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Race Matters

Well, at 27 years old, I can say quite confidently that I am:

~Possibly the world’s biggest dag;

~A confessed book nerd. I would rather spend money on books than clothes;

~A spelling nazi. I can spot a spelling mistake from a few kilometres away (well… maybe not quite that far!);

~A nerd. A nerd that would prefer to spend her Friday and Saturday nights at home feeling comfortable with a book than out on the town;

~Anti-social. I really dislike social events. Mainly ones that require being around a lot of people I don’t know;

~NOT a workaholic. I like to go home and not have to think about what I do from 9-5

…and I’m sure there are many more.

The saying “just be yourself” has become something of a cliche in our western societies. And although it has some nice connotations, it’s definitely one of those things that’s much more easily said than done. It has taken me 27 years to accept the above list of things about myself. Ten years ago, I was struggling to be something I’m just not: social, loud, attractive, popular, grammatically stupid. There’s no place more like high school that teaches you the contrary to “just be yourself”. But you know what? I have struggled to “just be myself”. And a lot of the time, that’s still not good enough for a lot of people, but I’m kind of over caring.

You know what I love about being around my Mum, Dad and sister? Is the feeling that I can just be myself. And things like my racial heritage and hobbies don’t really matter. I mean, I like having somewhat intellectual discussions about books and (stupid) people (LOL), but it’s nice to think I’m not being judged purely on those things. And that’s great. I’m sure that’s something my parents strived to achieve in having children: a place where their kids can feel accepted and loved (awww). And I’m sure many adoptive parents have this same sentiment in mind. Why wouldn’t you? But unfortunately, the outside world just isn’t this way, and it can be a bit of a contradiction to the values you’re being taught when you’re an adoptee of a different race to those around you behind closed doors.

One adoptive parent recently wrote about her frustrations with the things people say in regards to race and racial difference. It seems she got a little annoyed, saying how race shouldn’t really matter because we’re all human: why does it matter what piece of land we all come from? And that’s a nice thought and sentiment. It really is. But I think that what a lot of adoptive parents fail to realise and accept is that as much as it sucks, that’s just the way the world is. Furthermore, race does matter, and I don’t agree with telling this to children. Why? Because as soon as we walk out our front doors, we’re taught that it does matter, and we realise later on that it matters, because it makes up for a huge part of the people we are. Like it or not, race partially defines who we are as human beings. Yes, it might suck, yes it might make people uncomfortable, but it matters. Colour blindness is just that: blindness. It’s ignorance and it’s a failing to accept the world for what it is. Colour blindness doesn’t make you more moral than the person next to you who thinks otherwise. You’re not doing the world a favour by adopting a child. Adopting a child from a different country doesn’t mean you’re making some huge change to the world. Regardless of whether or not you adopt, the world is going to keep on spinning, and people are going to be just as narrow-minded as they always were.

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Speculation: What Has Adoption Given Me? What Has it Made Me?

Warning: this post is pure speculation and assumption. I haven’t done any background academic reading, nor have I even thought about this topic with other adoptees in mind. It is based purely on my own thoughts that have gone around in my head on my 3km (one way) walk to and from work everyday in the freezing cold. So excuse me if it comes off as complete and utter baloney. It could just be my brain freezing everyday. LOL.

*****

It was my birthday on Saturday. My 27th. I feel very old. LOL. But aside from feeling old, it was a nice, relaxing one, spent with my family. We had a BBQ, Robert made a honeycomb house and I got lots of books and other things. =D Despite the fact that I’m only getting older (who isn’t?), I was never one to dislike birthdays. And as a child, I never thought about my adoption or my birth mother or anything. It’s only been recently that I’ve begun to wonder: ‘hey, does my birth mother think about me on my birthday?’. As a child, my birthday was the second best day of the year. Second only to Christmas. It was a day all about me and the day that I got lots of presents and got to eat cake and feel special. I think this is what it is for many children, and in my opinion, that’s what they should be about for children: days of excitement and presents and balloons and wishes. As a child, I used to blow out my candles and wish I could fly like a bird. =P A simple, childhood wish. But there were never any about adoption or Korea. Which – I think – is a pretty good sign that my parents were doing something right.

I am usually making rather depressing and sad posts on this blog. And it’s so common for adoptees to focus on what they’ve lost by having been adopted. But I’ve been thinking about the type of person adoption has made me, as I believe it has really affected and influenced the way I think and act.

When I was a school student (at various ages), I remember watching and experiencing certain things my peers at school would do, not understand their reasons for doing such, then go home and say to my Mum: “why did such-and-such do this? Don’t they think it’s just going to… (insert-repercussions-of-actions-here)”. My Mum would answer with things like: “people don’t think. They’ll learn when they grow up“. Which is all very well. So for most of my childhood, I found myself thinking: ‘oh that’s stupid. I can’t wait ’til I’m in my 20s, ’cause then hopefully people won’t be so stupid’. (Bah. So much for that!) But ultimately, I think adoption has given me some sort of ability to think, and to think about things in a way that others don’t. I thought this was normal, but I don’t think it is, and after having read the blogs of lots of other adoptees, it seems we have this in common.

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Saints and Sinners

Adoptive parents make me frustrated. OK. Maybe that’s a bit of a generalised and unfair statement. My parents don’t make me frustrated. Nor do the adoptive parents whose blogs I read online and whom I talk with via e-mail: parents who, I can tell, are doing their darndest to learn from us adoptees and first mothers that are speaking out about our experiences and to avoid their children from experiencing certain things that some of us may have gone through earlier in our lives.

There has been much talk about this stupid book. Of which, I would argue is a waste of time and money. I don’t think biased views of adoption like this make for good entertainment or education. There are plenty of things I could say about this, much of which I’ve already mentioned on this blog before. So I won’t bother going into it all now. I think a lot of it is pretty obvious. What I want to think about right now is: why are adoptive parents who advocate so strongly for adoption made out to be heroes? And then, when we adoptees and first parents speak out about it and bring up the contentious issues in adoption, why are we made out to be horrible? Is it just that people like to turn a blind eye to the serious, less oh-you’re-so-wonderful side of it? Is it just easier to read about how adoption is “so wonderful”?

I’m not saying that adoption is all horrible. It isn’t. My life in Australia has been wonderfully fortunate, and I have a wonderful family who I love very much. I couldn’t have asked for better parents. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t more going on. Being adopted didn’t magically erase my birth mother’s existence in the world. Even if she’s passed away since I was born, she was still here. And aren’t I proof of that? Aren’t I a part of her legacy? As adoptive parents, shouldn’t you be more willing to honour our birth mothers? Afterall, they’re the ones who had us.  My parents adopted me because she couldn’t - for whatever reasons – take care of me. How is that something that can just be forgotten about?

I think Malinda said it wonderfully:

To me, “we were meant to be parent and child,” is saying that a child was meant to lose their first parents with all the pain and grief that comes with it, that the birth parents were to suffer life-long grief and loss and pain, so that the child could join its adoptive family.

To me, this isn’t some trivial part of adoption. It’s really quite serious. So why is it so easily brushed aside and ignored?

It frustrates me that our views are either ignored or brushed aside in place of stupid stories like that new book that’s been published. Shouldn’t new adoptive parents want to hear our sides? If you’re a parent, shouldn’t you want to learn so you can bring your child up as best as you can? Having my voice silenced in place of that of inexperienced, ignorant adoptive parents makes me feel extremely insignificant. It only encourages the ideal that we adoptees are only things: commodities that can be bought for the happiness of stupid people. And furthermore, where does that leave our birth mothers who brought us into the world in the first place?

Why is it that when people adopt, they automatically think they’re experts? The guy who wrote that book has an adopted daughter who’s seven. Now… correct me if I’m wrong, but seven isn’t exactly old. When I was seven I was playing with My Little Ponies, watching cartoons, dressing up. I was nowhere near being an adult, and I was completely dependent on my parents. Seven years isn’t a long time to have had children for. I’m about to turn 27, and I’m sure my parents are still learning things about being parents, even though their children are 27 and 24. Isn’t parenting an ongoing learning experience? What gives you the right to go preaching and spouting crap like you’re an expert when you’ve been involved in something for only a few years? Who are you to advise anyone else? What gives you the authority to tell others how it is?

As many know, I’m currently in the process of writing my own memoir. But unlike the way the above book is portrayed, I’m not writing a flowery, false, sickly sweet recount of how wonderfully magic adoption is. I’m trying to be as honest as I can be, without giving an overly biased and preachy view of something that is so much more than two dimensional.

I think it’s really unfair that natural mothers and adoptees are made out to be evil and bad, simply for speaking out about anything to do with adoption that’s not magic and pretty and ladida. Yes, it can be confronting. Yes, it can make you a bit squeamish in your seat. But how else do you learn? You don’t learn by covering your eyes and ears to truths just because they’re not precisely what you want to hear.

I’m sorry to say it (because I love my parents), but adoptive parents like that guy give adoptive parents a really bad image to those of us who actually know that adoption is so much more than happiness. And it frustrates me that they’re out there perpetuating such one-sided views on adoption. I believe that in this day and age, people should have much more knowledge about adoption, and I hate that books like this are getting published. They only communicate very wrong messages and ideals of which completely ignore the others involved with adoption. It’s so disrespectful to natural parents and it’s simply insulting and belittling to adoptees. Adoptive parents are not heroes or saints. But nor are we devils. Sure, our messages aren’t the easiest things to hear, but if the world was so simple and easy, would adoption even exist in the first place?

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Choice.

Choice. It’s a pretty small word. Only six letters. But it’s a word that comes loaded with meaning, presumption and action. It’s a word that has been sitting in the back of my mind since starting to blog about adoption. It’s an idea that also comes up regularly on other adoption blogs, whether they be of adoptees, adoptive parents or first parents. We make choices every day. For me, choice is what determines getting up at 7:30 in the morning to go to work; drinking coffee when I get to work; continuing to write my story; whether we have home cooked food for dinner, or deciding to be lazy and order in; it was deciding to marry Robert; it’s the difference between buying or not buying those $500 boots in the window of my favourite boutique… etc etc. These all seem like quite obvious things: things we take for granted in western societies.

Choice plays a huge role in adoption, and I think it’s something that everyone knows is there, but no one really wants to talk about. It’s easier not to think about choice because not thinking about it can make the present easier to deal with.

I think what many people fail to realise is that there are different types of choices. Some of which are luxuries; not available to others in other places. Particular choices are like luxury items. My iPhone 4, MacBook Pro, 50″ TV,  ever-growing collection of books etc etc are luxury items that came from luxury choices. And I love that about my life. I love being 20-something. I love being at the stage where I’m old enough to make my own decisions. I’ve said this many times, but I was a pretty awful teenager. And part of what made me frustrated, as I remember it, was “not being able to do what I wanted”: not having the choice to come home when I wanted or go where I wanted, when I wanted. As a child, they were, of course, things my parents decided for me, regardless of whether I liked it or not. As children, we often don’t have the luxury of those choices, because it’s our parents’ duty to look out for us. Or so we like to think. The items I listed above are the results of my having the choice to purchase stuff that I don’t necessarily need. I didn’t need an iPhone 4. I’ll admit that. Even without a mobile phone, I’m sure I’d likely be surviving similarly to how I am now. I’d still be living in a wealthy part of Sydney, going to work each day, etc. Owning an iPhone 4 is not something that determines my survival in this world.

When it comes to adoption, there are different types of choices that I see get argued back and forth. I think it’s something that’s included in arguments, and probably will be ’til the end of time in the adoption world. Mei-Ling made a post here about whether or not her birth mother had a choice in giving her up. And until very recently, I had a bit of hatred toward my birth mother, because I always felt that she chose to get rid of me. (That’s got nothing to do with my life here.) But having read some birth mothers’ blogs and in thinking and researching a bit more, I’ve come to this realisation about choice: that it’s nowhere near as black and white as we like to sometimes assume.

I’m going to start by saying that, as I see it, there’s a conflict between choice for adoptive parents, adoptees and birth mothers. For most adoptive parents, the choice to adopt is a luxury choice. Just like my 50″ TV, it’s a choice that was made out of want. Regardless of the reasons for doing so, people adopt for selfish reasons. Adopting a child from a foreign country is not a biological need. You do not need children to survive. For survival, we need food/drink, shelter, warmth. We do not need children. And what I think many adoptive parents fail to see is that in adopting, they were lucky in the first place to even have the choice available to them to even consider adoption. No matter how you put it, adoptive parents have benefitted from the lack of choice available to mothers in dire straits and desperate situations. Adoptive parents have taken advantage of the fact that someone else has not had the luxury to choose.

You know what I can’t stand? Is when people make their own choices in life, then proceed to whinge about how terrible their lives are. One of the most recent examples that I saw of this was someone I went to uni with on Facebook, posting about her lack of having a job since she’s been out of uni. For almost a year, she has whinged about having to “only” work as a casual teacher when she wanted to be full time. Whinge whinge whinge everyday. But a couple of months ago, I believe she got some full time work. I, along with many others proceeded to congratulate her. And I nearly blasted her a few days later when I saw her complaining about the amount of work she now had, and that school holidays should be more frequent and longer. For people like this, nothing’s ever good enough and life’s so unfair and everyone else has everything while they go with nothing. My Dad’s family does this a lot. And although we don’t see them all that often, it drives me crazy to think that here are these people who could have gone much further in life, but haven’t because their lives are “just so drastic”. They only perpetuate their own misery and quite frankly… I want nothing to do with it.

That being said, I’m not saying this is something all adoptive parents do. But I often read adoptive parents’ blogs, many of which have an abundant amount of writing about how they feel so sorry for their child’s birth family and the loss their child has to experience. Yet I can’t help but think that had they not adopted in the first place, they wouldn’t be perpetuating, encouraging and continuing adoption and the lack of choice that many women have. Of course, this is not the only reason why adoption continues (DUH), however it seems a double standard to me when people adopt, then go on and on about how terrible it is for their child to have lost their birth heritage. Do you not realise that through your choice you have only continued to take things from your child for the happiness and satisfaction of your own wants? Again, I am NOT saying that adopting is wholly wrong (heck, I actually considered adopting one day, myself, the other day). And nor do I think adoption will ever truly end. But I think people really need to think much deeper about what they’re doing by adopting. Remember: it’s a choice. It’s a luxury. And as much as I hate to think of myself as another commodity like a television, that’s, in a way, what we are. We make others happy, we’re purchased, we make money for a third party.

Adoptees had no choice in being adopted. And this is what has often frustrated me the most. Despite what I just said above, I still love my parents. I couldn’t imagine any others. But I hate that I had no choice. OK, what baby gets a choice into what family they’re born in? Why is it different for adoptees? Well, quite frankly, regardless of who my family ended up being, I didn’t choose to have my heritage stripped away from me like a layer of skin. Having my Korean-ness taken away from me was through others’ choices. And that makes me angry in some ways. I wish I’d had the luxury to choose whether or not I sacrificed a part of myself.

I’ve experienced a very love/hate attitude toward my birth mother, and it was always easier to hate her at times, because I used to say to myself that she chose to get rid of me. I even got annoyed when I read birth mothers’ blogs, saying they didn’t have the choice but to give up their children and were still living the pain from having done as such. In my view, they were no different to the people that I mentioned above: those that make a choice then continue to whinge about the repercussions of that choice. But as I’ve read more, I’ve begun to think that maybe birth mothers don’t have this choice. Maybe adoptive parents are really the only people involved in the adoption triad that have the luxury that the rest of us would have loved.

You may (like I was/still am sometimes) be inclined to say “but your mother did have the choice. She didn’t have to give you up”, but I go back to what I said earlier about survival. Keeping in mind what Korean culture was like in the 80s (and still is), what would the alternative have been for my mother (assuming that she was, in fact, just another victim of harsh Korean society)? Had she kept me, would her family have kicked her out of the family for good (AKA: something that’s terribly unimaginable for traditional Korean families and their group mentality)? Would she have been living on the streets where I only would have died? If so, wouldn’t her only other “choice” be to give me up for adoption? Sure, giving me up and living on the streets is a “choice”, but it’s not a luxury one. It’s one that comes from need and fear. It’s not a choice that’s the same as whether or not one buys the latest technology. I don’t really like saying these things, because I don’t know my mother’s story and so I can only assume based on the research I’ve done over the past years into Korean culture and listening to the stories of other adoptees and their families. It also feels like I’m making excuses for her when I still harbour some sort of resentment toward her.

I don’t like to think that I go around feeling sorry for myself. And I don’t believe I do. But I can’t get parts of myself back. Sometimes that intangible loss feels as though I walk around without a physical limb. And what annoys me even further is that people think they can tell us adoptees that what we’ve lost in being adopted isn’t as bad as how our lives “could have been” had we not been as such. This often comes from white-privileged individuals: people who have become so accustomed to their luxurious choices in life, they think they can assume what it’s like to be in an adoptee’s shoes. But honestly: who are people in those positions to decide? Who are they to choose how we should and shouldn’t feel? Who are they to tell us such? Hence… who are Caucasian people to adopt us? Who are they to come along and take a child out of their home? What has decided this? Is it the fact that they had the choice in the first place? If they hadn’t had the choice; if all birth mothers had kept their babies, they would have been the ones without the choice. What is it about choice that gives power over others? Just because you have the freedom to choose something, why does that give you the right to impose on another’s life? Hmm…

Choice is a big thing. And like I said, it’s an idea that’s been sitting in the back of my head, simmering away. It plays a huge role in adoption when we don’t even really know it. Sometimes I wonder whether I’m the huge control freak that I am because I hated not having a choice about my identity when I was a baby. I’m a tad obsessed with the idea that I have to control my own life. When I was a child I used to think ‘I’m destined to be the way I am. I should have been white’, but now I just try to deal with my circumstances and do the best I can with them and make the choices that I have now. (Hopefully) without regret.

Anywho, it’s lunchtime! And it’s a beautiful day outside. I could probably write a whole lot more, but I think I’ll go sit outside with a book and my phone and my music.

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Fitting In: A Place All Us Adoptees Want to Be

I was recently asked what I thought/think about this video. It’s about three Indian American adoptees who go back to India for the first time since they were born and adopted to the US. (There’s also an article here for anyone who can’t be bothered watching the whole thing.) I had a few thoughts while watching this documentary, and I thought that what stands out quite a lot to me, as an adoptee, is the simple fact that most of us transracial adoptees “simply” want somewhere we can truly belong, because I think that’s – ultimately – a human need that many people seem to take for granted. Whether we’re Korean, Indian, Chinese, Australian… whatever, we all want/need to feel that we truly belong somewhere, and adoptees often go without that. Yes, of course we feel like we belong with our adoptive families and those that love us, but really… love cannot make up for the feeling of truly belonging somewhere; to something.

So I’m going to attempt to go through this doco and write my thoughts here. I’m not sure how far I’ll get, but we’ll see. LOL.

At the beginning, one of the adoptive mothers of one of the adoptees says:

I don’t think of Kaylan as Indian at all. I just think of her as my daughter. I don’t think of the colour difference… I don’t know how she sees herself.

I think a lot of adoptive parents are like this: colourblind. And it seems they consider this to be a positive trait. It almost seems as if it’s like justification in their actions of adopting. And I know my own family is also this way. My sister has said many times that she doesn’t see me as Korean. She just sees me as her sister. And although I know she means well, I think this attitude – from parents – only poses a “danger” to adoptees. Colour blindness ends up in ignorance of the things adoptees and children of colour go through in the wider world. It means that you’re not only blind to your child’s differences, it also means you’re blind to the experiences their differences make them targets for.

(In a less serious way, this has to be mentioned. LOL) Anisha (what a gorgeous name) says:

I love Indian food. If I could eat Indian food all the time, I would.

For what it’s worth, I feel the same way about Korean food. LOL. Not sure if that’s genetic or not, but there’s just something so familiar and homely about Korean food…

I think a lot of things are demonstrated through these three adoptees. The second one says:

I know I’m not supposed to be here, but I am, so I may as well… live it up.

I’ve sometimes thought this way: that there’s nothing I can really do about the empty feelings that come with being adopted, so I should just make the most of what I have in Australia, without Korea or any connection to it, other than my external appearance that I can’t change (not without a lot of money and a lot of plastic, anyway). But there’s a sadness that comes with thinking this way about life. It kind of feels like saying: “well, I have no hope of getting back that part of me that’s lost to adoption, so I’ll just make do with what I have”. It’s a sort of defeatist way of thinking, but the alternative poses so many challenges. Challenges that mean changing a part of who I already am, risking a part of who I am now to chase down something that may not even be possible. And could prove to only be a huge waste of time. It also means confronting things about ourselves that may be scary and may only oppose that which we’ve already learned and experienced. In one word: scary.

Anisha goes on to say:

I think I stand out really bad(ly). I’m really conscious of how I look. …if I walk into the grocery store, people look at me before they look at my Mum.

I think all of us adoptees are conscious of this. How can we not be? Others have communicated, through their accusatory looks, that we’re different to those around us.

Lizzie says:

I see myself as white. But I’m not as materialistic as a lot of Americans are.

I found this quote kind of interesting. I feel the same. That’s not to say that all non-adopted Aussies are materialistic. But I think being adopted gives you something else to think about. While others are thinking about the next pair of shoes they want to buy, we’re thinking about how we can go into that shoe store and not be looked at strangely when we want a gorgeous pair of shoe wear just as much as our blonde friends.

As stupid and as obvious as this may sound, the main difference I see between myself and the adoptees in this doco are the countries we come from. These girls go back to India and see a massive country full of poverty. As far as I know, my going back to Korea later this year is going to be very different. I doubt I’m going to see much poverty, but one of the most high-tech cities in the world, with internet that my husband only yearns for. As much as I know that Korea may have been just a little different 30 years ago, it would almost be easier to go back to my birth country and see poverty: people living in the streets with little access to basic needs. It would easily show reason as to why I may have been given up. But to see both wealth and luxury is going to be a tad difficult, and I’m almost afraid of how vulnerable and sick I may feel for a while… and I know I’m going to have to continuously remind myself that I, in all likelihood, was given up because of cultural necessities… not so much financial reasons… My birth mother is one of six. It’s likely her family isn’t living on the street…

The adoptees go on to say:

You’re seeing someone that you could have been…

But it makes you feel really isolated, too. I don’t fit in anywhere… I can’t fit in at home, and I can’t fit in here. It’s sad, because I had this picture of “I’m going to get over there and I’m going to feel like I’m part of something again… and you get here and you’re still isolated… you’re still treated different(ly).

…there’s some stuff mentioned about belief… but I think that’s worthy of a whole blog post on its own…

The cutest thing about the featured adoptees on this documentary is the friendship they make with one another. They even say:

We need to go make our own country of adopted Indian kids…!

It’s kind of testament to what I said here about wanting to start my own adoptee country: because we have identity experiences and understandings in common the way people of their nations have: that Koreans have with one another. They have common understandings of their culture, language, heritage… things we adoptees can’t share. But that absence is shared with other adoptees… I, too, wish I could start my own country with other adoptees and have others that have some deep, inherent understanding of my identity and my life.

Truthfully, there is probably a lot more I could say about this little documentary. And I probably will make that post about cultural beliefs and their place with me and adoptees. But I haven’t got the time right now. Ultimately, yes, I think adoptees have similarities, no matter what country we come from. We especially have the similarity of just wanting to belong and be with people that are like us: the main thing many of us grow up without. But I also feel that this is one of quite a few of these documentaries that seem to get made quite a lot, nowadays. There weren’t any real surprises or anything unexpected, and the main thing I saw was the differences between India and Korea. So although I can relate to what the girls go through as adoptees, I can’t really relate to who they are, racially when they go back to their country of birth. Yes, I’m sure I’ll go to Korea and feel just as isolated as I am here (maybe even more so), but I also think there are things (understandings and beliefs) that come from individual cultures… just another complexity that comes with the adoption cycle and experience.

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Protected: Childhood Memories Part 1.5

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Childhood Memories Part I

I have been quite absent from this blog lately. Robert and I got back the other night from a small holiday and work trip (for me) in Melbourne. So I’m only just getting over feeling rather pooped. I also got up insanely early yesterday and went and waited outside the Apple store to purchase a new iPhone 4 (who needs a life, anyway? LOL). So that didn’t do much for my recovery, either. But oh well. Sometimes new, shiny things like iPhones are just too tempting. =P

*****

Anywho, I noticed the other day a few school mentionings by Melinda. And as well as her writings, writing this memoir/novel/thing (that hasn’t been touched in over a week. Not good. Not good at all) has also pulled up some memories like radishes being pulled from the ground in me. So I thought I’d make a few posts about my childhood when particular memories are brought up.

I wouldn’t say I had an unhappy childhood. Quite the contrary, really. My home/family life was one that other kids would probably envy. And Christmases and birthdays were gold. But I don’t only get the warm and fuzzies when I think back to my childhood. Like everything, it definitely wasn’t perfect. And I think school experiences had a lot to do with that imperfection. But no one has a perfect childhood, life or school experience. So why is it different for anyone that’s adopted?

I think adoption is slowly growing in awareness. Which, I guess, is a good thing. Sort of. But when I was a child, I think it was severely overlooked. School topics that are usually “simple” no-brainers became (almost) rather traumatic for me and only increased any shame I may have felt in myself and the differences I had with my family.

I trained to be a primary school teacher a couple of years ago (even though I’m not in the area anymore). And I was sad to see that the curriculum here hasn’t really changed that much since I was five years old. As part of my prac (while I was still a uni student), I had to teach a unit of work on family to kindergarten students, and it still made me wince. Thankfully, all the kids in that particular class were all “of” their natural families, and none of them seemed to have any issues at explaining where their families originated from in the world. But I know that had I been in that situation when I was their age, I would have been devastated.

“Family” seems like a pretty basic, regular topic for young children at school. I mean, it’s pretty relevant. It’s a natural part of understanding themselves, so why shouldn’t it be a part of the school curriculum? It plays a pretty large part in NSW’s (and probably the rest of Australia’s) syllabus. I think it’s the teachers, though, that need to be the people who facilitate their students’ learning in this area. I think there are lots of teachers that approach this subject with little sensitivity, assuming that it’s obvious, so “all” kids need to do is get up and talk about their families. It should be a cinch, right?

But as the world goes on, I think this is a subject that should have more awareness around it. Adoptees are not the only kids now who live in “unconventional” families. And we shouldn’t really assume anymore that we’re all of the “normal” nuclear family, y’know, with a mother, father and siblings.

I – like many children – had to endure the “studying” of our families and origins. I don’t think there have been many other times in which I’ve felt more uncomfortable as those moments when I was sitting on the classroom floor, listening to my teacher/s talk about origin and relatives. I remember wanting to just sink into a hole and die, while other kids around me eagerly raised their hands to tell the class about how they were born in Sydney and their Mums had them at such-and-such a time of the day; how they look like their Dads, but not their Mums; how their siblings both have blonde hair; how their parents cook food from their cultural heritages… bla bla bla bla bla. Now maybe I could have been the only one in the class, but it’s obvious that teachers bring up this topic with little consideration into any other kids that might be anything but “normal”. And what better way of making those kids feel even more ashamed of themselves than by focusing so heavily on the “normal”? (Whatever that is.) Seriously… isn’t that the last thing that children should feel: weird? The odd one out? Not normal? Not like everyone else?

Things might be different now. Sure. Sure, I don’t like it when people assume things of me, or overlook things of me and my experiences as an adopted person, but I’m also 26 (27 in a couple of weeks). I’m not five. And isn’t that young age the one that adults are meant to look out for? There’s such a huge uproar nowadays about paedophilia and child abuse. And I’m not saying that adoption comes anywhere near those things, but shouldn’t teachers and most adults that have anything to do with kids, be a little more sensitive to those that may not be the stereotypical?

Honestly, I think my heart would break to know that a child I had (or was in my care as a teacher) had felt as though they just wanted to shrivel up and die simply from being at school: a place where they’re meant to feel safe, welcome and a valued member of the class community. Why should we feel condemned at such a young age simply from having been adopted? Sure, you may read this and think: ‘what’s the big deal? It’s just learning about family’, but when you’re five, six, seven… it’s a huge deal. It’s a huge deal to realise that you’re not like those around you and that there’s something different about you. Something that makes you almost less of a person than them. Why should school make us wonder what others have that we don’t? Like I’ve said a lot on here, realisations around adoption come surprisingly easy to children. I had these feelings and realisations at ages where parents like to think their kids are just having a great time. Instead, I was going to school everyday hating it because there was nowhere else that said to me: “there’s something wrong with you”. Is that how children are meant to feel? Obviously, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with me now… but that’s come from a whole life of a lot of thinking, wondering and experiencing: stuff that’s been overly time consuming.

Here are some thoughts that used run through my mind regularly when I was a primary school child:

~’What can I say today that will make people think I’m just like them? What can I say that will make up for the fact that I don’t look like my family?’

~’Maybe if I just sit over here, people won’t see me and they won’t ask things… but then I’ll be a loner and I’ll be made fun of, and then people will say things even more. What can I do to fit in? To be popular so people don’t ask me things?’

~’If I went to a different school to my sister, people wouldn’t ask/assume things.’

~’If I only wasn’t Asian, I wouldn’t have any problems.’

~’I wish I had white skin so I could do the family unit without any problems.’

~’What’s a good reason as to why I can’t bring in anything to do with my family?’

…and the list goes on.

Reading these, it would seem as though I’m overtly ashamed of my family. But I think ultimately, it was about being ashamed of myself. Because I was the one that was different: I was the one that stood out like a sore thumb. I was the one that needed “fixing”. Asian. Korean. Adopted. Three things I hated so much as a child. Because it was these three things that made me stand out, when all I wanted was to be like everyone else around me. At home and at school. School, because that’s where people didn’t know me, and it’s where they judged and assumed things of me: made me different and weird.

Like I said, teachers need to have more sensitivity toward their students, even when they think that a topic they’re teaching seems somewhat simple and trivial. I hated school all the way along. And I often wondered why/how there were people that actually liked it. But thinking back to my earliest school days, it’s not really hard to see why…

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Pretending to be Something You’re Not: Is that what Adoptees are Doing?

Well, thanks to Mei Ling and John Raible, I’ll still be making public posts here. So a big thank you to the both of you.

*****

I’ve been having a conversation on this post with Amy about drawing the line when it comes to adoptive parents being involved with their child/ren’s natural heritage/s and culture/s. In the past, I’ve sometimes advised adoptive parents (who come to me and ask what they could do for their children) that a good thing for them is to actually be interested in the culture/s their children come from. This does not necessarily mean always eating the food and adorning their homes with excessive amounts of decoration. It just means doing smallish things on a regular basis: things that make your child’s heritage part of their everyday lives and something they don’t really have to feel ashamed of. But in doing that, how much is too much? And in thinking about that, I kind of wonder: should both sides be doing the adopting and the adapting? I said to Amy that had my parents learned Korean with me and had a large invested interest in Korea, I believe there would have been times that it would have come off as “fake”; as potentially looking like they were trying to be something they’re not. And what sort of example is that setting for any child, adopted or not?

But then… when you think about it, what’s the difference between parents “pretending” to be a part of their child’s culture and adoptees? I’ve advised people not to go too over the top with their child’s culture/s because it’s not what they are, themselves. My parents aren’t Korean, so I probably would have thought it rather silly, as a child, for them to pretend to be so. Where do you draw the line? I may sit here and say that parents shouldn’t immerse themselves too much in their child’s culture and heritage because they also don’t want to forget about their own. But what about the adoptee? In being adopted, are we only “pretending” to be something we’re just… not? What’s pretend and what’s real?

We, as human beings, are the ones that have given ourselves labels. We label ourselves “Australian”, “Korean”, “American”, “Chinese”. They’re just labels. But what does it really mean to be one of those things? For my 26 (27 in a month. Eek!), I have called myself (mostly) “Australian”. Because I speak English, mate; because it’s the only country and culture I remember; because I have an Australian family… because I’ve lived an “Australian” life! These are characteristics of the label “Australian”, yet I still have things about me that fit into the “Korean” category: I look Korean; I was born in Korea; anyone I have a biological link to is Korean. So going by that, I guess I’m… Korean and Australian?

Another thing I’ve said here before is something that’s said in Adopted the movie. That: “when you adopt a child of colour you become a family of colour”. And I still agree with this. Insofar as my own identity. But what about the identities of everyone else in the family? If they adopt a Korean child, does that make them partially Korean, too? I’m Australian because it’s the life I’ve lived, it’s what is written on my pieces of paper. But I’m also Korean. I still identify myself as somewhat Korean. And I’ll never escape that because of the way I look and because of where I was born. It’s something I can’t change. But if adopting makes the family a family of colour, where are the lines drawn for individuals and their own identities? Does adopting not only mess with the identity of the adoptee, but everyone else, too? If you adopt and your life becomes one that embraces your child’s culture and heritage, wouldn’t that make you just a little bit Korean?

If you adopt a child from Korea (for the sake of naming a country), and you choose to embrace the Korean culture even just a little bit, as a part of your life, what does that mean? It means that now you have a Korean member of your family; it means you now live a slightly Korean lifestyle. If you’re learning the language, it means that one day you might be able to/can speak to other Korean people. Aren’t these things all things that make me both Australian and Korean? So doesn’t it go for the parents as well? Are adoptees really the only ones that are adapting? Is it the parents who are also adopted? If they’re living part of their child’s culture and heritage, why is that “pretend”?

I have no idea what I hoped to achieve by writing this post. It seems this topic has no end. It can just go forever and probably has a thousand different points of view. Perhaps it could be subjective and dependent on each individual family? I don’t know. But to any adoptive parents out there: what do you think? How do you feel? Do you consider yourself to be a part of whatever nationality it is that you’ve adopted into your family? Or do you just feel that it’s your child that has any real link to their heritage? What about other children? Do you think it affects them at all?

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