I have decided to start a new series of posts related directly to my adoption experience. This is mostly because I have started to delve more and more into the world of adoptees who are starting to express themselves about this whole being adopted thing – especially Korean-American adoptees. I know that some are reading, some are searching for support, etc. – like me. So, I feel like it is time to share a bit more of my truths.
Since I was 8-years-old, I knew that I was alone in my life experience as not only an adopted child of international origins, but also as one who somehow survived the domestic child welfare system in the US. Once I met fellow Korean adoptees, I also confirmed my belief that it would be difficult to find anyone who shared an experience anything like mine. In some ways it was nice to be different since I have always had an independent streak, but in others it left me very lonely, introverted and mistrusting of everyone….
Sometimes when I listen to my fellow Korean adoptees who were able to establish themselves in one family, I think, “What are you moaning about – not having a choice, not knowing your origins, etc.? At least you had one family who you knew loves you through it all!”
By the time I was eight, I had been given up by my birth mother, left a Korean foster family to be adopted in the States, which led to an adoption, a foster mother, an adoption, a foster family and then a final adoption. For now, I’ll spare the details that go with this, but that alone makes me waiver in my empathy and sympathy for the other Korean adoptee or non-Korean adoptee voices out there whinging about how they didn’t have a choice to not know their heritage….
I didn’t have a choice about anything either … and does it make me worse off or better for having survived? No. However, it does make me think about perspective. I mean I would have loved to have been adopted by my family right from the get-go…, but then who would I be today?
Thus, I try very hard not to complain about my past. It is all part of my life journey…, still the emotional turmoil is what I must face…and so I write. π
