Warning: This episode contains references to sexual assault within family or kinship.

Korean adoptee and Canadian Jenny Heijun Wills, 39, talks about her 2019 acclaimed memoir, Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related. It’s about her relationships with her first family after being reunited in a form of a letter to an older biological half-sister, separated by time, language, boundaries, child removal and international closed adoption. and parental failings. The book also bravely addresses inter-adoptee harm, ways marginalized communities protect and hide sexual assault amongst their own kin, and the fears that come with breaking that code.  

Wills also discusses the vulnerability and emotional labor adoptees must endure when returning to Korea to search for family or to connect with their roots, and the way the search process and international adoption strips adoptees from support or personal agency, when trying to retrace and uncover their journey, kin and identities.