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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.

(Click “read more” to read the rest of this post)

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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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“Orphan”: What is Wrong with this Word?

I was recently e-mailed by another adoptive parent, thanking me for giving my adoptee insight. Fine. That’s nice. I’m glad you can benefit from my experiences in life. She recently made a post here, talking about why people should adopt yadda yadda yadda. Despite the general point of her post, I really resent her repeated use of the word “orphan“. It makes me angry and it makes me angry on behalf of any children they may adopt. Harsh? Perhaps, but before you go commenting about how cold-hearted I may sound in saying that, I believe some people need to think about what they’re implying when they use certain words. Names are not just pretty sounding things. They are a way of identifying both ourselves and those around us. Hence the reason why many adoptees tend to go back to using their names given to them by their natural parents.

Firstly, what is so wrong with identifying a child by the term “orphan”? I’ll start by thinking about the way/s I used to identify myself as a child:

~I was Australian

~I was Korean (which I didn’t like)

~I was different from the rest of my family

~I was an adoptee (which I also didn’t like)

Aside from the first point, I didn’t really like the others. They made me feel ashamed, different, alienated. Although my parents have always referred to me as their daughter (no different to their biological daughter, my sister), I knew deep down that I still have natural parents out there somewhere. Throw in the word “orphan” by my parents, and I believe I would have felt even more shame in myself and my differences.

“Orphan” comes with negative connotations. It comes with the assumption that either:

1. Our natural parents died

or:

2. Our natural parents abandoned us: that their part in our adoption/s were wholly negative, cruel, selfish and inconsiderate of their child. Sure, that may be true in some circumstances, but my point is, you don’t know. You don’t know the stories behind birth parents. You don’t know why the child was given up. As cruel as it may seem to abandon a child, using verbs like “orphaned” implies that something unimaginably cruel was done to your child. I’m not discounting that giving a child up is cruel, in some respects. But who are you, as an adoptive parent, to judge the lives of the people you are getting a child from?

Furthermore, what sort of an image of self identity are you passing along to your child? How are you making them feel about themselves, to constantly go around saying “you’re an orphan”, “you were orphaned, so we took you in”, “your parents orphaned you” etc etc? Not only are you placing a rather negative image of them onto them, you’re building in them a negative image of their natural parents when they don’t even know their story. Don’t they deserve to have the chance at developing their own opinions, as opposed to hearing your negative terminology over and over?

I wince when I see adoptive parents using the word “orphan” so repeatedly like the above parent. It comes off as disrespectful for the child and the natural parents and puts them on a pedestal as if to say “I’m better because I have the power to take this child and make them my own. I have the money to make me look like I’m doing the world a wonderful service. Who cares whether I know the backstory or not?”. I feel for the child/ren that are adopted by people who say/imply these sorts of things, because adoptees have enough to adapt to, as it is. We don’t need to hear negative crap and negative terminology used to identify us, our backgrounds, heritage and roots as well. I feel for these adoptees and the shame they’re going to have to overcome: not only the shame that comes with being different, but the shame and further difference placed on them through the use of a “simple” word.

Would you do that to a biological child? Identify them as anything other than your child? No. Then why do it to an adoptee?

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Opposites

This week – although being tiring and long – has also been somewhat stand-out. Robert and I booked flights and accommodation for my first trip back to Korea since I was born. This brought with it (as you can imagine) an influx of emotions. A very strange combination, at that: anxiety, excitement, apprehension, nervousness, worry, anticipation, fear, trepidation, hesitation… Of course I’m looking forward to the “usual” things, like: meeting up with some friends, going to places that don’t exist in Australia, seeing the historical aspects, experiencing the world’s greatest internet, and experiencing my birth culture with my husband. However, it’s also a very scary and strange thought: to think I’ll be in the same country as my birth mother (likely) and to finally see the place of my origin. It’s funny to think that most people just take it for granted that they live in their countries of birth, but I’m only just about to go back to mine for the first time since I was born… Living the life of an adoptee really is so backwards. Which brings me to the main subject of this post…

I think this is something I’ve been trying to put into words for a while, now: the idea of opposites. It briefly came up in the comments in my last post. Like I just said, being an adoptee really is – at times – a backwards type of life. We go without things that others take for granted; we live the lives in cultures that are somewhat “opposite” to the worlds we were originally born in; and most of all, whenever someone mentions or says something about our lives, they’re treading on egg shells because there’s always an opposite side to what they’re saying. Mei Ling has a great way with words. She said:

Whenever someone says that, the opposite side of the coin is not really taken into account because then that’s like saying the child is lucky they weren’t kept by their ‘birth’ parents.

I’ve always wondered where the strange feelings come from when, even now, people say things about me, my birth parents or my adoptive parents. It feels like I’m just constantly on the cusp of saying “but…”, but I don’t know what the whole “but” is. BUT (LOL) now I think I understand: it’s because whenever something does get said, there’s always that other side that either hasn’t been considered, or doesn’t want to be considered. And being an adoptee is hard because we have to deal with both of them. We’re sort of stuck between both sides and it’s really hard to balance out the two, especially when we’re getting told by ignorant know-it-alls how we should and shouldn’t live our lives.

Sometimes life as an adoptee gets tiring. Sometimes I just wish I could throw in the towel and say: “that’s it. I’m sick of being me. I just want to be someone else for a day: just know what it’s like to not have the burden of having to balance out all these sides and invisible arguments that appear to be going on in my head and in my life. Because I just can’t do this anymore. I can’t figure out how to reconcile the clash of ‘sides’ that seem to be warring in my head and in my world”. I just want to be me without the added burden of thinking about where I come from VS who I am here. It’s just not possible.

I think that’s the “problem” I have when I read adoptive parents’ blogs. I know most of these people (not all) are just trying to do what they think is best. I know many of them (like my parents) are good people and genuinely want what’s best for their children, adopted or not. But I can’t help but sit and read them and think ‘while you’re so happy, someone else is mourning. Your child could be mourning without even knowing it’. My heart goes out to the child I once was for not being able to put those feelings into words, and I wish I could just bring everyone together into one big happy family and be… whole. But that won’t ever happen. It can’t happen. My Mum and Dad are here. They’re the people I love and care for. But my biological side is elsewhere. And my birth mother has lost all chance of ever being my “Mum”. She can’t replace my Mum (the one that’s seen me through good times and bad), but my Mum also can’t replace my birth mother: the one that brought me into the world in the first place. Where’s the middle? Where’s the happy medium? Is there such a thing?

To add to all of this, I guess that’s what I abhor about the idea of adoption classes, usually given (to make more money) by adoptive parents. As someone who’s been trained as a teacher, how can you genuinely teach someone anything without having all the knowledge behind you to teach? I feel that adoptive parents teaching from their own experiences is only passing along one side of adoption. It’s biased. Just because you’ve parented an adopted child doesn’t suddenly make you expert enough to teach and charge others money for your one experience. One experience doesn’t mean anything. Parenting and adoption aren’t about 1+1=2. It’s not that simple. You can’t teach something when you’re only coming from one side: one side of many.

In being married, one of the things that has always boggled my mind is just how different Robert and I am. We are the perfect example of opposites attract. Aside from our obvious differences in appearance, our likes and dislikes are completely opposite. Not only that, the way we do things is also completely opposite. It’s always boggled my mind and made me wonder ‘what on earth?! How did we end up together?!’. Furthermore, we were also (apparently) completely different as kids, too. While I wouldn’t move off my Mum’s lap, Robert would be the kid running around like crazy, beating up bigger kids, eating snails, climbing trees etc. He and I are just a strange phenomenon. LOL. But somehow… we work. Somehow we ended up together and (usually) get on really well and still manage to find things to do together.

Usually, I like to think that a happy medium is possible, despite the two very different sides that are at play in my life. Sometimes I think it would be easier to just be one or the other. I don’t discount the pain, anguish and loss that my birth mother went through in adopting me, nor do I simply brush aside the difficulties that adoptive parents must have in taking in foreign children as their own, but when it comes to themselves and their own identities, they – ultimately – know who they are and can take it for granted throughout their day to day lives. One side is Korean. Period. The other is Australian. Period. …What I wouldn’t give to have that sense of self and secure identity. It must be luxurious not to have it playing on one’s mind day in and day out.

Does all this mean I hate my life? No. Does it mean I hate everyone around me? No. Does it mean I hate myself? No. Does it mean I’m an awful, angry, bitter adoptee that isn’t “grateful” every waking moment of her life? In the good sense of “grateful”, no. But this is me. This is my life. These are my challenges. I’m only human, and I can’t help but wonder how my life would be different had I “simply” had that which everyone else around me takes for granted and doesn’t have to give second thought to.

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