i received my first letter from my birth mother today

i'm sure i'll have words for it in a month...or two.

miss saigon and other myths about adoption: remembering Hyunsu

Hyunsu's memorial, via Jane Jeong Trenka

I have been so full of grief recently, since story of Hyunsu broke - the 3 year old adopted Korean boy murdered by his adoptive father in Maryland.

There have been many excellent blog posts about this case already, but I have not been ready to write until now. Even this post feels...disjointed and rambling.

Where do I begin?

We call him 현수 but we may never know the name his mother gave him. Our agencies like to give us new names to better sever us from our pasts. There is a logic here - "clean slate" babies are easier to place. Easier to place means more adoptions. More adoptions means more profits. Additionally, the adoptees' past is fabricated - fictions about anonymous abandonment, false names, dates and places - to discourage reunions. Reunions, and adoptees with any connection to their homeland threaten to upset the system that keeps the golden goose laying eggs. More babies equals more profits. You can now browse a photo catalog of "waiting children" on Holt's website. This is a business.

And Hyunsu's mother, his 어머니, may never learn of her child's fate. Holt, Hyunsu's Korean agency, had previously stated in the aftermath of the Sueppel murders that birth mothers would not be notified in less they inquired with the agency as to the status of their children. Hyunsu's mother may still be hoping her child is living a better life than she could provide. Or perhaps she has seen his photo in the news, blurry and turned away, and wondered if that was her son. Maybe she felt Brian O'Callaghan's death blows like they were dealt to her own heart, because the bond between mother and child can be that strong.

I mourn for Hyunsu as if he was my own little brother, 동생. He was a part of the adoptee family, and as his 형 I wonder why I didn't protect him. Why wasn't I fighting harder? Could I, and others like me, have prevented his death? I grieve for myself and and for all adoptees, because Hyunsu's short, painful life makes our stories more real. It does away with any lingering doubts about being "better off" or any questions as to the insatiable greed of adoption agencies. The public response - news articles that highlight Brian O'Callaghan's government job and military commendations dismiss the value of Hyunsu's life. Holt's own misdirection about Mongolian spots (birthmarks), hydrocephalous and "waiting for the verdict" in a corrupt legal system typifies their scrambling to protect their own financial interests in maintaining an pretty picture of adoption. Brian O'Callaghan's post-homicide actions of donating his son's organs and then bragging about it on his facebook page reveals a lot about the value he placed on his son's life (and death). If you read the comments (and never, read the comments) you will find many accusations being flung at adoptees, in particular, that we should be grateful that our adopters didn't murder us, too.

Adoptee's lives - our whole lives, not just the ones our agencies fabricated, not just the ones that begin when we are adopted - matter. And so do our deaths.

The TRACK blog recently posted a list of 13 Korean adoptees murdered by their adoptive parents. This is an incomplete list, but it is too much. Just one is too much.

Adoptees also have a disproportionately high rate of suicide and suicide attempts. One of Harry Holt's adopted children, his son Joseph, committed suicide at the age of 32. As one of the first ever Korean adoptees - he is probably the first to take his own life. Sadly, he was not the last. We will never know his reasons, but as one of the many adoptees who has attempted suicide, this strikes a far too familiar and painful chord for me.

A recent (2013) study in Minnesota found, in a three year time period, adoptees were 4 times more likely to attempt suicide. Yet the researchers still insisted that this was good news, as "the majority of adoptees are psychologically healthy." This keeps the system moving. It keeps the picture pretty and the babies coming and the parents buying and we, the adoptees, are left to fend for ourselves.

The entire transracial adoption machine is complicit in our deaths, and near deaths.

Adoptees lives matter. And so do our deaths.

The whole thing is a little "Miss Saigon". By which I mean, racism, Orientalism, misogyny, ableism, classism, white supremacy, American/Western supremacy and plain ole greed fuel the international adoption industry. It tells us that it better to be killed by your adoptive family than to live with your family of origin. Just check out this quote from the "Dear Friends" letter Harry Holt sent out to recruit adoptive families when he started Korean adoption (and overseas adoption as a whole):

“We would ask all of you who are Christians to pray to God that He will give us the wisdom and the strength and the power to deliver his little children from the cold and misery and darkness of Korea into the warmth and love of your homes.”

Unwed mothers in Korea who choose to raise their children face very real challenges. But they believe in their decision and are working to change the system from the inside. 

As I weep and grieve for Hyunsu, I am more determined than ever to break apart this broken system and fight, for Hyunsu, for myself, for all of us.

the waiting game

a brief timeline of my birth family search:

august 11, 2010 - attempted to initiate birth family search through ESWS

august 20, 2010 - referred by ESWS to local agency, Love the Children

august 23, 2010 - started search through Love the Children

february 9, 2011 - contacted Love the Children for update, no response

may 23, 2011 - contacted Love the Children fo update

may 25, 2011 - response from Love the Children saying they sent my request to Korea in march, 7 months after i requested a search

may 16, 2013 - started search with KAS

sept 5, 2013 - KAS located my birth mother

sept 23, 2013 - contacted Love the Children for update

sept 24, 2013 - response from Love the Children saying they have heard nothing and that I should contact ESWS and KAS directly

sept 25, 2013 - contacted KAS for update and submitted forms to ESWS

dec 1, 2013 - submitted forms (again) to KAS

dec 10, 2013 - KAS notified me that they located my birth mother. referred to ESWS to establish contact.

dec 15, 2013 - contacted by ESWS about exchanging letters with my birth mother

jan 3, 2014 - i sent my first letter (translated, in PDF form) to my birth mother via ESWS

yes, you read that right, KAS located my birth mother in September of 2013, but did not inform me until december, after i had sent two emails to check the status of my search.

i was foolish to trust my agency, Love the Children. i don't believe that they took any action on my search, and what little contact i had from them was very dismissive. KAS seems to be a mess, but at least they did their job. sort of.

the point is, today i am again waiting. and in the grand scheme of things, the three years i searched (or even the twenty five years it took me to start searching) were relatively short in adoptee search time. some people get responses in weeks, months. others like me, in years. others, decades, or never.

i'm waiting for my first letter back. i'm waiting to know her name. maybe see her face. find out something - anything more than the flat black type of my adoption forms that has been staring me back in the face all these years. 

but i am afraid. i am afraid she took one look at my fat body and decided that she didn't want to know me. i'm afraid that another family member found out about me and now she is unable to contact me. i'm afraid of her own shame keeping her from contacting me. i'm afraid of her own fear.

in truth, this delay could be for any number of completely innocuous reasons. i'm terrible at keeping up with letters. and this isn't exactly an easy letter to write. i have had the freedom to be completely open with most everyone in my life about communicating with my birth mother. she does not have such support. i was able to have a dear 누니 translate my letter for me. but my mother's letter will have to be translated by ESWS. the new year just passed. she could have been sick. or just busy. it could be ESWS dragging their feet. anything.

but i do not know how to be the child not abandoned.

and so i am trapped, again, in limbo. waiting. another day, another week, another month. my heart quickens every time i see i have a new email. the let down when it's nothing more than a store newsletter. the dread, that when news does come, it will be bad news. that she will not want to know me. i am waiting for rejection. i am waiting to be abandoned again.

i'm finding it hard to be present these days. i'm finding even scars long healed are aching. it is hard not to fold inside myself completely. retreat to somewhere safe.

i'm working more hours than my body can physically sustain, but it's the only way i will get to Korea. i know it's just another way of hiding. i keep having nightmares that i'm leaving the next day, but that i'm not ready. that i have been so focused on earning the money i need to go that i haven't done any of the emotional preparation. i'm going to bed the night before my flight, crying and saying "i don't want to go" but everything pushes me to leave. it's terrifying.

so here i am, waiting.

lies our mother(s) were told

there are great fictions in adoption, particularly in transracial, intercountry adoption. Domestic adoption, as well, is full of lies: our child welfare system is corrupt and ruled by the same racism, classism, ableism, colonialism, xenophobia and misogyny of the international adoption world. but korean adoption is where I live my life, so that is where I shall begin.

lies told to birth mothers:

you have no choice

you have a choice

your child will be better off

your child will be loved

you will be better off 

adoption agencies care about your child

your family will disown you

you cannot raise this child

god wants you to abandon your baby

you will forget

you will survive

you will feel no guilt

you cannot ever tell anyone

this is your fault

lies told to adoptive families:

it's almost as good as having your own

it's better than having your own

these babies have no baggage 

these babies are cuter/smarter/more exotic

if you adopt an Asian baby then you are Asian too

attachment issues? what are you talking about?

racism? isn't that over?

god meant for you to have this child

it's cool/trendy/humanitarian

it will be easy
adoptees feel no different than biological children

your child was anonymously abandoned/some other fiction that makes the child seem more adoptable

you don't need to know anything about race to be a good parent

I feel like these barely scratch the surface.

my parents' home study called them "cold and aloof". the local agency told them not to adopt an older child because they have too many issues and it would be too hard on their family. as an infant, I was deemed to be a clean slate with no issues as long as they fed me korean food once a year and bought me a couple of books. there was a four page typed note given to them by the adoption agency. I've tried to read it but it makes no sense. it's really just lies and excuses. it is handwritten titled "The Final  Answer". as if there was anything "final" or "answer" about what it means to be adopted.

it is a heavy load. this memory i can't recall but that lives in my bones. the feeling discarded, feeling abandoned. being an orphan before i knew what that meant. the fear of being not good enough. the way that everyone I ever met wanted to know why and how I was abandoned. elementary school teachers, friends, their parents, strangers. everyone. they all said I shouldn't feel any different. so when I did, that shame was all my own.

the conflation of racist yellow peril myths about china with korean adoption. make no mistake, these systems are different. the social issues in korea that contribute to child abandonment are different than in China. and china only started adoption in the 80s, korea has been doing it since the 50s. but don't expect white people to know that. I was told that I was lucky because Korea hated girls and I was lucky I didn't get killed by my parents or sold into slavery. I was told that I was lucky a lot.

they call us "chosen children" because never say who does the choosing.

my parents still don't understand racism. my mother thinks that because she has "always been drawn to Asian things" that means she a) isn't racist and b) is qualified to parent an Asian child. neither of these things is true.

more lies.

my father is "colorblind". he is educated and worked for a long time in business. now he writes books about business, teaches classes, gives lectures. he is used to bring the authority figure inside and outside of the home. he argues with me about the validity of my experience while also insisting I am a "white girl".

lies.

as privileged white people my parents have the luxury of dismissing anything they don't agree with by looking down their nose at it. when I sent them to an exhibit of adoptee art at the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian American Experience (sidebar: my mother insisted on calling it the "Wing Luck"), they told me after that "it wasn't a very good museum". after many hours of my crying they admitted that actually the exhibit made them feel bad and they just wanted to dismiss it.

that was the last time I ever tried to talk to them about adoption.

it was only as I wrote my first letter to my birth mother that I even thought about what life must have been like for her. it was the first time I though that she must have suffered all these years, not knowing what happened to the child she never knew.

that is one of the many lies we adoptees are told. birth mothers are painted flat and simple. a place, not a person, not a relationship. 

but birth mothers are not machines, we are not blank slates, and adoptive parents are not saviors.

and every day is to reclaim a little bit of truth.

reality, check.

finding my birth mother is the ultimate reality check.

i don't know how to describe it. it's a strange sensation.

it is a stage to my life, a new peak to my journey. there is a kind of peace, a clarity. i stop, to take a long deep breath. from this vantage point i can see it all, the past 28.5 years. it is a long, hard view.

i can see what i've survived. i can see all the paths i've walked, all the skins i've shed.

i am reminded of what it is to be an orphan. the things that people raised by their birth families just can't understand.

truly, i was on this path before i found her. but there is a connection. i started searching over three years ago. this summer the wait (weight) became unbearable. it was so consuming, not knowing anything. i had gone through my local agency (Love the Children), KAS and directly to ESWS. nothing. i had to accept that i might never find anything. that until someone at KAS or ESWS picked my name out of a hat, i might never know.

this summer, following my birthday, my body suddenly put itself on Korea time. this lasted for months. at first it wasn't every day, but then it became permanent. i tried every herbal remedy to get to sleep - nothing helped for more than a night. most not at all. finally i tried not sleeping to force myself to sleep at night - my body still refused and i started sleeping every other day. for a month.

so i guess that is where it began.

somewhere between that, accepting that i might never find my birth mother and deciding to return to Korea (and realizing that my Saturn return was quite literally, upon me), a kind of clarity began to set in.

i was in an abusive relationship for five years. i've been able to do a lot of work about healing from the emotional and sexual trauma, but one of the most triggering parts of our relationship is that i don't know where he is, i haven't heard from him in over six years. i used to be so afraid, especially when flying to visit my family (we grew up in the same town). i would spend the entire flight figuring out exactly what to say if i saw him. i was afraid of what he would say to me. i was afraid he would break me down again. blame me again. i knew that he would break me. i could feel it. i was so afraid.

and sometimes, he would just fill my head, and i'd find myself scouring the internet for any trace of his whereabouts. stalking the facebook pages of friends of friends, using multiple search queries on multiple search engines, quickly scrolling past his college tennis photos, feeling tiny and breakable.

one night, as i felt that familiar panic set in, and found myself about to open up all my usual search boxes to look for my ex. time seemed to slow down, my brain, slowed down. i realized that i didn't need to go down that road. it had never happened like that before, where i'd been able to start the obsessing before it happened. but something inside me said that it wasn't worth the trouble, that i didn't need to know.

and just a few nights ago, riding the bus, i saw someone who looked just like him. i see people i think might be him often. but they always turn around or the angle changes and i see that they look nothing like him. but this person really looked like them. i immediately texted my boo. i want to stay it was instinct, but i don't know if i've ever texted them about that before. whatever it was, the feeling of worry subsided quickly.

later i texted my bestie about it. like a bogart, my ex had magically transformed into something non-threatening, something that could be flicked off my shoulder or kicked out a window. i was amazed to realize that i wasn't afraid of him any more. i don't want to say that finding my birth mom makes me feel invincible - far from it. but this is a time of cleansing, a time of shifting perspective. as i look out over everything that i have overcome in my life, and prepare to take a step into the next, unknown chapter, this is something i can let go.

more than that, i can trust myself. i can trust my experience, my heart, my head. i am standing on solid ground. i am more sure of myself than i've ever been.

every day is something new. ten somethings. constant shifting.

the first four days and my life will never be the same

i shed my first real tear today. i got a little misty on tuesday, reading all the responses to my fb updates about finding my birth mother. i was holding someone else's 5-month old infant, strapped onto me in a carrier. she cried most of the day. she missed her mother.

my eyes got wet on wednesday evening when a reunited adoptee offered to meet for coffee and talk. she told me about her reunion, and hearing her story it began to set in. the earth shattering life altering absolutely wild incomprehensible sum total of what had just happened, what was about to just happen.

today, during the intake for a physical medicine appointment i told my doctor about my search. i told him i wanted to tell him because it was in my body but i wasn't ready to talk about it. i guess i ended up talking a bit, enough, to shed a tear. a real tear. i did not blink it back or stifle it, i let it run down my cheek. just one. the first.

on tuesday morning i got the email. it was early - i didn't have to be to work until 10 but i had to get up at 7 to take my thyroid medication, and then i could eat and shower and get ready for the hour-long commute to my nanny job. so 7 am. i had a tooth extracted the day before, my jaw was stiff and sore and my mouth still tasted of blood. i looked at my phone, as i do every morning, bleary eyed, to check my emails.

mostly it's Joann's coupons and store newsletters, but sometimes there is something worthwhile.

i saw i had an email from KAS. because of the magic of mail preview, this is what it said:

KAS

Re: Birth Family Search Request

Dear ---x---. Hello, this is Sara Yun from Korea Adoption Services. First...

i read those words and recoiled. it sounded like bad news. or at least, more of no news. i had accepted that i might not ever get an answer to my searching. i didn't really think this could be The Email. whatever it was - it was 7am and i was going to have a long week and i was not ready to read it.

after about 5 minutes, i said to myself "you ridiculous human being, what are you doing, OPEN THE FUCKING EMAIL," and so i did.

and --that-- is the moment my life changed forever.

i'm scared. i'm terrified. i'm excited. i'm feeling everything that it is possible to feel, i think, and probably a few more things. this is truly standing on the edge of the unknown. and i know, i KNOW, that whatever comes next will fuck with my heart in ways i can't even begin to anticipate. nothing will protect me from what this process will do to me. as an adoptee - nothing has been easy. nothing has been painless. but i have survived it.

and so, what choice do i have but to take a deep breath and step into the abyss.

when i started my search, i did it because i didn't want to live my life not having searched. i was only 25 but had recently met adoptees older and younger than me who done their searches only to find their mothers had already passed. this possibility had never really entered into my consciousness, and i realized that i could wait around until i was "ready" (and really, when are you ever "ready" for this?) or  do it before i ran out of chances.

i emailed my local agency on August 23, 2010 to start my search.

four days later, i sent this email to my close queer adoptee friend:

"i have started my birth family search. that's about all i have to say on the subject at the moment. they said it could take a while. but. opening."

i'm trying hard not to have expectations. i am trying to go forward with an open head and open heart for whatever may come. i'm not looking for this to "fix" me - i don't feel broken anymore.

the waiting is the worst. first, three years, countless emails, to get to here. and now, waiting again. for the next step. knowing that people who don't want me to know my birth mother are the ones in control.

whenever i get a new email i feel like i'm going to throw up. and when it isn't ESWS, when it isn't me being one.step.closer to knowing my mother's name, my heart hurts.

here i am. day four and my life will never be the same.

괜찮아요.

I received this email yesterday morning as I was getting ready to go to work.

I'm not ready to write about this, but here it is.

-----

Dear --x--,

Hello, this is Sara Yun from Korea Adoption Services.

First of all, I am really really sorry about this late reply.

KAS has had the busiest season of the year. I am really sorry.

There was a miscommunication with ESWS, so a blank created from the time of your request to now.

I am really sorry that I have not perceived it.

KAS succeeded in locating your birth mother as of Sep.5th.

And ESWS help us to contact your birth mother via telegram.

She has not responded to it for a while.

I talked with a person at ESWS today.

She  informed me of such a great news.

Your birth mother contacted ESWS recently.

Your birth mother is very wondering how you have been and willing to exchange letters with you.

However, there is one thing that we should be careful.

She has a family now, but none of her family members know that she has delivered a baby in the past.

Therefore, she has a fear of being diclosed to her current family.

I really hope that you could understand her current situation before you started contacting her. 

ESWS suggested me that they are willing to help connect between you and your birth mother.

Therefore, I would like to know how you think of the suggestion from the ESWS.

If you are OK with it, can I give them your e-mail address?

Please, let me know your thoughts.

Please, also do not hesitate to e-mail me if you have any questions or you need help.

I definitely willing to help you as much as I can.

I am sorry about my lateness again.

I am looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Thank you for your understanding and patience.

Sincerely,

Sara Yun.