Wyatt Tuell, 45, is an adopted Korean who has learned that family does not have to be biological to be special. The Omaha, NE resident was adopted as a newborn to a Korean adoptive mother and white American military father. However, he was adopted a second time by another man whom he considers his father. And later, when he sought to become a father himself, health complications meant that path would also rely on alternative methods to create a family.
Audio available Friday, June 7, 2024.
(0:00:06) speaker_0: Welcome to Adopted podcast. Season 7, episode 20 starts now. This is a podcast that centers the voices of Korean inter-country adoptees.
(0:00:17) speaker_0: Adopted people are the true experts of the lived experience of adoption. I’m Kaomi Lee, and I was also adopted from Korea.
(0:00:25) speaker_0: I have been bringing you these stories since 2016.
(0:00:28) speaker_0: Our voices have often been silenced by adoption agencies, governments, sometimes even our own adoptive families, and society that wants only a feel-good story.
(0:00:39) speaker_0: Our lives are more complicated than that. Please listen to our stories.
(0:00:43) speaker_1: You know, family is you might not be related and still put your life on the line for somebody and love them unconditionally.
(0:00:52) speaker_0: This next episode hits all the touchstones of adoption; tragedy, loss, love, belonging, and identity. Wyatt Tull found the podcast and had a story to tell.
(0:01:03) speaker_0: Unlike many others whom we’ve heard from over seven seasons, Wyatt’s adoptive mother is also Korean-American.
(0:01:10) speaker_0: One thing that struck me about his story is that despite having racial mirrors, he also grew up with self-hatred of being Asian and wishing he was White.
(0:01:20) speaker_0: Here’s Wyatt.
(0:01:24) speaker_1: Hey, hi, my name is Wyatt Tuell. That’s spelled T-U-E-L-L. I’m 40, now 45 years old.
(0:01:31) speaker_1: I live in Omaha, Nebraska, and currently I’m a city planner with the municipal planning department here.
(0:01:38) speaker_0: Okay. So you’ve been listening to a handful of episodes. What has resonated with you?
(0:01:44) speaker_1: Uh, just the… I guess in some ways, my own naivety to some of the adoption stories out there.
(0:01:52) speaker_1: I’ve, I’ve met other Korean adoptees in my life, but I think it’s been very limited.
(0:01:58) speaker_1: So the scope that, of which you’ve been able to find, and/or have on your show was a little bit eye-opening.
(0:02:06) speaker_1: But in each story though, I’ve also experienced some, like, shared experiences, and I can see little bits of myself in each one of those stories.
(0:02:15) speaker_1: But everybody’s is very different too, and I feel mine is unique in its own way as well.
(0:02:19) speaker_0: Are you new to sort of going down this kind of adoption journey? I mean, not new in that adoption is (laughs)-
(0:02:29) speaker_1: For sure.
(0:02:29) speaker_0: … lifelong, but just kind of exploring, um, your feelings or thoughts about your adoption?
(0:02:35) speaker_1: Uh, not necessarily. I mean, I’ve, I’ve always been aware of it and thought of it. I guess you can say I never really dwelled on it too much.
(0:02:44) speaker_1: You know, I have not met my birth parents, and I’ve not, at this point, looked into really seeking them out.
(0:02:50) speaker_1: And so I don’t know if I will do that or not, but listening to your podcast has at least kind of opened that door to the possibility, more so than I thought I would before.
(0:03:00) speaker_1:
(0:03:00) speaker_0: Oh, okay. So you’ve kind of become more open to that potential.
(0:03:04) speaker_1: Yeah, for that potential. I still, at this point, for a whole lot of different reasons, just don’t know if that’s the path I want to go down yet.
(0:03:11) speaker_0: Okay. So Wyatt, when you wrote me, you wrote there was something a little bit different about your, your story. Do you wanna-
(0:03:19) speaker_1: Sure.
(0:03:20) speaker_0: … go ahead and, and talk to us?
(0:03:21) speaker_1: Sure. So I guess in a nutshell, my story is, I was born in Korea in a, I believe it was, like, a small coastal village at that time.
(0:03:31) speaker_1: From what I understand, my birth father had committed suicide before I was born.
(0:03:38) speaker_1: My birth mom, I guess that the two of them had a, a son already, so I, I believe ha- I probably have at least one biological brother.
(0:03:48) speaker_1: And at that time, my adoptive mom, who is also Korean, and was at that time married to an American soldier, and she was not able to have kids on her own.
(0:03:58) speaker_1: So they found out about me, and they adopted me right when I was born.
(0:04:04) speaker_1: The adoption wasn’t official till later on, but they took me in, like, the day I was born.
(0:04:10) speaker_0: So this happened in Korea?
(0:04:13) speaker_1: Yes.
(0:04:14) speaker_0: So your, your parents were stationed there?
(0:04:17) speaker_1: Yes. They, they had been married for a few years. They had come to the US for a while, and then, but I think he was… They came back to Korea.
(0:04:25) speaker_1: I believe he was stationed there again for some reason. Whatever it is, but they were in Korea again.
(0:04:29) speaker_0: And did you ever ask your parents exactly how they found out about your parents?
(0:04:35) speaker_1: Um, not really. I have talked about my adoption with my mom occasionally, but we don’t talk too much about it though.
(0:04:44) speaker_0: Okay. And your mom, was she a Korea native? Born in Korea as well?
(0:04:51) speaker_1: Yes. So my mom’s story is one that’s very, very tragic in a lot of ways.
(0:04:58) speaker_1: She was born in ’45, and at age five, her mom, and she had a sibling as well, her mom took her to, I believe, an orphanage or somewhere, but she was abandoned.
(0:05:10) speaker_1: And then she just kind of survived on her own for a while, was kind of taken in by another family. But, um, really was just kind of on her own.
(0:05:22) speaker_1: And so the person that she was married to at that time, when they, originally adopted, they divorced when I was age two, but she was working long, hard hours at a coffee shop when she met him.
(0:05:32) speaker_1: Then over time, they got married, and eventually somehow found me.
(0:05:38) speaker_0: This is before you were born?
(0:05:41) speaker_1: Yes.
(0:05:42) speaker_0: Okay. And so your mother, maybe having been abandoned as a child-
(0:05:48) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.
(0:05:49) speaker_0: … did she ever talk about, you know, was it related to her interest in adopting?
(0:05:55) speaker_1: I, I think so. I know that it’s always kind of like she would say she chose me, and that she’s had a lot of, in her life, a lot of abandonment.
(0:06:06) speaker_1: So I think for her, it was a special relationship where she could, I don’t know, you say make your own family, but she chose somebody to be a part of her life.
(0:06:13) speaker_1:
(0:06:14) speaker_0: And so you spent the first couple years in Korea?
(0:06:16) speaker_1: Yeah, I was looking at my adoption papers. So there was an adoption later the next year, let’s see here, it is through the Eastern Child Welfare Society.
(0:06:28) speaker_1: And then a few months later, there’s another one through the Children’s Home Society in Minnesota that kind of, I guess, finalized my adoption.
(0:06:37) speaker_1: And my mom’s ex-husband, he was from Omaha and that’s how we ended up back here. So they just moved back to the Omaha area.
(0:06:42) speaker_0: And you grew up in Omaha?
(0:06:44) speaker_1: Yes.
(0:06:46) speaker_0: Okay. What was your childhood like?
(0:06:48) speaker_1: It was really happy, actually (laughs).
(0:06:51) speaker_1: Um, so before I really have memories, they divorced, and for a few years it was just my mom and I, and my earliest memories are of her and I together in an apartment.
(0:07:03) speaker_1: And she worked incredibly hard for me at that time. Those were really, really, really tough years for her because she was very, very poor.
(0:07:10) speaker_1: She worked a lot of hours. And I do appreciate those memories because they make me appreciate her for what she did.
(0:07:18) speaker_1: And then later, when I was age four, she met the person that she would marry and that I consider my dad, who raised me, and our family was kind of an unlikely makeup.
(0:07:30) speaker_1: So it’s me and my mom who are Korean. She adopted me. By that time, she had become a Catholic. And then my dad was born in Georgia.
(0:07:41) speaker_1: He’s White, and he was born in 1919 in Georgia. So there was a pretty significant age difference between my mom and my dad.
(0:07:50) speaker_1: And together, we’re a very strong nuclear family. My dad, for me, I can’t say enough good things about my dad.
(0:07:56) speaker_1: I, I believe I take my personality after him. He was…
(0:07:59) speaker_1: For somebody that was born at the time he was born and the place he was born, was an extremely progressive and open-minded person. He was also military.
(0:08:08) speaker_1: He was an Air Force pilot, retired by the time we met him. And he was actually my babysitter for (laughs) for a little while when she first met him.
(0:08:16) speaker_1: And I quickly accepted him as my dad. They married when I was five years old. So I found a lot of love, fortunately.
(0:08:24) speaker_1: I’m very, very lucky in that, in that sense.
(0:08:27) speaker_0: And did you have a relationship with your, um-
(0:08:33) speaker_1: My mom’s ex-husband?
(0:08:34) speaker_0: Yeah. Do you
(0:08:35) speaker_2: (noise)
(0:08:36) speaker_0: … from your adoptive dad or not?
(0:08:37) speaker_1: Uh, at this time, no. So ironically, after they divorced, his sister and her husband kind of helped take care of my mom and I.
(0:08:46) speaker_1: They were still there for us. And actually, my mom’s ex-husband, his mom still considered me her grandson, and I still called her grandma.
(0:08:55) speaker_1: I would still see her up until her death, through most of my childhood.
(0:08:58) speaker_1: So it was, it’s kind of weird that we still stay close to some of his family, even though we didn’t stay close to him.
(0:09:05) speaker_1: Up until I was about four or five, you know, I would see him every once…
(0:09:09) speaker_1: After my mom got remarried, he moved to a different state, so we really didn’t see him. I met him again in college.
(0:09:15) speaker_1: He had since remarried, had a child, and we talked, and it was, it was good, actually.
(0:09:20) speaker_1: My mom doesn’t have any ill feelings towards him, but we just don’t have a relationship.
(0:09:25) speaker_1: I talked to him again, like a few years ago, just because there was some misunderstanding.
(0:09:29) speaker_1: They thought he was really, really sick and I called them, but that wasn’t the case. But we still had a good conversation.
(0:09:34) speaker_1: In that sense, I just don’t really feel… He’s got his family, I have my life here. And so we don’t really connect on any level.
(0:09:41) speaker_1: I mean, even though we’re still close to members of his family, though.
(0:09:45) speaker_0: And were you ever legally adopted by the man that you call your father?
(0:09:50) speaker_1: Yes. So I’ve been adopted twice (laughs), and so my name has changed a couple times.
(0:09:55) speaker_1: But when, I believe I was in third grade, they had asked me if I wanted to be adopted and have him, and I could take his name, and I did.
(0:10:03) speaker_1: So I remember getting dressed up that day, putting on a suit, going to the courthouse and making it official and coming back to school.
(0:10:11) speaker_0: Okay. So you were relinquished right after you were born?
(0:10:15) speaker_1: Mm-hmm. Yes.
(0:10:17) speaker_0: The day you were born?
(0:10:18) speaker_1: Y- Correct.
(0:10:19) speaker_0: Okay. Do you think, was your Korean mother in a, a midwife clinic or?
(0:10:24) speaker_1: I don’t know. I believe, I, I…
(0:10:26) speaker_1: Somehow I think I have a memory of talking about this with my mom, that it wasn’t in a hospital, so it might have actually just been a home birth.
(0:10:34) speaker_0: Okay, so it was a private adoption at first, but then-
(0:10:39) speaker_1: Yes.
(0:10:39) speaker_0: … it eventually went through Eastern.
(0:10:41) speaker_1: Uh, correct.
(0:10:43) speaker_0: Okay. All right. So having a, a Korean mom-
(0:10:46) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.
(0:10:46) speaker_0: … did she speak Korean to you at home?
(0:10:48) speaker_1: Uh, not, not really. So we always grew up speaking English in our house. My mom would speak occasional Korean, but I never picked up on it.
(0:10:57) speaker_1: And she said she tried to teach me Korean when I was little, but I wasn’t really willing to learn. And of course, in Omaha, there’s not a huge Korean…
(0:11:05) speaker_1: Uh, there are Korean people here, but it’s not like a huge community. And I didn’t grow up around a lot of other Koreans.
(0:11:13) speaker_1: And my mom also just didn’t try hard enough to, to teach me, and me being so young, I just didn’t really want to, because she was the only person I was going to be using it with.
(0:11:21) speaker_1: And we spoke English mostly in the house anyway, because she was always married to somebody who wasn’t a Korean speaker.
(0:11:27) speaker_1: So unfortunately, I never picked up on it.
(0:11:30) speaker_0: Did she want you to become 100% American? And so, that timeframe?
(0:11:35) speaker_1: I think so.
(0:11:37) speaker_0: Like, to assimilate.
(0:11:38) speaker_1: Yeah. I mean, my mom’s pretty, pretty Americanized.
(0:11:41) speaker_1: I think part of it is because she doesn’t have really good memories of Korea because of her hard, very hard childhood and early life and, you know, young adulthood.
(0:11:50) speaker_1: And then when she, we came in the United States, the Korean community to her was always kind of kept at arm’s length.
(0:11:58) speaker_0: Oh, why do you think?
(0:12:01) speaker_1: Uh, because I think… Well, she says she always didn’t like the gossip, is what she says. She didn’t like the gossip.
(0:12:08) speaker_1: And, and there’s, part of it is possibly because, with me being adopted, and there is, you know, some cultural stigma with that in the world that she grew up in….
(0:12:17) speaker_1: I don’t know if it’s safe to say that for sure, but I think that has a factor in it.
(0:12:20) speaker_0: That’s the feeling you got. So the Korean American community in Omaha-
(0:12:25) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.
(0:12:25) speaker_0: … The Korean community in Omaha, perhaps your mother felt a little shunned by them?
(0:12:30) speaker_1: Um, I don’t know if she felt shunned.
(0:12:33) speaker_0: For having adopted?
(0:12:34) speaker_1: I don’t… Yeah. I don’t think she ever really told anybody, um-
(0:12:38) speaker_0: That’s the feeling you got, but-
(0:12:39) speaker_1: Y- yeah. Yeah.
(0:12:41) speaker_0: Okay.
(0:12:42) speaker_1: I mean, we would still, you know, she would have Korean friends, but we never spent a significant amount of time with them and they were wild, and those friends just kind of lasted their moments and at a certain point, I really didn’t, she didn’t really have any other Korean friends.
(0:12:54) speaker_1:
(0:12:54) speaker_0: Okay. You know, one thing, uh, I’m wondering if you grew up with Korean food?
(0:13:01) speaker_1: I did. Quite a bit. So my mom did cook a lot of Korean food. Um, my, my dad liked Korean food, so he enjoyed eating kimchi.
(0:13:08) speaker_1: She cooked a lot of the Korean food, I guess, that was more friendly to an American palate, so it’s a lot of bulgogi, a lot of kalbi, kimchi, made some soups too.
(0:13:18) speaker_1: Uh, but, you know, I would say that my Korean food experience is not as like far as the Korean Americans who I were raised with, both parents are Korean, the Korean food that they would probably had a wider range than what I grew up with.
(0:13:30) speaker_1:
(0:13:30) speaker_0: Uh, what… Did you have miyeok guk on your birthday?
(0:13:33) speaker_1: Yes. I, I do… Well, there, there’s pictures of me on my first birthday.
(0:13:38) speaker_1: I think that, that birthday was probably more traditional, and that was in Korea at that time too.
(0:13:44) speaker_0: Oh, but she didn’t carry on traditions-
(0:13:48) speaker_1: N- no, not really.
(0:13:49) speaker_0: … in the United States? So like when you went to school you didn’t get, you know, quote unquote a stinky lunch or…
(0:13:55) speaker_1: Uh, I did one time (laughs). I, I do have a very specific memory where my mom made some, like, I didn’t even ask to have it to take it with me to school.
(0:14:05) speaker_1: And so I had some rice, some dried seaweed and some kimchi and my school mates, some of them they said how it smelled, but some of them wanted to try it and, you know, they said, “Oh, this is gross.
(0:14:16) speaker_1: I don’t like it.” So that was the one and only time I ever brought a traditional Korean meal to school.
(0:14:22) speaker_0: Did you ever feel ashamed about your mother being… Or you and your mother being Asian, being Korean, being, well, she was an immigrant?
(0:14:32) speaker_1: I think, well, it’s more…
(0:14:34) speaker_1: It’s probably similar to a lot of Asian American experiences especially growing up in the Midwest where there’s not a lot of Asians.
(0:14:43) speaker_1: And I think I remember one of the, the earlier podcasts, one of your guys said that, you know, being Asian in the ’80s was hard.
(0:14:50) speaker_1: And (laughs) I, I think I kind of experienced that as well. So it’s not something I was more ashamed of.
(0:14:55) speaker_1: Uh, it’s just kind of more the, uh, why can’t I just fit in and be like everybody else? And, like, there’s a common saying, “I wish I was white.
(0:15:03) speaker_1: ” And kind of having grown up in a world that was like, you know, because my parents is very full Korean, but I was raised kind of half, so I, I grew up with influences from different cultures, but one that was rooted in what I look like.
(0:15:17) speaker_1: But for a long time, I just didn’t know where I fit in for a while. (instrumental music plays) So, yeah, just growing up was…
(0:15:32) speaker_1: Because, I mean, the neighborhood I grew up in was actually fairly diverse.
(0:15:37) speaker_1: It still, like, was very much majority white, but for the longest time, my, my first best friend was black, and there were, there was Hispanic families, there was a, uh, Indian American family.
(0:15:49) speaker_1: So I, I grew up around diversity, but I was always the only Asian one. I was also an only child as well.
(0:15:55) speaker_1: So it was more the, uh, I just feel like I was always the only one around, so I felt like I, you know, stuck out a lot in some ways.
(0:16:04) speaker_1: And at that time, in the ’80s, stereotypes had a stronger influence than I say in some ways today.
(0:16:10) speaker_1: It was just having to fight those stereotypes and then really not having representation in the media that where I could kind of see myself in a different light than what I was kind of subconsciously being pigeonholed into.
(0:16:22) speaker_1:
(0:16:22) speaker_0: What about your upbringing do you think seems different from other transracial Korean adoptees?
(0:16:29) speaker_1: I think because having a Korean mom helped in the sense that I… Especially later on in life, that like a part of me was always rooted in Koreanness.
(0:16:41) speaker_1: So I still had, you know, like the Korean food.
(0:16:43) speaker_1: There’s still parts of my mom, even though she’s very Americanized, there’s still Korean in her and Korean aspects of her and the way she believed in things.
(0:16:51) speaker_1: And then I did also listen to your podcast where you had another adoptee who was also adopted by Korean parents.
(0:16:59) speaker_1: What some of the differences I know from that one specifically is that I believe she wasn’t told that she was adopted until she was in her 30s, I believe.
(0:17:09) speaker_1:
(0:17:09) speaker_0: Right. Mm-hmm.
(0:17:10) speaker_1: So for me, I believe I was about six or seven or eight years old when my parents took me into the dining room and told me that I was adopted.
(0:17:18) speaker_1: I remember it very, very, very vividly and I’m very much convinced that my dad is the one who convinced my mom to tell me that, you know, that I needed to know that I was adopted because I’m sure at some point I was gonna have figured out on my own that, you know, my, my parents is full Korean, but the two dads that I’ve had in my life aren’t.
(0:17:36) speaker_1: And so why do I look like this and not half?
(0:17:38) speaker_0: So they never… Until that time, they didn’t really explain why you didn’t look half?
(0:17:43) speaker_1: No. I think at that time, I was just… I was a very naive kid (laughs). Up until that point, I believed that my mom and her ex-husband were my birth parents.
(0:17:51) speaker_1:
(0:17:51) speaker_0: Even though he was white?
(0:17:53) speaker_1: Yeah. Even though he was white. I think at, at that time, I was just too naive and too young to-
(0:17:58) speaker_0: Uh-huh.
(0:17:58) speaker_1: … realize that.
(0:17:59) speaker_0: Or maybe you just thought the way you looked was the product of a Korean woman and a white man.
(0:18:04) speaker_1: Yeah. Uh, to that point, I just assumed that I look what I look like mainly ’cause of my mom. And so I, I used to always say, “Mom, I came from your belly.
(0:18:14) speaker_1: ” And so I remember that night they said, “You know how you always say that you come from my belly? Well, actually that’s not true.
(0:18:23) speaker_1: You were, you were adopted.”… and I remember crying really, really, really hard (laughs) and being kind of, kind of devastated by that.
(0:18:33) speaker_1: But at the same time, I still felt their love and I recovered very quickly from it.
(0:18:40) speaker_1: And, and we’ll probably talk about this later, for my own kids, that me being told at that age helped me, because I was old enough that I could understand it, but I was young enough that I wasn’t gonna overthink it, and then lived my childhood knowing this fact of my life.
(0:18:59) speaker_1: So, it was something that I just knew, whereas I think if I had been told later in life, it would’ve been a more difficult pill to swallow.
(0:19:07) speaker_0: So you were told you were adopted when you were seven?
(0:19:11) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.
(0:19:13) speaker_0: Do you think, uh, growing up, most people just assumed that your mom was your biological mom?
(0:19:18) speaker_1: Yeah.
(0:19:20) speaker_0: So you didn’t really get questions, “Are you adopted?” you know, from strangers or…
(0:19:25) speaker_1: No. No. Uh, the only times that…
(0:19:27) speaker_1: ‘Cause at times I was with my dad, ’cause my dad was a, like a much older White man, so when we would go other places together, I think they probably wouldn’t assume that I was his son, or the times that actually he did…
(0:19:41) speaker_1: People would say, oh, “Is this your grandson?” And my dad would get upset. He’s like, “No, this is my son.
(0:19:47) speaker_1: ” In hindsight, I know that he was saying that not for the other people.
(0:19:50) speaker_1: He was saying that for me, ’cause he was trying to show that he loved me, so he’s like, “You’re my son.
(0:19:56) speaker_1: ” ‘Cause he realized that on the surface, I’m clearly not his biological son. But I don’t really remember anybody…
(0:20:02) speaker_1: I think just ’cause people didn’t assume that him and I would be related in any way. But for my mom, no, never…
(0:20:08) speaker_1: People always assumed that I was her biological son.
(0:20:11) speaker_0: Okay. Did people stare at your family?
(0:20:15) speaker_1: I… Yeah, I, I think so, ’cause I think it was a lot of different aspects of that with, obviously…
(0:20:23) speaker_1: It’s an interracial marriage, and then my dad is significantly older.
(0:20:28) speaker_0: What was the age difference between them?
(0:20:31) speaker_1: Uh, she was born in ’45. He was born in 1919, so roughly 25 years.
(0:20:36) speaker_0: Okay. So, when you graduated from high school, how old was he?
(0:20:40) speaker_1: Uh, I graduated in ’97, so that would be…
(0:20:46) speaker_0: Roughly, was he like in his 60s when you graduated from high school?
(0:20:50) speaker_1: Yeah. Or, he actually would’ve been in his 70s, I believe, so 19 in ’19, then ’97.
(0:20:56) speaker_0: Okay. You know, you talked about your mom being really resilient.
(0:21:01) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.
(0:21:02) speaker_0: Hardworking. When you look back now, do you think there’s traits about her that seem to you very Korean?
(0:21:09) speaker_1: Um-
(0:21:10) speaker_0: I mean, I know you say she was very Americanized.
(0:21:12) speaker_1: Yes. Yeah.
(0:21:12) speaker_0: But now looking back, are there things about her personality or her values that seem to you now, that she retained some of her Korean, uh, culture?
(0:21:25) speaker_1: Sure. Um, I think so. I’m trying to think of anything truly specific ’cause the way she grew up, she… I mean, she grew up uneducated, so she-
(0:21:36) speaker_0: She ended up on the streets, right? Or no, she had a family-
(0:21:39) speaker_1: Pretty much.
(0:21:39) speaker_0: … take care of her?
(0:21:41) speaker_1: Later on. I, I don’t know all the story on that exactly.
(0:21:43) speaker_1: It’s, it’s something I try not to ask too much of my, my mom’s past ’cause I know it’s painful for her, so unless she divulges it, you know, I don’t really ask her about it.
(0:21:52) speaker_1:
(0:21:52) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.
(0:21:53) speaker_1: But I remember she grew up uneducated, so she really had to strive and kinda do things on her own.
(0:21:59) speaker_0: Did that make her a tough, a tough woman, on the exterior anyway?
(0:22:04) speaker_1: Yes. Yes. It’s tough, but it’s also given her a lot of anxiety and it’s, it’s caused her some, you know, mental health issues in terms of-
(0:22:13) speaker_0: Like depression?
(0:22:13) speaker_1: Anxiety.
(0:22:14) speaker_0: Can I ask…
(0:22:15) speaker_1: I would say, yeah, depression, anxiety, abandonment. She was abandoned when she was five.
(0:22:20) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.
(0:22:21) speaker_1: Her first marriage didn’t work out.
(0:22:23) speaker_1: And then, in 2009, my dad passed away too, so it kinda feels like she’s, she’s lost a lot, and it feels like people close to her have left her.
(0:22:34) speaker_1: So, that part has caused her some trauma where she’s had to deal with that. Um, so in her… She’s, you know, had some different Korean beliefs.
(0:22:44) speaker_1: Like, she still, for my dad, on holidays, she likes to bring food to him at the cemetery.
(0:22:49) speaker_1: She still believes in those certain foods, doing certain things, and some of those superstitions of Korean culture, she still believes in some of that.
(0:22:57) speaker_1:
(0:22:58) speaker_0: Like, did you not fall asleep with a fan on?
(0:23:01) speaker_1: Actually, that wasn’t one, but I remember bleeding out, like if I wasn’t feeling well when I was really little, she would poke my finger to let some blood out.
(0:23:09) speaker_1:
(0:23:09) speaker_0: When you were not feeling well?
(0:23:11) speaker_1: Yeah.
(0:23:12) speaker_0: Okay. Well, how did you figure out that was maybe different?
(0:23:16) speaker_1: That was probably when I was in elementary school.
(0:23:19) speaker_0: You would tell your friends and they would say, “We’ve never done that?”
(0:23:24) speaker_1: No, I think I’d just say… Later on I was old enough to figure out like, okay, I don’t see how this makes… This doesn’t make any sense to me.
(0:23:29) speaker_0: I- is it a Korean thing or is it just your mom thing?
(0:23:32) speaker_1: I think it’s a Korean thing.
(0:23:34) speaker_0: Okay. Did she like sitting on the floor?
(0:23:36) speaker_1: When I was younger, especially when she would make kimchi, she would always make kimchi on the floor, or do some cooking where she’d prefer to sit on the floor to make dough or noodles.
(0:23:46) speaker_1: But then later on, I don’t remember her doing that. Probably by the time I was in high school, I don’t think she was doing that as much.
(0:23:52) speaker_0: So what… You said, you know, you described your mom having some depression and struggling with mental health.
(0:24:00) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.
(0:24:01) speaker_0: Do you feel like because of her…
(0:24:03) speaker_0: The trauma of being abandoned herself, and probably raising herself, did you feel like she had attachment issues or problems attaching with people?
(0:24:13) speaker_1: I think so.
(0:24:15) speaker_0: Do you feel like also that she had trouble attaching to you?
(0:24:19) speaker_1: I don’t think she had any trouble attaching to me, probably because I was family and…… I was hers.
(0:24:27) speaker_1: Whereas, I think other people, it’s probably the, kind of the adage of she’s gonna push other people away before they can push her away.
(0:24:36) speaker_1: It’s probably more, I would say, an accurate statement of her. Like now, even now, she has a very small friend circle and…
(0:24:42) speaker_1: Whereas, it’s hard ’cause she’s actually really good in social situations, but after a while she says she just doesn’t want to be in them.
(0:24:58) speaker_0: Okay. Do you think that impacted you in any way?
(0:25:09) speaker_1: Um, well, in a sense because…
(0:25:11) speaker_1: We’ll put it this way, because she kept the Korean community locally at such an arm’s length that, that then probably prevented me from making more Korean friends growing up.
(0:25:23) speaker_1: Here in Omaha, in a suburb called Bellevue, there’s a very large Air Force base called Offutt.
(0:25:28) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.
(0:25:28) speaker_1: And so there was a larger Korean community because of the Air Force base, but we lived about 45 minutes from there.
(0:25:35) speaker_1: So like her friends had Korean kids that were around my age, and when I would see them, we would play or hang out, but we never lived close enough where I made meaningful friendships with them.
(0:25:44) speaker_1: In a sense, I just really didn’t grow up with any Korean friends.
(0:25:48) speaker_1: Whereas I think if she was a little bit more accepting of the Korean community and maybe that her anxieties and other issues, uh, had allowed that to happen, then I think I would have not had as many of those questions of self-identity growing up.
(0:26:04) speaker_1:
(0:26:05) speaker_0: And you never… Did you guys go to a Korean church at all?
(0:26:08) speaker_1: No, we went to a, a white Catholic church, is where I grew up.
(0:26:13) speaker_0: So kind of indirectly your mom, or subconsciously, I guess, your mom didn’t have good memories of Korea.
(0:26:22) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.
(0:26:22) speaker_0: Kept other Koreans kind of at arm’s length.
(0:26:26) speaker_1: Yep.
(0:26:26) speaker_0: What kind of message did that send to you? Did you feel like being Korean was bad?
(0:26:33) speaker_1: I can’t say that it was bad, um, but it just left kind of a question as to where, you know, where do I fit in?
(0:26:41) speaker_1: Like, you know, my dad was from the South, but he didn’t really bring a lot of, you could say Southern culture, small aspects but not really.
(0:26:49) speaker_1: So I grew up very Midwestern and Americanized, but I was kind of rooted in some Koreanness with her. But, um, it was…
(0:26:59) speaker_1: And then because of the language too, sometimes she would go to the Korean market here, and a lot of times I remember when I was little, I didn’t want to go inside because I knew they would speak Korean and I wouldn’t understand.
(0:27:10) speaker_1: And at that time in my life, I was embarrassed of that, so I didn’t want to go inside and, um, kind of had to face that. I would just stay in the car.
(0:27:19) speaker_1: Like, I think I wanted to know more about the Korean culture in some ways, um, but I was naive to it. I…
(0:27:26) speaker_1: It was more of a subconscious thing, I would say, ’cause it wasn’t till later on in college that I started to become more comfortable in my skin about all of that.
(0:27:37) speaker_1:
(0:27:38) speaker_0: Where did you go to college?
(0:27:39) speaker_1: I went to Kansas State University, which is about three and a half hours south of Omaha.
(0:27:44) speaker_0: Okay. And so growing up in the ’80s and ’90s-
(0:27:49) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.
(0:27:49) speaker_0: … were you teased because you were Korean?
(0:27:52) speaker_1: Um, yeah, somewhat. Yeah.
(0:27:54) speaker_1: Uh, I would say, you know, I’ve never experienced really outright hateful racism, but just more, yeah, teasing or just the, the ignorant questions like, “Do you know karate?
(0:28:05) speaker_1: Do you, do you speak Korean?” Or, “Your English is really good.
(0:28:08) speaker_1: ” Or, um, I remember even somebody came door to door selling some pamphlets or something like that, and I talk in, having a conversation with them and then all of a sudden she asks, “Oh, can you read English?
(0:28:17) speaker_1: “
(0:28:18) speaker_0: Mm. Mm-hmm.
(0:28:19) speaker_1: So… And then, of course, you know, the, like the dog, dog meat jokes. Um…
(0:28:23) speaker_0: Asking if you ate dog meat.
(0:28:25) speaker_1: Yeah. Or not only that I probably don’t, but just, you know, making that joke about it.
(0:28:29) speaker_0: You really didn’t have maybe a lot of pride in being Korean or identity.
(0:28:35) speaker_1: Yeah, I would say so.
(0:28:36) speaker_1: That’s probably, you know, wishing, wishing I, I could just blend in with everybody else and not have those jokes and stereotypes put on me.
(0:28:46) speaker_0: Growing up, did you ever think about your, your birth mother or trying to find her?
(0:28:51) speaker_1: Not, not really.
(0:28:53) speaker_1: And this is something that, you know, though with some of those challenges, you know, stereotypes and things like that, overall my childhood was very, was very happy.
(0:29:06) speaker_1:
(0:29:06) speaker_0: Like a middle-class upbringing?
(0:29:08) speaker_1: Yeah, middle class. Yeah, after my mother married my dad then life was much better. Before then, you know, we were really, really poor.
(0:29:17) speaker_1: But then he was middle class and so that put us in a better financial situation.
(0:29:33) speaker_0: And had… Did you ever talk about it with your parents about wanting to know or having a curiosity about…
(0:29:44) speaker_1: So, since I was told at a young age and I just kind of knew about it, and I grew up, you know, very happy because I felt very loved by my parents and they took great care of me and loved me very, very much.
(0:29:55) speaker_1: So I never, like had this yearning to find love from my birth parents.
(0:30:00) speaker_1: I didn’t really have that urge and it wasn’t until college actually that my mom told me that my birth dad had committed suicide.
(0:30:10) speaker_1: And she didn’t say why, but my, my assumption is that it’s because, um, my birth mom probably became pregnant, it probably was unexpected, and I’m sure it was probably something that he couldn’t handle, is, is all my assumption here….
(0:30:28) speaker_1: and then that, that’s why that he, I’m guessing, committed suicide.
(0:30:33) speaker_1: So I, I just never had a strong, strong feeling, and I’ve always kind of said like, you know, if, if I could find them, I would just write a letter and say that I’m good, that you made the right decision.
(0:30:43) speaker_1: But, um, there’s also part of me that’s kind of both a combination of selfishness and fearfulness about what would I find, you know?
(0:30:52) speaker_1: ‘Cause I’m not really seeking happiness or an empty spot, ’cause I don’t feel that. It’s more, if I find them, what situation would they be in?
(0:31:03) speaker_1: I assume that they would probably still be poor.
(0:31:06) speaker_1: I wonder if my brother would have any resentment to me being adopted and then maybe being put into a better life than what he might be in currently.
(0:31:16) speaker_0: What do you mean? You mean, being resentful of you or jealous of you?
(0:31:20) speaker_1: Yeah. That’s a thought in my mind, like, would that be a thought in his mind, or does he remember that he had a brother? I don’t know what age he is.
(0:31:29) speaker_1: Am I just a memory, or, or am I forgotten about?
(0:31:33) speaker_1: But if I am something that he knows, I just wonder if I do find them, if they are in a bad situation, even if they’re not asking for it, would I feel an obligation to make their lives better?
(0:31:45) speaker_1:
(0:31:45) speaker_0: Would you, do you think?
(0:31:47) speaker_1: I think I would feel that, but then, you know, this sounds selfish.
(0:31:52) speaker_1: My life currently, I have my own family, I have my own worries and things in life, and a lot of burdens.
(0:32:00) speaker_1: Being an only child (laughs) is, I guess, one thing is my mom always did pass along that culture that, you know, the oldest son is responsible for taking care of the parents, and I kind of took that on.
(0:32:11) speaker_1: And so I feel like I’ve already, have a lot of responsibilities, and I don’t know how well I can handle and what, h- how much guilt would I feel if I can or can’t help them, if, if that ends up being the case.
(0:32:26) speaker_1:
(0:32:26) speaker_0: And I mean, we don’t know either, you know?
(0:32:29) speaker_1: Yeah. Yeah.
(0:32:29) speaker_0: This is all kind of an assumption.
(0:32:31) speaker_1: Yeah. I’ve kind of played that scenario in my mind. So it’s something like, do I wanna know? Do I need to know?
(0:32:38) speaker_1: Because up until this point, I kind of would just tell myself it would just be too hard to find them anyway.
(0:32:43) speaker_1: There are probably avenues I could at least look into for that, but I haven’t even attempted that at this point.
(0:32:48) speaker_0: So when you say it’s too hard, do you have their names in your paperwork?
(0:32:52) speaker_1: In the English paperwork I have, there is no name. There’s an address that I think I even Googled at one point, but it didn’t seem like it existed anymore.
(0:33:00) speaker_1:
(0:33:00) speaker_0: You have not written to Eastern?
(0:33:02) speaker_1: I have not.
(0:33:04) speaker_0: Okay. And have you been back to Korea?
(0:33:08) speaker_1: I did, uh, about 10, 15 years ago.
(0:33:10) speaker_1: I had a Korean American friend of mine that, at that time, was teaching English in Seoul, so I went to go visit her, so I did that, but it was just more of a vacation and the visit a friend, so actually just kind of doing more of the touristy things, and we went to Jeju Island.
(0:33:24) speaker_1: It, it wasn’t like a search for my family or a deeper dive into Korean culture. It’s just more of like, this is my first time back in Korea.
(0:33:32) speaker_1: I’m just gonna visit my friend, and we’re gonna do fun, touristy stuff.
(0:33:35) speaker_0: And how did you feel going back?
(0:33:37) speaker_1: It was, it was odd. I mean, I really enjoyed it.
(0:33:41) speaker_1: Being in Seoul was the first time in my life that I felt so insignificant, because, you know, being in Omaha, obviously, I’m, I’m around majority white people, or at least in the population where there’s not as many Asians or Koreans.
(0:33:55) speaker_1: And so being in Seoul, and especially like riding the subways, there were so many people, and it was the first time where I felt like I wasn’t unique or I didn’t stand out, and that I could just kind of disappear and nobody would even know.
(0:34:07) speaker_1: So while I, I really enjoyed my time there, there was times where I just felt very insignificant. It was kind of a weird feeling.
(0:34:15) speaker_0: Okay. You’ve only been back the one time?
(0:34:18) speaker_1: Yeah. My girls right now are three and 19 months.
(0:34:21) speaker_1: So once they’re older, then I definitely wanna take them to Korea so then they can have memories, uh, or maybe learn some more about their cultural background, and then maybe have a little bit more of a fuller experience than I did.
(0:34:34) speaker_1:
(0:34:35) speaker_0: Why, do you feel somehow you are at a disadvantage, or, like you said, your own background was a little bit ambiguous, and do you have feelings of inadequacy when sharing Korean culture with your daughters?
(0:34:50) speaker_0:
(0:34:51) speaker_1: Um, so yeah, I, like I feel like I don’t have a strong enough background. You know, obviously, I know some things. I sing Santoki to them at night sometimes.
(0:35:00) speaker_1:
(0:35:00) speaker_0: What’s Santoki?
(0:35:01) speaker_1: Santoki is a Korean lullaby, essentially, a Korean song.
(0:35:04) speaker_0: Is it about a rabbit?
(0:35:06) speaker_1: Yes.
(0:35:06) speaker_0: Okay.
(0:35:07) speaker_1: And I can’t interpret it (laughs), but I, um-
(0:35:09) speaker_0: You know the song? Okay.
(0:35:10) speaker_1: I know the song. My mom sang it to me a lot when I was little, and I-
(0:35:13) speaker_0: Can you sing it?
(0:35:14) speaker_1: Can I sing it? Oh, uh, sorry, you want me to sing it?
(0:35:16) speaker_0: Yeah. Can you sing it for me?
(0:35:17) speaker_1: Uh, okay. Well, there’s two versions, but then my mom always sang the long version to me. I didn’t realize ’til later there was a short version.
(0:35:22) speaker_1: It’s, uh, (singing). I believe that’s the short version.
(0:35:40) speaker_0: So you sing that to your daughters?
(0:35:43) speaker_1: Yes.
(0:35:43) speaker_0: Oh, that’s cool.
(0:35:44) speaker_1: Yeah.
(0:35:44) speaker_0: Okay.
(0:35:44) speaker_1: And it, and it is weird because when my oldest is crying, it’s kind of, you know, that when I sing the Korean songs, and maybe it’s ’cause she doesn’t know what the words mean either, it seems to calm her a little more than some other songs, and I really don’t know why that is.
(0:35:58) speaker_1: My wife and I, we had some fertility issues. My wife got pregnant once biologically from both of us.
(0:36:08) speaker_1: We ended up losing that baby, and through that process, we found out that I have a chromosomal issue that’s called a balanced translocation.
(0:36:19) speaker_1: It’s basically where the chromosomes, when I was born, they split, but then they came back together symmetrically.
(0:36:26) speaker_1: But when I try to have children, that same thing is gonna happen with the chromosome split, but more often than not, they combine unsymmetrically, which causes a lot of birth defects and other issues.
(0:36:38) speaker_1: So after a while, we decided to go with, um, donor sperm, and actually a donor egg as well, because at that point-
(0:36:47) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.
(0:36:47) speaker_1: … that was our, our most viable option.
(0:36:50) speaker_0: Sure.
(0:36:50) speaker_1: So the sperm was from a sperm donation bank, and we wanted them to look as much like us, if we were to have biological children, as possible.
(0:36:58) speaker_1: So we were able to find Korean sperm donors, and we tried to find one that as closely matched my physical appearance from the descriptions.
(0:37:07) speaker_0: You see a photo of them?
(0:37:08) speaker_1: You don’t see a photo of them now. You can maybe get a childhood photo. And then also, if they want to, they can say, “Oh, I look like these celebrities.
(0:37:16) speaker_1: ” And then you’ll have links to see what celebrities they look like. So that’s the best way that, uh, that we can do it.
(0:37:22) speaker_0: Okay.
(0:37:23) speaker_1: Um, so yeah, they are half Korean, and-
(0:37:26) speaker_0: Half white?
(0:37:27) speaker_1: And half white, yes.
(0:37:28) speaker_0: Okay.
(0:37:30) speaker_1: When we went through this process, we were actually required to see a psychologist to go over, how would we tell them, how were they conceived, at an appropriate time.
(0:37:39) speaker_1: And they say that at age five is the ideal time to tell them, just ’cause they’ll be old enough to kind of understand, but not too old to overthink it.
(0:37:48) speaker_1: So then when that happened, that made me think to when I was told, and how I’m kind of thankful that, even though I was a little older than what they said, it’ll still, that probably, being told at that age, probably helped me.
(0:38:02) speaker_1: And then that, when the time comes, we’ll tell them, and hopefully that’ll be the same for them as well, that they’ll be more accepting, and that they’ll also have me around who also grew up with non-blood-related family, but having a very, very, very close family, and knowing that family doesn’t have to be blood.
(0:38:19) speaker_1: (instrumental music plays)
(0:38:22) speaker_0: Oh, interesting. So your kids, how old are they, your daughters?
(0:38:23) speaker_1: Three and 19 months.
(0:38:23) speaker_0: Okay. And so they, the three-year-old does not know?
(0:38:24) speaker_1: No. Not, not at this time.
(0:38:24) speaker_1: We’re recommended some children’s books that, you know, kind of help explain that, and we’ve read that to her, but not, uh, haven’t really tied it to us yet.
(0:38:24) speaker_1: But she’s still too young to really grasp all that.
(0:38:25) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.
(0:38:25) speaker_1: But there are some children’s books that explain that, so that’s something that we read to them as well.
(0:38:25) speaker_0: Mm-hmm. So you remember your own kind of traumatic experience being seven and finding out you were adopted.
(0:38:25) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.
(0:38:25) speaker_0: Do you worry? Do you have anxiety about-
(0:38:25) speaker_1: Uh-
(0:38:25) speaker_0: … to tell your, your daughter?
(0:38:26) speaker_1: I don’t think so, because I think since she’ll be, at age five and we told her, that I think she’ll just kind of be like, “Oh, okay.
(0:38:26) speaker_1: ” Or at least that’s the hope. I mean, there is some worry about that, but it’s not, I’m not overly concerned about it.
(0:38:26) speaker_0: And they say age five is a good age?
(0:38:26) speaker_1: Uh, yes.
(0:38:26) speaker_0: Okay. Do you worry that you wouldn’t want to wait until she’s seven? Like they-
(0:38:26) speaker_1: Yeah.
(0:38:26) speaker_0: Like-
(0:38:26) speaker_1: Yeah. Yeah, I would’n’t wanna wait much longer than that of letting her know how she came to be.
(0:38:39) speaker_0: Okay. How is your mother with your kids?
(0:38:42) speaker_1: Uh, she loves them. She, she loves them to death. She enjoys being a grandma.
(0:38:47) speaker_1: She wants to see them all the time, and she’s accepting them just as much as she accepted me growing up.
(0:38:53) speaker_0: And has your wife been interested in Korean culture, or have you wanted to incorporate into your family? Like food or things?
(0:38:55) speaker_1: Also, I mean, not a whole lot. You know, she enjoys Korean food a lot.
(0:38:58) speaker_1: Actually, when we first started dating, I remember she liked kimchi and I brought over a big jar of radish kimchi, and I remember coming by the next day and she had eaten half the jar.
(0:39:03) speaker_1:
(0:39:03) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.
(0:39:05) speaker_1: You know, for a period of time, I added some more Korean American friends, and we spent some time with them, and they were impressed by her enjoyment of a variety of Korean foods.
(0:39:13) speaker_1: And for the girls’ first birthday, we got them dressed up. We didn’t do like all the aspects of a first Korean birthday, but we did a little bit.
(0:39:33) speaker_1: And my mom, you know, like I said, is very Americanized, so had we not even done it, she probably wouldn’t have cared.
(0:40:53) speaker_0: Do you think your kids today will be growing up in a much more tolerant or accepting society than you were?
(0:41:01) speaker_1: I, I believe-
(0:41:03) speaker_0: In terms of race?
(0:41:03) speaker_1: I believe so. Omaha, it’s become a lot more diverse than when I was growing up.
(0:41:06) speaker_1: So when I was going through school, I was pretty much the only Asian kid in my class, and nowadays, that’s not the case.
(0:41:13) speaker_1: There’s a higher Asian population in the schools. And of course, representation in media is much better than it was in the ’80s and ’90s.
(0:41:21) speaker_1: But because they are half and I was looking for, you know, half Asian children’s books, and I didn’t really find a whole lot.
(0:41:28) speaker_1: So I actually wrote a children’s book for them that I self-published as well. And it’s called Kimchi or Bratwurst.
(0:41:35) speaker_0: Kimchi or Bratwurst?
(0:41:36) speaker_1: Yes. So…
(0:41:37) speaker_0: (laughs) Okay.
(0:41:38) speaker_1: The concept is, there’s a young half Korean girl who talks to the reader, says, “My mom and dad want me to cook something for dinner, and the first I saw was kimchi, and my dad’s Korean.
(0:41:47) speaker_1: ” And it kind of goes through a real brief history of what kimchi is and where it’s from.
(0:41:52) speaker_1: And then she sees a bratwurst like, “Oh, this bratwurst is from Germany, and my mom’s family is from Germany.” And then she’s like, “Now this crisis.
(0:41:59) speaker_1: What do I do? Because I want them both.” But then the idea is she figures out to combine the foods together and it makes something wonderful.
(0:42:06) speaker_1: And so that, the concept of mixing cultures can create something very special.
(0:42:10) speaker_0: I see it’s on Amazon.
(0:42:13) speaker_1: Uh, yes.
(0:42:13) speaker_0: It’s on the paperback. Well, congratulations. And-
(0:42:16) speaker_1: Thank you.
(0:42:17) speaker_0: What are you hoping this book… It sounds like it fills kind of a void out in children’s publishing.
(0:42:23) speaker_1: At least from what I can see. I mean, there are some other half Asian children’s books out there, but they seem more for a little bit older kids.
(0:42:30) speaker_1: For the age group that my daughters are in, I didn’t see any that I could find at least.
(0:42:35) speaker_1: And thankfully, you know, there’s a lot of other children’s books for Asian American kids that are available to them, but I kind of want to make one specifically for them since they are half.
(0:42:44) speaker_1:
(0:42:45) speaker_0: What age range is this book for?
(0:42:47) speaker_1: I would say from like, 2 to 12, basically.
(0:42:50) speaker_0: Age 2 to 12, so elementary?
(0:42:53) speaker_1: Yeah, elementary.
(0:42:54) speaker_0: Okay. What does your daughter think of the book?
(0:42:58) speaker_1: Um, she, she loves books, but she reads a lot of books.
(0:43:01) speaker_1: So sh- she, she likes it, although, of course she’s three, so I think appetites change quite a bit.
(0:43:07) speaker_1: So when she was one, she loved kimchi, she’d eat it like crazy. But now, when we go to the Korean restaurants, she goes, “I don’t like kimchi.
(0:43:14) speaker_1: ” So, (laughs) but she likes sausages a lot. So she likes the book, but I’d say it’s not, at this point, not on her heavy rotation.
(0:43:21) speaker_0: And your bio on Amazon says that you’re a passionate advocate for diversity.
(0:43:26) speaker_1: Mm-hmm. I am, because I grew up in a family that was incredibly diverse.
(0:43:31) speaker_1: My dad was a white man from the South and was older, so I grew up in a family that was both racially and generationally very different, and regionally very different.
(0:43:41) speaker_1: My job takes me to a lot of minority neighborhoods, so I’ve experienced a lot of diversity in my life, and I worked a lot with people with disabilities.
(0:43:52) speaker_1: That’s another population demographic I’ve been able to get to know closely.
(0:43:57) speaker_1: I do have another book that illustrates the ADA building code to make it more accessible and digestible for people, to make the world hopefully a little bit more accessible for people with disabilities.
(0:44:08) speaker_1: So the books that I have written so far, and hopefully continue to write, are to help make the world more acceptable and open doors to diversity.
(0:44:18) speaker_1: And hopefully that people can see different perspectives and make them more accessible.
(0:44:21) speaker_3: (instrumental music)
(0:44:28) speaker_0: Yeah, you said you’re a city planner, Wyatt?
(0:44:30) speaker_1: Yes. Uh, it’s a little bit of a misleading term.
(0:44:32) speaker_1: (laughs) So it’s not something where I’m mapping out the city and, you know, I’m in control of these big, big projects or zoning.
(0:44:39) speaker_1: I’m in, uh, the housing community development division of, of my department, so I’m mostly involved with housing rehabilitation, so that’s more of helping fix up older homes.
(0:44:49) speaker_1: And also, we have a program that helps make homes accessible for people with disabilities. So those are mainly the programs that I’m involved with.
(0:44:55) speaker_0: Okay. You know, with your name, Wyatt-
(0:44:59) speaker_1: Yes.
(0:44:59) speaker_0: … do people assume you’re adopted?
(0:45:01) speaker_1: Uh, I think that probably, ’cause people say like, like Wyatt Earp.
(0:45:06) speaker_0: Wyatt who?
(0:45:07) speaker_1: Wyatt Earp.
(0:45:08) speaker_0: I don’t know who that is.
(0:45:09) speaker_1: He was a sheriff back in the old West. There’s been a few movies that have been made about him.
(0:45:13) speaker_1: My mom’s ex-husband, he was the one who named me, and he liked Westerns and cowboys, so I actually am named after Wyatt Earp.
(0:45:20) speaker_0: A Korean American man.
(0:45:22) speaker_1: Yes.
(0:45:22) speaker_0: And your name, kind of having a quote unquote white name-
(0:45:25) speaker_1: Yes.
(0:45:25) speaker_0: … do people then bring up the adoption?
(0:45:28) speaker_1: Um, no, not really. Um, they’ll just kinda say, “Oh, I like that name.” Nobody ever really ties it to an adoption.
(0:45:35) speaker_0: Nobody asks you to explain your background?
(0:45:39) speaker_1: No. I would probably think that most people just assume that, ’cause me and my last name is not Korean. I think it’s more of an assumption.
(0:45:45) speaker_0: Okay, so people aren’t maybe, where you are, they’re not as blunt as being, uh, “Why do you have a name like that?”
(0:45:52) speaker_1: No.
(0:45:52) speaker_0: (laughs)
(0:45:53) speaker_1: No. In my job, I visit a lot of people, I visit a lot of homes.
(0:45:56) speaker_1: I know that when I call people to say I’m making an appointment with them, and I say, “Oh, my name’s Wyatt, and I’m gonna come visit your home,” and I know that when I show up at the door, I’m probably not what they expected.
(0:46:06) speaker_1: And it’s never been said before, except for one time, and it was actually very, it was amusing.
(0:46:13) speaker_1: I went to go fix something for her, and I get there and she goes, “You’re Wyatt?” I say, “Yeah, I’m Wyatt.” She’s like, “You don’t look like you sound.
(0:46:19) speaker_1: ” (laughs) And I said, “Yeah, I know, there’s not too many Asian Wyatts running around.” But that’s the only time I actually really… Nobody’s ever-
(0:46:27) speaker_0: Did you ask her, “What does Wyatt sound like? What am I supposed to sound like?” (laughs)
(0:46:31) speaker_1: (laughs) Yeah. Well, I, I, she wasn’t malicious about it or anything like that, so I just more laughed, laughed about it with her.
(0:46:37) speaker_1: But you know, most people would think Wyatt is a very white name.
(0:46:42) speaker_0: Right. Well, Wyatt, I, I wanted to go back to, if you don’t mind-
(0:46:47) speaker_1: Sure.
(0:46:47) speaker_0: … you know, your, both kids it sounds like, right, they’re in vitro fertilization, but-
(0:46:53) speaker_1: Yes.
(0:46:53) speaker_0: … both of them are not your biological kids, right?
(0:46:57) speaker_1: Correct.
(0:46:58) speaker_0: Okay. You said that being adopted yourself-
(0:47:02) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.
(0:47:02) speaker_0: … you feel maybe in some way some kinship with your… Well, obviously they’re your daughters, but-
(0:47:09) speaker_1: Yep.
(0:47:09) speaker_0: … perhaps you might be equipped to help them?
(0:47:12) speaker_1: I think so.
(0:47:13) speaker_1: So before, when my wife and I were planning to have kids, I remember, and she remembers this very specifically too, I had said to her, you know, “I, it would be nice to, when we have kids, that I’ll have somebody that will be my own blood that I’ll be, you know, be able to have with me.
(0:47:29) speaker_1: “
(0:47:29) speaker_0: Yeah.
(0:47:30) speaker_1: And then when we were given the news about my chromosomal issue that that, that was not gonna be possible anymore, she took it really hard ’cause she felt so bad for me.
(0:47:40) speaker_1: But for me, I actually took it quite well, surprisingly, because I had already knew that I could love a family and family members without being blood related.
(0:47:52) speaker_1: So even though I was very, I was very disappointed, I was able to move on from it pretty quickly.
(0:47:57) speaker_1: Whereas my wife actually felt, it was, it was harder for her to move on from that ’cause she felt so bad for me.
(0:48:03) speaker_1: And so I think when they’ll say, you know, “Well, we’re not blood related,” but I can say, “But, you know, I’m not blood related to your, your grandmother or my dad, but we loved each other incredibly.
(0:48:15) speaker_1: We’re a, a fantastic family, and there’s no reason why that can’t be the same for us as well.”
(0:48:23) speaker_0: Do you… You, you said up until this point, your mid 40s-
(0:48:28) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.
(0:48:28) speaker_0: … haven’t had a lot of curiosity or motivation to try to find your natural mother.
(0:48:35) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.
(0:48:36) speaker_0: Do you, do you think part of that is do you think your Korean mother, are you afraid you might upset her?
(0:48:41) speaker_1: Um, if I did do it, I probably wouldn’t tell my mom about it….
(0:48:45) speaker_1: I think it probably would upset her, and I think that, part of that goes to her abandonment history.
(0:48:53) speaker_1: So I think she might feel hurt that, you know, why, why do you need to find…
(0:48:57) speaker_1: Because you’re, um, um, you already have a mom, and I’m your mom, is probably what that she would probably feel.
(0:49:03) speaker_1: And that because she’s had so much other loss in her life, that’s, you know, she might feel hurt in the sense that, you know, a- am I abandoning her then for, for somebody else?
(0:49:14) speaker_1:
(0:49:14) speaker_0: Hmm.
(0:49:15) speaker_1: So if I did go on this journey, I probably wouldn’t tell my mom about it.
(0:49:19) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.
(0:49:20) speaker_1: If my dad were still alive, I know that he would be supportive of it, and he would have been fine with it.
(0:49:24) speaker_1: But I don’t think my mom would be able to handle it. She wouldn’t see it in a positive light.
(0:49:29) speaker_0: Okay. And with your kids not being biologically related-
(0:49:32) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.
(0:49:32) speaker_0: … it’s not something that you feel like seeking, uh, your Korean roots would be something you would do for your kids?
(0:49:49) speaker_1: Yeah. I never really thought about that, but then the way, when you just say it now, yeah, it’s something I…
(0:50:02) speaker_1: It would just have to be more for me than for them. I mean, I don’t think it would be…
(0:50:09) speaker_1: It, it would be so much more for me, and that would just be more of a minor factor for them, I would say.
(0:50:17) speaker_0: Sure, okay. Would you be open to your kids one day looking for their parents who, who donate?
(0:50:25) speaker_1: Yes. Yes, we would be. And there’s a lot of options in that world.
(0:50:30) speaker_1: We know that they will probably have quite a few half siblings, and then in a world of 23andMe, they’ll likely f- you know, find out w-
(0:50:38) speaker_0: Find out, yeah.
(0:50:39) speaker_1: Yeah. I believe with the sperm donor, at a certain point, they could have contact with them, uh, if I, if I remember correctly. And-
(0:50:47) speaker_0: And so the, the egg was also donated?
(0:50:49) speaker_1: Correct, yep. I can’t remember the, the exact privacy rules that were set in place by the donor as to whether or not she would be open to contact or not.
(0:50:58) speaker_1: But if our children wanted to go on that journey, we would be more than supportive of that.
(0:51:02) speaker_0: And so the, the donor can set the parameters?
(0:51:06) speaker_1: Yes.
(0:51:07) speaker_0: Okay. And then with the sperm donor, do you remember if he indicated he would be open to…
(0:51:12) speaker_1: I, I believe that was the case, yeah, that after a certain amount of time has passed by-
(0:51:17) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.
(0:51:17) speaker_1: … then he’s open to communication.
(0:51:20) speaker_0: And was that important to you when you were looking for donors, or wasn’t much of a factor?
(0:51:24) speaker_1: Uh, it wasn’t much of a factor.
(0:51:26) speaker_1: I think at, at that time, it was just more of a finding somebody that was healthy and matched what we were looking for physically.
(0:51:34) speaker_0: And so for parents who, their family was formed using in vitro fertilization, I know there’s some controversy, I guess, about the ethics of it.
(0:51:43) speaker_0: Do you-
(0:51:44) speaker_1: Sure.
(0:51:44) speaker_0: … you know, in terms of, like you said, your daughter could have quite a few half siblings?
(0:51:50) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.
(0:51:51) speaker_0: Um, how do you feel about that?
(0:51:53) speaker_1: We, we, we’re fine with…
(0:51:54) speaker_1: It’s, it’s more the fear, ’cause if there’s anything, you know, locally, there’s the, uh, hopefully she doesn’t meet somebody that she’s related to and, you know, has a, like a romantic interest with, obviously.
(0:52:05) speaker_1: But as far as meeting other siblings, you know, we, we hope that they… ‘Cause my wife and I, we come from small families, ’cause I’m an only child.
(0:52:15) speaker_1: My wife has a brother, and then her brother doesn’t have any children, so they’re not gonna have any cousins growing up.
(0:52:22) speaker_1: So we, we want them to have, um, and we actually hope that they find their half siblings so then they can form a larger family base, especially once we’re not around anymore.
(0:52:34) speaker_1: We want them to, to have that.
(0:52:36) speaker_0: Well, wise- Thank you for sharing. It’s quite a interesting and, you know, untraditional family.
(0:52:43) speaker_1: Yes. (laughs)
(0:52:44) speaker_0: Um, but adoption, also, not the traditional family.
(0:52:49) speaker_1: Yeah.
(0:52:49) speaker_0: Um, what would you like people to know about family? How, how has your experiences informed your ideas around family?
(0:52:58) speaker_1: Um, you know, listening to your podcast too, and I, I wish that everybody had what I had growing up, ’cause I’ve, I know that everybody’s adoption story is, um, as fortunate as what I was brought into.
(0:53:11) speaker_1: I was very, very lucky to be brought into a family that was incredibly loving and then also had, um, you know, had, had means-
(0:53:20) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.
(0:53:21) speaker_1: … to li- to live comfortably. You know, family is, you do not need to be related and still put your life on the line for somebody and love them unconditionally.
(0:53:33) speaker_1: And I, I think about all the…
(0:53:35) speaker_1: For me to be here right now, and for my, my daughters to be here right now, and I also think about all the, the terrible things that happened in order for this to have happened, you know, my mom being abandoned, her first marriage not working out, you know, me, my birth father committing suicide, and then my mom giving me up for adoption.
(0:53:56) speaker_1: And then all that led to me being here, and then, you know, for my own chromosomal issues, for my daughters to be here.
(0:54:05) speaker_1: It’s an incredible set of circumstances that led us here, and the family aspect of it is that there’s a lot of tragedies and sorrow and sadness, but we remained loyal to each other and accepting of each other despite a lot of differences.
(0:54:25) speaker_1: My mom and my dad had a lot of cultural differences, but they came together and created a great environment for me to, to be in, and I hope to create a similar environment for my daughters.
(0:54:37) speaker_1:
(0:54:37) speaker_0: Oh, that was a beautiful way to put that, thank you. Anything more you wanted to, to say with it?
(0:54:46) speaker_1: Yeah, well… So for my own experience with Korean culture, there was…… in my youth, I, you know, I was…
(0:54:54) speaker_1: self-identity crisis, and then going into college, that was the first time I started becoming around more Korean Americans and befriending them, and becoming a lot more comfortable in my skin.
(0:55:05) speaker_1: And then for that time period in my 20s, I kind of, like, forcefully tried to involve myself more into Korean and Asian American culture and-
(0:55:14) speaker_0: Oh, you did?
(0:55:15) speaker_1: Yeah. I did try to learn, like, learn Korean. Started to, like, you know, listen to K-pop.
(0:55:21) speaker_1: Try to, like, watch more Korean dramas and shows, and I dove into that for a while.
(0:55:26) speaker_1: And even after graduating from college, I went to a, a Korean Catholic church here in Omaha, and, and all that w- was good, and I enjoyed that time period.
(0:55:36) speaker_1: But then after a while, I, I think I kind of just did level back off, um, to a point where I, I just felt so much more comfortable with who I was.
(0:55:45) speaker_1: Like, I didn’t need to be, I didn’t need to dive into Korean culture.
(0:55:49) speaker_1: I didn’t need to, um, try and force that into my life, and I can still be proud of it, still have it be a part of my life, but I didn’t need to force it any more than I needed to.
(0:55:58) speaker_1: That’s how I felt for myself.
(0:56:01) speaker_1: Um, so I still have, you know, some Korean friends, and, uh, so I have Korean culture as, you know, a part of my life, but I’m not forcing it any more than I think is necessary for myself.
(0:56:13) speaker_1:
(0:56:13) speaker_0: I see.
(0:56:13) speaker_0: So I’ve seen this happen myself as well, that once you kind of realize if you feel like the lack of Korean identity or cultural competency, if you feel like it’s a deficit that you wanna reach out and-
(0:56:29) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.
(0:56:29) speaker_0: … get it for yourself, you know? (laughs)
(0:56:31) speaker_1: Yeah.
(0:56:31) speaker_0: Or, so, you can go into, you know, a lot of, uh, language learning and just diving right in.
(0:56:38) speaker_1: Mm-hmm. Yep.
(0:56:38) speaker_0: But at some point, you realized that that wasn’t really who you were either.
(0:56:42) speaker_1: Correct. Yep. So it was, like, I’m, I’m not…
(0:56:45) speaker_1: I don’t regret any of that, obviously, but I came to realization that I didn’t have to try to be something that I wasn’t.
(0:56:53) speaker_0: And that’s really just about considering that your family, there’s a lot of difference about your family-
(0:57:01) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.
(0:57:01) speaker_0: … about yourself, that it sounds like you came to a, maybe a maturity, you know-
(0:57:07) speaker_1: Yeah.
(0:57:07) speaker_0: … of realizing that you’re accepting yourself for who you are.
(0:57:10) speaker_1: Yeah.
(0:57:10) speaker_1: And ’cause you know for a long time too, I was pretty, pretty shy and if you ask people about me now they probably still say like, “Wyatt’s pretty reserved,” but I’m way more outgoing than I used to be.
(0:57:20) speaker_1: And also, to a, a certain point too, I just decided, well, two things I would say.
(0:57:26) speaker_1: I would think about what are my insecurities and are other people thinking about that about me?
(0:57:31) speaker_1: Or what if I was somebody else looking at myself, would I be thinking about what he’s thinking about?
(0:57:36) speaker_1: And I’ve made, I came to realization like, no, people aren’t caring about what I’m obsessing over.
(0:57:43) speaker_1: And then also if they are, I came to a comfortable point and confidence point in my life, I said, “Well, I just don’t care what they think.
(0:57:50) speaker_1: ” I don’t, I don’t care what they… if they are thinking that, then their opinion doesn’t affect me one way or the other.
(0:57:56) speaker_1: And that helped, truly helped me become, you know, a lot more comfortable with who I am and whatever identity I choose to be.
(0:58:03) speaker_0: And so, Wyatt, just, uh, wrapping up here a bit-
(0:58:07) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.
(0:58:07) speaker_0: … you said that you had not really been that interested in searching for your bio mother, and that lately you had been thinking about it.
(0:58:15) speaker_0: What was the change?
(0:58:17) speaker_1: Uh, I think actually listening to your podcast. (laughs)
(0:58:20) speaker_0: (laughs)
(0:58:20) speaker_1: It’s, well, I think because I heard so many more stories about it through your podcast, and it was just because, like I said, I, I kept telling myself it’d just be too hard, it’d just be too hard.
(0:58:31) speaker_1: But I think there probably are avenues that are more feasible for me to look into if I really wanted, if I actually just tried.
(0:58:39) speaker_1: Um, so I think now that I realize that there’s people that are there to help me if I want it to, I think that’s something that I was just probably more head in the sand about.
(0:58:50) speaker_1: And then listening to your podcast more than helped me realize, okay, if I wanna take my head out of the sand, I can do that.
(0:58:57) speaker_0: Well, it’s been wonderful having you, Wyatt, on the podcast.
(0:59:00) speaker_1: Thank you.
(0:59:02) speaker_0: What would you be most curious about if you ever were able to find your mother?
(0:59:08) speaker_1: Um, it, it probably…
(0:59:10) speaker_1: I don’t know how to, if I would want to even ask her if I did, but it would be, well obviously, you know, what was the catalyst that, or what was the ultimate reason why you decided that you wanted to give me up for adoption?
(0:59:26) speaker_1: And then questions about my father and like, you know, and more about them too, like their story. Um, how did they come together?
(0:59:35) speaker_1: And then ultimately, you know, what, what happened to him, you know, why did, why did he decide to take his life?
(0:59:40) speaker_0: Mm-hmm. These are such just natural questions that most people get answers to or know. (laughs)
(0:59:46) speaker_1: Yeah, yeah.
(0:59:48) speaker_0: It’s like-
(0:59:48) speaker_1: Yeah.
(0:59:49) speaker_1: But also I realized, you know, from hearing other stories, ’cause I, I’ve met other Korean adoptees in my life, but we never really talked about it in depth and they just seemed kind of like they were just accepting of what their situations and, from what I could tell, hadn’t thought about it as much.
(1:00:05) speaker_1:
(1:00:05) speaker_0: Is there a Korean adoptee community in Omaha?
(1:00:08) speaker_1: Not that I’m aware of.
(1:00:10) speaker_0: Okay. So not, no meetups or-
(1:00:14) speaker_1: No.
(1:00:14) speaker_0: … that you’re, that you’re aware of?
(1:00:16) speaker_1: Not that I’m aware of.
(1:00:18) speaker_0: If you were to… I know you said Omaha’s more diverse now.
(1:00:21) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.
(1:00:22) speaker_0: If you were to see another Asian person about your same age-
(1:00:27) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.
(1:00:27) speaker_0: … you know, East Asian, would you assume they’re adopted?
(1:00:31) speaker_1: Yeah. Uh, actually probably not.
(1:00:35) speaker_0: Okay.
(1:00:36) speaker_1: Because I have enough Asian and Korean American friends here that aren’t, so I, I, I probably wouldn’t assume that initially.
(1:00:43) speaker_0: Okay. Gotcha. Okay. Wyatt, if someone wants to get in touch with you or, you know, wants to chat, are you open to that?
(1:00:52) speaker_1: Sure, of course.
(1:00:54) speaker_0: How can they get in touch with you?
(1:00:55) speaker_1: I do have an author website, so it’s Books by Wyatt. The W-Y-A-T-T.com, so that would be my website and then there’s a contact there.
(1:01:05) speaker_1: I am on, I’m on Facebook as well just through my name or I also have an Instagram, uh, authors.
(1:01:11) speaker_1: Not too much on there right now but it’s Books_by_Wyatt with underscores between the words, so @books_by_wyatt on Instagram.
(1:01:18) speaker_0: And do you think you’ll write more children’s books?
(1:01:20) speaker_1: I hope to. I have a, an idea for a sequel to the concerned about worst story.
(1:01:26) speaker_1: So it’d be, involve another culture, probably with a friend that the character has and then, uh, the mixing of those cultures with a friend.
(1:01:34) speaker_0: Okay. Well, thank you so much, Wyatt.
(1:01:37) speaker_0: Uh, it’s been a pleasure getting to know you and hearing more about your family and thank you so much for sharing such personal details.
(1:01:45) speaker_0: I know it’s not easy to sometimes share all of the…
(1:01:50) speaker_0: Because like you said, there is a lot of sadness and pain that comes with and also the joy that you’ve been given for your, um, forming your family, families.
(1:02:02) speaker_0:
(1:02:02) speaker_1: Yes. No, thank you so much for having me on. It’s been a pleasure. I thank you for sharing my story and so many other people’s stories as well.
(1:02:11) speaker_1: Um, I, it’s, just for me, you know, it’s made a difference and I strongly believe that for so many others that your podcast has made a difference.
(1:02:20) speaker_0: Okay. Thank you. (instrumental music) Thank you so much, Wyatt.
(1:02:29) speaker_0: I am glad you’re on your adoptee discovery journey and I wish you all the best for you and your family.
(1:02:39) speaker_0: These stories aren’t easy for adoptees to go public with and it takes a lot of courage and an act of selflessness, frankly, to want to help others feel not so alone.
(1:02:52) speaker_0: Something you might not realize is as an interviewer and podcast producer, it’s also emotional work to help people unlock their story, help them feel comfortable, and gain some trust in the process.
(1:03:04) speaker_0: I’m glad you’re here. There are a handful of episodes left in this season.
(1:03:09) speaker_0: If you’ve valued the podcast for a while or even since 2016 when we started and would like to help us out financially to finish up the season, please consider becoming a supporter at patreon.com/adoptedpodcast.
(1:03:23) speaker_0: Later in June, we’ll be holding our supporters-only Zoom meetup with Korean American adoptee therapist and author, Camley Small.
(1:03:30) speaker_0: It will be a way for me to say goodbye to some of our most loyal listeners. Thanks also to everyone who has supported this podcast along the way.
(1:03:39) speaker_0: Shout out to new supporter, Hannah Lee, and a generous donation from Curtis J. Bonk. Jennilee Park provided audio production help.
(1:03:49) speaker_0: Yugeun Jeon is our volunteer Korean translator. I’m Kaomi Lee. See you next time. (instrumental music)