How words like “lucky” and “grateful” hurt me.

My last night in Korea, I was on a high with my new Korean adoptee friends (KADs). The pain of the last week fell away as we laughed and sang at a karaoke bar.


Yet, this morning, the reality of returning home hit me hard.

First, I absent-mindedly left handmade paper I had bought from a famous Korean calligrapher behind at a counter. While it seems silly to most, I cried when I realized I would not get it back (as it was left outside security). I also shared my distress with my fellow KADs. A few who were leaving after me used their precious preflight time to retrace my steps and found it. I was already on the plane, but they said they would mail it to me.

They touched me and healed that silly sore.

The second blow of my flight back was a family that sat within eyeshot. Their daughter was just over one year, and they were traveling with the grandparents. The mother looked as mothers do … tired yet strong.


The beauty of watching this Korean family interact just brought up the longing. The longing to have that connection with my foster mother … the longing to be embraced by my Korean family … the longing for roots.

As the grandmother strapped the little one on her back with an airplane blanket, I flashed back to a time when I may have spent my time strapped to someone’s back.

I tried to distract myself with the magazine … then this.


“A meeting resulting in pain.” I know too well the false expectations of fortunes and horoscopes, but then, I had this encounter.

This encounter came after a time when I thought I had come to terms with my loss. But I haven’t.

I am raw and aching. I know I should feel fortunate, lucky and grateful that I had this experience in Korea. But those words just boil me down to generalities and adoption stereotypes. It is time to change the language and stop using words that make me feel diminutive and my search trivial.

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.

A Stranger Among the Same

Stepping on the Korean Air plane in O’Hare resembled a purgatory. My experience wasn’t poor, just different.

The plane was filled with mostly Koreans and a few Americans (both black and white). As soon as I boarded, all announcements were in Korean first, English second. At first, I enjoyed hearing the novel sounds, but as time progressed, I became slightly irritated.


What a great lesson! Here I am viewing life through others’ senses! My privilege was showing. It felt strange to be the “last to know.” This strangeness shouldn’t be new to me. I have traveled to French, German, Polish and Spanish-speaking countries, but it was always evident that I was the foreigner.

On this flight, that was not the case. Passengers looked at me and smiled. I wondered what they were thinking. It was obvious to me that I was foreign to them. My dress, my complexion, my gait were all counter to the thin, pale crew.

I found it interesting that the members of the crew and passengers would first speak to me in Korean, but when I said, “Sorry … ” the knowing smile and then English.

From my economy seat, I didn’t at all feel the classism I have sensed on domestic and European flights. The crewmembers were kind and polite. I often felt I was being a bit too “American,” and was reminded of my Rwandan days when I would defend my country from the insults of a white South African.

In those days, when he described the wealthy, American tourists he encountered and how their entitled attitudes sickened him, I broke down in tears, and explained how my family members were not those kind of Americans.

The South African mocked me and ridiculed my tears with “How can you be so passionate about such a wealthy, selfish, racist country!”

America is the only home I have known. I cling to the things that validate my place in my country. But now, I shift to another loyalty, one that has waited far too long.

“A DNA test is only as good as the database.”

I am riding on the bus … to O’hare for my trip to Korea. I am filled with so many emotions, I cannot fully explain them in words.

Having said that, the reality of the search hit me hardest when the itinerary for my trip arrived. In the next day or so, I will be swabbed for a DNA test. Many of my Lost Daughters’ sisters have already had such a test. They have found so many things about themselves via 23andMe and Ancestry.com.

I have always toyed with the idea of the DNA test in my mind, but this summer at KAAN, as I listened to the words of Bonnie LeRoy, I felt ambiguous relief as she said, “A DNA test is only as good as the database.”

For the domestic adoptees of the Lost Daughters, the test has in some cases been successful. Hearing Dr. Lee’s words, I realized that such a test may not be plausible for me, a Korean born adoptee. In order for my DNA to match someone in Korea’s, that person would need to test and access DNA records in the United States to find me.

As you know, the reasons for my search began with my children’s curiosity but have ended with my hope to never rob my birth mother. I feel as though I take one step forward, then pull myself two steps back. While I want to do this for others, I am not sure I want this for myself.




The prospect of this DNA test in Korea has made it all the more real. When I sit on my sofa in Wisconsin, there are many “what ifs” I can ponder, but to set foot in Korea and add my DNA to other Koreans’ …

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.

The Ceramicist in Me … could it be the ceramicist in her?

A new Korean adoptee friend sent me this fantastic video:

Post by Dursun Ali Erzincanlı.

Watching the masters carve, I felt as I do when I carve … a release. It’s cathartic, and my tears flowed. They were tears of joy and sorrow flowing together … the epitome of my life experience thus far. I wonder whether someone else in my biological family ever felt this same feeling … the release. Does my natural mother weep and think of me when she carves, as I do for her?

I had a flower carved and ruined it with glaze, but I now am recreating it with the knowledge of what I learned from the mistake.

Here’s the beauty of it before the glazing. My family tree is a fully enclosed flower.

The family tree haunts me in a way I cannot describe. I feel rootless and lost. But the flower … it reproduces, it symbolizes the beauty of connection with others. It can live a little without the roots when it is severed.

The petals are the only part I retain from my natural family, and the new flower shows them as the background to the petals from my adoptive family. Stay tuned for more photographs as this new flower blooms.

Children are not commodities … unless they are adoptees.

Today, this meme presented its horribly designed self:

Anyone who has known me well-enough will know that on first-glance, I was sickened by the usage of type, lack of spacing, color and of course … Papyrus and Comic Sans. I like my life to be clean and concise. But I digress. [control]

The type wasn’t the reason someone posted this. The business of adoption is why people posted this. Look how the word “bought” could easily be substituted for the word “adopted.” The dialogue about this garnered everything from anger and disgust to explanations of how the agencies swindle people. Once again, my feelings on adoption as a business, international adoption and rehoming swelled, and my reaction was physical.

Since returning from KAAN, I cannot sit still without thinking about the experience, the speakers and the impact it had on me and my family. (Read this wonderful description of KAAN topics at Red Thread Broken.) One very important keynote, presented by Dr. Elizabeth Raleigh and titled “Is Asian Adoption Less of a Transracial Adoption? Racial Hierarchies in a Post-Racial World,” outlined her research based on interviews with adoption players, agency workers and social workers.

Some of her research quantifies the racial breakdowns of adoptions. What Dr. Raleigh saw in the data and confirmed by interviews with social workers is that there is a secretly spoken racial hierarchy which moves from an infant who is white (because the parents are white) to a multiracial (part white) child, to an Asian, a Hispanic and finally a black child.

Here are some of the shocking statements made by social workers to Dr. Raleigh:

“As I am sure you know, there are lots of stereotypes around Asians. Asians are preferable to African American or Latino. They are sort of lower down. There is a pecking order.”

“I would say maybe it goes white, Hispanic, maybe a variety of Asian cultures. And maybe kind of a big jump to maybe a more browner skin and Middle Eastern and Indian, and maybe another big jump and you get to black. I am not saying that’s ok but it is a pretty reasonably understood spectrum.”

I sat disgusted at the thought that adoptees were “chosen” like you would pick a sofa color. “Well, I want gray because it goes with my rug.”

To distance myself from these destructive feelings, I tried to step outside of my box. I understand full well a person’s need to see herself in another being. My own children have my physical features, some of my mannerisms and ultimately my genes; I find that very validating as a person who has lived isolated from those who resemble me.

So, in that sense, I see why a parent would request a child of the same race. Also, there are obviously challenges in adopting and guiding a child of another race, or my blog and others would not exist.

And yet … the cost of white babies exceeds the cost of black ones. Does no one see the ethical issues of assigning a market value to a human being? There is an obvious “supply and demand model” at work in adoption. Can happiness be bought? If it can, should it and how genuine is that happiness? And for whom is the happiness?

Our government regulates our food, our water, our education and our civil rights in order to keep us safe and healthy … but what about adoption? Aren’t the health and safety of children important?

Yes, everyone agrees that children deserve to feel loved and safe, and yet, we can talk about child adoptees in a way that whittles them down to dolls.

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.

Control

Control. That word was repeated numerous times at KAAN a few weeks ago. I guess I always knew it deep down … that I had a freakish need for control. In the past, I phrased it as “anal retentiveness.”

I control many things in my adult life, and I enjoy the stability I feel with that control. If I control my life, there are no surprises … right?

Wrong. Everything about my adoption was not controlled by me. It was controlled by the Korean culture, the Korean government and Holt International.

As I grew up, I learned again that my life was out of my control. I couldn’t control the remarks or the ridicule from others. I couldn’t control my appearance, though I tried.

I tried to be more white; I tried to fashion an eyelid crease. I suppressed my Korean side and emphasized my place in a lower, middle class, Tennessee family. If I was going to be oppressed, I wanted it to be for an affliction that could be remedied. I wanted to regain control.

We all have those instances where we feel oppressed for many different things: our accent, our clothing, our socioeconomic status, our religious affiliation …

Please understand, I am not downplaying these things, but they are things that can be changed or hidden. I cannot hide my face, my eyes or my ochre skin.

Just like the woman on this train in Australia, I would not have been able to control the words of this racist woman.

In the racist’s defense on the local news, she talks about criticism she has received in the past. She diverts attention from her remarks by using her hardships … work problems, money problems. Here I have started to understand that often when we are oppressed we are blind to the oppression of others, and we lash out.

Watching this footage was triggering. Her words and gestures brought back all those times where I had no control over what was said to me. My reaction was always to take the words, say nothing and then, silently slink off to a private place to cry. I have done that for years. Lately, my coping mechanism has changed. I learned this at the KAAN conference. When I feel out of control, I lash out at my family … possibly because I know they will still love me.

My daughter has asked when adoption will stop being the focus of my thoughts … when my frustration and misfired anger will stop. While I can never disassociate myself from my adoption, I recognized this in myself at KAAN and have returned determined.

I am resolute in channeling my outrage into change for their sake.