Posted by 윤선 | 3 Comments

Blog Carnival III – Photos of Adoption

Grown in my Heart’s Blog Carnival III is about photos of adoption. Originally, it was going to be specifically about children, but there were quite a few people (myself included) who voiced their objections to this, because adoption isn’t only about children. Us adoptees grow up, believe it or not (yes, it may be hard to imagine!), hence adoption isn’t only about children and childhood. So it got changed to simply being focused around photos of adoption. For my contribution, I struggled to find just one photo that represents adoption to me. So I’m posting a few. The photo that stood out the most for me, in regards to this topic would be this one:

This photo (courtesy of Visuality Photography) was taken on my wedding day, from my parents’ house before we went to the church. Why did this particular picture stand out? Well, in all honesty, when I first thought about posting a picture of adoption, I initially thought about Korea. I’m not really sure why. I guess to some, it wouldn’t really be surprising, but I don’t really have a suitable picture, and when I thought about it a bit more, I guess adoption also means my life here: it means my upbringing, and the events that happened for me to turn into the person I am right now, right this minute.

My relationship with my parents has been through very good times and also very bad times. I was a particularly emo teenager, and I’m sure there were periods where my parents were afraid I’d run off and never see them again, or I’d y’know… go jump in front of a train or something. XP Adoption was only a part of my teenage insecurities, but I’m sure it played a big part of them. However, despite the ups and downs, and the adversity that my relationship with my parents has seen, I feel that we came through it all quite well, and really, I couldn’t have asked for better parents. So on one hand, I do feel that despite how difficult it’s made things for me – in terms of identity and such – it’s also given me wonderful parents and an upbringing that I think others could only be envious of. ^_^ When we had our wedding photos taken, the photographer was often telling us what to do, how to look etc etc… but I really feel that these days, my relationship with my parents looks and feels the way the photo above does, and obviously, I couldn’t have had that without being adopted here.

Read More