Meg is a Korean intercountry adoptee, raised in Australia and a comic artist. She makes largely autobiographical and non-fiction work that has appeared in The Nib, The Lily, Liminal Magazine, The Comics Journal and anthologies including Comic Sans,Steady Diet, Threads That Connect Us and the Eisner award-winning Drawing Power: Women’s Stories of Sexual Violence, Harassment and Survival. She has exhibited comic, animation and film work internationally, taught comic making to university students, developed and delivered comics programs to high school-aged students from migrant and refugee backgrounds with STARTTS, and art programs to elementary-aged students in Korea. Meg is currently working on a long-form work based on her experiences as the Asian child of white parents in Australia, a recent period of living in Korea, and a failed search for her Korean mother.
She created the artwork for our K-Box Adoptee-Übernahmenacht promotional material and ZINE:
Meg also presented as one of our adoptee artists and you can watch the video of her presentation here:
You can also view it in the web version format for those who prefer to read and see.
von Kayla Curtis, Korean adoptee raised in Australia, social worker and counsellor specialising in adoption.
I want to share some reflections from going along to the K-Box Adoptee Takeover Night at the Malthouse and seeing Ra Chapman’s K-Box play in Melbourne, Australia on 9 September.
Personally, I am feeling an excitement from seeing K-Box because it captured so much of my personal adoption experience with confronting and emotional clarity. My comments to Ra afterwards were: “They could have been my parents on that stage, the set was my family home and the script was very close to the conversations I have navigated with my family over the years. Thank you for shining a light on some of what we have to navigate and including some of the uncomfortable and confronting issues that are so covert and invisible to others, especially our families”.
K-Box is written and directed by Ra Chapman, a South Australian Korean adoptee, currently Melbourne based. This play is one of a kind and is the first to shine a bright light on the complexities and nuances of the intercountry adoptee experience in Australia and to have an intercountry adoptee as the leading protagonist. Ra wrote the play based on hers and other adoptees lived experiences of adoption. Feedback from adoptees who saw the play on Friday night was that the portrayal of the adoptee’s experience was not only relatable but a provoking and truthful representation of their own adoption experiences.
The play was about a 30+ year old Korean adoptee navigating relationships with her adoptive mother and father and was also about her journey of coming to understand the impact adoption has had in her life: how it has influenced her identity, her internal working model and sense of self and connection with her adoptive parents. It touched on many of the core themes of adoption including identity, belonging, loss and grief, race, the life-long impacts of adoption, racism, stereotypes, attachment, belonging, white privilege/white washing, ‘dangers of single stories’, family as well as how we talk about adoption issues and navigate these difficult discussions with our families. What the play did well is to explore the impacts on the adoptee and family relationships when these core issues are not understood, validated, explored, or supported. As is normal for many adoptees who begin to explore and pay attention to these issues, there can be a destabilising effect on the family relationships as the adoption ‘fairy-tale’ or ‘happy adoption’ narrative begins to come apart.
L to R: Jeffrey Liu, Ra Chapman, Susanna Qian
For any professionals working in the area of adoption, this play is a great resource, providing a deep and valuable insight to the dynamics, relationships, interracial experiences, and challenges intercountry adoptees have to navigate within their adoption experience and adoptive families. Of course, this was delivered extremely cleverly with the play using comedy/satire as well as emotionally intense and beautiful monologues and symbolism complimented by outstanding acting from an intimate cast of four performers.
It was powerfully delivered and received, leaving many adoptees who attended feeling emotional and unsteady but also connected, seen, and supported. Likewise, it may also leave adoptive parents feeling unsure, confronted, and curious about their role in their child’s adoption. In the end, I think it brings everyone together: adoptees and parents, opening up possibilities of how we can partner up around the adoption experience and do better for the journey of the adoptee.
Following the play, I valued the emotive speeches and other performances by adoptee’s sharing their creative work and projects. In addition the evening mentioned some other exciting adoptee led projects and creative works in development that I will be following closely with anticipation.
The main takeaway for me from the evening was the amazing way adoptees were able to come together through this event, which I think highlights the collective healing power for adoptees when surrounded by community, elevating the adoptee voice in a safe and supported way and feeling a sense of strong belonging by being seen and heard. It is great knowing that the Australian adoptee community is going strong!
I hope that we can continue having open and welcomed discussions together as a community so we all can benefit in learning from those with lived experiences especially from adoptees.
Dearest Ra, please know the powerful impact you have had and how your creative work is helping to shape all of our learning and better capacitate the adoption community in Australia.
I encourage all to see Ra Chapman’s play K-Box showing only until 18 September; adoptive parents, adoptees, adoption professionals and the broader community.
Coming Next at ICAVs blog is some of the Adoptee Artist performances from our Take Over of the Malthouse Night and artwork from the ZINE magazine which was handed out at the event.
Ra Chapman and some of the Korean adoptees who attended the evening Photos by Lynelle Long
Christmas and New Year is a time when we usually get together as families, celebrating and reconnecting. For some adoptees, this is a particularly tough time of the year because not all of us are closely connected with our families (birth or adoptive). Often it is this time of year that can be the hardest for it brings up painful feelings of not being closely connected .. to anyone. It can remind of us how we don’t “fit in”, how we are forever in-between spaces, or of how little we are understood by the very people who raise or birthed us.
Grieving the Child of the Past by Dan R Moen (Filipino adoptee)
Adoption is based heavily on loss – loss of our origins, loss in knowing who we came from and why, loss of our culture and traditions we are born to, loss of our extended families. And adoption does not always replace everything we’ve lost. Adoption is also heavily based in trauma – it is the trauma our generations went through that often result in us being relinquished for whatever reason. Or it can be the trauma our country went through, a result of war, famine, natural disasters, etc. We adoptees carry these losses and traumas within us, often we are unaware we carry it, until we do some deep diving into our origins and reconnect to some of our most primal feelings of abandonment and grief.
This Christmas and New Year period, I hope that we can be mindful of our fellow adoptees for whom this can be an especially triggering time of year. Last year in Europe the team of adoptees who are therapists at AFC knew at least 6 adoptees from their immediate circles who suicided between Christmas and New Year. This year, globally who knows what our numbers will be – for we’ve also lived through another tough year with COVID-19 and that has further heightened the sense of isolation for many, adopted or not.
I’ve just finished participating in two major events this year to raise awareness of the connection between between being adopted and experiencing suicidal feelings or actions. The first was a webinar with lived experience where we shared openly. You can view it here:
The second, which followed on from our first, was a Twitter event in which more of us shared our lived experience and thoughts which you can read here as a summary Wakelet.
Huge thanks to the sponsoring organisation United Survivors and intercountry adoptive mother Maureen McCauley at Light of Day Stories, who organised these 2 incredibly powerful and much needed events.
I wanted to share my answers for Question 4 which asked us, for fellow adoptees who are struggling, what would I say? My response is:
You are not alone! Many of us have been in that space, I know how tough it is to find a way through, but it is possible. Please reach out to your peer support spaces – there are so many of them. If you need help finding them, ICAV has a list of intercountry adoptee led orgs around the world.
Please also don’t be afraid to try and find a mental health professional. It can make a world of difference to be supported by someone trained to understand our lived experience. If you need help finding them, ICAV has a global list of post adoption supports as a great starting place.
Adoption begins with traumas and most of our life, we spend unpacking that and making sense of our life, who we are, how we came to be here. But once we surround ourselves with support and commit ourselves to working through those painful parts, our life can change and we CAN find healing and connection.
It begins with ourselves, finding connection back to ourselves – who we were born to be, not necessarily who we are adopted to be.
Our life as an adoptee does not have to be controlled forever by our beginnings but it is so important to not deny and ignore the pain, but to offer your inner hurt child a space where her pain can be heard, and where healing can begin.
My message for adoptive families and professionals who struggle to understand how/why adoptees can feel suicidal, I highly recommend you watch our video series which covers the universal themes I’ve observed, reflected through the stories many adoptee have shared with me over the past 20+ years. It is SO important adoptees feel heard, validated, and given the space to share from our hearts, without judgement or expectation.
Part of the vision I created and still hold for ICAV remains very true at this time of year:
Eine Welt, in der bestehende internationale Adoptierte nicht isoliert oder ignoriert werden, sondern während ihrer gesamten Adoptionsreise von der Gemeinschaft, der Regierung, Organisationen und der Familie unterstützt werden.
I am proud to launch our new adoptee led educationalvideo resource for professionals designed to help doctors, teachers, and mental health professionals better understand our lived experience as intercountry adoptees.
This project has been a huge effort over the past 6 months in Australia to gather adult intercountry adoptee voices and share what we would like education and health professionals to know, so they can better support us on our complex life path.
Overall our project included a production team of 6, direct input into the film scripts from 18 adoptees who auditioned, filming of 8 adoptees, provision of music from 5 adoptees, a feedback/review team of 10 professionals, translation support from 3 adoptees, and emotional support throughout the project to the film participants from Relationships Matters – Gianna Mazzone. This has truly been a community collaboration!
I look forward to hearing feedback on what you think after you have a look. I would also appreciate you sharing the resource link to any doctors, teachers and mental health professionals whom you feel would benefit from this resource.
Huge thanks to our project funders:
Beziehungsangelegenheiten who for the past 5 years ending June 2021, did an incredible job of providing for our community a free mental health psychology based counselling service to intercountry adoptees and our families under the federally funded ICAFSS service (currently awarded to Beziehungen Australien for the next 5 years);
NSW Committee on Adoption and Permanent Care which brings together government and non-government agencies, support groups and individuals interested in, involved in, or affected by adoption and permanent care or related aspects of Out of Home Care within New South Wales (NSW);
Guest post shared anonymously by one of ICAVs members and originally published in the Transracial Adoption Perspectives group which is setup to promote a greater understanding of transracial adoption for adoptive and prospective parents. An excellent resource and one of the safest spaces being managed on Facebook, for the triad.
Once again yesterday evening, I found myself in a nearly-all-white social space (the only people of color were myself and one Black/biracial woman). I was there for a very good reason, and have no regrets whatsoever, and everything went totally fine.
But every time I go into all-white or nearly-all-white social space now, it reminds me both of the lived experiences of my childhood, including the intense sense of social isolation and of differentness I experienced, and of why I chose to push myself into racial diversity and representation as soon as I could, as a young adult, and why I’ve now been living in vibrant racial diversity and representation in a major city for the majority of my adult years. Growing up in near-total whiteness was devastating for me, and it took me many years to “peel the layers of the onion” and to find myself as a person of color, to “place myself” as a POC, as it were, and to center myself in an environment that worked for me.
I had deeply loving parents, but honestly, no-one knew anything during that first wave of transracial and intercountry adoption in the late 1950s and the 1960s, and there were absolutely ZERO resources for adoptive parents back then–ZERO–and those of us in that first wave, suffered as a result. My parents did an incredible job with zero resources, but still, there were negative consequences.
So my wish for the littlest transracial and intercountry adoptees is that they not have to spend several decades of their lives finding their social place in the world, that they find their identities, voices, and social spaces, as people of color, decades before I did, that they grow up to be confident young adults of color. Indeed, one large element in my sense of mission in co-founding the group Transracial Adoption Perspectives, was to influence the white adoptive parents of the second decade of the 21st century to learn about and recognize some fundamental truths about the lived experiences of transracial adoptees, in order to help those littlest adoptees, who are their children now.
My journey into wholeness, integration, and self-confidence as a person of color has literally taken me several decades. My profoundest wish for the littlest adoptees is that they not have to struggle for several decades to get to their equivalent of the place where I am now, because taking several decades is just too long a journey, honestly.
I hope that adoptive parents around the world will be able to hear this, and will be able to do what it takes to support their children on their journeys. That would be an amazing thing, truly.
In any case, thank you for reading and considering this.
A new book, Die Farbe der Zeit: Eine Längsschnittuntersuchung der Auswirkungen der internationalen Adoption in Australien is to be released in June this year.
Die Farbe der Zeit folgt den Reisen von 13 der ursprünglich 27 Mitwirkenden ab Die Farbe des Unterschieds. Wenn Sie 15 Jahre später über ihre Erfahrungen lesen, werden Sie ein besseres Verständnis dafür bekommen, wie die Adoptionsreise im Laufe der Zeit navigiert wird, wenn Adoptierte reifen und älter werden. Das Buch untersucht, ob sich die Dinge ändern, und wenn ja, wie?
Eingeschlossen in Die Farbe der Zeit ist eine neue, jüngere Generation von 15 internationalen Adoptierten, einige erst 18 Jahre alt, andere Anfang 30. Sie geben Aufschluss darüber, ob die Probleme, die sie erlebt haben, die Komplexität widerspiegeln, die von der älteren Generation in Deutschland aufgeworfen wird Die Farbe des Unterschieds. Hat die Schulpflicht für werdende Eltern etwas bewirkt? War Rassismus ein Thema im Vergleich zu denen, die in den 70er und 80er Jahren nach der Ära der White Australia Policy angesprochen wurden? Hat ein größeres Bewusstsein für die in hervorgehobenen Komplexitäten Die Farbe des Unterschieds hat etwas bewirkt?
Insgesamt das Buch Die Farbe der Zeit umfasst 28 internationale Adoptierte, die in Australien aufgewachsen sind und aus 13 Geburtsländern adoptiert wurden. Das Buch bietet eine Momentaufnahme einiger Probleme, die sich auf dem lebenslangen Weg der Adoption ergeben, die spezifisch für internationale Adoptionen sind. Diese reichen von jungen Erwachsenen, die die High School beenden, mit Identitätsproblemen ringen, suchen und wiedervereinen, durch Dating-Beziehungen navigieren, Eltern werden, sich entscheiden, Single zu bleiben, durch Beziehungen nach der Wiedervereinigung zu navigieren, Adoptiveltern oder leibliche Eltern durch das Alter zu verlieren, Traumata zu lösen oder zu lernen, damit umzugehen und langfristige psychische Gesundheitsprobleme und vieles mehr …
Die Farbe der Zeit ist ein Muss für alle, die daran interessiert sind, ein tieferes Verständnis für den lebenslangen Weg der internationalen Adoption zu erlangen, egal ob Adoptivelternteil, Adoptierter, Adoptionsfachmann oder jeder, der sich für Adoption interessiert.
Many of the book participants aim to attend and it will be a great way to celebrate this amazing milestone in recognising and recording Australia’s history in intercountry adoption. The book will be available with limited print copies and unlimited as an ebook. Details as to how to obtain a copy will be provided in the next few months.
