#lost daughters

[randomfangirlingposts]

Half way through this one, it's amazing 😍😍😍

[fifthblackbird]

"There are times when I wish I didn’t exist. I don’t mean that I wish to die, but to simply not exist. I think because I don’t feel love, I experience a self-imposed isolation and unbearable loneliness. I’m old enough to know that I’m past the age that I can learn to love, and that I’m just made badly. I also believe that most of the people who love me have experienced more pain because of my existence. Sometimes I imagine driving off bridges or into trees, and it is a very thin glue that holds me from it."

[thekoreanhillbilly]

Adoptees are family.

As an adoptee, there are so many people who create your sense of self … adoptive families, birth families, and most importantly, adoptees. The latter has not come into fruition for me until this year. In September of last year, I met my first Korean adult adoptee. It was a serendipitous meeting.

So much has happened in this last year, but the cap to this year has been my connection to the Lost Daughters. I have learned so very much from them. The stories are all so different, but then again, so familiar.

How we got here has shaped us, and we continue to grow. The internet has granted us access to so many people. Again, only this year have I dived into the sea of social media; the wading has ended.

This flood of people has taught me so much about the struggles we all have … struggles with seeing our original birth certificates, struggles in not having birth certificates, struggles in blending two very important families into one.

Adoptees converged on St. Paul this weekend for the Adoption Policy and Reform Collaborative Conference. My drive to St. Paul had me in a twist of ambivalence. I feared rejection again from the group for having loved my adoptive parents, rejection from having not searched for my birth family, rejection for just being me.

What I discovered was a group that welcomed and enveloped me, as tentative as I was. We are our comfort. Thank you, adoptees.

Enveloped by the Lost Daughters.

With my Lost Daughter sisters.

With Deann Borshay Liem of First Person Plural.

With Fang Lee of Somewhere Between.

[salesses]

Here's what I said:

I started writing about adoption indirectly about a year ago now, in an article about Jeremy Lin and the different racism that Asian Americans face. I couldn't write about racism without writing about my own experiences. And that essay opened the door to many other essays in which I talked somewhat about adoption, and then a few essays that dealt with adoption directly, or as directly as I could manage. One of the things that comes up for me time and again is to wonder which parts of me, which fears and desires and characteristics, are about adoption. That's what I'm playing with in the title here, that I'm not sure what's "about adoption" or not. The book is obviously about adoption, but it's about adoption in that it is me trying to figure out what about me is really about adoption. I have learned a lot in the past year, and I have so much left to learn. This project was begun with the intention of really jumpstarting that learning and sharing it.

and:

As you may know from Twitter, my wife and daughter are currently away, in Korea, on a three-month trip. So this was as a good time for me to start a longer/larger project. It is indeed my intention to post every day for three months, though I'll be out of town  some days, like this weekend, and won't be able to post then. The format came about after a conversation with another adoptee writer, in which I talked about my desire to write a book "about" adoption and how I couldn't find a way in. I mentioned that I didn't know anything about adoption, but that I usually wrote like that, just trying to figure things out--that figuring things out was often my narrative arc. Later, I thought: why not write the book that same way? Why not learn as I go and write about that learning? And I thought: how do I learn? How have I learned so far? Mostly through a community of which you are a part. I wanted to incorporate all of that as I wrote, and a Tumblr and communication/sharing through the internet seemed the natural way to do so. I know I need help on this, so I would love any comments from readers, personal stories, sources of information, etc. I am open to being taken in completely new directions. I want that to be a part of what I am doing. I want many ways into the narrative, into adoption. I want this community to be a part of finding out where to look.

Lost Daughters is a great resource, and Karen Pickell is wonderful. I will be turning to the LD site as I write/research/write.