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The Divisiveness of Adoption

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I became a Korean Adoptee at the ripe old age of 9 months. My parents are white. My siblings are also adopted from Korea. We grew up in the 1980s and 1990s in a rural New England town where the diversity percentage was zero besides my family. I never knew the topic of adoption was so controversial, divisive and hostile until now.

Topics that divide

Hmm…where to start…

Is adoption good? Is it evil? Are adoptive parents bad? Are adoptive parents saviors? Are birth parents good or bad for giving up their children? Is it a heartless act because who could give away their flesh and blood? Or is it a selfless act because he/she thought that child would have a better life elsewhere? Should adoptees be grateful for being adopted? Should adoption be illegal? This list goes on and on and on.

Giving back to the adoptee community and why more adoptees should share their stories

When I was in my late 20s I decided to initiate a birth family search and found them. This started me down an unexpected path of meeting them in Korea and getting a glimpse into the life that would have been. Something that helped me immensely during that time in my life was listening to other adoptees either via Facebook groups, YouTube videos, blog posts, you name it. I consumed anything and everything I could find from adoptees from all walks of life.

Now in my mid 30s I am ready to give back to the adoptee community. I have chosen to share via blog posts and YouTube videos and sometimes both. The overwhelming feedback is positive and grateful for an adoptee’s unique perspective. UNIQUE being a keyword here. I can guarantee no two adoptees have the same exact perspective or lived experience.

This sounds too obvious right? That two adoptees who have lived through trauma, identity crises and countless other complex hurdles would have unique takes on the world…shocking!

People love to speculate how they would feel in a given situation or comment on how an adoptee should or should not have handled a given situation. This is true for even fellow adoptees which I find amazing. I may not understand every adoptee’s life story or identify in the same way on a given issue but I do not judge my fellow adoptee comrades. For, we have been through enough and need not add to each other’s burdens.

That being said adoptees have to forge on and let their stories and perspectives be heard. If not to educate those unfamiliar with adoption, then for fellow adoptees who might identify and feel less alone on their journeys. I benefitted greatly during my birth family reunion from others’ stories and I am forever grateful for those adoptees whose stories I consumed.

The Many Sides of Adoption

There are too many topics that divide the adoptee community to discuss in one blog post. It both astonishes me and saddens me to witness the negativity in adoption Facebook groups and the like.

My reaction to unsettling news and topics is to learn more. I am a researcher. So that’s what I plan to do. I will be dissecting and discussing some of the controversial adoption topics on here. Adoption is messy and complicated. I hid from my adoptee identity for most of my life. It’s time to embrace it and try to understand it from as many angles as possible; not just the ones that feel comfortable.

Thanks for reading.

-Christina

Korean Adoptee: Returning to the Motherland

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I am a Korean adoptee. At 29 years old I returned to my country of birth, South Korea. The decision was easy for me. I wanted to check this trip off the list before we expanded our family.

Korean adoptee returns to motherland
Visiting a Buddhist temple in Daegu with my birth family

A motherland tour is emotional and thought provoking for any adoptee. I think what helped me was our mindset leading up to the trip…with 0 expectations. We booked the nicest hotels we could find in each city we planned to visit. I made a list of things we wanted to do and places we wanted to see. This was supposed to be a luxury vacation before we embarked on parenthood. It turned out to be so much more than that…

After deciding to go back I initiated a birth family search. Mostly, it was a formality. I never had an intense need to know more about my origins but I also didn’t want regret. I filled out the necessary documents and officially submitted my intent to search.

We finalized our itinerary for the trip. We had so much fun stuff planned! I checked in with the adoption agency often in the months leading up to the trip. I would find myself anxious and hopeful whenever I got a reply from the agency seemingly caring more than I would have admitted at the time.

Almost exactly two months from submitting my intent to search I woke up one morning to the email that would change my life as I knew it.

Present day

Six years later in the year 2020 I am ready to share my story. I encourage all international adoptees to consider returning to their birth place at some point, with or without a birth family search.

Realizations from my motherland tour:

  • Stepping off the plane at Incheon I had an immediate sense of peace being surrounded by people who looked like me. I was one in the crowd for the first time in my life. Nobody knew my story or questioned why i was there. In S. Korea I was never the only person of color in any given room or environment. I would often have reality checks with myself which were almost out of body experiences as I couldn’t believe I was back surrounded by my original culture and language.
  • Going back meant so much more to me than I could have known before the trip. Or maybe meant so much more than I could have admitted to myself. It was seeing and experiencing a culture and language that I will never be a part of but there were moments throughout the trip where I felt a sense of belonging. A feeling not often felt in the States as tolerance is not the same as belonging.
  • Being there made me sad. A different kind of sad being Korean than I had experienced growing up. Until then I had only experienced racial negativity being Asian in a white world but this sadness was a sense of loss. Now knowing what it felt like being in Korea I knew once and for all that I would never truly fit in there either. You can look the part in passing but with any interaction with shopkeepers, waiters, etc. they knew I was American in an instant. I guess through all of the adversity growing up in America maybe I had in the back of my mind that I could always go back to Korea and feel normal. This trip was confirmation that was not the case.
  • The biggest realization I had was probably that nobody can or will understand these feelings of loss being immersed in a country and culture where you look the part but which you share no part. I believe only transracial adoptees have a chance of understanding the complexity of emotions I was feeling. Not my husband, my adoptive parents, my birth parents or birth sisters.

Seeing my birth country further solidified who I was then and more importantly who I am today…a Korean adoptee. My children are descendants of a Korean adoptee. A different topic for a different day…

Being a transracial adoptee is messy and complicated. I returned to S. Korea to simply check it off my life list but the realizations and clarity of identity I gained was far more than I could have expected. The time spent in Korea was happy and sad, fulfilling and draining, full of clarity and added confusion. I realized that who I am today actually had very little to do with who I was when I left South Korea at 9 months old. I control my destiny regardless of my past and I shall live without fear or regret.

Thanks for reading!

-Christina

Korean Adoptee returns to motherland 29 years later