He loved music.

My daughter insisted on playing her Papito one last lullaby.

The pain is almost more than I can bear. The loss of my father follows many losses that many are able to identify in their own lives. I acknowledge their losses too. But I ask that you understand the profound loss as an adoptee. I have lost many times over. I lost a first set of parents, I lost a foster family, I lost my grandmothers, my mother and now Daddy.

While I still hold the option to search for my first family, I am unable to bear any more loss or rejection right now.

I am alone. Some try to comfort me by mentioning my husband and my children. I know this. But who knew me before? My sister, yes. But my parents, all of them, held their memories of me. Their love sustained me for 47 years.

I will miss the man who intervened when others had questions about our public hugs and affection. At the funeral, an acquaintance asked if I were my father’s widow, then moved on to ask the same of my sister. Daddy wasn’t able to protect us from that pain.

He wasn’t there to accompany us to the local Walmart to pick up goods. We are too identifiable as different. I wanted a cloak of invisibility, so my brother-in-law drove us to the next big city to shop invisibly.

He can no longer be there to FaceTime when I feel weak … when words wound me.

He can no longer reinforce our story of family when strangers doubt my loyalty to him.

He can no longer comfort me in his love and support.

He can no longer show pride in my abilities to elevate my voice.

I am holding on to the last birthday card he sent me. He loved Hallmark and read many cards before choosing the one that said perfectly what he wanted to say.

This year, when I tried to form my identity without the lies of the agency, he was there, sending his approval and love, not on the fabricated day, but on any day in November.

I felt lost this summer when the agency had nothing for me. I called Dad. I mentioned that I wanted him to come with me. He just said, “They won’t listen to me, and they won’t give me anything either.”

Today, I am truly lost.

I am still wandering around … looking for him, but knowing.

Parenting? Well, that’s a pain-filled one.

My daughter, like myself at her age, says she will never bear children. Her reasonings are based in physical pain. She cannot imagine a child exiting her vagina. My reasonings were far more complex, and as a teenager, I selfishly wanted a life without responsibilities that children brought.

Parents of all kinds kept repeating the “You’ll never know the joys of parenthood until you are actually a parent.” My husband and I would just roll our eyes; we were DINKYs (Double Income No Kids Yet & livin’ the good life). That is, we thought it was the good life, until going out to dinner every night and drinking with friends became unfulfilling.

The moment I realized what that blue line meant, I was frightened and excited all at once! Could I do it? Could I be a good parent?

The minute my first child emerged, bloody and crying, I knew I was meant for this. I was connected despite that umbilical cord being severed. I tried to ask my mother about parenting a little boy. She kept saying, “Well, I just had girls. But just love them.” Six weeks after my firstborn’s birth, she had a stroke. The minute her eyes laid sight on him, they twinkled. The ICU nurses said she physically and mentally perked up. He was our little light in all the sadness of my mother’s illness.

After her death, I felt lost. Lost because I was a mother without a mother. At first, I thought that her death was the only thing I could relive and understand my loss. I replayed it over and over and over again.

But then, the penny dropped. This year, the first and primal loss surfaced. This year, I realized the first loss … my birth mother, my original mother, my natural mother. Like my connection to my own children, I understood that like Philomena Lee, my mother may have felt the loss I was feeling … that we might be connected by the same spiritual umbilical cord that keeps me connected to my children.

My son is a teenager now. His fears and anxiety are real, but sometimes, they get the better part of him. When that happens, his fear wounds me in a way I am not sure all mothers know.

You see, recently, I had no control over his safety. I was forced to leave him in a place where he was distraught and scared. I wanted to help. I wanted to stay, but the powers that be, made me leave him.

When I walked out of his hospital room, I felt the pain that I imagined my birth mother felt as she left me. I will not know how she left me, but the many ways play out in my head EVERY. DAY. Was her leaving me out of her control? Was I taken from her? Was she powerless?

I never thought that I could be powerless as a mother, as a parent, but my son’s recent trips to hospitals have illustrated that I cannot always control the safety of my children. That frightens me and pains me. I am wounded every time my son tells strangers that he is afraid of me. (He explains to me that he is not physically afraid of me, but he is afraid of the truths of life that I try to explain to him … like his need to go to school … how life isn’t always fair.) I am fearful that others will take my children from me in misunderstandings and just plain recklessness of systems that do not care to know those involved.

All this reminds me that my circumstance as an adopted person … as an adoptee was completely beyond my control and possibly my birthparents’ control. If I cannot keep my children safe, how can I expect that my birth mother could?

I have not told my son the workings of my pain. I never want him to feel the guilt that I feel today … the guilt that I may have caused my mother to face ridicule … the guilt that I may have caused my mother pain in the separation … the guilt that I feel my mother may feel to this day because I am simply not with her.

I feel ripped up, torn, tossed away and salvaged. I spend my time these days in the pottery studio. Recently, I created the belly bowl. It represents all the birth mothers who feel that the adoptees have been torn from their lives.

The beauty of it is its contents. Adoptee pendants. I will stop using the word “adopted” to describe me or my series. From now on, I want to own the title “adoptee” for it represents secret pain, strength, perseverance and purely who I am.

The Regression of the Search

The teen years. Everyone has memories of that awkward time. I am reliving it …

Here you have her, the 80s punk girl. The teen years are about identity, experimentation, discovery and disappointment. I spent my time writing, sulking and listening to Depeche Mode. If you asked me then what I would be doing now I would have said, “Living in New York, writing for the Rolling Stone and driving a BMW.”

I wanted out.

Escaping Appalachia meant freedom … from honky tonk bars, from racists, from religious zealots, from closed thinking. I vowed no person (especially men) would “hold me down.” I vowed to hurt others rather than love them, to use and not be used; I vowed I would never marry. Anger and confusion consumed me. I blamed these feelings on my own adoptive parents’ failed marriage. While I loved being loved, I feared it too. I trusted no man.

My fear of love and my lack of trust were broken by my husband. With each burst of anger, he held tighter and embraced me. He withstood my irrational accusations and accepted my bizarre need for order.

He loves me despite feeling confused and rejected at times, and I am thankful for that. I need him. I need a person to whom I don’t irrationally think I need to repay.

Let me be clear. My adoptive parents never insinuated or implied that I would ever need to repay them. All those feelings of indebtedness were my own fabrication, possibly from adoption propaganda imposed by the public or possibly from the religious zealots who reminded me how lucky I should feel to be clothed and fed.

My identity has changed many times over the years from preppy college student to hippy to alternative to goth to wife to mother and now …

Now, I am unsure again. I am unsure of my past … that is, the past I do not remember. I find myself sinking to the regression of my teen years. My adult mind is wrapping itself around these suppressed feelings.

The ones who keep me grounded are my children. It is difficult for them; I know that. I turn to my fellow adoptees for emotional support.

For my family’s sake, I have hid my fears of what may come … fears of finding no one in Korea, fears of finding parents but being rejected again, fears of finding parents and not being able to communicate, fears of finding siblings but no parents living. A piece of me wishes I could just go back to the “bliss” of not knowing … not knowing why I was angry, not knowing why I felt distrust, not knowing why love was so hard an emotion to accept.

My precocious daughter said it best, “Mom, you are scaring me! I mean you act like a teenager with your loud music, wanting a tattoo and joking. Please be an adult!”

I so desperately want that, but yes, in some ways she is correct. While I may play my music loud in the car because my hearing is going, I am back in that teenage discovery mode. I am exploring my identity through art, thinking of a tattoo to accentuate this new identity and enjoying the immaturity of my youth with my teenaged son. That brings me joy for now …

“Mom, please don’t leave us.”

As you may have read, I will be flying in August to Korea, my first trip back since my adoption at 13 months. Obviously, this topic has graced our dinner table talk, and now it looms heavily in the air.

I am both excited and anxious. But I try to hide this from my children. Apparently, I suck at hiding these feelings from them. They get me. They are biologically connected to me. They are me.

I will miss their first day of school this year as I explore this biological side of myself. In some ways, I feel selfish in pursuing this, but in others,  I feel a sense of urgency for me and my children. This search isn’t just about me or them.

My husband and I watched Philomena together this week. That film gave me the realization that adoption isn’t just about the adoptee; the original family is affected too. Philomena Lee has said she thought of her son every day, and his birthdays were incredibly hard. As a mother, I know how important those days are. I still remember the day I lost my second child, just two days after my 35th birthday. I think on it and will never forget it.

Knowing all this, I cannot imagine any mother forgetting the birth of her child. She might quietly and privately mourn, and no one may notice. She may not share this secret that torments her. And yet,  somewhere, there is a child that wonders if she wonders.

My daughter wonders but stops herself. Today, with tears streaming down her cheeks, she asked me when I would stop focussing on adoption. I told her the truth … that adoption is the very fabric of my being. It is the loose thread that I have repeatedly clipped when it began to show. I am tired of clipping it and throwing it away only to have it pop back out. (Medical history or family tree, anyone?) I am acknowledging it and exploring it.

I asked my daughter what she felt. Her answer? She is afraid of losing me. She fears that I will return to Korea and decide I don’t want to return to her, to her brother or to my husband. “Mom, please don’t leave us,” she pleaded.

“I would never leave you. I love you, your brother, your father, and your Papito,” I replied. “You all are my everything.”

I sense her feelings of loss. I know them. I experienced them long ago, and then again when my adoptive mother died. The sorrow stays, but it is eased with the grasp of my children’s hands.

Fear of Being Korean

Every time I look into my children’s eyes, I see pieces of me that I feel I do not know. In August, I journey to Korea with the help of G.O.A.’L, a Korean organization of adoptees who advocate for other adoptees.

I love finally having a physical connection through my children, but I struggle. I don’t want to make it about me. They are their own people. They are entitled to their own identities.

That said, as they have gotten older, they do question, and the tie to me is more evident. They suffer the ambiguity that I feel; they question this unknown family because frankly, it comes up almost every time we enter a clinic or hospital.

We are working through all this at a faster rate than I expected. The trip to Korea is in 43 days. My children are reluctant about my trip. They fear something … losing me … losing Papito (my father) … losing themselves in a family they want to know but are afraid to know.

I feel the same. I have had questions for so long, they live in my mind like all the other nerves that function as a part of my being alive. I have grown accustomed to them and kept them quiet for fear of hurting my parents. However, what I know now as an adult is that my father has always wanted this for me.

He wanted me to know the culture and history of Korea. He wanted me to know the food, the language and the customs. Yet, rural Tennessee was not the place for such knowing. Tennessee is a place of survival … a place to cherish kin and the Bible.

Once more, I see more clearly my father’s Puerto Rican culture was suppressed there. He jokes that when patients at the hospital where he works say, “You got an accent,” he retorts, “I didn’t have one until I got here.”

I see him feeling the ambivalence of being Puerto Rican, yet not … being Tennessean, but not. He knows too well my fears, and I take comfort that whatever happens in August will never break the tie I have to my family at home.

But I fear being Korean. I fear being Korean yet a stranger in my homeland. I fear being Korean but unable to converse with my Korean family. I fear being Korean because that might mean I am less Puerto Rican. I fear being Korean, but not recognizing the part of me that has tormented me my entire life … the part that kept me separate from others … the part that made me different … the part that elicited prejudice.

When I said I was “Korean, not Chinese” as a child, I had no idea how complicated that was.

#TBT

It’s Thursday. The feed floods with remembrances of babies, youngsters, bad hair days, 70s disco dress and 80s rebel wear. Proof we lived through the 80s.

Here’s one:

Seriously … bad.

I love seeing the photographs of others’ siblings and parents. The similarities in their anatomical features: the similar smiles, the same stance, mirrored features.

Last week, someone posted a photograph of her brother as a child. It was amazing to see her biological children’s faces in this image taken many years before they were born. I found myself typing about the similarities, but then, I stopped myself. She has one son who is adopted. Quickly, I hit the delete key.

Knowing her son might see my comment, I wanted to spare him the sadness of never sharing the sameness. I know that sadness; however, it was often tempered with my family forgetting my foreignness.

The birth of my children solidified my biological place in my own little family. I realize for many adoptive parents who, like my own, never thought they would see their eyes gaze up at them, that fact is so very difficult to bear. I empathize. I understand the joy an adoptee can bring to a childless couple … how we ease the pain. Yet, here I implore adoptive parents to recognize and address the added pain their adopted child experiences when she has no physical frame of reference.

Selfishly, I finally delight in the comments, “Oh, your son and daughter look just like you!” Bear with me. This time of seeing myself in another human being has brought me joy amidst the childhood pain of never experiencing this reflection of self in someone else.

The Lengths of Loyalty

At this moment, my father is intubated and riding in an ambulance to Knoxville, Tennessee. This is the man who I highlighted in this tweet.

Seriously, I have THE. BEST. DAD. EVER. What you say? You do? Uh, NO. Te amo, Papito. #adoptee
— mothermade (@mothermade) May 21, 2014

This tweet came about after my last conversation with my father about my adoption search. As always, he reassured me and punctuated my right to know about my original country and family.

Loyalty is a legacy. While I had discussed my search with my father many times, my husband wanted me to discuss my open search with my father one more time. My husband feared that such actions would hurt my father.

I knew this to be untrue. Too many times, my father and I had discussed the possibility of my search. Books on Korea, his Korean dictionary, his affinity for Korean food were shared with me. I have never felt that I was not his or he mine. But loyalty works its way into my entire family.

Earlier this year, as my daughter was lamenting how far we are from family, she sighed and said, “Mom, I wish I had cousins.” I, of course, began rattling off the names of my sister’s daughter and my sister-in-law’s children. My daughter said, “No, I meant genetic cousins, like in Korea.”

And yet, after our visit to Puerto Rico, my daughter’s loyalty began to show.

“I want to know the heritage (Korean), but I don’t want to know my genetic family. I have cousins already. You can’t neglect the family you have. I don’t need to be blood-related to have family,” she told me.

I asked her how she felt in Puerto Rico.

“I felt out of place at first … as a different race. But then, I realized they (the Puerto Rican family) are enough. What if they (my original family) don’t want to find you? What if they don’t like you or are bad? I don’t want to see you hurt,” She continued.

Obviously, the media, adoption agencies and some adoptive parents reinforce this idea of “being loyal.” Adoptees are asked why we can’t be “grateful.” We are told that our adoptions are “gifts.” Perhaps it is a level of guilt that all families have. Guilt, loyalty and love are all wound up in the fabric of family.

Take for example, the movie, August: Osage County.  I saw the pervasiveness of guilt and loyalty spill out in these quotes:

“Mama was a mean nasty lady. That’s where I get it from.”
“Smug little ingrate … ”
“Your father was homeless for six years!”
“Stick that knife of judgement in me. You don’t choose your family!”

I am realizing that we all have this level of loyalty. My father’s loyalty to me is that he wants to shield me from hurt too. Just before my mother and my grandmother died, both my mother and my father withheld their medical conditions from me. They wanted me to enjoy my life and not stress about things they felt were out of our control. But in the end, the white lies hurt more. I couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t tell me. 

Now, I realize so much more. I have that loyalty. The loyalty to lie. The loyalty to protect. The loyalty to love.

What sucks about being adopted?

Here I go, down to the depths.

But before I take you there, I want to tell you that it isn’t that I am unhappy with my adoptive family. I am not angry at them or as some might say, “ungrateful.” Far from it. You can read about my mother, my father, my sister and my extended adoptive family in past blogs to understand the extent of our love.

Now, I want to tell you what sucks about being adopted.

1. I have no birth certificate. —This frustrates me to no end. Every time, I needed proof of my birth, I had to dig out my naturalization papers (from age 5) and my adoption papers (from age 13 months). Well, that is not proof of my birth. Neither list my birth family or birthdate. This leads me to number 2.
2. I have no true birthdate. — Yes, I have one, but it isn’t my true birthdate. It’s an estimate, a fabricated birthdate based on how I appeared on May, 24, 1968. 
3. I have no birth story. — This never really bothered me until I had children of my own and realized how elemental it was to celebrate that moment when you take your first breath. I love telling my children’s birth stories, and they love hearing them. It bonds us all as a family because we were there at the creation of our family.
4. I have no medical history. — This one is a true pain in my rump. With every move or change of health insurance, we must have that initial first meeting with the new doctor. It goes, “Any history of heart disease?” There, I stop them, “No history, I’m adopted.” This happens for me and my children, because obviously, the mother’s family medical history plays into the children’s health.
5. I am not really Korean. — This one is complicated, and I have written about it numerous times. While my dad fed me kimchi, and my mother sewed hanbok sets for me, I really wasn’t exposed to the Korean culture in the way I would have been had I grown up in a Korean household. So, I find it irritating when I am viewed as Korean, spoken to in Korean, asked about my “real” Korean family, asked if I know Tae Kwondo … well, you get the picture.
6. Reading or hearing the phrase, “like you’re adopted” (insert snarky, teen voice) — Language. Why must people joke with the word “adopted”? Listen, it isn’t funny, and I don’t appreciate being the butt of a joke. I am #notyourbadword. Adoptees are people with feelings, so refrain from using that word in jokes. Got it?
7. Being referred to as an “adopted child/children” — Even as we grow into adults, we are referred to as “children.” This is especially prevalent in the media’s headlines and news stories. Someone please add this to the AP Stylebook!
8. Being left out of the adoption conversation — Big one related to number 7. As adult adoptees, this perception of us as children seems to exclude us from the adoption dialogue. The fear that we might say or write words that might hurt adoptive parents is insulting. If an adoptive parent is hurt by the words of an adult adoptee, that parent is a grown up, remember? Adults should have the maturity to take someone else’s words, understand them and learn from them. 

Now that I have all that off my chest, carry on believing what you want of me, but understand that it might be an assumption by you, dear reader, given your history with adoption. Realize that every adoptee is different, has a unique narrative, and struggles with her own demons.