My Korean Adoptee Life Archives - My New England Seoul

I am a Korean adoptee and I lost my mom to Alzheimer’s Disease. It was as they say “death by a million cuts.” The decline was slow and agonizing for everyone.

My mom and I were always close. We used to talk on the phone constantly. When I was away at college and even in early marriage we talked during my commute every day.

The last few years of her life our bond was fading. Even though I know the Alzheimer’s was running the show most days it added grief on top of my grief. Most days she didn’t know who I was or who my kids were but thankfully for the kids she put on a polite show.

Did me being Asian amplify her confusion? She didn’t know I was her daughter maybe because I look nothing like her or maybe the progression would have been the same. I’ll never know exactly when she “knew” me for the last time. Our bond and relationship was rooted in our experiences and memories, both of which were quickly disappearing.

I’m sure this is a shared experience for anyone who has lost a parent to Alzheimer’s Disease. However, for an adoptee relationship where all you have are your memories and shared life connecting you it’s a bit different when that fades away.

I started sheltering my kids from the hurt. Over time it became obvious that she did not know them or me. Fatigue and confusion infused and eventually would saturate our visits. No one was enjoying them and lead to harder evenings for my mom.

My 6 year old was increasingly confused and concerned wondering what was wrong with Meme. It’s a hard thing to explain. Death and its finality is a hard thing to understand. The concept of death continues to plague my daughter’s thoughts.

It’s been over a year since her passing and the grief process continues. As I grow older my desperation to understand myself and inner thought processes intensifies. For myself but even more so for my children. The better I understand myself, and why I am the way I am; the better I will be able to help them.

Losing my mom has really shed light on the parent/child relationship and its impact on me both as the child and now as a parent myself. The adoptee factor just adds another layer on top.

When I first planned my return to the “motherland” I knew there were a few things on my bucketlist. Months prior, I had stumbled upon a blogger’s pre-wedding photoshoot she had done in S. Korea. After reading more about it, looking into studios and watching people’s videos on it I knew I wanted to do it.

Let me tell you the experience did not disappoint! Even my husband thought it was a worthwhile experience.

Now, to clarify even though they call it a “pre-wedding photoshoot” my husband and I had been married for five years already.

I will say the process was not particularly simple to book. We contacted several studios and communication was difficult with the language barrier and getting answers to our questions was not easy. (Hopefully, many of the studios have streamlined their booking process since then.)

After some frustration trying to book a session directly with a studio we found an agency called How2Marry who helped facilitate the process.

We finally settled on La Promesse Studio located in the Gangnam district of Seoul. The studio itself isn’t huge but one would never know that from the pictures. It seems every square inch of it was purposefully thought out.

The package included the following: