Etikett: letar efter familj

Publicerat

Reunification with my Colombian Family

by Anonymous, adopted from Colombia to Australia

I was born in Cali, Colombia in 1993 during the midst period of civil war, disruption, political instability known as ‘la Violencia’. This period saw the degradation and exploitation of state civil services through corruption, war and systematic racism, which in turn resulted in tremendous damage to the lives, human rights and cultural heritage of millions of Colombians, Afro-Colombian and Indigenous Colombians whom who were displaced from their tradition lands an often subject to violence and systematic oppression.  As a result of these circumstances and internal corruption within the adoption industry, I was separated from my biological mother and adopted to Australia at the age of one. I have a close but complex relationship my adoptive family.

Growing up, I loved to be outside and activate like most Aussie kids at the time and spent most of my time, fishing, kicking the footy around, and riding bikes around the neighbourhood with friends.

While I was always social and enjoyed making friends, I also struggled with bullying, racism, and the spectre of isolation/identity crisis/lack of racial mirrors that many of us adoptees experience.  I fondly remember finding refuge and solace in books, stories, myths, and legends, everything ranging from magical fantasies like Harry Potter and the Homer’s Iliad to biographies and the encyclopedia on the Fall of Rome.

I distinctly recall being in grade 1 and recall reading Harry Potter and afterward, daydreaming about an imaginary time when my biological family would appear in a fireplace one day, tell me I was a wizard and take me off to enrol at Hogwarts with the other Wizards.

As a child, although I recall some intense moments of isolation and loneliness, I also had a close relationship with my younger brother, immediate and extended family who always made me feel welcome and as part of the family. It is only as I entered by teenage and adult years that these relationships began to shift and change, not as a result of any ill intent but largely due to the development of my own awareness about my place in the world (or lack thereof) as a black Afro-Colombian/Afro-Australian and subsequent experiences with racism and micro-aggressions.

This tumultuous but unique start to life, in conjunction, with the lived experience of navigating the word though the lens of an Afro-Colombian/Afro-Australia male, has aided in the development of a nuanced but balanced understanding of cultural, adoption and racial politics of today’s multicultural Australia.

This lived experience, is further supplemented by an academic background in law, investigations, government, politics and international relations, the pursuit of which in retrospect and with the aid of therapy, was both my innate curiosity to learn more about the world, a desire to effect change, and my inner child seeking validation and identity through achievements.

It was during this period, that I spent a year studying and playing college basketball at Oxford Brookes University, United Kingdom. Not whole lot of studying was done and the academic transcript upon return was not great but I can honestly say this was one of the best years of my life. I say this, as it was the first time in my life where I was not the only person of colour but also the first time in 21 years that I was around racial mirrors and a large Afro British/West African community. I think, in only my second week, I joined both the African and Latin American societies and immediately felt welcomed and at home.

Fast forward to 2022 and that sample feeling of what it was like to belong, in conjunction with the covid pandemic and the BLM movement, I was motivated to start to take some concrete steps to look into my own background and search for my biological family in Colombia. I really started to ‘come out of the adoptee fog’ as we tend to call it.

I joined a number of extremely welcoming and supportive online adoptee support and re-unification groups and through one of these groups, I was fortunate to connect with an extremely kind and amazing Colombian adoptee who explained further the history of illicit adoptions in Colombia and how and what documents I would need to start my search.

I diligently followed the advice provided and unearthed the limited documents I had (a birth certificate, a few medical records, abandonment certificate and adoption paperwork) and wrote a short blurb about myself with some baby and current photos. I then posted to range of reunification groups both here and in Colombia.

I was sceptical that anything would come of it especially knowing the current social and political climate of Colombia both now and at the time of my birth. I had grieved and accepted that I would most likely never find my biological family or that that they would be deceased.

Despite those initial reservations, approximately 24 hours after I had posted the search, I woke up to hundreds of messages on Facebook from people all around Colombia (nurses, doctors, private investigators and ordinary people ) offering to help or sending pictures of profiles of people who fit the description based on the information I had provided.

One of the groups who reached out was Plan Angel (an adoptee led organisation that specialise in biological reunification in Colombia). They sent through Facebook the profile of a lady with the same name as the woman listed on my birth certificate. Funnily enough, this happened to be a profile I had come across in my own searches but had discounted it as the date of birth did not match my birth certificate.

Plan Angel explained they had been contacted ‘by a lady, who knew a lady, who use to baby sit children that looked like you’ and asked whether I ‘would like them to make further enquires to confirm’. With my heart in chest, I replied, ‘Of course!’ 8 or so hours later, Plan Angel called at 7am in the morning saying, ‘We have confirmed that it is your biological mother, would you like to arrange a time to speak to her’. I calmly replied yes, expecting that this  meeting would occur in few days, weeks or months but to my great surprise, the lady pressed a button and in a little box at the top of my cracked iphone and for the first time in 30 years, I saw the face of  my mother, this illusive woman  whose face and personality I had imagined since as long I could remembered; a woman and a queen who had generously carried me around for 9 months and made me 50% of who I am. I think in that moment, even if it was for a split second, I felt at peace and knew what it was to truly have a point of reference for identity and place in this world.

As soon as we saw each other, we burst out in tears because we knew.  Looking back, I can honestly say this was a call that changed my life, as  I went from not knowing my place in the world,  feeling culturally isolated  and from a close loving but small two  sibling family, to 25 minutes later being the 3rd oldest in a crazy Afro-Colombian family of 13 and finally understanding and having a sense of culturally finding home and place! Here, I was not only  accepted for who I was, but I was celebrated.

Since that day, life and process of navigating the reunion process has been one wild, humbling, joyous, sad, grief filled, soothing yet erratic adventure that has really felt like the screenplay to a classic Latin telenovela. It has an unpredictable mix of horror, happiness, scandal, secrecy, crime, horror, drama, pain, love and family all mixed together.

A big part of what made this journey possible and survivable, has been the ongoing support, guidance, mentoring, exchange of shared experiences, friendship, healing education and community offered/provided by Lynelle and other adoptees through ICAV, Plan Angel as well as the wider adoptee community. It is my hope, that by sharing my tale, I am able to pay it forward, raise awareness around the realities of adoption (the need for improved support services), hopefully provide guidance and a relatable perspective to other intercountry adoptees both in general and for those who are thinking about reunification.

Click here to RSVP to ICAVs upcoming webinar on Reunion and Beyond:

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ICAVs webinar on Searching in Intercountry Adoption

Publicerat

Searching for my family in the Philippines

Följande bloggserie kommer att tillägnas vår Söker i Intercountry Adoption serier. Dessa individuella berättelser delas från vår Perspektivpapper som också delades med våra Webbseminarium, Searching in Intercountry Adoption by Adoptee Experts..

förbi Desiree Maru, born in the Philippines, raised in the USA

I was born in destitute poverty in the Philippines in 1985 and hence relinquished to an adoption agency on the day that I was born. I was taken care of at Asilo de la Milagrosa, in the care of Catholic nuns who were social workers at the time, and adopted via Holt International to the USA when I was about two years old. I did not know my adoptive parents, nor did they come out to the Philippines to get to know me. My name legally changed, and I was flown from an airplane and delivered to Caucasian strangers that were my legally binding family.

I grew up in Wisconsin, in the Midwest, and had an adopted brother, who was two years older than me, who was also adopted from the Philippines, from a different orphanage. We grew up not being taught about the Philippines. We grew up with a lack of pride or understanding of our home culture, heritage, customs and language. Instead we were heavily assimilated into the Western culture; we were asked a few times about our culture from our adoptive parents but it wasn’t enough support to keep us connected to our home traditions. 

Barriers included a lack of being informed from our adoptive parents about our homeland, ancestry and we also lacked emotional-psychological support for intercountry adoptees in the Midwest at the time. I vaguely remember a time when my adoptive mother sat me down in the living room, back in Wisconsin, she told me I was adopted, and I said, “I know,” and walked out of the living room. I went back to my bedroom to be by myself. That’s the tone of my childhood, where I was showing like I didn’t care when in fact, the whole experience was difficult for me. But I didn’t know how to reach out or talk about it to anybody.

My brother had a lot of issues and we moved to Arizona in high school to try to start over as a family. This is a time when my adoptive mother came into my bedroom and showed me my biological papers. She said she had to wait until I was 18 to give these to me, but I was close enough to the age, or something along those lines. She left, and I looked at them and I cried. I saw the name of my birth mother, and I longed to know more about her. 

I imagined my birth mother a lot in those days. I wrote poetry, and it was never enough to fill the gap and missing pieces of my heart. 

Obstacles in searching at the time was that my biological papers, which had been established by social workers in the Philippines, didn’t preserve much of any functional information for independently searching for family members or family history. These biological papers lacked any kind of suitable, identifiable information that preserved in any way my heritage and family tree information, which would be necessary to piece together my past without needing the very individuals to re-establish the knowledge of my heritage. 

My biological papers revealed next to nothing about my father, which later on, I would find that the information that was volunteered by my birth mother was also false. But as a teenager, when all I have are these old, governmentally-certified papers from my home country, that’s all that I had. So these old-fashioned, brittle documents were my only hope, which were papers that scarcely were able to certify my birth on thin, fragile paper. I had a feeding schedule from my orphanage and a mighty, descriptive report of what I looked like and acted like as a vulnerable baby in the orphanage. And that was all I had of my entire past. These artefacts showed I was just a product of the adoption process. 

I finally decided to pursue a reunion when I was in my mid-twenties. I discovered that Holt International actually had a search and reunion department, so I emailed them, and started the process. They reached out to my old orphanage, Asilo de la Milagrosa, and the kind social workers there had found my files. They also went themselves to the address of my birth mother, and thankfully, she still lived there. From that point, they coordinated with her.

I planned a trip to the Philippines with barely enough funds to cover this at the time. It was difficult because my adoptive mother wasn’t supportive at all, and nobody from my adoptive family supported me either. But in a few months, I was able to create an itinerary. I was to leave Seattle, to the Philippines, and I was given a place to stay with the Intercountry Adoption Board of the Philippines, and later, Asilo de la Milegrosa had guest quarters too. 

The cost of a reunion is plenty. The cost of travel is hefty. But the main cost to consider is the toll of what you’re undergoing psychologically and emotionally. You’ve spent all your life fabricating an identity away from this place, and now you’re returning, and you’re having to break out of that safety net to acknowledge and face parts of your past that had been concealed all this time. So it is disruptive to the security in our lives. It is a risk one takes as well, because you don’t know the results, and how you’ll process the experience post-reunion either. 

The outcome of this search was that I was unknowingly able to have a reunion granted for me, with my birth mother and half-birth brother, due to all of these circumstances leading up to this being uniquely favourable and available to me at the time. 

My reunion was in 2012, and it is now 2023 and I’m living on my own in Indiana. My adopted brother recently passed away last year, homeless on the streets of the Philippines, in 2022. He lacked much needed support throughout his whole life, which will always weigh on me, and I miss him everyday. I don’t talk with my adoptive family anymore, although I had kept in touch with my adoptive parents and grandparents mainly. I just have one surviving adoptive grandfather now as well, so life has changed even in their circumstances. 

After experiencing the whole search and reunion process, I do have my own perspectives to share. I think what is needed is that every adoption company and governmental organisation should have a search and reunion department for all adoptees to utilise.

Every adoption agency and birth country of an orphaned or vulnerable child should be collecting all of their biographical information including family trees and family members, so that they can have the knowledge of their past to utilise for their own personal purposes. Adoptees should have a right to have their family history preserved and safeguarded, administratively. Their biographical information, including birth information and birth records, needs to be preserved as best as possible, and social workers should make sure that all information is accurate and not in fact made up. 

This biographical information is what holds the last of an adoptee’s own cultural identity and historical background, and even medically, this is paramount. This information could give a sense of security and psychological support if anything, which could save society a lot of issues in the long run. It would hold well in the search and reunion process because the more information adoptees are given, the more options adoptees have for meeting or getting to know their home countries in ways that are comfortable for them.

Supportive resources include the adoption agencies free search and reunion administrative support, biological paper filing and holding for the adoptee; it is giving an adoptee full access to their records at any time as well. Intercountry adoption boards or agencies of the home country, and the orphanage that the adoptee was cared for at, all need to be officially accountable. They all need to have proper records of the vulnerable child, and proper process and procedures for the search and reunion. Support should be accessible on a regular basis. 

There should be rapid communication readily available for adoptees today such as having proper email addresses, current phone numbers and customer service at hand. Support should be granted such as places to stay when the adoptee visits the home country and on a reunion; they should be informed of the reunion process, given counselling support, translator support, and if someone can document the reunion for the adoptee, that could help too. 

Now in 2023, after all these years of living life, pursuing therapies, working and becoming the owner of my own life, I’ve decided to start a new chapter of my search and reunion by requesting a MyHeritage DNA Kit for starting an initial search for biological relatives, and to also learn about my DNA heritage, and where I come from. This DNA kit was free due to the program in place recently, which was why I’d participated in requesting this kit. 

The difference in this is that before, I would say, I experienced more of a direct line to my poverty-stricken past at Asilo de la Milagrosa, where in my mid-twenties, I met my birth mother and half birth-brother in 2012. Now, it is simply nice to search in a more discovery-toned, self-paced way, versus having to respond to a critical need to grasp the truth of what happened to me as a vulnerable baby and understand why my mother gave me up when I was born.

In this DNA search, I don’t have to ask too many hard questions, although even to this day, some questions can still linger in my mind from time to time: Why didn’t my biological family contact me all this time? Why wasn’t I able to mend the fabric of my biological family history at a certain point in my life? And, why did my past have to be such a void? 

Härnäst: Searching for my family in Sri Lanka

Resurser

Sökning och återförening inom internationell adoption

Publicerat

Webinarium för att söka i Intercountry Adoption by Adoptee Experts

On 23 April 2023, ICAV ran a panel webinar to bring you the expertise of our Search professionals around the world, sharing their best words of wisdom for what to consider when undergoing searching in intercountry adoption. They directly represented adoptee organisations from Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, Sth Korea, Haiti, Colombia and Greece.

Watch the webinar here:
Obs! Om du tittar i Chrome klickar du på knappen Läs mer för att titta på videon

Timecode

For those who are time poor and want to skip to the sections that are relevant, here is a timecode to assist:

00:20 Intro, Welcome, Purpose
04:30 Intro of panelists
04:39 Marcia Engel
06:48 Rebecca Payot
09:29 Jonas Desír
10:25 Linda Carol Trotter
12:55 Kayla Curtis
15:22 Hilbrand Westra
17:44 Benoît Vermeerbergen
21:00 Celin Fässler

Questions / Answers

23:28 What does the general search process involve? – Kayla
27:30 What should adoptees to do prepare? – Linda, Marcia
35:51 What are some of the outcomes? – Jonas, Kayla, Linda
46:50 Some possible barriers to expect? – Rebecca, Linda
56:51 What ethics to consider? – Marcia, Kayla
1:06:40 What should a search cost? – Rebecca, Linda, Celin
1:11:46 Who to trust? Hilbrand, Jonas
1:16:16 What issues to consider in DNA testing? – Benoît
1:19:18 What outcomes can result with DNA testing? – Benoît
1:20:40 What DNA tests do you recommend? Benoït, Marcia
1:23:51 What are the advantages of using an adoptee led search org? – Celin, Marcia
1:28:28 What was involved in becoming a trusted Government funded search org? – Celin
1:30:36 What is needed most from Governments to help adoptees in our searching? – Hilbrand, Marcia

Summary of Key Messages

Klick här for a pdf of our Key Messages from each panelist

Resurser

Huge thanks to the 26 adoptees who wanted to share their experiences of searching so that others can gain a deeper understanding. They represent experiences of 13 birth countries (China, Colombia, India, Malaysia, Morocco, Peru, Philippines, Romania, Russia, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam), sent to 9 adoptive countries (Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Scotland, Sweden, UK, USA).

ICAVs newest Perspective Paper on Söker i Intercountry Adoption

For more resources, see our Searching & Reunion page

Publicerat

Vietnamesiska adopterade bror och syster hittar varandra genom DNA

Mikati is a fellow Vietnamese adoptee raised in Belgium, who joined the ICAV network some years ago, wanting to connect to those who understood the complexities of this lifelong journey. I’m honoured to be a part of her life and she told me the amazing news recently of finding and reuniting with her biological brother Georges who was also adopted, but to France. Neither knew of the other until their DNA matches showed up. Together, Mikati and Georges have shared with me their thoughts about finding each other and searching now for their Vietnamese family. Since sharing this and having their news go viral in Vietnamese media, they are currently awaiting news that they have possibly found their mother. Incredible what can be achieved these days with DNA technology and social media! Here is their story as reunited brother and sister.

About Your Life

Georges

I’ve been adopted in 1996 by French parents and my Vietnamese name is Trương Vanlam. I live in Noisy-le-Grand, a little Parisian suburb near the river Marne. I happily live with my cat and girlfriend.  

My life in France (childhood to present) meant I’ve grown up in the countryside surrounded by medieval castles, fields and forests. It has not always been easy to be different in a place where Asian people were very rare to encounter. I was a shy kid but I was happy to have the love of my adoptive family and some friends. Later, I studied in Paris, a pluri-ethnic place with a lot of people from different origins. I have an interest in arts like theatre and cinema and I’ve started to develop short films with my friends. I am not shy anymore but creative and more confident.  

My adoptive parents were very happy to see me for Christmas. They are retired and they don’t leave their village very often like before. They try to help me as much as they can and are happy about my reconnection to my new found sister, Mikati. I trust and respect my adoptive parents and they trust me and respect me equally.  

I teach cinema, video editing and graphics with Adobe suite to adults and teens. I’m making videos and one day, I hope to become a movie director.  

Mikati

I was born in 1994 and adopted to Belgium in June 1995 at 7 months of age. I currently live in Kortrijk in West-Flanders, Belgium. My childhood was in Anzegem, not so far from Kortrijk.

I have been able to develop and grow up in Belgium. I have some dear friends. I have a nice job. Over the years I have made beautiful trips in and out of Europe and met many people. I have done two studies – orthopedagogy and social work. Here I learned how important human, children’s and women’s rights are. I have been working for a non-profit organization for years. I follow up families in socially vulnerable situations and connect them with a student who is studying at the college or university. I did not study to be a teacher, but it is true that I do train students about how they can work with vulnerable families, how they can reflect on their actions, etc.

My childhood wasn’t all that fantastic. As an intercountry adoptee, I grew up in a white environment. That environment had little respect for my original roots. Sometimes I would walk down the street and hear racial slurs from people I didn’t know. As much as I tried to assimilate, I didn’t forget my roots.

My Vietnamese name is Pham Thi Hoa Sen which says a lot about what my life has been like. I grew up to turn out beautiful but I grew up in mud just like a lotus flower. A thorough screening could have prevented a lot. My adoptive parents are not bad people and they did their best, but they underestimated the care needed for children adopted internationally. My adoptive mother already had two children from a previous marriage that she was no longer allowed to see. She was mentally unable to raise children. My adoptive parents are burdened by trauma that they have not worked through. At that time there was also little to no psychological support and guidance for adoptive parents. It was very difficult growing up with them. It is by seeking help for myself and talking to people about it, that I am more aware of life. Just because you mean well and have good intentions does not mean that you are acting right.

About Your Reunion

Georges

It has been surreal, like a dream and a little bit frightening to be found by my sister because all my beliefs about my personal history are now unsure. The first days, I remember repeating again and again, “I’ve got an elder sister, I’ve got an elder sister”. Then we started to talk and get to know each other more and it became more real. Now I’m very happy and proud to have Mikati as my sister. It’s very strange because even though we met only two weeks ago, I feel like I have know her for a long time. For me, it’s a new step in my life, the beginning of a journey where I will connect more with her, with Vietnam, where we will try to discover our family story, I hope.  

Mikati is a strong and caring woman who is always trying to help others despite having encountered many difficulties in her life. She’s very passionate, clever, funny and above all I respect and admire the person she is. We like to discuss many things from important subjects like international adoptions and smaller subjects like the life of our respective cats or tv series or why Belgians are so proud to eat French fries with mayonnaise. I don’t know why but I’ve quickly felt a connection with her. It could be because of our shared DNA but I think it’s more probably because she is fundamentally fantastic as a person. I like to tease her a little sometime and she’s very patient with me and my jokes! We’ve got our differences of course, but siblings always have differences. I’m very glad to have her in my life.  

Mikati

1.5 years ago I decided to take a DNA test through MyHeritage (a commercial DNA-kit). To get a bit of an indication of where my roots come from. Through the result I got a little more information about ethnicity and I saw distant relatives. It was cool to know something because I know very little about my roots. I hadn’t looked at MyHeritage in a long time until early December 2022. I have no idea why exactly as I didn’t even get a notification. To my surprise, I saw that I had a new match. It wasn’t just any distant relative, it was my brother! He lived in a neighbouring country, France!

You have to know that I just woke up when I looked at my mobile phone, so I immediately sent a message to some close friends and my guidance counsellor at the Descent Center. I wanted to know if I was dreaming. Finally I got the confirmation from the experts at the Descent Center that my DNA result were real and we share over 2500 centimorgans! That means he is not half but rather, a full brother.

I was so happy! So many emotions raced through my body that day. I saw a lot of people who were also adopted at an event that day. Most of them were a great support. Most were as happy and moved as I was. A minority reacted rather short, jealous or gave unsolicited advice about anything and everything. I also understand their feelings. It is an exceptional situation that triggers many emotions. Those emotions of others made it sometimes overwhelming for me.

I contacted Georges through Facebook. I wondered if he had already seen it. When he didn’t reply, a friend gave me his LinkedIn profile that had his email address on it. I felt like a little stalker but I decided to send him an email as well. I sent him a little text and gave him the option to get in touch if he wanted to. When he answered, he introduced himself and asked a few questions. The contact was open, enthusiastic and friendly. So we are very sure of the DNA match, but some mysteries soon surfaced quickly during the first conversation. We told each other what name we got on our adoption papers. Our last names are different. I see on my adoption papers that I have the same last name as my mother. Maybe he has the father’s last name? Georges has not yet properly looked at his adoption papers, so there are still pieces of the puzzle missing.

I am happy when I connect with my brother. The contact feels so natural! We talk and joke like we have known each other for years. We both got a little emotional when we talked about our childhood but also realised how close geographically we grew up. Georges is barely 14 months younger than me. Did the orphanage ever talk to my adoptive parents and suggest taking Georges too? So that we could grow up together? What would my adoptive parents do in such a situation? With a reunion, the search for one’s identity is not over. In fact, it has opened up many more questions!

About your biological family in Vietnam     

Georges

My determination to find my family in Vietnam has increased since I met my elder sister but I’ve always been curious to find more information about my biological mother and father. Growing up as an adopted child, I grew up with a perpetual mystery about my origins. It defines me, marking me forever because I’m always facing the fear of being rejected again . Like many adoptees, I grew up with this explanation: “Your first parents left you because of their poverty.” This is speculation which may be true or not and we do not know until the facts are gathered. I feel no anger about that but I want to know the real motives, the real story from their point of view. Was it their decision or not….?

Mikati is really passionate and determined in this search and about our story and she told me about the real problems caused by some organisations which have seen international adoption as a business in the 1990s. I did research to gather information based on official and independent reports from the press and UNICEF and I talked to adopted people who have been in our orphanage. I’m worried about some testimonies, about the lack of transparency in the adoption process and to adoptive parents, adopted children and biological parents and now I want to be sure if our parents gave their consent or not. I’m also determined to discover this truth and to show our journey through a documentary in order give more information about what could have been problematic in international adoption in the 1990s to year 2000. I’m not alone in this quest ,my elder sister is with me and I’m with her.  

I’ve never had the opportunity to return to Vietnam yet but it is something I hope to do in the near future. I’m sure it won’t be only for fun and tourism!

You can follow Georges at Facebook, LinkedIn eller Youtube.

Mikati

I have my reasons for wanting to find my parents. Under Article 7 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the child has a right to information about his or her parentage. It is also fundamental in human beings to know where they come from. As long as I don’t know the story about my biological parents, I can’t be mad. I really wonder what their
story is. I know it’s going to be hard to search. I know that commercial DNA testing is less used in Vietnam. Papers and names were sometimes forged. I don’t know if my mom actually came from My Tho. Is her name really Tuyet Mai? Right now I’m looking at it mostly inquisitively and with compassion. I want to look at the bigger picture. Why is it that parents are faced with the decision to give up a child? How can a system support parents so that such things do not have to happen again?

Recently a Vietnamese woman contacted me on social media. She told me why she had given up her child in the same orphanage as Georges and I. It has not been easy for her to find out where her child went and she continues to search for her child, even if it was more than 20 years ago. She is still saddened by the situation. If anyone can help us broaden this search, please see här.

I have lost contact with my adoptive parents, so they know nothing about my search. I’m sure my adoptive mother would have disapproved.

It would be nice if we find our parents, but we’ll see. I am very grateful for Phuc who has offered to help us search. He seems very nice. I hear from other adoptees that he is friendly and reliable. I also read articles about him and it’s unbelievable what he does to bring families together! I would find it courageous if families dare to come out for what was difficult in the past and why they gave up their child. By telling their story as biological parents, even if they feel ashamed, our society can learn and improve the future.

There are adoptees whose biological parents thought their baby was stillborn but it was actually sold for adoption. If that’s the case with our parents, they don’t even know we are alive. Our story can be everything. It’s hard to know what our case was.

I have so many unanswered questions and I would like to know my family’s story.

If I were to see my biological mother again, the first thing I would tell her is that I would like to get to know her and listen to her story.

Vietnam will always be special to me, even though I didn’t grow up there. I was 9 years old when I went back with my adoptive parents and my sister (non biological) who is also adopted. We went from North to South. Even though my adoptive mother was negative about Vietnam, she couldn’t ruin it for me. The food, the smiling people, the chaos in Ho Chi Minh and the nature in smaller villages have stayed with me. Now I’m reading more about Vietnam and talking more to Vietnamese people. I am saving up to travel to Vietnam again. Maybe alone, maybe with friends or maybe with Georges. We’ll see. But I certainly will go back and learn more about my beautiful country.

You can follow Mikati and her journey at Facebook eller Instagram.

To read Mikati and Georges’ story as published in the Vietnam media, click här and the English translation här.

Publicerat

Sökning och återförening inom internationell adoption

Search & Reunion: Impacts & Outcomes

In 2016, ICAV compiled a world’s first resource of our lived experience voices sharing the ups and downs of searching and reunions, specific to intercountry adoption. No such resource existed like this before and yet, as adoptees, one of our hugest challenges across our lifespan, is contemplating if we want to search, what’s involved, and figuring out how to go about it. I wanted to provide a way to address these questions so I asked ICAV adoptees to share their experiences, focusing on lessons learnt after looking back in hindsight. I also asked them to share what could be done by authorities and organisations to better support us in our search and reunion process. I published our perspective paper in english and french and it ended up being a 101 page paper (book) covering the experiences of adoptees from 14 birth countries, adopted to 10 adoptive countries.

Given one of the core topics for discussion at the recent Hague Special Commission is Post Adoption Support, I felt that it was timely to re-share our paper and provide a summary of what it captures for those who don’t have time to read the 101 pages and for the benefit of Central Authorities and Post Adoption organisations to learn from our experiences.

Summary of key themes from ‘Search and Reunion: Impacts and Outcomes’ by InterCountry Adoptee Voices (ICAV) 2016

Issues and challenges faced using tracing services:

  • The need for specialised counselling is a recurring theme throughout most stories, particularly to prepare adoptees for the first meeting, delivered from someone who understood and specialises in intercountry adoption
  • Searches are often conducted through social network sites that can leave adoptees can vulnerable and not properly supported to engage with birth families
  • Privacy issues and barriers
  • The need for access to birth records to help with birth reconnection
  • Several cases mentioned issues with passport and visas
  • Adoption agency would not disclose identifying information about their birth family due to privacy
  • Transparency of services and where to access them
  • Assumption that birth records are accurate, despite corruption
  • The sense of ‘rebuilding your history’
  • Challenging to maintain a relationship with birth family due to language and cultural barriers
  • Need more standardised laws  and processes for adoption agencies to follow when adoptees are seeking their information
  • Laws passed to allow adoptees access to their files
  • More support is needed for adoptees in counselling, and translation when searching
  • Facilitated counselling service that assisted with the search and reunion process from beginning to end
  • Listing of adoptees as mentors who have been through the process
  • Stories of adoptee searches and their reconciliation of those searches would provide emotional support to other adoptees thinking of beginning their own search

Suggestions for improved support for adult adoptees when searching for birth families:

  • Documentation is the key and open adoption is the best way to lend support
  • The need for interactive support groups and to know where to find them
  • A comprehensive education for adoptive parents to help them manage the lifelong issues for adoptees, and affordable counselling for all parties in the adoption process, and particularly to have access to this support regardless of the stage of the adoption process
  • Having a social worker ‘check in’ on people who are adopted throughout their lives
  • Maintenance of a database to allow the search to be conducted with access into other databases such as births, adoptions, deaths and marriages in each country
  • Some adoptees want adoptive families to have mandatory training that helps them manage adoptee issues up to the age of 18 – education in language, culture history, the importance of having all the documents, the value in making regular visits together to the country of origin
  • Include adoptee DNA testing done, Y or N on the adoption file

Key quotations from adoptees about their experience of reunification:

“Adoption is a life long journey and even to this day I have fresh revelations of my adoption. The “general” impact has been one of profound empowerment which arose from great anguish.”

“Although I had a session with a very good psychologist before my reunion, I still feel there was so much more I should have been made aware of. I wish I had been directed to other adoptees willing to share their experience of their reunion with tips, advice and support.”

“It was devastating for me to realise my birth family are basically strangers and if I wanted a relationship with them, I would have to sacrifice the life I built after they rejected me and re-alter the identity I have struggled to develop, just to fit into their expectations.”

“The biggest obstacles for search and reunion in my experience have included:

Being a ‘tourist’ in my country of birth. I found it surprisingly confronting and difficult to have people of the same nationality assume I was one of them and then having to explain my adopted situation.

Post reunion i.e., working through the consequences of opening the door to the past – it is irreversible! I should have been better prepared and better supported for the post reunion aspects and consequences.”

“It took many years to properly come to terms and to get my head around my adoption after reunion. It has undoubtedly affected my identity and the course of my life for the best. My adoption has become something I have grown to appreciate and evolve with. Learning my life should have ended before I was even born, has made me incredibly grateful and motivated to do something with my life.”

“Primal wounding when separated from mothers is exacerbated by the mystery of unanswered questions.”

To read the full ICAV Perspective Paper: Search & Reunion – Impacts & Outcomes in English or French, see our collection of Perspective Papers.

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Grekisk intercountry Adoptee Advocacy

Logo of the organisation, The Eftychia Project for Greek Intercountry Adoptees

As one of the earliest cohorts of intercountry adoptees, the Greek intercountry adoptee community is represented by the amazing work that Linda Carrol Forrest Trotter does under her organisation The Eftychia Project. I’ve been connecting with Linda over the past 5 years and I love what she has done in advocacy to bring her community to the attention of the Greek government. It’s wonderful when adoptees advocate for themselves!

This was one of the meetings Linda had with the Greek government late last year. Apologies for posting so late but it’s helpful for other adoptee groups and leaders to see what some adoptee leaders are doing around the world to advocate for their community.

Here is Linda’s formal letter which she provided to the Greek government at her meeting. Thanks for sharing Linda!

Excellent work and let’s hope the Greek government steps up and provides much needed supports, services, and rights to the Greek adoptee community which are requested in Linda’s letter. These right and requests need to be recognised as basic essentials to be provided from every country that we are adopted from.

For more on Adoptee Advocacy, see ICAVs extensive list of blogs on some of the work we’ve done around the world.

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The Complexities of Adoption

förbi 백현숙 (Baek Hyun Sook) adopted from South Korea to Belgium.

My siblings and I

11 January 1984

There we were, 38 years ago! 3 small Koreans with a backpack – where the first stone was thrown in, not yet realising that the backpack would be filled with a lot of questions, insecurities, and a mess of feelings!

Every year again, around the time of January 11, I am overcome by a lot of emotions.

I’m trying to feel what my sisters felt then, how other fellow mourners felt. As a 1 year old, I can’t remember anything of this. But I can imagine how terrifying and traumatic this must have been for other adoptees who were older.

But too often adoption is considered a beautiful thing, a happiness, new opportunities. And it’s too often forgotten what this means for the adoptees themselves. For me, this became a long hard quest for why? Who am I? And it has severely damaged my self-esteem and confidence. I can say this has made an impact on my entire life.

Finding my Korean parents 5 years ago has changed nothing. Learning that my parents didn’t know anything about our adoption and the impact it has on them for the rest of their lives, gives me an even more restless feeling. Not only in terms of my adoption story but also in terms of many of my peers who are still looking. The realisation that many of my fellow adoptees had a similar story. Realising that often we have a not-so-kosher start to adoption. However, I’m also happy and grateful that I had the opportunity to grow up with my 2 sisters who are my support!

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A Picture Conveys a Thousand Emotions

förbi Sara Jones/Yoon Hyun Kyung, adopted from South Korea to the USA.

I have no photos of myself before I was 3 years old.  I have a few photos after that age taken at the orphanage.  Staff members took photos of children to send to sponsors or potential adoptive parents. In one of the photos, I am wearing a Korean hanbok but I am not smiling in any of the photos at the orphanage.

One of my orphanage photos

A few months ago, I came across a photo (not one of mine) that literally made me feel like I had been thrown back in time. The photo was taken in 1954 at a well. The well has high cement walls and a pulley system.  Rusted metal drums sit nearby.  Two young boys are drawing water while a little girl stands near them. The 1954 photo helped me visualize what life might have been like for me in Jeonju, South Korea. 

Here’s what I see when I looked at that 1954 photo:  I see an older brother, about 8 years old, a younger brother almost 6 years old, and their little sister who is 2 years old. They are poor, but don’t really know anything different. They live with their grandmother and father in a rural village in South Korea. Their father is the oldest of several children and some of their aunts and uncles are still quite young. They are all struggling through the economic disruption that has happened in their country. Their father worked in manual labor and was injured. So the boys help their father and keep watch of their little sister. The little sister is used to staying near her brothers. Sometimes the children go to day care and the boys sneak the little sister extra corn snacks. Her brothers are her protectors.

The children don’t know that their father is making an excruciating decision. Their father can no longer provide for them and thinks his only choice is to send them to the children’s welfare center. The little girl has no idea that she will be separated from her father or even from her brothers. The children also don’t know that their father will soon take them to a well and give them each a tattoo on their arm, using a needle, ink and thread. He is worried he will never see his children again. In the 1954 photo, the children are just siblings, sent to the well for the day’s water.

The children might have wondered why their father was taking them to the well the day he gave them their tattoos. The oldest son cries as his father gives him the tattoo. As the father gives his oldest son his tattoo, he says to him, “I will come back for you.” Before the father gives his little baby daughter her tattoo, he hugged her.

It’s been a long 3 years since I met my Korean birth family. The distance from the U.S. to South Korea feels longer and harder with the pandemic. The language barrier weighs on me constantly. How will I ever communicate with them?  

Some things need no words. Like this moment 3 years ago of my Korean family and I at the well in Jeonju, where my father gave us our tattoos. Watch the video här.

To listen to more of Sara sharing, watch her Ted talk här which has over 2m views
Read Sara’s other ICAV post Adoptionssagan

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Adopterad till Spanien

förbi Andrea Pelaez Castro adopted from Colombia to Spain. Andrea has written a masters thesis that investigates adoptions in Spain with a focus on how to prevent adoption rupture/breakdowns. You can follow her blogspot Adoption Dekonstruktion.

INTERNATIONAL ADOPTION IN SPAIN: DECONSTRUCTION OF AN ANACHRONISM

Some might think how lucky I am because I didn’t lose my mother tongue, nor my biological sisters and the fact that we blended in with our parents. Along these years, a lot of people dared to tell me we should thank whoever is in charge of this world that we weren’t on the streets drugging or prostituting ourselves. It was my parents who put that idea in our soft brains in the first place. Those words marked my entire childhood, but I’ve always felt something was wrong. I didn’t felt grateful for all those things I was supposed to be. On the contrary, I kept asking myself why we were in country that wasn’t our own, why we were treated so different from others kids, and why we couldn’t claim our mother (something we stopped doing because of the punishment we received). This constant fight between what I was supposed to feel and what I felt turned out to be, was the longest period of hatred and low self-esteem that I’ve ever experienced. I couldn’t bear the anger and loneliness that comes with what I was told: my mother abandoned us because she didn’t love us. Repeated word after word like a mantra, I embraced that idea in order to survive and be accepted. However, being conscious of the situation I was living, I eventually reached the turning point when I left the nest.

My life was about to change again thanks to my determination to know the truth, frightening as it might be. In 2015, I lived in London for a year, my first independent experience which allowed me to think about my origins and my mother. When I came back to Spain, my adoptive country, I decided to start my journey along with my professional career as a lawyer. As a way to understand why I hold myself back for so many years and why my parents didn’t want to speak about adoption, I began my studies on Family and Children Law in Barcelona. I devoured every book and article about adoption, emotional regulation, relinquishment, trauma, ADHD, attachment disorder and first families that landed on my hands. I became a sponge absorbing every bit of knowledge that could help me to comprehend this exchange of children happening all over the world. I named my final thesis “Adoption in Spain: assessment and support to prevent disruption”. Finally, a critical thinking about adoption emerged to answer all my questions related to my parents and the way I was educated.

When we arrived to Madrid, Spain, after the long trip from Colombia, I marvelled at the big city, our new home and the kindness of those strangers. What I never could have imagined was the solitude and lack of acceptance of the people that were supposed to care about us. What I am about to tell I’ve never shared before (besides my chosen family). Our first ten years with our parents can be summed up with one word: isolation. We only knew physical and emotional pain, treated as if we were savages or from ‘la guerrilla’ (FARC members), insults they used to call us. With constant threats of being relinquished again and reminding us about their regrets for adoption. The entire building heard our crying and screams. We told some adults, but everyone looked the other way. This abuse upon our bodies and minds left us hopeless and developed into an attachment disorder, afraid of physical contact but longing for any kind of sign of love.

Isolation by George Papadimitriou

We could only understand what was happening being young adults. We aimed for their recognition of the trauma they caused, trying to comprehend why they didn’t reach for help or psychological aid. Still, I made an effort after I finished and shared my thesis with them so they could understand about international adoption and the effects of the affective bond broken in the first place. But every attempt was in vain. In that moment I perceived the causes of their own distress and grief, such as their unfinished mourning of infertility or the absence of care and attachment from their own families. They were raised under violence and depriving circumstances, therefore that’s the only kind of love we knew from them. However, even being aware of this, I didn’t quite accept the current situation and I persisted in fixing my family, longing for a tie that never existed.

While I specialised in children, family law and adoption, I started to peel the first layer: looking for my origins and my mother. For this purpose, the main step was to educate myself and deconstruct why I ended up here. I was adopted in Spain where adoption is a legal construct that is meant to protect children who have no families or when their relatives cannot provide for them, but I figured out that instead, adoption is preserving others’ privileges and interests, inherited from favoured families thanks to colonialism and Catholicism. The first stirrings of adoption occurred after the civil war in 1936-1939, leaving the defeated side subjugated under a dictatorship, which ruled the country until 1975. We all know this period as the time of ‘bebes robados’ (stolen babies). The opposing families were diminished and punished by the government, sending men and women to prison and taking every child they could to place them in ‘suitable’ homes. This undertaking was possible due to the collaboration between the dictatorship itself and the Catholic Church. Hospital personnel and maternity residences (run by nuns) were connected and instructed to register and hand over the babies, previous payments were made by the priest of the village or the district. This vast network kept going until the 90s. Associations estimate 300,000 babies were abducted in 1940-1990 in Spain after Justice was served for the first time in 2018. Most of those adults and their mothers who claimed their rights weren’t able to know the truth considering those crimes were historic and there was no one alive to take responsibility nor documents to prove it.

From this perspective and the generalised conception of nuclear family (one mother-one father), but also a restricted moral view that encourages sexism and undermines single motherhood, the adoption was and has been assimilated as the biological filiation. I’ve heard so many times one phrase from people who want to adopt: ‘Why must we get an assessment of our abilities as parents and yet a 17 year old girl doesn’t need it in order to be pregnant?’ There is another one that arises: ‘What if the child comes with issues?’ And the gold mine: ‘Shouldn’t international adoption be permitted without restrictions? Those children need to be saved’. These statements are from common people, well-educated, with economic and even emotional resources. Despite these sentiments, there is so much to be taught and learnt about adoption and adoptees. Our voices and stories must be heard so we are no longer represented as ‘forever a child’, which prevents us from acknowledging our experience as a life long journey.

I would like to address and comment on those phrases:

  • First of all, privileges from prosperous countries and poverty or lack of resources from first families are the reason why someone can afford to raise an adopted child. Therefore, if impoverished countries could receive those funds set aside for an adoption, children could be raised by their parents and would stay in their communities. In addition, when a child is born from others parents the affective bond doesn’t grow magically or in the same conditions as a biological one because his/her roots are stated, so prospective parents will always need to learn from scratch what is to grow without knowing our beginning.
  • Adoption comes from trauma, considering the emotional wound left and carried within ourselves, caused by deprivation from the primal protection, nourishment and affection of our mother and sometimes caretakers in orphanages/institutions or foster homes. Mainly, the issue is not the child, but the adult that wants to adopt thinking about himself, concerning how things or events would effect on one when the purpose is no other but the person separated from their origin. We are not meant to be suitable for adoptive families, it is meant to be the other way around.
  •  Finally, but not less important, international adoption is a veiled and corrupt purchase and we do not need to be rescued from our birthplace. Our families could have less or be in a temporary crisis, but it shouldn’t mean these circumstances may be used as an advantage by privileged families. It is a widely-known vicious circle, where a child can be taken by authorities or abducted by organisations. There are stories where even a poor family could have received threats and/or money in order to give up their child so others can be fed. I insist, those resources could be exactly the required aid, but still white saviours and the colonialist debt find their way out. It is a burden our countries keep suffering. As well, international adoption creates a psychological shock and sorrow. It means our pain and grief are only moved to another place, which are not accepted because those feelings have been denied in our adoptive countries since ‘we have been saved and thus we must be eternally grateful’.

In Spain, and other countries, sometimes people who approach adoption as a way to form a family do not realise and/or aren’t even interested in deconstructing their own desires and the consequences. Yes, here we speak about adoption, there is news about it on TV, there are associations from adoptive parents and adoptees, but it is not enough. What needs to be care about is the critical view on this matter. We can no longer ignore that this system doesn’t protect children nor save them. Especially plenary adoption, which is the most outdated contract to ever exist. Yes, it is a contract where one signs and pays to give their name to a child and gain rights over another person so he or she can be raised by someone else and in another country. That being said:

WHY DO WE HAVE TO LOSE OUR FIRST FAMILY TO BE PROTECTED OR RAISED BY OTHERS? WHY MUST THE AFFECTIVE BOND BE BROKEN? WHAT IS THAT FEAR THAT PREVENTS US FROM BEING ABLE TO STAY CONNECTED WITH OUR ORIGINS?

THE AFFECTIVE BOND

International adoption is a success precisely because of this reason: people being afraid of losing someone that is not theirs to begin with. What an archaic concept! Back to the assimilation of adoption as a natural filiation. The affective bond cannot grow if our roots and our past are rejected. Still there exist a type of movie within the terror genre which speaks about this fear, where adoptive children rebel against their family or the first mother comes back to claim what is her own. Fear and rejection cannot be the seed of any family. This is the reason my thesis wasn’t quite appreciated at that time, because I addressed an important subject and pointed out a fear we were born with (not being accepted). This clean break concept within plenary adoption is outdated and must be removed from our communities. Society might not be ready to abolish this figure due to economic, fertility and mental health problems, but adoptees should not be the ones to suffer others’ choices. Adoption must come from a place of stability and acceptance of our own limitations, otherwise generations are wounded and anguish created over issues that are not our duty to fix or responsible for.

Now that I’ve found my family and I understand the circumstances that led me here, I can start my healing process, which doesn’t mean being static, but moving forward through sorrow and all kinds of grief. The next layer I’m trying to live with and didn’t accept at the end of my research is that there is no affective bond or a concept of family in my adoption. At some point I had to endure the pain that comes with it, but finally it set me free. In the words of Lynelle Long, my contract with them is over. Reading those words and relating to them at this time, is the beginning of a crucial period of my life. I highly recommend others to initiate the search of our origins, only new wisdom can be spread into ourselves, and also do not be afraid of sharing your story. Don’t deny yourself or your wounds. They are just a reminder that we are still alive and we can heal together.

THIS IS MY STORY

I’m 32 and I was adopted at age 7 years old, along my two little sisters (5 and 3 years old) by Spanish parents in 1995 in Colombia. Our Colombian mom was 20 when our Colombian father died in 1993. His death was related to a drug/paramilitary organisation. This event changed our whole life. I’ve been in these stages of grief, negation and hatred, but now I think I’m in the negotiation phase of the loss of my family, my mother and this whole different life I could have lived if things would have been distinct, even just one thing. Due to this violence, the male members of my father’s family were wiped out in case of a possible revenge. This way, my mother lost contact with his family, therefore she couldn’t take care of us while trying to provide for us. The ICBF (Colombian Central authority that protects children) found out about this situation and intervened. My Colombian mother didn’t have any economic or emotional support (at least, nobody cared enough to look for the rest of our family), so she had to make a decision with both hands tied.

Two years later, we were moved to Madrid, Spain. Our adoptive parents were old-fashioned not only in their thinking about education, but also in their emotional intelligence. They didn’t really empathise with us or accept our past and origins. As a result they wouldn’t speak about adoption. Until I flew the nest, I wasn’t able to think about my first mother or family. It was too painful and I wanted to be accepted by any means. I never felt close to my adoptive parents, but they took care of us three children and we never knew what is to be separated from each other. In 2016, I decided it was enough and I started this scary journey. My sisters never felt prepared to do it with me, but they have been by my side looking over my shoulder, and as they like to say: this is like a telenovela (soap show). However, I did my own research and became my own private investigator. I only needed our adoption file to get her ID number, and with a little help from contacts in Colombia, I found her in 2018. I wasn’t ready to make contact at the beginning, but I overcame this difficulty by writing a letter with my sisters. Then in December 2020, I got to find my father’s family on Facebook. One name was missing that my mother told me about, but it was the key to unlock what was holding me back from truly knowing my family.

Jag inser, särskilt när jag läser andra adopterades erfarenheter, hur lyckligt lottad jag har. Jag är medveten om konsekvenserna av adoption, dess trauma och sår, de ärr vi måste lära oss att leva med; dekonstruktionen av mitt ursprung och min egen personlighet, de nödvändigheter och försvar som krävs för att överleva. Hela den här processen har lärt mig något mer värdefullt som jag aldrig kunnat föreställa mig: acceptera mig själv och andra. Jag har alltid haft mina systrar med mig, som lär sig av denna tillväxt med öppna sinnen, och vet att det inte är lätt och att de inte är redo att gå igenom samma faser som jag, men de är villiga att lyssna och gå med mig som så långt de kan. Att inse och förstå att detta inte var möjligt med våra föräldrar har varit det mest smärtsamma steget, men vi har lyckats ta kontroll över våra liv och val. Nu förbereder jag mig för denna resa, fysiskt och känslomässigt. Just nu läser jag "Colombia: en kortfattad samtidshistoria" för att äntligen lära känna mitt land, som jag ignorerat i så många år. Tack vare min colombianska mamma har jag upptäckt att jag verkligen föddes i Muzo, Boyaca.

Min födelsestad, Muzo, Boyaca i Colombia

Spanska originalversionen av denna artikel här.

Publicerat

Vi är mer än siffror!

förbi Brenna Kyeong McHugh adopted from Sth Korea to the USA

Below is the documented data and information from The Ministry of Health and Welfare in Korea.

It is inaccurate and incomplete as it states that only 156,242 infants, children and adolescents were adopted from 1953 to 2004. The actual total number of adoptees from Korea since the 1950s is estimated to be 220,000 or more.

There are an estimated 15,000 Korean adoptees in Minnesota alone, including myself. The numbers are appalling. 8,680 children were adopted in 1986, myself included. Read that number again: EIGHT THOUSAND SIX HUNDRED EIGHTY. This is just the number that is documented; it is most likely much higher. 8,680 children lost their families, names, identities, language, and culture. 8,680 families were forever altered and destroyed. 8,680 of us endured irreversible trauma that we continue to work and process through as adults, granted, those of us who did not lose our lives to suicide, abuse, addiction, and other circumstances.

According to the data in the second chart, the leading reason that was documented for adoptions was listed as Abandonment. The second documented reason was Unwed Mothers. They only listed the number of male children who were adopted but not the number of female children, which we can all assume is much, much greater.

These numbers for every year since the beginning of international adoption from Korea are astronomical. The data itself indicates the systemic issues that feed the adoption industry, making it the beast it is today, including racism, White supremacy, saviorism, capitalism, ableism, poverty, socioeconomic issues, politics, etc.

Throughout my journey as an adopted person, I have been told different accounts about the first part of my life. I was first told that my name Lee Okkyeong (pronounced Yi Oak Young), was given to me by my family. Later, I was told that it was given to me when I was being processed at Eastern Social Welfare Society, the adoption agency. I was also told my date of birth was an estimate. I was initially told my mother was single and unwed and that my father was basically a dead beat who left my mother before knowing she was pregnant with me and that he couldn’t hold down a job. When I was 24 years old, I was told by the adoption agency that my mother and father had actually been married.

The beginning of my life is full of contradictions. I still don’t know my truths and I’m going to continue to assume that I never will. Being adopted and trying to piece my past together has proven to me time and time again that people in power and the system are not to be at all trusted, and are not designed or created for the us – the marginalized, the poor, and those who seek change and truth.

The adoption industry will lie, fabricate, use, exploit and destroy families in order to make profit. The adoption industry does not care about children; it only cares about money and having control and power. I realise just how unaware I was of the inequities and inequalities in adoption when I was little and how they affected me even though I couldn’t fully understand or name them.

Korean adoptees are more than these numbers. We are more than this data, and these documented statistics. We are human beings. We have histories and families. We are more than our losses, pain, and trauma. We deserve our truths. The more we adoptees share our narratives and return to Korea to search and fight for our truths and families, the more government and adoption agencies will not have any choice but to acknowledge us and what they did to us – their children.

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