Etikett: trauma av avgivande

Publicerat

Kära Korea, om Mia*

*Name has been changed to protect identity

förbi kim thompson / 김종예 born in South Korea, adopted to the USA, Co-Founder of The Universal Asian

This article was written for Finding the Truth of 372 Overseas Adoptees from Korea published in Korean

Artwork: Gone But Not Forgotten by Amelia Reimer

Dear Korea,

I want to tell you all about my friend Mia, but I am limited in how I can tell you her story as she is no longer here and cannot give consent to my re-telling of what is hers and hers alone.

And so, Korea, I will tell you about my experience and observations of her and of our friendship.

Mia was a fellow adoptee and my friend. We met in your city of Seoul around 2013 or 2014. I was in my fifth year of living there. Mia was, as is the case for many adoptees in Seoul, trying to learn your language and doing various freelance jobs related to writing and teaching English, as well as working as a journalist for publications in the country she had been adopted to and raised in. She was an immensely talented writer and photographer.

Mia was quirky. For example, she loved marshmallows more than any child or adult I have ever met. She loved them to the point of ecstasy–we used to laugh at how deliriously happy it made her to roast a marshmallow on a rotating spit over hot coals where we’d previously been cooking our 양꼬치 (lamb skewers). Mia was her own unique self. When it came to your food and cafes, Mia loved everything about you, but the fact that you could get marshmallows from 다이소 made her love you even more, even if they weren’t (according to her) quite the same as she could get in the country where she’d been raised. She laughingly said it made her life with you that much easier.

Mia was funny, kind, thoughtful, and incredibly generous both with her time and money. She once hunted down and gifted my then-partner and myself with two specialty sakés from Yoshida Brewery because we had told her how much we loved the documentary The Birth of Saké. She cared deeply for others, freely and easily expressed gratitude, and was just an all-around fun person to hang out with. She had a laugh that I can still easily recall.

Mia loved the band 넬(Nell) and used to, needlessly, thank me constantly for “introducing” them to her. “They’re sooooooo good~~~” she’d earnestly exclaim when talking about an album of theirs she’d been listening to on repeat. She was an intelligent, articulate, and creative mind who had a delightful hunger for life, art, travel, new experiences, and good food… and marshmallows.

Mia also had a very deep awareness and understanding of her mental health struggles and was as proactive as one could be about working to be healthy. She sought out the professional help she needed. She used her very real diagnosed depression as a positive in that she allowed it to make her an even more empathetic being, which was so evidenced in her professional career as a journalist and how she conducted her personal relationships. Mia had lived through traumas and tragedies that are all too common for adoptees and had profound sorrows and losses.

Korea, I am writing to tell you that Mia was such a good friend to many, including myself. She was genuinely interested in and curious about the lives of those around her. When one was with Mia, one felt seen, heard, loved, and cared for.

Four years have passed since she took her life, and I still and shall always love and miss her.

Something else I can tell you, Korea, with as much certainty as possible, is that if the adoption agency through whom she was exported from knew of her suicide they would quickly blame her adopters, her circumstances, her environment, her traumas, her mental health, and Mia herself. They would never think to own their responsibility in being the root cause for all of the “reasons” for why she felt she could no longer stay in her life or this world.

Korea, chances are, the agency would tell you that while it’s an unfortunate reality that “every so often” “bad” adopters manage to get through their system–that it’s a “rarity.” They would dig their heels in, feigning willful ignorance and dismissal over the well-researched and known statistic that adoptees are four times more likely to attempt or commit suicide than non-adoptees. They would tell you that they are not to be held accountable for Mia’s mental health, and that she should have gotten the help she needed. They would say that what happened to her is too bad, and I do not doubt that they would mean it, but they would in the same breath tell you that none of this is their fault.

And yet, Korea, it was the agency that placed Mia in the family she was raised in via a system that has been empowered and enabled on both societal and governmental levels to prioritize and value financial gain over keeping children with their ummas and appas. Mia’s physical and emotional safety and support she needed were not prioritized, nor were they valued.

The responsibility for her mental and physical wellness was placed directly onto her shoulders. The responsibility for her surviving her childhood; learning how to thrive; and later, as an adult, trying to adapt to life in Korea; to explore and embrace her cultural and racial identity; to try and learn the language; and to search or not to search for her first family were also all placed directly onto her shoulders. Mia’s birthright to family, culture, and identity had been sold right from under her without her consent when she was a baby, and she was then left to pay the price for someone else’s immense financial profit.

Dear Korea, I want… I need you to know that Mia, like so many adoptees including me, had to constantly navigate statements from the agency, adopters, and non-adoptees like: “You sound so bitter and angry. You should be more grateful.” “Your life is so much better than if you’d grown up an orphan in South Korea.” “You don’t know how poor South Korea was.” “You’re so lucky to have been raised in the West. Your life is so much better.”

I need you to know… to feel… to somehow understand that no matter how emotionally or mentally strong or proactive we as adoptees are in advocating for ourselves, no matter how “perfect” some of our adoptive parents might be, these kinds of statements, which embody attitudes and perceptions of denial, dismissal, and diminishing, take a toll on our mental health. They are forms of what is now known as “gas lighting.” They can cause us to question our sanity, goodness, love, gratitude, self, and sense of worth. They make us feel like we really might be ungrateful, unloving human beings who should be good with not knowing our parents, our ancestral roots, language, or culture because: “We got to grow up in the ‘rich’ West.” These are things that no adoptee I have ever known, myself included, is truly equipped to handle, and yet the responsibility to do so, is always on us.

I think about how all of this must have worn Mia down. I think about how even though she knew on an intellectual level that her traumas were never her fault, she bore the emotional toll.

Dear Korea, when Mia took her life, your citizens did not wail aloud in the streets wearing black and white. The adoption agencies operating on your soil that to this day export children to the West for financial profit did not fall to their knees asking the gods and Mia’s soul for forgiveness. 

The ones who were wailing, the ones left falling to their knees under the gut-wrenching sorrow and ache of Mia’s suicide were and remain the same ones who also live as survivors of adoption–us adoptees. You see, when any one of our 200,000 is lost to suicide or addiction or abuse, the loss is deep and the loss is a collective and a permanent one. Four years later, and I still feel the absence of her presence not just in my life, but also in this world.

I am writing you Korea, because it is imperative that you always remember that Mia’s decision to end her life was not her fault. Yes, she made that choice at the very end, but in so many ways that choice had been made for her the day her agency got their hands on her and sold and sent her away from your shores to her adopters.

Yes, it’s true that chances are, Mia would have always struggled with aspects of her mental health even if she’d been able to grow up in the family and place that was rightfully hers. But, I am also confident in saying that her taking her life in her late 30s most likely would not have happened because she would not have had any of the traumas inflicted by coerced abandonment and adoption to carry in her heart that was too big and beautiful for this world.

When Mia died, not only did I lose a dear friend, we the collective of adoptees lost yet another of ours, and whether one can or wants to see this or not–you, my beloved South Korea, you lost a great woman, a great creative mind, a great friend, a great daughter, a great sister, a great aunt, a great partner, a great heart, and a great Korean who had all the potential to significantly contribute to the richness of your literature, arts, and culture.  

But more than anything dearest Korea, when Mia lost her life to the wounds and traumas of adoption inflicted on her by her agency, you lost one of your children.

Resurser

Intercountry Adoption and Suicide: A Scoping Review

International Conference for Verifying and Guaranteeing the Human Rights of Overseas Korean Adoptees (English – Korean translation, Research Overview of the largest study done on Korean intercountry adoptees)

Intercountry Adoptee Memorials

Research on Adoptees and Suicide

Adoptees and Suicide Risk

R U OK Day? – It’s time to talk about adoptees and attempted suicide

Publicerat

Självmord bland adopterade

förbi Hilbrand Westra, born in South Korea and adopted to the Netherlands, founder of Adoptee & Foster Care (AFC) Netherlands

ATTENTION TO SUICIDE AMONGST ADOPTEES

Five times higher than average

Hardly anyone really wants to know, and people don’t talk about it easily, let alone the adoptees’ attention when it happens. Usually the attention goes to the #adoptiveparents and the adoptees are often alone in the rain.

Last week was the book launch of adoptive mother Rini van Dam’s book #donderdagen in Sneek. Speakers’ introductions rightly focused on the author, of course, but one of the topics why the book was created was Sannison’s death. A fellow Korean adoptee who ended her life before she was 17 and her funeral service was on November five, my birthday. She had just broken up with a fellow adoptee shortly before. It was 1991, the year when association for adopted Koreans, Arierang, held its first major national meeting. The year where loves both blossomed and burst apart. The year I became aware of what and pain and sorrow lurked beneath us all.

Two years later, Julia, a Korean adoptee from Belgium who left life just before she turned 21, died and her funeral service was on 5 November, my birthday. Her adoptive parents, however, did not want adoptees at the funeral service.

A few years later, I would lose my own sister, Joo Min, while stationed as a UN soldier in Bosnia. We don’t really know why she chose to save two boys in their fall in the French Italian Alps when she must have known it would be fatal for her herself.

Yesterday, I was reminded of the above. A painful but perhaps the most necessary confrontation with my personal history to learn through this hard road that I could no longer look away from my inner development. Since then, I have been working hard for the suffering of adoptees around the world. But instead of praise and support, I received threats and angry adoptive parents in my path. Some even threatened to want to kill me. But angry adoptees and #scientists, especially from the Netherlands, also tried to take my message off the air. Until the Swedish research by Anders Hjern, Frank Lindblad, Bo Vinnerljung came out in 2002 and substantiated my experiences and suspicions.

Existential trauma to suicide shows a relationship with the tearing process created by relinquishment and #adoption. Since then, such outcomes have surfaced all over the world except in the Netherlands. The Netherlands still likes to indulge in the Walt Disney story and any contrary noise about this phenomenon is conveniently dismissed by statistical research, which, although Evidence Based accredited, manages to conveniently dismiss this issue.

Science prefers to leave the suffering of many adoptees to themselves because what doesn’t show up in the statistics doesn’t exist according to the government and adoption agencies.

Original in Dutch

AANDACHT VOOR #ZELFDODING ONDER #GEADOPTEERDEN

Vijf keer hoger dan gemiddeld

Bijna niemand wil het echt weten, en men spreekt er niet makkelijk over, laat staan dat de geadopteerden de aandacht krijgen als het gebeurt. Meestal gaat de aandacht naar de #adoptieouders en staan de geadopteerden vaak alleen in de regen.

Gisteren was de boekuitreiking van het boek #donderdagen van adoptiemoeder Rini van Dam in Sneek. De inleidingen van sprekers waren natuurlijk terecht gericht op de schrijfster, maar een van de onderwerpen waarom het boek is ontstaan is de dood van Sannison. Een mede Koreaanse geadopteerde die voor haar 17e een eind maakte aan haar leven en haar rouwdienst was op vijf november, mijn verjaardag. Ze had kort daarvoor net de prille verkering met een medegeadopteerde uitgemaakt. Het was 1991, het jaar dat vereniging voor geadopteerde Koreanen, Arierang, haar eerste grote landelijke bijeenkomst achter de rug had. Het jaar waar zowel liefdes opbloeiden, maar ook uit elkaar spatten. Het jaar dat ik mij gewaar werd welk en pijn en verdriet onder ons allen schuil ging.

Twee jaar later, overleed Julia, een Koreaanse geadopteerde uit België die net voor haar 21e het leven verliet en haar rouwdienst was op vijf november, mijn verjaardag. Haar adoptieouders echter wilden geen geadopteerden bij de rouwdienst.

Enkele jaren later zou ik mijn eigen zus, Joo Min, verliezen terwijl ik gestationeerd was als VN soldaat in Bosnië. We weten niet echt waarom ze verkoos om twee jongens in hun val in de Frans Italiaanse Alpen te redden terwijl ze geweten moet hebben dat het haar zelf noodlottig zou worden.

Gisteren werd ik aan het bovenstaande herinnerd. Een pijnlijke, maar wellicht de meest noodzakelijke confrontatie met mijn persoonlijke historie om via deze harde weg te leren dat ik niet langer weg kon kijken van mijn innerlijke ontwikkeling. Sindsdien heb ik mij hard gemaakt voor het leed van geadopteerden over de hele wereld. Maar inplaats van lof en ondersteuning ontving ik bedreigingen en boze adoptieouders op mijn pad. Sommigen dreigden mij zelfs om te willen brengen. Maar ook boze geadopteerden en #wetenschappers, vooral uit Nederland, probeerden mijn boodschap uit de lucht te halen. Totdat het Zweedse onderzoek van Anders Hjern, Frank Lindblad, Bo Vinnerljung in 2002 uitkwam en mijn ervaringen en vermoedens staafde.

Het existentiële trauma tot zelfdoding laat een relatie zien met het verscheurende proces dat ontstaat door afstand en #adoptie. Sindsdien zijn over de hele wereld dergelijke uitkomsten opgedoken behalve in Nederland. Nederland laaft zich nog graag aan het Walt Disney verhaal en elk tegengesteld geluid over dit fenomeen wordt handig weggewerkt door statistisch onderzoek, dat weliswaar Evidence Based geaccrediteerd is, maar dit onderwerp handig weet weg te werken.

De wetenschap laat het lijden van veel geadopteerden liever aan henzelf over want wat niet in de statistieken opduikt bestaat niet volgens de overheid en de hulpverlening.

Resurser

ICAVs Memorial Page with Suicide Awareness links and other resources on this topic

Publicerat

The Dehumanisation of an Adoptee

förbi Kayla Zheng adopted from China to the USA.

I would be so bold to say that the vast majority of, if not all, adoptions are the selfish act of those wanting to, or having already adopted. The result of adoption leaves the adoptee in a perpetual state of dehumanisation. If we look at the word dehumanisation defined by  the Oxford Dictionary, it means “the process of depriving a person or group of positive human qualities.” For the public and individuals who are not well versed in adoption, the adoption industrial complex, and its practices, this can be quite confusing and the representation of adoption and adoptees have, for the most part, been a glamorised sensational plot twist or form of character development. Yet, here lies one of the many ways adoptees, both on-screen and off, are dehumanised and portrayed as void of any critical thought or experience. 

Adoption, as portrayed by social media and film, consistently shows adoptive parents (who are often white) as selfless philanthropic couples whose only intentions are to dote and shower love on a poor child (who are often BIPOC), ever pushing the narrative of white saviours. The consistent and inherent goodness and altruistic nature of whiteness by default shifts both power and racial dynamics in favour of whiteness and the dependent, in need of saving, is helpless without the all-powerful and knowing whiteness bestowed onto the child of colour. When these patterns of adoption become representative and up for societal consumption, it dehumanises the adoptee to be merely a puppet without inherent positive attributes on their own. Any potential is tied and associated to the people who adopted them, leaving the adoptee as a hollow shell used to narrow in the spotlight on the adoptive parents. Through film and TV, adoption is the stripping away of an adoptee (again, predominantly BIPOC), the illumination of adoptive parents (and, again, predominately white), how can society possibly see us as humans when we live in the shadows of those who adopted us? How can we be seen with inherent potential, with the successes of our ancestors running through our blood, and dreams reflecting our truest selves when we are constantly being shown that we are nothing without adoption? That we are nothing without whiteness?

In the continual film and TV portrayal of adoption and adoptees, adoptees are always pitted against one another. When you think of some of your favourite films or characters that are adoptees, who are they? Do they happen to be Loki, Frodo Baggins, Black Widow, Batman, The Joker, Lord Voldemort? The paradox of society’s fascination and indifference for orphans is destructive, the demand for adoptees (and thus, adoption) is binary and forces adoptees to fill the dual desire to save adoptees/orphans and villainize an adoptee/orphan. The loss of biological connection and identity loss is fantasised to create a more contextualised storyline. The need for adoption to contribute trauma and fantasy for character build-up is highly sought after. This is the double dehumanisation of adoptees through film and TV.

The danger with artificial and weak backstories is that it boxes adoptees and orphans into narrow forms and compounds the stigma and expectations surrounding our existence. This forced role of villain or hero does not provide a realistic experience of cohesively incorporating mountainous rage, burdening grief, exuding joy, and love. What Hollywood and the media project of “bad” or “good” adoptees/orphans limits and strips them of their individuality, autonomy, and humanness. The “damaged and broken” adoptee or “overcomer and hero” orphan are roles that are inaccurate and are a weak reality that is far from the nuanced life an adoptee/orphan lives that requires a burden too heavy to carry. Film and TV strips away our humanity and adoptees do not get the privilege to exist as ourselves. We are only for consumption and the limited space provided for us in the binary tropes romanticises our trauma, confines our capabilities, and diminishes us to fit a consumer’s palate. We never belong to ourselves. If we cannot have ownership over our own stories and lives, are we even able to be fully human? 

In my experience, the greatest form of dehumanisation occurs for an adoptee within the church. Growing up in an all-white environment and heavily involved in a white church that preached white Christianity, I had to survive in an ecosystem of whiteness that demanded gratitude to the good white Christians who saved me from big, bad, heathen, communist China. I would find myself, more than once, being paraded around as a token of Christian and white goodness. Of how “the Lord works in miraculous ways” and gave lil ol’ me the “opportunity and privilege to be adopted by a Christian family in a Christian country where I learned about Christ.” What that told me loud and clear was that China was irredeemable unless under the power of the white Christian church or through adoption by whiteness. In other words, I did not possess inherent potential and positive traits without the white man liberating me and providing me access to success under the guidance of white Christianity. 

The dehumanisation continued, as in my early years during conferences I would be brought in front of a congregation or made to stand onstage alongside my adoptive parents, and they would discuss how adoption was a beautiful gift that touched their life. Other times, youth leaders would openly discuss how my adoption is a metaphor for how Christians are “adopted” into the family of Christ. And how my adoption gave me a new father – we have a new father through Jesus! Different variations and versions of these scenarios have plagued my youth and further trivialised my existence into a metaphor that others could benefit from. Not once did anyone question if adoption was a gift to me, if being taken away from my homeland touched my life in a beautiful way or not, or being uprooted twice before the age of three with a group of white strangers benefited me or could replace a sense of family for me.

To have your story told through a white lens as a person of colour that protects the white man while diminishing your autonomy and the multifaceted complexities of your existence, is one of the most dehumanising grievances that can happen. Adoption through mainstream media and the church gave little room for me to feel human but instead made every space feel like an advertisement that others could project their value onto, for their own benefit. Winners have the privilege to write history or speak about it on stage. Losers, those who are not given the same chance to speak their own story, those who are bought…are dehumanised. 

Kayla’s most popular articles: Decolonizing Moses & Atlanta Consequences

Publicerat

Review of Reckoning with The Primal Wound

Rebecca and Jill

Att räkna med det primära såret is an adoptee led film created by Rebecca Autumn Sansom and her natural mother Jill. Together they explore what the Primal Wound is and how it’s affected their lives.

This film is really about Rebecca’s journey of coming to terms with who she is; making sense of being adopted; understanding the deep pain and loss she’s felt in her life; exploring how it’s not just her journey but many other adoptees too; coming to terms with hearing her natural mother’s journey and understanding that this experience has universal themes.

I think it’s a fantastic exploration of the profound impacts created when separating a mother and child; hearing and seeing the lived experience from both ends – the adoptee and her natural mother. It’s also insightful in demonstrating the common reality of how adoptive parents struggle to understand the significance of, and coming to terms with, the trauma from which they’ve built their family upon. 

Often in reunion we adoptees are caught in the middle of competing emotional issues and we can sometimes shoulder too much of the responsibility of holding the space for all. I personally felt Rebecca’s film is such an empowering way to hold the space for herself and tell her story, bravo!

I love the range of experts within this documentary, especially all the lived experience and how professionals are interwoven amongst the personal stories. It’s so important to understand the huge web of interconnected people in adoption, the roles they play, how we are all impacted. It was especially poignant to see the longitudinal journey of reconnection facilitated by Jill’s social worker, who clearly cared very much.

Ultimately this film resonated with me because of its truth and validation to all adoptees who cannot just “get on with it” and act as if being separated from our natural mothers has no impact on us. Overall, the message for me rings true: that for deep healing to happen in adoption, there needs to be a profound reckoning of the impacts caused by separating a mother from the child, and acknowledgment that these are lifelong.

To learn more about the documentary, you can visit Rebecca’s hemsida.

ICAV is running adoptee online events this September where adoptees will have access to view the documentary and participate in an online group afterwards for a post film discussion.

Publicerat

Jag förlorade min mamma två gånger

förbi Linzi Ibrahim adopterad från Sri Lanka till Australien, grundare av Srilankesiska adopterade.

Jag saknar dig varje dag men mest av allt idag.
Smärtan försvinner aldrig.
Du togs ifrån mig två gånger, jag har sörjt dig två gånger.
Du levde det svåraste livet och lyckades ändå vara den mest otroliga människan.
Du var snäll, kärleksfull, rolig, självsäker och en otrolig kock!
Från det ögonblick jag kom tillbaka var du omedelbart en kärleksfull mamma mot mig, och fortsatte där vi slutade.
Jag kände att jag var hemma, jag kände mig helt avslappnad för första gången.
Amma, jag kunde se smärtan och traumat i dina ögon.
Jag vet att det var svårt att se mig och minnas alla trauman du kände för många år sedan.
Jag hade alltid känt det också.
Jag saknar dig!

Linzi och hennes Amma, född döv/stum. Linzi stals från henne och ställdes upp för adoption.

#amma #adoptröster #adopterestories #adopteremovement #srilanka #interlandadoption #interracialadoption

Publicerat

Adopted Men Only Online

förbi Niels Ernest Lam, transracially adopted in the Netherlands with African and Dutch heritage; adoption / lgbti / life coach at Simply Niels and with AFC.

At the end of March, I attended the first edition of Men Only Online. This was created by Adoptee & Foster Coaching (AFC) because more and more adopted men are open to deepening in terms of relinquishment and adoption. Olv. Hilbrand Westra (정운석) and Sandor Penninga met with a number of domestic and foreign adoptees.

I must confess that I was quite tense beforehand because until recently I have not previously talked to only men about my relinquishment and adoption. Previously, I always participated in groups that mainly include women. And I also found it exciting because because of my homosexuality I didn’t know how the group would react to it. My assumption is that women accept this easier than “real” men. However, the tension, created by myself, soon disappeared like snow through the sun. The openness and vulnerability of all the men present made me feel no less or different from the rest. My sexual orientation didn’t matter at all.

The morning flew by, a lot was discussed. There was recognition in everyone’s story. That made for the connection.

Once again, I would like to thank the men who were there for who they are. And for what they contributed to this morning.

Original post in Dutch

Door, Niels Ernest Lam

Afgelopen zaterdag was de eerste editie van Men Only Online. Dit is in het leven geroepen omdat steeds meer geadopteerde mannen openstaan voor verdieping op het gebied van afstand en adoptie. olv. Hilbrand Westra (정운석) en Sandor Penninga ging een aantal binnen- en buitenlands geadopteerde met elkaar in gesprek.

Ik moet bekennen dat ik van tevoren best gespannen was omdat ik tot voor kort niet eerder met alleen maar mannen over mijn afstand en adoptie heb gepraat. Voorheen nam ik altijd deel aan groepen waar voornamelijk vrouwen bij zitten. En ook vond ik het spannend omdat ik vanwege mijn homoseksualiteit niet wist hoe de groep erop zou reageren. Mijn aanname is dat vrouwen dit makkelijke accepteren dan ‘echte’ mannen. De spanning, door mijzelf gecreëerd, verdween echter al gauw als sneeuw door de zon. De openheid en kwetsbaarheid van alle aanwezige mannen maakten dat ik mij niet minder of anders dan de rest voelde. Mijn seksuele geaardheid speelde helemaal geen rol.

De ochtend voorbijvloog, is er veel besproken. Er was herkenning in een ieders verhaal. Dat zorgde voor de verbinding.

Ik wil nogmaals de mannen, die erbij waren, bedanken voor wie ze zijn. En voor wat ze hebben bijgedragen aan deze ochtend.

Publicerat

Adopterade behöver mentalvård

förbi Christina Soo Ja Massey, aka YooNett adopted from South Korea to the USA.

I shaved my Hair because of two Reasons:
The upcoming Scottish Mental Health and Arts Festival in May 2021.
My current state of declining Mental Health.

The Tears of Trauma I cried as a helpless Orphan in the past, I cry as an Adult throughout my entire Life.

I am an Overseas Korean Adoptee.
Adoption is Not a Happy Ever After that some may try to make believe.

A homeless Overseas Korean Adoptee, telling of an Adoptive Family that does not discuss anything to do with his Adoption and previous Background. Loosing another Overseas Korean Adoptee through Suicide. Many Overseas Korean Adoptees who have been lied to about their past, present and Future. Many Suffering further Neglect or more Abuse of all Forms at the Hands of their Adopters.
Just consider we have already experienced Traumas by loosing Birthparents in the first place.

In the 1970s and 80s Korea has been accused of child trafficking because of the increasing number of Korean Children sent Overseas for Adoption.

The Picture my Adopters received from Korea was of a Toddler with the Hair shaved off. I suffered from a rash on my head caused by Atopic Eczema. Atopic Eczema stays through out life retelling the story of every aspect of stress experienced by the Body.
So does Post Traumatic Stress.

You may think of other people famous or not who shaved their head in a state of Mental Distress. Sinead O’connor, Britney Spears, Amy Winehouse … what ever their motive.

Shaving the head is recognised as a symptoms that can occur in connection to Mental illness, but not to any specific Form of Mental Illness. Sufferers often have gone on experiencing a mental breakdown soon After, maybe in a state of Mania … An attempt to regain control or a sign of loosing control.

There are numerous social media contributions online of people shaving their Hair off during the Lockdown of this Covid-19 Pandemic.

We urgently need to address shortcomings in the Mental Health Services. We need a safe and well resourced Environment in which Mental Health Professionals can continue Working. Better access to advanced Technologies and Social Media. More Diversity. More Holistic and individual tailored Therapies. Just to list a few.

As long as Mental Health Issues are continued to be unheard and unseen, there is little hope for more resources.

Get involved and raise awareness. Thanks.

#mentalhealthawareness
#mentalhealthmatters
#mentalillness
#mentalillnessawareness
#survivor
#seeme
#arts
#artsandmentalhealth
#artsandmentalhealthfestival
#korean
#asian
#german
#asianlivesmatter
#international
#adoptee
#overseasadoption
#suicide
#atopiceczema
#orphan
#ptsd
#bpd
#severedepression
#suicidalideation
#emotionalunstablepersonalitydisorder
#ambivalentattacment
#trustissues
#svåra relationer
#våld i hemmet
#sexuella övergrepp
1TP5 Människohandel

Publicerat

Sorgen efter mamma varar för evigt

förbi Melanie Kleintz adopterad från Peru till Tyskland.

Mellan 24 december 2020 och 1 januari 2021 tog totalt 6 adopterade från Europa livet av sig, en Black Week i Europa för adopterade. Antalet orapporterade fall är definitivt högre. Alla kunde inte klargöra sitt ursprung, deras smärta var för stark och de hittade inget annat sätt att göra smärtan uthärdlig.

Det är så oändligt sorgligt, värkande och outhärdligt att höra om det. Jag har arbetat med adoptivföräldrar och blivande adoptivföräldrar i 10 år nu och har hållit föreläsningar i ämnet. Jag undviker också ganska glatt ämnet om hur nära adopterade är döden, även om jag vet bättre.

Hur många gånger under de senaste åren har jag hört att adopterade borde vara glada att de blev frälsta. Under de senaste månaderna fick en liten flicka mig att inse hur viktigt det är att arbeta med adopterade, fosterbarn och systemet runt dem. På utsidan ser allt så enkelt ut. Barnet har nya föräldrar och "är bra".

Barns smärta tillåts inte av omvärlden under en livstid. Sorgen efter deras första "mamma" varar livet ut. Barn som känner sin nyblivna mamma kan inte förstå deras smärta. Min lille son förklarade det bra igår. Dessa barn har en "tomhet i sina hjärtan och även om de skrattar är de alltid ledsna".

Det återstår fortfarande mycket pedagogiskt arbete med traumatiserade adopterade och fosterbarn. Förebyggande arbete och tjänster efter adoption är de viktigaste funktionerna för mig!

Om jag hade en önskan skulle jag önska att varje adopterad kunde klargöra sitt ursprung och att inga hinder lades i vägen. Adoptionspapperna skulle vara kompletta och adoptivföräldrarna skulle alltid erbjuda stöd i allt.

Jag är så oändligt ledsen att dessa 6 inte hittat någon annan utväg och jag hoppas bara så mycket att adopterade, adoptivföräldrar eller andra personer nära adopterade söker hjälp och stöd i ett tidigt skede.

Vi adopterade kan upprätthålla denna fråga inom våra grupper. Det "käraste" i livet togs ifrån oss och alla som inte förstår hur vi saknar vår första mamma behöver lite mer förståelse för önskan hos dem som har blivit adopterade.

Vi kan inte hindra de adopterade från att fatta sina beslut. De planerade det. Det var deras eget beslut, med hopp om att deras situation skulle vara acceptabel.

Jag känner en tysk adopterad som tog sitt liv på julen för några år sedan. Vi fick veta att han dog och oavsett var det berättades visste alla i hans ålder att han hade begått självmord. Alla visste om hans situation men ingen kunde hjälpa eftersom de inte visste hur.

Jag är så stolt över medlemmarna i mina grupper. Vi utbyter idéer, lär oss prata om sin egen adoption och stöttar varandra. De sista månaderna av 2020 kände jag en riktigt fin samhörighet i gruppen. Känslig och försiktig! Nätmötena gick på samma sätt. Det skulle jag vilja behålla och behålla.

Kära medadopterade, ni är starka och modiga människor. Jag ser fram emot nästa möte som vi kan tillbringa tillsammans.

Publicerat

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

어머니 (Mamma)

Eomeoni

förbi Michelle Y. K. Piper adopted from Sth Korea to Australia.

Artwork by Michelle Piper, 2021

Two years today, they told me you were dead.

15 years from the day I turned 18 until the day I officially began that dreaded, infuriating, dehumanising, grievous process of trying to trace you; 15 years of constant internal conflict, a fierce war raging within.

Remain loyal to the family, society, culture, and country I had been relinquished to; remain obedient to the process of forced assimilation, never questioning or asking why? (at least never out loud) and ALWAYS “grateful” for the privilege to be alive and living in one of the greatest countries in the world (Australia); continue to ignore the ever-deepening awareness of agonising turmoil and grief consuming my soul borne from the empty, rootlessness of my erased past.

Or…
Face what I have always so desperately avoided.

Questions…
All those questions.
So many, many questions.
Impossible to voice out loud even to myself in secrecy and solitude, yet impossible silence within the confined walls of my Psyche.

15 years to amass enough courage to search for you; I searched, and a year later I received “the call”. A call I’d been on constant edge waiting for, a year of repeatedly checking my emails and phone. It came from a stranger in a government office, who had only just been transferred to my case. A transfer I was neither asked nor informed about.

On the 2nd January 2019, a strange, unfamiliar voice explained who she was and why she was calling.
You were dead.
You died exactly 2 months after my 23rd Birthday.
You died on the 6th July 2009.
2009, I was 10 years too late.
My father could not or did not want to be found.
That was it.

For over 30 years, being adopted meant nothing, or at least I told myself it meant nothing. Just a word to explain away the inevitable whispers of confusion when people crossed us.
“Did they just call her mum?”, “Maybe the dad is Asian…? They don’t look like half/half’s though.”
I was used to these comments, my entire life’s been layered with racism, some out of ignorance, some without doubt intentional.
But being adopted was not something to be dwelled upon, simply a fact; accepted and acknowledged only when unavoidable.
But unavoidable became impossible.

That call, that damn call; no matter how fiercely I fought back would demolish the foundations of every wall I had established; a myriad of walls forming the incomprehensible and impenetrable maze of protection I had completely encompassed and lost myself within.

15 Years to find the courage to look for you, but a lifetime of wondering….

Was I ever in your thoughts?
Did you ever think of me?
On the day of my birth? When that inevitable date once again came full circle, a date that would forever mark each year we have spent apart.
Another year gone; another year of life missed. Another year of what has been a lifetime of separation.
Did you think of me at Christmas?
At times of family, cultural and traditional celebrations, when milestones should have been reached. When recipes, secrets, and the stories of our ancestors should have passed from Mother to Daughter.
Did you ever wonder as I do now if or how much we look and are alike?

Did the same irrevocable, emptiness, loneliness, grief, and self-loathing consume you as it has me?
…..Did I mean anything to you?

Did you, on the day you gave birth simply walk away and never look back? Erasing every memory, every moment, every emotion. Erasing me.
Did you reject me from the moment we ceased to be one, refusing to acknowledge the life you had so painfully bore into this world?
Did you even once, hold me in your arms?
Was my existence always a disgrace?
A corruption in the flow and purity of bloodlines. The product of the worst kind of offence one can commit against a culture and people whose social, ethical, political and legal systems are fundamentally embedded in the principles of Confucianism.
Was I always perceived as an abomination?
An ignominy, an abhorrent consequence of defying what is so vehemently indoctrinated in our people from birth, so fiercely prized and expected from each child from every generation.
Obedience. Respect.
Respect of your elder’s and absolute obedience in following directives. Know your place, in family, home, and society, in culture and country. Fail to comply; step outside the social norms and be condemned to a life forever tainted by shame, rejection, and dishonour.

Or, on the day you gave birth did your gaze fall upon me, desperate to memorise every detail that time would allow?
Did your arms find me, enfolding me close, tightening your embrace? Did you memorise my scent, that beautiful, sweet baby scent while your mind commenced an onslaught; vivid recollections of the 9 months passed?
The pain, terror, love, bewilderment, and confusion. The internal struggle of a decision impossible to make yet impossible to disregard.
Did your mind force upon you the memories of my first movements you felt within? Undeniable proof of the life growing inside?
Did you remember all the times you found yourself cursing me for the morning sickness, or when it became impossible to move around freely?

Did you recall all the times you had spoken to me, and soothed me? Patting your stomach and smiling with happiness and contentment when my restlessness ceased at the sound of your voice?
Did you recall all the one-sided conversations you had with me, admonishing me for your weight gain, bloated ankles, constant need to pee, and general discomfort?
Did you remember thinking none of those things mattered when you finally beheld the face of your newly born daughter in front of you?
Did you remember and retain these precious moments with as much desperation as I did the day my daughter was born?
Did I remain an only child? Or were there future children that were deemed “worthy” to keep?

You left endless questions with no definitive answers, not even in death.
The agency who sold me insist you are dead, while the government itself cannot seem to confirm this.

What am I meant to do with that? Please 어머니, tell me.

Do I hold onto hope that somehow you are still alive..?
Cling desperately to the childish, naïve dream that MAYBE, just maybe, you are?
That maybe you’re not dead, but looking for me, maybe I was one of those children never willingly relinquished.
Or take the word of the agency who trafficked me, sent me overseas and accept you are gone?

Will it ever be possible to heal if I tell myself you’re dead?
How am I supposed to mourn you?
How does one weep for a face it cannot remember?
How do I release myself of someone who, no matter how much time and distance was placed between us, is still everything I am, yet everything I don’t know?
How can I be free when your faceless form haunts my dreams? When each day I am struck by a renewed wave of painful understanding of all that has been stolen.  All that’s been lost. For all that has been erased.
For my parents who will forever remain faceless strangers, parents I will never have the opportunity to know or meet. For the brothers and sisters I will never know. For the Aunty and Uncles, the cousin’s, and grandparents.
For the history of my people, I remained so ignorant towards until now; for the heart-breaking and brutal history of our country; still at war after 70 years, divided, literally torn in two, poisoned by political corruption, military coups, and slavery. Of trafficked children, The Forgotten Generation; a generation who fought, died and rebuilt our country, now languishing in poverty pushed to the fringes of society living in isolation and squalor, afraid to ask for help for fear of “burdening” the country they fought and died to protect. For the enslaved comfort women abused, raped, tortured, and murdered by the Japanese. For the Sewol Ferry Tragedy, which began to sink on the morning of the 16th April 2014, where 304 of the 476 passengers on board, 250 of them students perished; trapped on a sinking ferry, while the captain and crew escaped, telling the passengers on board to stay where they were. Obeying their elders (that prized attribute ingrained from birth), the students placed their trust in the orders given, they remained where they were, waiting to be rescued. A rescue that was never attempted, a rescue that never came.
Parents, family, teachers, classmates and survivors alike hysterical, stranded on the shoreline, still receiving messages from the remaining students trapped inside that they were still alive in what was an almost completely submerged vessel. Parents helpless to do anything but watch as the last visible section of the ship sank in front of them.
And then nothing.
Silence, as the shock and magnitude of tragedy that had just unfolded before them set in.
A moment of disbelieving silence before the blood curdling, guttural cries only a parent who has just lost their child can make.
Footage later released, revealed to the world the last 20 minutes of some of the students trapped inside. The memories of which will haunt me forever, faces I won’t ever forget. Messages of love and apologies to loved ones, that still produce physical pain to hear.

To watch my people suffer, to die in the most horrifying ways, to feel the overwhelming outrage, and unbearable grief that has consumed our nation time and time again but to be unable to be there with them, to grieve with them; did you never consider how painful these moments would be?
Did you ever imagine how much agony it would cause just to observe my native language? When everything appears, sounds and feels so natural, until you remember, none of it makes sense to you. You can’t decipher it. You don’t understand it. You can’t speak it.
Did you ever consider just how high a price your baby girl would pay, for that “better” life you were so sure she was going to?
If you, my own Mother could not find it in yourself to raise me, whether from the shame, dishonour, or just for being a “bastard” (YES, my adoption papers actually use this word!), if you feared for me, for the prejudice, discrimination, and stigma I would have endured had we remained together in Korea, how could you think that throwing me into a world of white where I was one of maybe 5 Asians for over 18yrs of my life would be to my benefit? Did you honestly think that those of the western world wouldn’t reject me? Debase me, use my status as a Korean adoptee against me in the most humiliating and degrading ways conceivable? If you; my own mother, my own family, my people and country viewed me as nothing more than a product for export, why would anyone else?

If you did in fact die in 2009, you died at the age of 46.

I’m aware you never looked for me, never once tried to find out where I was.
And now you’re gone, (maybe), I don’t know.
The fact that I don’t know enrages me, consumes me with a desperate hopelessness and despair.
But, if you are gone…
How could you leave and never say goodbye?
How could you leave without ever reaching out, never once trying to find me?
Didn’t you care how I was or where I ended up?
How could you leave me with so many unanswered questions?
No photo for me to remember you, to study your face, to memorise.
No last parting words of wisdom or advice.
No letter of explanation.
Nothing.
Just an endless, hollow silence.

And so, inside the now grown adult, still remains, the frightened, confused, rejected, abandoned little girl, who will never grow up. Who will never know why you didn’t want her, why you didn’t keep her? What it was it you saw in her that repulsed you so much you cast her aside and across the seas; keeping the existence of the baby girl you once bore so many years ago a shameful secret, you literally took with you to your grave.

Michelle has published other articles about her experience as a Korean intercountry adoptee at Korean Quarterly.

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