Tonight I watched “In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee” a film by Deann Borshay Liem. Soon I will write a review, but it was a very interesting documentary. (Thanks to my BFF and another friend for telling me about these films!)
As I watched, there’s a scene where Liem goes to the Social Welfare Society, which is the oldest organization dealing with orphans in Korea. The very same organization that dealt with me. Once I got over the shock of seeing the face of the woman I’ve been emailing with for the past year regarding my adoption files in Korea, I also realized two things:
1. I can see my actual case file that tells more of the story of how I got to the States – if I actually make a visit there and ask them for it.
2. PLAN Korea was an organization that dealt with adoptions overseas… I’ve always heard the name PLAN, but thought that it was the American adoption agency, not the Korean-based name….(maybe it’s both…)
So, now a seed has been planted in my mind. I need to go to Korea again to read my file, to find out as much as I can about how I got to the States. I think I am more curious about the how and why than I am about actually finding my birth mother/family. Finding her conjures up much more anxiety and a sense of disappointment than the idea of being able to know the back story that put me on the path of my life.
R said to me the other day that it seems that I have more of a morbid curiosity in my birth mother more than a dire need to find her. Finding her is more about me than about her and though valid must be admitted and realized as selfish. I agree. At the same time, I’m not even sure that I want to find her in particular. I’d like to know why from her point of view, but more – I’d like to know the how first.
Since discovering that she married an American and has been in America almost as long as I have (now longer than me), I’ve felt deeply confused. Much more so than I ever did growing up or when I considered her as a Korean woman in Korea living out her life in a developing country. Now, I have to picture her as fluent or nearly so in English, with kids who are Americanized – like me, and that picture causes me to feel a sense of unbalance and internal turmoil. I’ve been told that the agency in the States has tried to contact her, but received no response from her. Whether or not this is true, I’m content to wait that out. It’s the picture of her as an American, living an American life with an American family that I’m not ready to accept. So, I’m still working through that reality, but in the meantime, I’m considering the next step I am willing to take….
A trip to Korea. A visit to SWS. Read my file. Go from there.
No set plans are made just yet, but the wheels are a’turnin’.
-T
