adopteevoices

[adopteevoices]

This is letter to both of my fathers. Yes, I have two fathers, and no they’re not together. In fact the latter might act…

a letter to both of her fathers, written by a fellow adoptee, kumfa volunteer, and most importantly friend. 

[adopteevoices]

I realize it has been a long time since I last updated this blog. I think things came to a halt in the lead up to my reunion with my Korean biological family back in August. The weight of the event and the stream of every emotion possible that I was feeling prevented me from feeling capable of communicating the experience in an accurate and meaningful way. so i just stopped. I simply do not have the skills as a writer to describe all that happened and how it all made me feel, and I felt trying to do so in a public blog would trivialize it in some way.

Last week I attended a digital storytelling workshop in Lyons, CO. This unique opportunity allowed me to really reflect on my entire journey to Korea, my family(s), and my emotional response. I am tremendously thankful for the people I met, the skills I was taught, and the environment where I was able to create this piece.

I hope that it may give you a glimpse of what meeting my family was like, of what living in korea was like. I hope that if you are an adoptee considering reunion, that it inspires you in some way. This was the most difficult and rewarding moment of my life that I am proud to share with you.

[adopteevoices]

On December 4, 1979, I flew from Seoul, Korea to the Philadelphia airport to be adopted by my strong, independent, single by choice, white mother. I was a two-and-a-half-year-old newborn. I have no recollection of the flight, or my life in Korea, or that transitional moment where I became American and lost my Korean self. Now as an adult, when I look back at early baby pictures, I am stunned to discover that Ling Ling, my first oriental doll, was there on my first night at home in America (evidence from this picture). The thing is, I remember hating that doll. I hated her unflattering bowl shaped haircut. I hated how her face, although made of rubber, was supposed to resemble porcelain (like a little china doll). I hated how flabby her plush arms, torso and legs gave her an ironing board body shape. I hated her white lace smock dress with matching pants that screamed Chinese. Back then I couldn’t articulate why I felt such an intense rage. But now, I’m pretty sure that my childhood feelings were a mirror reflection of how I didn’t want to be seen. As oriental. Foreign. Ugly. Chinese. I have to wonder what my mother’s true intentions were. Did she think that if I held onto a doll that looked like me, it would bring me comfort and I’d adjust faster to the white world I was plopped into?  Did it really not matter to her that Ling Ling was Chinese and I was Korean—a fact that I would spend most of my adult years trying to make sense of—figuring out my identity once and for all. Just as my hatred for my oriental skin disappeared, so did Ling Ling. I have no idea what happened to her. Lynne Connor, Brooklyn, NY, writer

[adopteevoices]

fellow adoptees:

an anthology of KAD stories will be published by Thomas Park Clement, the idea is to get real up-to-date KAD stories published. if you are interested in participating, the story proposal concept is due in September and the first draft not due to till Dec. 1 (it need not be long - up to 4,000 words max). i’ve read a lot of great KAD writers here on tumblr, please submit! more info here. 

[adopteevoices]

One of the K-Pop songs I really enjoyed while I lived in Korea was BoA’s version of 안개. Then a friend told me it was actually a remake, but the original was really boring and stuff. Which I was willing to accept, since the only Korean music I knew was K-Pop, but I wanted to hear for myself all the same. Curiosity!

The resulting search for Song Chang Shik’s version on CD led to picking up a Pearl Sisters compilation, which was fantastic, and then hearing Kim Jung Mi’s Now, which was a revelation, which led to monthly visits to a small CD cart near Namdaemun that specialized in folk and trot albums.

I wasn’t very proficient at Korean, so I would take the compilations I had, painstakingly copy the names of artists I enjoyed onto a sheet of paper, and then bring them to the older woman who ran the cart.

Then (and I always said the exact same thing, so that it was a little bit of a ritual; rituals are comforting to me), I would ask if the owner had any other music “like this.” And she would study the paper (laughing at my handwriting, lol, which looked like sacrificial crab leg dancing), pick out a few CDs, and send me on my way.

Rinse and repeat for a few years. When I left Seoul, I mailed home two boxes of CDs and records and still ended up with leftovers to press on friends. I’m not exactly the Sasha Frere-Jones of Korean popular music, but sometimes I recognize a song or two on Immortal Song.

But mostly not. There are still a lot of gaps in my knowledge and experiences of Korea. Sometimes it feels like I’ll never catch up. I think it’s the feeling of cultural immersion that seems so distant; the way culture is subconscious and reflexive when you’ve lived your life in one place and grown up swimming in the language.

I mostly feel okay with my sorry messed up Korean. I still study by myself, and I read books on Korean history. But I’ve also come to understand that what I hoped for when I went to Korea isn’t going to happen, mostly because it would require travel along the fabric of space and time. I can’t go back in time and grow up in Korea while simultaneously growing up in the U.S. with my family and preserving the happiness and love they have given me. There is no such thing as both. One precludes the other.

However, sometimes when I’m feeling a bit maudlin and indulging in a glass of wine after dinner, looking at the lights on the water, or I’m traveling in a city and all the fluorescence start to remind me a bit of Seoul, it feels like the possibilities open a bit more. Like here and there are a bit closer, and with some effort and sideways thinking, I could manage to reach through to the other side and touch that life. It sounds weird in writing, but the experience is oddly peaceful.

My life is what it is. I can’t go back and undo what other people did. I can’t unmake myself American, and I can’t disinherit the power and privilege that come with growing up in this country as the offspring of affluent, progressive, educated white parents. Part of accepting this, I think, has been realizing that entertaining the question of whether I would want to — whether I would redo my life if I could — is a pointless indulgence. It doesn’t mitigate my worries and it doesn’t diminish my responsibilities. It doesn’t do anything but decrease my focus on the here and now.

I still believe, as I always have, that the ability to reconcile the past with the present is not just a symptom of a mentally stable society but a prerequisite.

But for me on a personal level, part of that reconciliation is letting go and moving on. If I wait for the past to resolve itself, I’ll be waiting forever.

In the end, I mounted one last attempt at finding my birth parents. And I did it through the husband of a family friend, a civil official who promised his wife he would make discreet inquiries about my case, for all the good that it would do. I didn’t know him very well, as I spent most of my time with his wife and children while he worked long hours at the office. But he went above and beyond the call, spending what amounted to nearly two months calling my adoption agency and searching for someone — anyone — who had given up a baby girl between 1984-1986 in roughly the area of my birth. When that failed to yield results, he expanded the search.

Those were strange months. When faced with stress, I tend to bury myself in work. There was a lot of work at that time, as we were nearing the end of a semester. But the enforced blackout of not thinking about it, not talking about it, was heavy in itself. And though it seemed we might have a promising lead at one point, I didn’t ask for details while it was being investigated. It didn’t seem right to immerse myself in the details of a woman’s life if I didn’t feel very strongly that she might be my birth mother.

I don’t know if that was right or wrong. But in the end, we found she was not a viable candidate and moved on.

We gave up. I don’t want to say “then we gave up” or “finally we gave up.” There wasn’t a sense of sequence or of ending. I still remember the expression on his face when he and his wife gingerly broached the subject with me at dinner. For someone who had spent little time with me and who owed me nothing, the look on his face was so genuinely sorrowful as he tentatively suggested that we had exhausted all avenues. I don’t know why, looking back, that’s the memory that brings tears to my eyes. Maybe it’s just that he tried so hard, when so many others tried not at all.

In the course of my search, it became clear that the information on my family register is dubious at best, completely fabricated at worst. In all likelihood, the fabrication is mere convenience — an officious way of filling those holes which the agency’s interview and adoption process left open. There is false information because there is no information. It is not that they are hiding my birth mother from me, but that they do not know who she is. Neither do they care, failing as they did to ask her name when she gave me up for adoption all those years ago.

Despite the reconciliation, there are some things that stay with me. For one, the sense of unease that comes when I contemplate where I came from and how I got from point A (birth) to point B (adoption). I may be secure now in my place in the world, that is true. But any event that encourages one not to think, not to look too closely, is a decidedly melancholy one.

The thing that haunts me most, however, is the thought that such stability and peace is out of my birth mother’s reach forever. That she might be experiencing pain and suffering that I could alleviate — that only I could alleviate — and how easily it would be dispelled, too, just by raising my hand and confirming that I exist, am happy and healthy and well.

But since I can’t reach her, if she is suffering, it is a suffering that will never end. It lives in the background forever, surging into the foreground on occasion, lying dormant even in happy moments. The possibility that my birth mother is living in this way is wretchedly unbearable. That I should be the one to make it stop, and that I can’t, and never will, is like staring into a gaping, screaming abyss that is screaming back at you.

But you can’t live life that way. I also don’t want my birth mother to live in this way, even if it means putting me aside in her thoughts. Maybe she’s already done that. It’s possible I’m just something that happened in the past: a regrettable incident, fading rapidly around the edges.

I’m okay with that. More than anything, I would like to think of my birth mother as living a full and happy life. I can’t say anything about what someone would have to do to survive giving up their child, especially if that child was wanted.

I’m not religious. I also don’t call myself spiritual. I think when I die, I’ll turn rapidly to dirt, if I’m not cremated first. I don’t believe that a triumphal reunion with loved ones awaits me in heaven; I don’t believe my birth parents and I will “meet again, for the first time!” in a great white palace in the sky. I don’t believe I will ever meet my birth parents, period. I’m not okay with it, but I’ve made peace with it.

If there’s anything that my search has taught me, it’s that the things that happen to us at our birth — the choices people make for us, about us — have nothing to do with merit. If my birth mother wanted to keep me but felt she couldn’t, I wish with all my heart that hadn’t been the case. But I don’t believe my adoption is a reflection on me, good or bad. Talking about the worthiness and gratitude of adoptees misses the point entirely. And the desire of some to make a Shakespearean production out of the lives of adoptees — the desire to be entertained by the theatrical performance of their natal lowness, redeemed by the miracle of adoption — is utterly repulsive.

Because I am thankful anyway. Without it needing to be coerced out of me. My life is filled with loving family, wonderful friends, laughter, good books, good wine, and just the right balance of routine and adventure (not to mention a snotty cat).

For me, part of being thankful includes continuing to write and to speak out about the vagaries and difficulties of adoption. That is part of how I square my future with the past. For some, that might seem a contradiction in terms. To respect a thing is to leave it alone. To examine it critically is tantamount to an interrogation. If I truly accept my adoption, why research and learn and talk about the adoption process in Korea today?

I understand that point of view, and I disagree with it in almost every way. It bears virtually no scrutiny. Wanting to know more about a thing is not the same as rejecting every other object in the universe that is not that thing. Korea and the U.S. are not mutually exclusive concepts. The existence of birth parents does not preclude the existence of my parents who raised me. I am not “rejecting Whiteness” with curiosity about something that is “not Whiteness”; it is not a graft or a cancer that my newly awakened Korean immune system is fighting off. Of all the ridiculous fallacies…

It’s true that I haven’t discussed many of my thoughts with my family. Part of that is not wanting to disturb the waters, as we do not really discuss race or adoption in my family. Part of it is not knowing exactly how I feel, and being afraid that uncertainty might translate to ambiguity in a discussion. In reality, I feel unambiguously happy to be part of my family.

The suggestion that I do not write enough “grateful” posts on my tumblr may have a grain of truth to it. But that point is outweighed by the reality that if I post often about the problems of Korean adoption, it is because I have no one offline with whom to discuss them. I would therefore ask certain parties to reconsider the question of selection bias before alerting all of Facebook that the sky is falling and your adopted daughter is actually a Communist Korean sleeper agent (the Sino-Korean Candidate?).

I will continue to write about adoption or not write about adoption as I like. Everyone is invited to read or not read as they like. The reconciliation might be over, but the future is wide open. And I intend to fill it.

I’ll see you all in September. Until then, be well. :)

[adopteevoices]

for those in korea~

"Korean International Adoption: From Militarization and Neocolonialism Towards Human Rights" with special guest lecturers Tobias Hübinette and Jane Jeong Trenka August 11th (Sun), 5-7:30pm at Haechi Hall (Seoul Global Culture & Tourism Center, Myeongdong, M Plaza - 5th floor). Korean interpretation will be provided. Attendance is free but all collected donations will be given to the Korean Unwed Mothers’ Families Association.

"한국해외입양: 군대화와 신식민주의 개념에서 인권으로" 토비아스 휘비네트교수와 제인정트렌카 작가 특강  날짜: 8월 11일 (일) 5시부터 7시반까지, 장소: 해치홀 (서울글로벌 문화와 광관센터, 명동 엠프라자 5층). 한국어 통역 제공. 입장료 무료. 모금은 한국미혼모가족협회에게 기부. FB event page here. come, come, come! (also all reblogs greatly appreciated!)

  (reposting this because the last flyer had a typo;;;)

[adopteevoices]

When many people think of adoption, they tend to focus on the adoptive parents and the baby they bring home. But less attention is paid to what becomes of those babies. Starting Monday, a new online magazine called Gazillion Voices aims to provide a voice for adult adoptees around the country.

All three adoptees bristle at a frequently asked question: Are they for or against adoption?

"We kind of hate it, because it puts us in this binary that erases a lot of these complexities," Gibney said. “The reality is that we are here."

Vollmers insists that “Gazillion Voices" is pro-adoptee. Many adoptees think they have had good experiences, he said, and the magazine will have a place for them.

"It is very complex, adoption is," he said. “To break it down to into pro-adoption and anti-adoption is a disingenuous conversation. It doesn’t allow for broader conversations. I’ve been labeled as anti-adoption, which is completely false.

"But that does not mean I can’t look at, for example, South Korea, where I’m from, and say there is a problem when single women who actually want to keep their kids cannot do that because of societal pressures and familial pressures."

[adopteevoices]

Chinese adoptee searches in China for birth family

(As of 9/6/12) 11 year old Chinese adoptee searches in Guilin, I think (I google-translated the page…)

(5/26/13) Belgian Chinese adoptee searching

(7/18/12) 9 year old searching in Huainan, Anhui Province

Jenna Cook from Somewhere Between and some links I found…. -(5/25/12) Jenna’s Original QQ Posts (I have no idea what it says so here’s the google translated version haha). It received an incredible amount of publicity and responses -Chris Zheng’s 5/30/12 Article on TeaLeafNation (originally in English) -Chris Zheng’s 6/4/12 Article -Pictures with 10 possible birth mothers/families from Wuhan

(3/28/11) Sofia, 16, from Fujian province began search in 2008

(1/3/13) Dutch couple adopted son searching for birth parents from Jinan

I’m not really sure if it’s a search article, but at one point it says that over 46 adoptees are searching in China for their “roots" in 2006?…(6/1/12) Article

I know there are plenty more, but many are on Chinese forums, and that takes a lot of time to go research. I am sure there are groups in English and such, but I’m not on any of them and I am sure it’s all private. 

Success stories

Haley Butler from Somewhere Between (12/28/09) LA Times Article. Literally minutes after she put up a poster, someone stepped forward  saying they looked like someone they knew

(2/1/13) 10 year old Chinese adoptee from Netherlands with birth parents from Jiangxi Province

(Article written on 6/23/07) 10 year old Dutch Chinese adoptee "what is to believed to be the first successful birth parent search by a Chinese adoptee" from Chongqing. The girl’s name is Eline. 7/10/11 Article about it with photos and website

(1/20/11) L’s Birth Family. I personally really don’t like this blog because of the way the mother wrote about the experiences. She tried to make it seem like her daughter was in it, maybe she really was, I don’t know, but her diction kinda irked me…this isn’t about the adoptive parents needs, it’s about the adoptee…clearly her blog was appealing to the adoptive families, mostly.

(Winter 2012) Wyatt Harris finds birth family. He was adopted from Ma’anshan, Anhui Province in 1994. This was an excellent article. Here’s an excerpt from his book, Second Chance, on ISSUU 

There are more. I know there are. Either they aren’t public or I’m not searching the right things.  

Other stories relating to adopted sisters/twins and birth parent searching

Biological sisters adopted by same family -(Oct 2002) Original article by adoptive mother explaining situation from Changde, Hunan Province -(4/21/12) Adoptee sisters searching

(3/13/06) Sisters Reunited from Changde, Hunan Province. Same SWI as the sisters in the article before. They are fraternal twins.

(12/2/09) Twin sisters born in China, separated at birth from Jiangmen SWI. Both named Meredith and so, they’ve made some psychology news haha. They are fraternal twins. 2011 article.

(8/21/06) Twin Girls Find Each Other in America. Both named Mia from Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province. 

(3/3/12) They knew they were twins beforehand. Identical twins adopted from China by 2 different Ontario families from Hunan Province

2004-a Norwegian and an American couple adopted a baby girl each—they were twins, but China denied it. Youtube Video of reunion

I know of two adoptees who turned out to be cousins. And another set of adoptees that were adopted in the same travel group and were twins. Their story, I don’t think is publicized. It seems like it’s rather common though? Then again, I do know a handful of twin girl adoptees…so I don’t really know. 

(7/15/11) Chinese birthfamily searching for their daughter -Reddit Article (family from Quzhou, Zhejiang)…confusing story though -ChinaAdopt post

(5/12/11) China Birth Parents Sue to Find U.S. Adopted Son. Read it, it’s kinda wild. This boy went missing in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province in 1992.

(4/3/02) Interesting scenario… By sheer chance, Chinese twin toddlers are reunited from Zhanjiang

This post is just a discussion on ChinaAdopt from 2011 about adoptive parents wanting to make an adoptee/birthparents registry 

Weird e-how page on "how to find my adopted Chinese child’s birthparents". Kinda weird to have it on an e-how page, but whatever

Research-China.org is another site that’s run by an adoptive parent… They did find one of their daughter’s birth parents, but I probably should just read it a bit more closely..Oddly, they require a paid subscription due to sensitive nature of some of the articles?? And they have this package where you can pay to get orphanage book info… I don’t know. It’s not applicable to me. I was adopted in 1994 and they only have records, depending on orphanage, from 2000?…I mean, understandably, getting those things is costly since it’s dealing with China, but I don’t know..I’m not a fan of having it turn into a business. We should have the right to this info like abandonment trends, not pay for it

[adopteevoices]

hi! i'd like to link to an adoptee poem collection at blogspot called "thursdaypoems" but i don't think i can submit a link... would you link to it, or should i try to submit a post with the link?

(an ask via admiralmackbar)

excellent submission. made rebloggable. here is the link. and a brief intro of the project:

THURSDAYS is an ibyang* intercontinental poem a week project. Every Thursday, Korean ibyangs from around the world post a poem here. We’re not just writing poems about being ibyang.  We’re ibyang, and we’re also writing poems.  We’re interested in seeing how our common identity shapes our language in both similar and disparate ways.     Currently, the contributors to the blog are: kim thompson, Christy NaMee Eriksen, HeJin, Jonathan F. Schill, Andrew Dupre, Katie Leo, Jung Mee Bec, Michael Sung-Ho, Kurt Blomberg, Mads Them Nielsen Lee, and Laura Klunder. We welcome any other Korean ibyang poets who would also would like to contribute weekly to the blog.  Please e-mailchristynamee@gmail.com if that sounds like something you’d do. * ibyang - korean for “adoptee" 

[adopteevoices]

It is assumed that there are no special problems, or emotional or psychological costs in being a non-white adoptee in a white adoptive family and living in a predominantly white environment. Consequently, assimilation becomes the ideal as the adoptee is stripped of name, language, religion and culture, only retaining a fetishised non-white body, while the bonds to the biological family and the country of origin are cut off.

Tobias Hubinette, “Adopted Koreans and the development of identity in the ‘third space’” (2004)

“only retaining a fetishised non-white body” …and then put in environments where those non-white bodies are fetishised and consumed!!! not dangerous at all, right? is it a coincidence that i know so many korean adoptees that have been molested or subjected to sexual assault both in their families and in their communities? where we internalize the fetishisation of asian women and even commodify ourselves?

(via peaceshannon)

[adopteevoices]

erm, someone just told me they don't think international adoption is an industry...

Isn’t there a “demand" for Asian babies? [healthy ones take 7 years now to get assigned, I think for China]. So what happens? Horrible kidnappers take children from their families and put them in orphanages. Sometimes the birthparents really do participate, I believe that, but um…the supply is still being satisfied…

Supply and demand. That sounds like an industry to me.I know there are fees for adoptions and orphanage donations and such. I know children need to find families and I know special needs and older children need to be cared for and adopted, too…

blah, but if you don’t realize that there is an international adoption industry, then you’re crazy. People can go online and look at children’s photos who are available for adoption…people advocate for these children. Is that so bad? No, I don’t think so. But sometimes the terminology makes it sounds kind of…too business-like, for me. Even my dad pointed out he sees what it has become. We’re human beings, aren’t we?

[adopteevoices]

A while back while visiting China I was at a hotel near my orphanage and this white woman from Florida came up to my mum and I and said “do you know how lucky you are? You would have been living on the street or possibly a prostitute of your parents didn’t adopt you. You know that right? Do it now, thank your mum!"

It was very awkward, even my mum felt uncomfortable. The woman wouldn’t go away until I said thank you. I did it but it was forced. I love my adoptive mother but I don’t feel obligated to thank her for adopting me, when being adopted wasn’t my choice. However I thank her for being a good mother and I know I’m luckier than many other people. But that incident really bothered me. She was so patronising. Do I have a right to feel like this?

[adopteevoices]

Recently in Europe a friend said this to me: “What beautiful people to have adopted you…you have to admit it takes really beautiful people to do that kind of a thing."  She smiles and I smile back, swallowing a silent little lump of sadness.   Beautiful people? Yes, of course I think my parents are two of the most beautiful people in the world.  But not because they adopted children.  They are beautiful because of who they are, the art they create, the family they built, the things they have taught me as their adopted daughter.   But are they beautiful because they adopted me?  Are they beautiful because they would not have had any children at all if it weren’t for adoption?  Is necessity the virtue that makes them beautiful? This comment triggers a flashback.  A fellow Ph.D. classmate is sitting and typing beside us at a cafe.  He says, "Jennifer, don’t you think it takes a special kind of person to adopt a child, one who is not ’their own’…?  I mean, that’s unique."   And I can’t help but wonder, does it take an equally ‘special’ and ’beautiful’ adopted person/child to adapt to an entirely new family, continent and country?  To be completely cut off from their roots and still smile through it all and say, yes, isn’t this wonderful to not know who I look like?  And isn’t it wonderful to not have any access to my genetic and family ancestry, to not know the stories of where I come from and of who I really am…? Yes, I wholeheartedly agree.  My parents are beautiful people.  But it’s not because they adopted me.  Adoption has nothing to do with their inherent beauty, or mine for that matter.  At least, this is what I think today, filled with Monday’s musings on belonging, home and the notion of true beauty. 

[adopteevoices]

To my adoption readers:

I have to put this out there: I love both my birth family and my adoptive family with all my heart.  Both have shaped me into the woman I am today and for this, I am thankful. I know my family back home reads this. Maybe some adoptive parents read this. And with many of the articles I have been reblogging lately, it can cause some confusion and hard feelings.  I do believe it is possible to love both of your families but still criticize the industry that created these two families.  I do believe some people have honest to goodness intentions with adoption but unfortunately,  good intentions don’t make up for the corruption behind the scenes. I do believe adoptive parents love their adopted children with all their heart, but there needs to be a bigger understanding that maybe the biological parents love then equally as much. And I do believe that is has been written in my heart… from the time I can remember realizing I was an adoptee, the four years I spent studying sociology, the day I left for Korea,  and the hours I have spent educating myself on adoption issues… that issues like in this very article are important.  That even though it steps on some people’s toes, even if it unintentionally hurts the people I care about most… sharing this kind of story is what I need to do. Because in the end, its not about me or my issues. Its about the bigger picture. And its been absolutely disheartening to learn that the bigger picture of adoption is not what many believe it to be - a pure system built out of love, in what some say God’s calling, that creates a family. Adoption has what everything else in this world posseses — faults that need to be exposed and then changed for the better. So that is my aim when I post adoption articles - hope for change.

[adopteevoices]

I didn’t realize the agency my parents did my/our adoptions through was actually processed through Holt until I started doing some digging today (now that I have someplace I’m staying for more than a few days at a time/someplace with stable internet)…now, I really, really want to start searching, to see what the truth actually is…

But I’m afraid. No, I mean, in some ways, I’m still afraid. But not afraid like I was before. I know what’s stopping me. Guilt. Indebtedness. Not wanting to appear ‘ungrateful.’ Not wanting to hurt the people who’ve raised me, no matter the ‘bad,’ since there has been a substantial amount of ‘good.’ My mom has already said somethings about this matter, wanting to look for birth parents…she’d ‘support me,’ because she knew I’d do want everyone I wanted to do, when it came down to it…but, she seemed upset, dismissive…and I know, because she said, “but we’ll be your real parents forever, won’t we Katelyn, even if you do find them?" that, I think…will be the biggest problem…and has been one of the biggest problems thus far…should I talk to her about it when I see them tomorrow? I’m so nervous…every three or four days I’ve been seeing my family (since I’m living apart from them due to complicated reasons), and every time I’ve been with them, I’ve gotten in arguments with my mom over the stupidest things. I know it’s because of the underlying strain, stress, worry of this and other things going on…what should you do, Katelyn?

[adopteevoices]

If I dare to write these words

If I dare to write these words

which live on my skin

in between the beats of my heart,

and the crevices of my eyes,

If I dare to write these words

I am  a woman whose split into

2 hemispheres

the East and the

West,

attempting to correct

what has always felt 

Less.

If I dare to write these words,

become the seoul of

this little girl

inside of me

who had always wondered,

what it would have been like,

if she had not been given up,

who still struggles

to face

the pain of her face,

the yearn of familiar faces in 

a busy street,

only in recognition

can she release

the prism

of a flight

wanting to fly

higher and higher

above these skies

If I dare to write these words

maybe they’ll come alive 

again

and be re-vived

out of my skin,

If I dare to write these words,

maybe I’ll finally

be able

to say

what’s been inside

my heart

for so

long

that I can never seem to get out,

that I can never seem to shout

which only becomes a whisper

within a picture

of someone

you don’t know

staring back at you

because no one

looks like you

and you forever

search 

and trace

and search

and trace

and try

to embrace

the face

of 

your

race

but its disclaimed

and 

abandoned you

and all you want to do,

is reach

for its shores

but you come home

empty handed,

always feeling like.

You are on the outside,

looking in…

-jadalyric

[adopteevoices]

Adoption

On nights like these…all my writings go into the draft folder.

So confused - everything in my life pertaining to adoption sucks right now. Sometimes I just feel like I don’t belong anywhere. Not with my birthfamily, not with my adoptive family… (except for my sister, huge exception there).

Even though I have an amazing husband and two wonderful boys, I still have this empty hole for my family… It’s strange.

I just want to know… Where was I supposed to be? Was it REALLY with those parents? Birthmother has told me in the past she would have kept me had she done it again - but - I’m just confused. Hurt & confused. Going to go spend a week with my in-laws. At least I know where I stand with them - they are the best! :)