Korean adoptee Delight Roberts, 52, talks about marrying into a Korean-American family and the challenges and benefits that provided her. Some were surprising – like table eating etiquette – but all of Roberts’ experiences from childhood bullying to having future in-laws who didn’t approve of her because she is adopted, have strengthened Roberts’ resolve to live the life of her choice.

Audio available on Friday, June 21, 2024. Patreon supporters have early access.

Transcribed by AI

(0:00:00) speaker_0: (music) Welcome to Adopted podcast, Season 7, Episode 21 starts now. This is a podcast that centers the voices of Korean inter-country adoptees.

(0:00:19) 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.

(0:00:28) speaker_0: Our voices have often been silenced by adoption agencies, governments, sometimes even our adoptive families, and a wider society that wants only a feel-good story.

(0:00:39) speaker_0: Our lives are more complicated than that. This is a safe space where we can explore all of ourselves. Please listen to our stories.

(0:00:47) speaker_1: I was not aware of a lot of the cultural issues that would be present, nor did I have an appreciation for, for the fact that being adopted would be a big issue.

(0:00:58) speaker_1:

(0:00:59) speaker_0: What is it like to marry into a Korean American family? We’ll explore that with this next guest, Korean adoptee, Delight Roberts.

(0:01:07) speaker_0: She struggled to fit in growing up in Utah and felt stigmatized for her race and her family.

(0:01:13) speaker_0: As an adult woman meeting Korean American immigrant in-laws for the first time, she felt another kind of stigma. But I’ll let Delight tell her story.

(0:01:23) speaker_0: Here’s Delight.

(0:01:31) speaker_1: Delight Roberts, I’m 52, and I live in Seattle.

(0:01:37) speaker_0: Okay, Delight, so I’m sure you’re tired of explaining this, but there’s gotta be a story about your name.

(0:01:44) speaker_1: Oh, yeah. Actually, so my parents waited a long time, um, my mom could not have children, and they waited a long time to actually have a child.

(0:01:56) speaker_1: But the other part of the story is my mom actually had a sister named Delight who had died when she was seven during a tonsillectomy.

(0:02:04) speaker_0: Oh, wow.

(0:02:05) speaker_1: Yeah, and so those are the two reasons I have been given for my name.

(0:02:09) speaker_0: How does that feel, having the namesake of someone else?

(0:02:13) speaker_1: You know, it’s funny, I didn’t think about it for a really long time, but I was extremely close to my grandfather, so the father of the first Delight who had died during a tonsillectomy, and he and I were very, very close, and he wrote me a letter once and just basically said that it was like the greatest gift after that loss that he had mourned so many years ago to then have another Delight in his life to love like he had loved her.

(0:02:36) speaker_1: And so I never felt like it was a burden, uh, I think because it was so tragic. She basically died of an anesthesia issue.

(0:02:44) speaker_1: I think it was an anesthesia overdose-

(0:02:47) speaker_0: Oh, wow.

(0:02:47) speaker_1: … which is very unlikely to happen today, um, but yeah, that part never… I never felt burdened by it.

(0:02:54) speaker_0: Were your grandparents Southern?

(0:02:57) speaker_1: No, no.

(0:02:57) speaker_1: So my grandparents were from California and my grandfather had come to Salt Lake, he worked for the National Weather Service, and so they ended up in Utah, total anomaly because they weren’t Mormon, and yeah.

(0:03:12) speaker_1:

(0:03:13) speaker_0: Okay, okay. And so you… Where did you grow up?

(0:03:16) speaker_1: I grew up in Salt Lake, in a suburb just outside of Salt Lake City.

(0:03:19) speaker_0: Yes.

(0:03:19) speaker_0: And so a long time ago, I went to Salt Lake, a friend of mine had moved from Minnesota after she graduated from college and she lived in Salt Lake, and I remember when I went to visit her, there was like…

(0:03:32) speaker_0: It probably doesn’t still exist, but you had to put your name on a list if you were gonna have a drink.

(0:03:37) speaker_1: Oh, yeah.

(0:03:40) speaker_0: Were you caught with it?

(0:03:41) speaker_1: Yeah, the liquor laws are very challenging, interesting, obtuse, pick one of those, ’cause it’s a dry state.

(0:03:48) speaker_1: So like, you can only buy alcohol at the designated store.

(0:03:52) speaker_1: You can’t buy it, like, in the grocery store, and there are only a limited number of manufacturers and suppliers that can supply alcohol to those stores, and they’re usually not, like, top wines.

(0:04:03) speaker_1: And so, yeah, that’s not surprising.

(0:04:04) speaker_1: I’m sure you probably were, like, at a private club or restaurants at the time used to have to get, like, a private license so they could serve alcohol.

(0:04:11) speaker_1:

(0:04:11) speaker_0: Yeah, I think it was probably more like a bar or restaurant or something like that where she had to submit my name ahead of time or just that I was a visitor and I don’t know, maybe it was because there were special licenses that establishments had to get.

(0:04:27) speaker_0:

(0:04:27) speaker_1: Yeah, yeah, I think that probably was the case.

(0:04:30) speaker_0: Which I just thought was the most bizarre thing, but… (laughs)

(0:04:34) speaker_1: Yeah. (laughs)

(0:04:35) speaker_0: It was beau- ah, it’s beautiful out there.

(0:04:36) speaker_1: Yes, and that is why a lot of people live there. Like, the natural beauty, I miss that to this day. It’s so beautiful, the mountains…

(0:04:44) speaker_1: If you’re outdoorsy, it’s fantastic, although it’s gotten a lot more crowded since I left.

(0:04:49) speaker_1: I left, uh, gosh, 30 years ago, but I still go back pretty frequently because my family is there, but it is so beautiful.

(0:04:56) speaker_0: Yeah, so not only were you Korean growing up and maybe the only Asian in your neighborhood, school?

(0:05:05) speaker_1: So in my elementary school, my brother, who’s also adopted from Korea, we were the only two Asians. It was horrible. And, and…

(0:05:14) speaker_0: (laughs) So being the only Asian and then also being not Mormon.

(0:05:17) speaker_1: Not Mormon, and there was a third strike and that was that my mother was divorced and in 19… Let’s see, that was in 1977.

(0:05:26) speaker_0: Oh, wow, okay.

(0:05:27) speaker_1: D- Divorce was hugely, hugely rare, scandalous. I mean, there were kids that would not play with us because my mother was divorced.

(0:05:37) speaker_1: It was like she had The Scarlet Letter. It’s crazy to think about that now, but we really were marginalized in a lot of ways for all those reasons.

(0:05:46) speaker_1: It was a pretty tough upbringing, I have to say.

(0:05:49) speaker_0: Um, do you think that some of your experiences that you grew up in kind of, you know, tough and probably many ways really have stayed with you?

(0:05:57) speaker_1: Oh, definitely, because I… My brother and I were both bullied pretty mercilessly too for being Asian….

(0:06:04) speaker_1: taunted, like, daily about our eyes and our face and how we looked and, you know, they’d sing those rhymes.

(0:06:09) speaker_1: And back then, you know, nobody took bullying seriously. And my mom was a school teacher. And she didn’t teach at the same school we went to, but-

(0:06:17) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:06:17) speaker_1: … you know, the answer back then to any bullying, the response was, “Oh, it’s because they like you,” or, “Ignore it.”

(0:06:25) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:06:25) speaker_1: And now, we know just how damaging that was.

(0:06:28) speaker_1: But yeah, I definitely think that shaped me and it was a pretty difficult place to be a kid, uh, I think if you’re not white and you’re not Mormon.

(0:06:37) speaker_1: Uh, more importantly, it was very lonely and the thing that saved me is that I was very close to my family, really close to my mom, and my grandpa, and my grandma before she died, and then my uncles.

(0:06:49) speaker_1: And so having them around, I- I think really helped want some of what I was experiencing during the day.

(0:06:55) speaker_1: And back then, thank God, there was no social media, so I could just go home, literally slam the door, and I knew I was safe, and it was quiet.

(0:07:03) speaker_1: And I read a lot, so I could escape into my books and my dog. And that really was a refuge for me.

(0:07:09) speaker_0: How do you respond to being bullied like that so frequently? Did you become a fighter or did you avoid people?

(0:07:17) speaker_1: No, I was a crier. I mean, I would, I would run away. I was a runner. So, and we lived just around the corner from my house, so I would just leave.

(0:07:26) speaker_1: When I couldn’t take it anymore, I would just run away from school and I’d go home. But I cried a lot. I was not a fighter.

(0:07:32) speaker_0: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

(0:07:33) speaker_1: And part of me wishes that I had fought back, but, um, yeah, it was just-

(0:07:41) speaker_0: That sort of response, yeah.

(0:07:42) speaker_1: Yeah. So I, I would just run home when I couldn’t take it anymore, when it just became too much.

(0:07:47) speaker_1: But the other thing that was really hard is, a lot of parents didn’t want their kids to play with us or to be our friends.

(0:07:53) speaker_1: Again, I don’t know how much of that was, you know, allocated because we were Asian, because my mom was divorced, because we weren’t Mormon.

(0:08:01) speaker_1: I actually, I think the religion part played a pretty big part in that.

(0:08:04) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:08:05) speaker_1: And what people don’t realize is that with Mormons, a lot of the social activity and a lot of the community, like they do have a very strong community, so all of the kids would be doing something every night through the church.

(0:08:17) speaker_1: So if you weren’t a part of the church, you were really left out.

(0:08:21) speaker_1: And that goes for, like, school dances, just about th- the entire social life revolved around the church, so to not be part of that…

(0:08:28) speaker_1: And they were not inclusive if you were not Mormon, so it’s not like if you had a friend you could go to their, you know, Monday night craft activity for the kids and participate.

(0:08:36) speaker_1:

(0:08:36) speaker_0: Mm-hmm. Why would your mother settle there?

(0:08:39) speaker_1: Oh, that is a very good question. So she, my mom was just a remarkable person.

(0:08:45) speaker_1: She went to Berkeley in the ’60s, paid for it herself, because at the time, my grandfather, who changed his views over the years, just didn’t think women needed an education, so he wouldn’t pay for it.

(0:08:57) speaker_1: So my mom worked three jobs-

(0:08:58) speaker_0: Wow.

(0:08:59) speaker_1: … to put herself through college. And then I don’t know why she came back. I’ve often asked her, I was like, “Mom, you were free.

(0:09:04) speaker_1: You should’ve just stayed there.”

(0:09:06) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:09:07) speaker_1: But she returned I think because her family was there and then just didn’t leave, you know?

(0:09:13) speaker_0: Oh, I see. So she was from Salt Lake.

(0:09:16) speaker_1: Yeah, yeah.

(0:09:17) speaker_0: Okay.

(0:09:17) speaker_1: So both of my grandparents had based their family in Salt Lake, and so my mom went away for college, but then came back ’cause that’s where everybody was.

(0:09:25) speaker_1:

(0:09:25) speaker_0: And why would they? And I’m just kind of wondering, you know, non-Mormon, it’s gotta be kind of a little bit…

(0:09:32) speaker_1: I think, you know, it’s, that’s a question I never asked, and I’m very sorry I have never asked him that directly ’cause he’s gone now too, but I don’t know, I was always just told that he’d gone for work.

(0:09:42) speaker_1: It’s interesting because men back then made all the decisions.

(0:09:47) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:09:48) speaker_1: And for a lot of men, a lot of their social needs are met through their families and through their wives.

(0:09:54) speaker_1: So, I suspect that my grandpa wasn’t nearly as bothered about not being Mormon and being in Salt Lake as maybe my grandma was in terms of making friends and, and socially.

(0:10:04) speaker_1:

(0:10:05) speaker_0: Having a social circle.

(0:10:06) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:10:07) speaker_0: So when did things get better for you?

(0:10:09) speaker_1: Um, things got better when I went to college, for sure. I had really wanted to go away for college, but my mom was a teacher, and so couldn’t afford it.

(0:10:21) speaker_1: And I got a full ride scholarship to the University of Utah.

(0:10:24) speaker_0: Hmm.

(0:10:25) speaker_1: But I was so miserable in school that I skipped my senior year of high school, and so I started college when I was 16.

(0:10:31) speaker_0: Oh, wow.

(0:10:32) speaker_1: Just to get out of that environment. And I’m an extrovert and I have a lot of friends now, but it was really hard for me to make friends.

(0:10:37) speaker_1: Like, it was just a really hard thing.

(0:10:39) speaker_1: And by the time you’re in high school, you’re not bullied outwardly anymore as much as you’re just more kind of left out.

(0:10:46) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:10:46) speaker_1: And so I really was looking to find my people.

(0:10:49) speaker_1: But I ended up at University of Utah, which I have to say, back then was not the university I would have chosen.

(0:10:55) speaker_1: But because I had wanted to get out of high school so badly and qualified for early admissions-

(0:11:01) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:11:02) speaker_1: … that, to me, seemed like the best option.

(0:11:04) speaker_0: It makes sense, a full ride too.

(0:11:06) speaker_1: Yeah. So I stayed, and then, I’m a lawyer, so I had also gone to law school in Utah.

(0:11:11) speaker_1: And it was kind of the same thing, I had also intended to leave, but my mom didn’t really want me to leave, ’cause we were, we were quite close.

(0:11:19) speaker_1: And then I also got a really nice scholarship for law school, and I was kind of afraid to leave. Back then, I didn’t really like change.

(0:11:26) speaker_1: As much as I wanted to go, I was pretty happy to stay too.

(0:11:30) speaker_1: And in hindsight, I’m really grateful for that, ’cause my mom ended up dying unexpectedly when she turned 60 of a heart attack.

(0:11:39) speaker_1: And so I’m really grateful that I had that time with her, ’cause I saw her a lot in law school and in college.

(0:11:45) speaker_0: Yeah. Yeah.

(0:11:47) speaker_1: But as soon as I graduated from law school, I was like, “I am outta here.”

(0:11:50) speaker_0: (laughs)

(0:11:50) speaker_1: “I’m going to wa- I’m going to one of the two Washingtons. I’m either going to Washington State or I’m going to Washington DC,” ’cause I love politics.

(0:11:55) speaker_1: But I- I knew that I wasn’t gonna stay.

(0:11:58) speaker_0: Now, I know they don’t give out full rides, uh, to anyone. You must’ve been quite studious and did well academically.

(0:12:07) speaker_0: Did you see academic school as freedom and ticket out of there?

(0:12:13) speaker_1: … know about that, but I just was a super nerd.

(0:12:16) speaker_1: Like, I really liked school, I loved to read, I liked to learn, and I was really achievement-focused, I really liked getting the A, and so (laughs) all those things together.

(0:12:27) speaker_1: And like I said, I didn’t have a lot of distractions ’cause I didn’t really have any friends, and so I had a lot of time to study.

(0:12:33) speaker_1: And so I don’t know if I really thought of it as an escape or as my ticket out, but it was just something that I could focus on on the day-to-day.

(0:12:41) speaker_2: And where did you meet your husband?

(0:12:45) speaker_1: Oh, that is like, a really good story.

(0:12:48) speaker_1: So I met my husband Tom in Seattle through friends, and the funny part about this is that I- I had two friends, Michelle and Peter, who both had separately had reached out to me about meeting their friend Tom.

(0:13:02) speaker_1: So Michelle and I have lunch one day and she’s telling me about him and I’m like, “You know what? Nah, he’s just, he doesn’t, he’s not my type.

(0:13:09) speaker_1: I- I don’t think so.

(0:13:10) speaker_1: ” Peter was a lot more persistent, and Peter is Tom’s best friend, and Peter and Michelle are both Korean-American, and they were both like, “Oh, we’ve, you know, you should meet my friend Tom.

(0:13:19) speaker_1: ” And I was like, “No, no, no.” And so, but Peter kept-

(0:13:23) speaker_2: What wasn’t he your type? What was, uh, what did you think?

(0:13:25) speaker_1: Yeah. Um, (laughs) Michelle was like, “Well, he’s really quiet and he’s introverted and he’s kinda shy.” And I was like, “Oh.” Like, “No.”

(0:13:35) speaker_2: (laughs)

(0:13:35) speaker_1: “I don’t…” Like, I mean, I’m not like, a super extrovert, but I was like, “Oh,” you know? “That doesn’t really sound like my type.

(0:13:42) speaker_1: ” And honestly, the other thing too is she’s like, “Oh, and he’s Korean-American,” and that was not something I had ever looked for. So…

(0:13:48) speaker_2: Hm.

(0:13:49) speaker_1: It was not like I was out there trying to date different Asians or Korean men. As a matter of fact, Tom was one of only a few Asians that I had ever dated.

(0:13:56) speaker_1: But Peter kept being like, “Oh, come to this happy hour, come to this, come to that.” And I kept declining. This went on for months.

(0:14:03) speaker_1: Well, one day I was supposed to go over to Peter’s house, he and his wife Julie, to their house for dinner, and we’d had to cancel the first time and then I had been painting my house the day that I was supposed to go over there for dinner, and I thought about canceling ’cause it was like, five o’clock and I was in my painting clothes and I was like, “Oh, I don’t really feel like getting cleaned up and going over there.

(0:14:23) speaker_1: ” And I thought, “Oh, what the heck? It’s just Peter and his wife.” And so I didn’t even shower, I was just like, “All right.

(0:14:28) speaker_1: ” Didn’t even change my painting clothes. So I pulled up to their house and I parked, and immediately a car pulled up behind me and out pops Tom.

(0:14:38) speaker_1: And I was like, “Oh, man. This is that guy that they’ve been trying to set me up with. I’m gonna kill Peter.”

(0:14:44) speaker_2: (laughs) You knew it was a set-up, right?

(0:14:45) speaker_1: Well, I figured it out pretty quickly.

(0:14:47) speaker_2: (laughs)

(0:14:47) speaker_1: And of course, Peter, I walk up and I’m at this point just super annoyed, and Peter said, “Oh, did we not tell you our friend was coming?”

(0:14:56) speaker_2: (laughs)

(0:14:56) speaker_1: I was like, “No. No, you did not, you did not tell me that.

(0:15:00) speaker_1: ” But it’s actually a pretty fun story because we go in, and for like, the first hour Tom sits against the wall and doesn’t say a thing, and I’m thinking, “Oh man, this guy is like, such a dud.

(0:15:10) speaker_1: ” And I was thinking to myself, “What’s the minimum amount of time I have to stay and not be rude so I can go back home and finish my painting?

(0:15:17) speaker_1: ” And then we had gone out to their deck to have dinner, and Tom and I started talking.

(0:15:22) speaker_1: We both liked this film that nobody else saw called Nowhere in Africa, set during World War II, and it was like, one of our favorite movies.

(0:15:29) speaker_2: Oh, how random.

(0:15:30) speaker_1: Exactly. And then we started like, having all these things in common. He actually was born in Salt Lake, but had moved when he was a toddler.

(0:15:36) speaker_2: Oh my gosh. That’s so sweet.

(0:15:37) speaker_1: Just some really randomly weird things. It was like the movies.

(0:15:41) speaker_1: And then you couldn’t shut either one of us up, and it was like, it was like my friends disappeared, and I remember thinking-

(0:15:48) speaker_2: (laughs)

(0:15:48) speaker_1: … every once in a while that we needed to include them in the conversation ’cause we were being rude.

(0:15:52) speaker_2: (laughs) So it was that moment where everything else falls away.

(0:15:57) speaker_1: Everything else fell away. And it was kinda crazy. And I’ll tell you, I was 35 when we met.

(0:16:05) speaker_1: Tom was almost 40, so it’s not like we were just out of college and didn’t know what we were doing on the dating front.

(0:16:14) speaker_1: But this was in August, and we were engaged by Thanksgiving.

(0:16:18) speaker_2: Wow. Your friends really did know you.

(0:16:22) speaker_1: Yes, yes.

(0:16:22) speaker_2: Because it wasn’t just a, you know, like, “Our two single friends. Let’s have them meet.” Like, they must’ve really seen something.

(0:16:29) speaker_1: They did. And what I tell people now, you know, younger people, I’m like, “Oh, you know what? Forget about your type.

(0:16:34) speaker_1: How much is looking for your type, how far has that gotten you so far? Yeah, not very far. So maybe you should be a little more open-minded.

(0:16:41) speaker_1: ” It was pretty crazy, and it was so fast that even my brother and my best friend both pulled me aside.

(0:16:46) speaker_1: They were like, “Look, we really like Tom, but do you think you guys are rushing it?” I was like, “No.” And we’ll be married 17 years in July. So…

(0:16:53) speaker_2: Wow. Congratulations.

(0:16:54) speaker_1: Yeah. Thank you. So it’s kind of a crazy story.

(0:16:56) speaker_1: Sometimes I can’t even believe, like if somebody else was telling me this story, I’d be like, “No, I really don’t believe.” It was a, kind of a crazy thing.

(0:17:04) speaker_1:

(0:17:04) speaker_2: I mean, I’m single, not married, and you know, people are like, “Oh, when you know, you know,” or whatever.

(0:17:10) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:17:11) speaker_2: Did that ring true for you?

(0:17:12) speaker_1: It really did.

(0:17:13) speaker_1: I had had boyfriends, I had lived with two people, had long-term relationships with both of them, and when I met Tom, after that first meeting, he’d asked me out and I was hosting a baby shower, and I was like, “Well, you can come over and…

(0:17:27) speaker_1: ” And we had mutual friends who were coming to that baby shower, so I said, “Yeah, why don’t you come over to the shower?

(0:17:31) speaker_1: ” And then we were gonna go to the movies. We ended up talking for like, eight hours and after that, I was like, “I think that’s the guy I’m gonna marry.

(0:17:38) speaker_1: ” And what’s funny is, the next morning, he had called his oldest sister and he said, “I think I met the person I’m gonna marry.”

(0:17:44) speaker_2: Wow.

(0:17:45) speaker_1: So, so yes. To, to your point, I used to never believe that. I was like, “What do you mean you just know? Like, that is just made-up.

(0:17:53) speaker_1: ” But it really was like a sense of knowing, and part of it was, you know how when you’re single and you go on a date and then basically after the date you’re like, post-morteming it?

(0:18:02) speaker_1: You’re like, replaying the day thinking about all the things you should’ve said differently or done differently or whatever?

(0:18:07) speaker_1: Th- there was never, there was none of that with Tom. I just was super comfortable being myself.

(0:18:13) speaker_0: When you were dating and even, you know, through marriage, did you ever feel like your adoption, being adopted somehow played a role in your attachment style?

(0:18:26) speaker_0: Or if you have “attachment issues,” quote unquote?

(0:18:30) speaker_1: Yeah, that’s a really good question. Hmm, I haven’t really, um, I think spent a lot of time thinking about it in those kinds of terms.

(0:18:38) speaker_1: I mean, I will say this, thanks to a lot of therapy throughout my life, I feel like I had worked through a lot of my issues.

(0:18:46) speaker_1: Honestly, I think more of my issues came from the fact that my parents were divorced, and that my dad had left, and really wasn’t part of my life.

(0:18:56) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:18:56) speaker_1: And if there were some sort of issue around adoption, as I said, I’m 52, and so during all of my childhood, there wasn’t an awareness around adoption that there is now.

(0:19:06) speaker_1: Like you were expected to be adopted into a family, and then just be happy and grateful and feel lucky…

(0:19:12) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:19:12) speaker_1: And live happily ever after.

(0:19:14) speaker_1: And so, I mean, I credit my mother, and like I said, in my very close relationships with my grandfather and my uncles, to the fact that I didn’t feel like I had really an attachment issue per se.

(0:19:28) speaker_1: And what’s funny is, with adoption, like I just hadn’t spent a lot of time really deeply contemplating what it meant.

(0:19:34) speaker_1: And I have to admit, I am probably somebody that has been late to the, um, late to thinking very deeply about some of those issues and what they mean and the history.

(0:19:45) speaker_1: And it’s quite painful now for me to do that as an adult.

(0:19:49) speaker_1: And I think because I have a lot of perspective because I am older, now that I’m learning more and doing more, like I didn’t go to Korea until I met Tom, and really wasn’t interested in it, wasn’t interested in, like, seeking out an adoptee community.

(0:20:05) speaker_1: And interestingly, my mother was far more interested in, uh, going to Korea and finding a biological family.

(0:20:11) speaker_1: And she had always said to me that she had wanted us to go together ’cause she wanted to thank my adoptive mother. She wanted to find her and thank her.

(0:20:18) speaker_1: But for me, this is kind of something I’ve come to, I’d say, later in life, given my, given my age.

(0:20:25) speaker_1: But now that I am learning more about it, I spend a lot of time thinking about it, and I have to compartmentalize it. Like I can’t…

(0:20:31) speaker_1: It’s just so overwhelming and it’s so painful sometimes, especially now that I’ve learned so much more about the Human Rights Commission and the investigations and Holt.

(0:20:40) speaker_1: Like I grew up thinking Holt was fantastic. The stories I was told, it’s just the Holts were like saints on Earth. They were amazing.

(0:20:49) speaker_1: And that was the narrative I believed my entire life until recently.

(0:20:54) speaker_1: And so that undoing a- a- and just really realizing what an industry it was, and still, I mean, it really…

(0:21:01) speaker_1: So it’s been, um, it’s been something that’s been really hard for me at times to think about for too long.

(0:21:10) speaker_0: Sort of the reeducation process.

(0:21:12) speaker_1: Yeah. Or I would just say the education process, ’cause I never got the first education. I mean, except for the, the narrative, the story.

(0:21:20) speaker_1: And so now it’s like, oh, there’s a whole other story, and there are whole other pieces of truth.

(0:21:25) speaker_0: Yeah. And growing up in the ’70s and ’80s, I mean, it was pretty… There were very dominant narratives around adoption and how we should feel.

(0:21:34) speaker_1: Yeah. And there was no way to find other narratives, right? ‘Cause this was the time before social media and the internet.

(0:21:40) speaker_0: Right.

(0:21:42) speaker_1: So you were really limited in terms of the information, even the people that you could seek to connect with.

(0:21:47) speaker_1: My mom had started the first Korean heritage camp for adopted Korean kids when I was, I think I must have been 10.

(0:21:53) speaker_1: And that was so fanta- Like I looked forward to that every summer. And kids would fly in from Colorado and Wyoming, like all the surrounding states.

(0:22:02) speaker_1: And then we would spend a week with first generation Korean American college students from Berkeley.

(0:22:08) speaker_1: There was an organization called KIM, Korean Identity Matters, and they would be our camp counselors.

(0:22:13) speaker_1: And it was just so much fun ’cause then we would have like a week of language and culture and folktales and history. And we loved it.

(0:22:22) speaker_1: And the best thing about it was it was a place to go for one week a year where I did not have to field questions about, “Who are your real parents?

(0:22:29) speaker_1: Do you know who they are?” You know, “How old were you when you were adopted?” All those questions-

(0:22:35) speaker_0: Were you given up? Yeah.

(0:22:36) speaker_1: … yes, I did not have to answer. It was so fantastic.

(0:22:40) speaker_0: You know, and you’re probably, uh, you’re a great person to ask this, ’cause I’ve always wondered, for years, you know, decades predominantly, it’s white adoptive parents who put on these culture camps.

(0:22:51) speaker_0: They’re usually the ones involved and-

(0:22:53) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:22:53) speaker_0: …

(0:22:53) speaker_0: the volunteers and for one week a year perhaps, all the adopted kids are together and they’re singing songs or l- learning about drawing and, um, you know, writing their name in Hangul or, or eating food.

(0:23:11) speaker_0: But is that just cosmetic culture? I mean, obviously, white adoptive parents, they know what they’re missing to instill cultural competency.

(0:23:21) speaker_0: But I know all of us, when we are around other Korean Americans, maybe not so much as an older person, but you know, as a younger person, that we feel really white.

(0:23:31) speaker_0: And so wondering, is there something that our white adoptive parents could have given us to help our identity growth and our cultural competency?

(0:23:39) speaker_0: Or is it just the fact that they can’t give us certain things?

(0:23:42) speaker_1: Oh, that’s a really great question. No, I mean, I, I think they definitely can. I think part of it is the time in which we were raised.

(0:23:52) speaker_1: The idea that a week is gonna be enough.

(0:23:54) speaker_1: And at these camps, they were not talking about issues of abandonment or the adoption industry or how lonely it is or the isolation of being the only in a white community, right?

(0:24:03) speaker_1: Like there’s nobody there trying to facilitate that kind of a conversation. Um, but I will tell you something interesting.

(0:24:09) speaker_1: Two of my really close friends both have adopted daughters from China…. and I’ve known one of them since the day she was adopted.

(0:24:16) speaker_1: I wrote the letter for my friends, a recommendation, and the other one I’ve known since she was four.

(0:24:22) speaker_1: It is just striking to me what a different world it is now to raise an adopted child from Asia.

(0:24:28) speaker_1: Both of my friends have done an amazing job with having those conversations early, with not being performative, but really wanting to provide their children with the right environment and the right climate to be who they are and to feel sad and to embrace their culture.

(0:24:47) speaker_1: It’s pretty impressive ’cause these girls didn’t just get a week. I mean, this is their life. They belong to an adoptee group. They get together often.

(0:24:56) speaker_1: Well, they’re both in college now, the young women are both in college, but when they were younger, they did a lot of stuff together as kids with the adoptive community.

(0:25:04) speaker_1: Like, they both had gone back to China when they were much younger, before they were teenagers.

(0:25:09) speaker_1: One of my friends, they went and they lived in China for three months, and Lucy went to a Chinese school for three months.

(0:25:17) speaker_1: Like, they have done a lot to really truly…

(0:25:21) speaker_1: T- to just make sure that they were really cognizant and welcoming and open about some of the issues that adoption brings. And they’re white.

(0:25:33) speaker_0: They’re, your friends are white?

(0:25:34) speaker_1: They, they are.

(0:25:35) speaker_0: Oh.

(0:25:35) speaker_1: For the one set of parents, they’re both white. The other set of parents, the mom is Chinese and the dad is white.

(0:25:41) speaker_0: Okay.

(0:25:42) speaker_1: But both of the girls are Chinese, and it has just been amazing to watch them, and I am just so happy ’cause I love them both a lot, and it’s just been such a joy for me to see them not as burdened as I was as a child.

(0:25:54) speaker_1: Now, here’s the interesting thing.

(0:25:55) speaker_1: Even though they are both raised in Seattle where there are a lot of Asians, it has been interesting and painful for me too to see that they still struggle with some of the things that I struggled with too.

(0:26:06) speaker_1: And so, part of me thinks no matter how educated your parents are or how much work they do, there’s some of that, really around fitting in.

(0:26:14) speaker_1: It- it’s just a struggle, around belonging.

(0:26:19) speaker_1: So it’s like you feel like you don’t fit in completely in white culture, but then you don’t fit in in Asian culture too, right? And that’s something…

(0:26:33) speaker_1: Because you were adopted, so you’re raised in a family without a lot of the traditions and the background.

(0:26:39) speaker_1: And I have run up against that a lot being married to Tom, who was raised in a traditionally Asian family, and not having been, and then marrying into that family.

(0:26:51) speaker_1: There’s just a lot that I didn’t grow up with, right? Because culturally, I’m American. I grew up American.

(0:26:57) speaker_0: Did he have similar struggles with fitting in or, and/or with you?

(0:27:01) speaker_1: Tom? No, Tom’s amazing. He is just amazing for a lot of reasons.

(0:27:05) speaker_1: But he has got to be one of the only people and probably the only Asian I know who did not, growing up, have, like, a lot of issues around self-esteem, and this is, I think, a big reason why.

(0:27:16) speaker_1: His parents did the reverse migration when Tom was 12.

(0:27:19) speaker_1: Tom’s parents had immigrated to the US before he was born, so he was born in Salt Lake, and then they had lived in some different places.

(0:27:27) speaker_1: My father-in-law was a mineral engineer, mining engineer, so the family moved around based on his jobs.

(0:27:33) speaker_1: Well, when Tom was 12, my father-in-law got a job offer from LG to come back and be a VP of something back with the business.

(0:27:41) speaker_0: So a relatively well-to-do family?

(0:27:44) speaker_1: Yeah, for… Well, at least for that period of time.

(0:27:47) speaker_1: So they moved him back to Korea, and, um, Tom basically went to high school, spent some of his formative years at Seoul Foreign.

(0:27:56) speaker_1: And so, he wasn’t like the other.

(0:27:59) speaker_1: I think being raised in Korea during those formative years, he was, you know, he was a Korean living in Korea, and that really shaped his worldview in such a positive way.

(0:28:12) speaker_1: Like, he thinks that Korean women are the most beautiful women on the face of the Earth. Like-

(0:28:17) speaker_0: We are. (laughs)

(0:28:19) speaker_1: Yes, we are. He’s certainly right there.

(0:28:21) speaker_0: (laughs)

(0:28:21) speaker_1: But more importantly, he didn’t have that thing where he was like, “Oh, gosh, I wish I could change my nose or my face, or, you know, how I look to fit in.

(0:28:30) speaker_1: ” He didn’t ever have a feeling like he didn’t fit in, if that makes sense.

(0:28:33) speaker_0: Yeah, and just one little that I know about Seoul Foreign School that he also was an international Korean there.

(0:28:40) speaker_0: Most likely, other Koreans who had international experience and/or Korean families and/or other non-Korean families who were internationally living in Seoul.

(0:28:51) speaker_0:

(0:28:51) speaker_1: Exactly.

(0:28:52) speaker_0: He was probably in a very like-minded environment.

(0:28:55) speaker_1: Yeah, I, I look at the impact that I think that has had on his life.

(0:28:59) speaker_1: That was so impactful and so profound that our son is 14, about to start high school next year, and we actually asked our son, “Ethan, would you like to go to high school in Korea?

(0:29:08) speaker_1: ‘Cause we would consider moving to Korea for a period of time so that you can go to high school here,” and he doesn’t want to do that to one of his friends, but I, I think that-

(0:29:18) speaker_0: I want to do that. Will (laughs) you send me?

(0:29:20) speaker_1: Yeah, I’ll send you.

(0:29:21) speaker_0: Cool.

(0:29:21) speaker_1: I, I think the benefit of that, though, for a young person during those formative years-

(0:29:25) speaker_0: Yeah.

(0:29:25) speaker_1: …

(0:29:25) speaker_1: just cannot be, just cannot be underestimated, and ’cause in my very small sort of data study, you know, my observation, that was just really such a game changer for my husband.

(0:29:35) speaker_1:

(0:29:35) speaker_0: I wonder if that experience that he had, also a lot of his formative years, he was in Utah, right? Or US?

(0:29:44) speaker_1: No, I think he moved from Utah, uh, pretty early on, so I don’t, I don’t think he was even two when he moved.

(0:29:50) speaker_1: So he was born there, but he didn’t stay there.

(0:29:53) speaker_0: But he’s not… Yeah, and he’s not Korean Korean ’cause he grew up some years, elementary years in this, uh, middle school.

(0:30:00) speaker_1: Yeah, and, and Tom was like a, a boy’s boy in that, like, he played all the sports. That’s how boys bond, right? To play sports.

(0:30:08) speaker_0: Okay.

(0:30:08) speaker_1: Yeah, he played, he played football, he played basketball. He played any sport he could find, and so-…

(0:30:15) speaker_1: he always had friends, and I think the experience for boys is different from girls, especially if you’re a boy who plays sports.

(0:30:21) speaker_0: Yeah.

(0:30:22) speaker_1: And then he ended up moving back to Seoul, and that was… I mean, he had a really good time at SEUL Foreign.

(0:30:28) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:30:28) speaker_1: He’s still in touch with a lot of his friends from that time too.

(0:30:32) speaker_0: So when you started dating him, was he the first Korean American you had dated?

(0:30:37) speaker_1: Yes.

(0:30:39) speaker_0: So even I know, I’ve heard of the… I don’t know if you could say the dreaded mother-in-law. I mean, that’s kind of a trope for everyone, right?

(0:30:47) speaker_0: The dreaded mother-in-law. But I’ve always thought to myself growing up that, “Oh, I don’t think I want an Asian mother-in-law,” because they…

(0:30:55) speaker_0: you’ll be under their thumb, you know? (laughs) They will be really strict and really demanding. Um, were you afraid of that when things got serious?

(0:31:03) speaker_0: And is that just a stereotype? (laughs)

(0:31:05) speaker_1: Um, no. You know, it’s funny, I hadn’t really thought much of it, but a, a c- couple of things. My mother-in-law is passed now. She died three years ago.

(0:31:15) speaker_1: My father-in-law is still alive. He’s 92. There are few people I have more respect for than my in-laws.

(0:31:21) speaker_1: Like, if you knew what they have gone through, you know, Japanese occupation, starvation, some of the things that they did to survive.

(0:31:29) speaker_1: And both of my in-laws were from pretty wealthy families in Korea.

(0:31:33) speaker_1: And then being immigrants to this country, like, my father-in-law came over, came to Utah with literally 20 bucks in his pocket. That’s it.

(0:31:42) speaker_1: And he raised three kids, like hardest workers you’ll ever meet, and my mother-in-law was just really amazing. She… just super outgoing.

(0:31:50) speaker_1: Everybody loved her.

(0:31:51) speaker_1: So I wasn’t that afraid to meet them ’cause I think I hadn’t really thought about what that would mean, and I thought, “Oh, you know, parents like me.

(0:32:00) speaker_1: Like, this is not gonna be a problem.

(0:32:02) speaker_1: ” But I was not aware of a lot of the cultural issues that would be present, nor did I have an appreciation for, for the fact that being adopted would be a big issue.

(0:32:13) speaker_1: But when you think about it, you know, my in-laws were 70 when we met, and so they were really old school, very traditional Koreans.

(0:32:23) speaker_1: And when you think about the attitudes around adoption and what they had grown up believing in terms of the strength of the bloodline, it’s not hard to understand that because they grew up in a culture where adoption just wasn’t acceptable, they were of the perfect age.

(0:32:39) speaker_1: You know, they were 70, so that was the generation that had children and then gave them up for adoption ’cause it was just not…

(0:32:45) speaker_1: it was just so unacceptable to keep them.

(0:32:48) speaker_0: What did they think about adoptees?

(0:32:50) speaker_1: Well, I’ll tell you, my, my mother-in-law, um, was really just not very happy that I was gonna marry their only son. So Tom is the oldest son.

(0:33:01) speaker_1: I’ll say this, he’s the oldest son of the oldest son for 32 generations.

(0:33:05) speaker_0: Oh, wow. That’s a lot of pressure.

(0:33:07) speaker_1: It was a really big deal, and because he was the oldest son and he was almost 40, they really had been waiting for a long time for him to marry somebody, and it did not help that his previous girlfriend, long-term relationship, um, her mother had once been considered…

(0:33:21) speaker_1: She’s Japanese, had been considered to be as a wife for the imperial prince at the time of Japan.

(0:33:28) speaker_1: So, like, my mother-in-law was just not really very excited at all to have an orphan marrying-

(0:33:34) speaker_0: (laughs)

(0:33:35) speaker_1: … their only son.

(0:33:35) speaker_0: And so even if the ex-girlfriend, her family had this, like, lineage that was, you know, very high class, but the fact that she was Japanese was okay?

(0:33:46) speaker_0:

(0:33:46) speaker_1: Yes. I, I asked about that. I was-

(0:33:48) speaker_0: Right.

(0:33:48) speaker_1: I was really shocked. Yeah, and I think because of the relationship with the royal family-

(0:33:54) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:33:54) speaker_1: … the ex-girlfriend’s family had been very close to the royal family, and so to go from that to me, I think, felt like a pretty big…

(0:34:03) speaker_1: you know, it was like, “Wow, that’s, that’s a big gap.”

(0:34:06) speaker_0: Was there kind of this fear of like, “Well, we don’t know who her-“

(0:34:09) speaker_1: Yes.

(0:34:09) speaker_0: “… Korean family is,” and-

(0:34:10) speaker_1: That’s exactly what it was, and-

(0:34:12) speaker_0: … could be disagreements or, you know?

(0:34:13) speaker_1: So it wasn’t personal ’cause they didn’t know me, but it was really like, “Oh, gosh, we don’t know who her family is. We don’t know who her…

(0:34:20) speaker_1: ” You know, who your father is and your father’s name is everything in Korea.

(0:34:24) speaker_1: A friend of mine said that even now when you apply for a job, it asks you for your father’s name.

(0:34:28) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:34:29) speaker_1: So to not have that, I think was a pretty big deal.

(0:34:35) speaker_0: That must have been kind of hurtful. I mean, when did you hear she had these kind of reservations?

(0:34:41) speaker_1: Um, I think Tom had told me early on, and so I had to do these things that I didn’t realize you had to do.

(0:34:47) speaker_1: (laughs) Like, when I first met his parents, I had to go out and buy very expensive gifts for them, and I had gotten some help.

(0:34:55) speaker_1: I have a couple of friends who are good friends of mine who are Korean American, and they are like my Korean whisperers.

(0:35:01) speaker_1: Like, they basically had told me, “Okay, here’s what you need to buy. Here’s where you need to go.

(0:35:06) speaker_1: ” The other thing is, I think that Korean culture, and this might be an overgeneralization for sure, but it seems to me that a lot of people are more brand conscious.

(0:35:14) speaker_1: You know, it’s really about appearances.

(0:35:16) speaker_0: Mm. Mm-hmm.

(0:35:17) speaker_1: Very appearance driven, and I am not like that at all, and so having to then think about that and the optics of everything was something that was new to me.

(0:35:24) speaker_1:

(0:35:24) speaker_0: Like the status and how things look-

(0:35:26) speaker_1: The status.

(0:35:26) speaker_0: Yeah.

(0:35:27) speaker_1: Yeah, so like, when we got married, I had to buy handbags for all of my mother-in-law’s relatives, and there was a big thing about what brand they were.

(0:35:34) speaker_1:

(0:35:34) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:35:34) speaker_1: “Oh, that’s not a good enough brand.” I’m like, “Really?” Like, like a $500, $800 ba- like, that’s not…

(0:35:40) speaker_1: And then it was like, “Well, what’s the logo like?” It- there was more of that than I had really ever been kind of raised with or, or been around.

(0:35:49) speaker_1: And part of it was I grew up, I didn’t have any money. My mom was a single mom, and she was a schoolteacher.

(0:35:55) speaker_1: So I just was really unaware, and it was just not on my radar. Um, but Tom had said, “Well, you know…

(0:36:02) speaker_1: ” I don’t recall him coming to me and saying, “Oh, my mom, like, has a big issue with you.” But he had made comments.

(0:36:10) speaker_1: We kind of made a joke out of it because, you know, Tom’s very modern, so he’s like, “Oh, that’s an antiquated thought.” And here’s the funny thing.

(0:36:17) speaker_1: It never hit my radar that me being adopted would be an issue for e- a- any boyfriend’s parents…. even those who were Korean.

(0:36:26) speaker_1: I will say, the one thing I had going for me was I was a lawyer. And, you know, a lot of Koreans want their kids to be lawyers or doctors, and-

(0:36:34) speaker_0: Right.

(0:36:34) speaker_1: … my husband worked for a nonprofit his whole career, and then my two sisters-in-law are, like, artsy people. And so there are no lawyers or doctors.

(0:36:42) speaker_1: So part of the joke was, “Okay. Well, now your parents are gonna get the lawyer that they’d always wanted in the family.”

(0:36:48) speaker_0: So it was kind of a trade-off for them.

(0:36:49) speaker_1: (laughs)

(0:36:49) speaker_0: Adopted, but a lawyer.

(0:36:51) speaker_1: I think that helped somewhat, but it really was the fact that, for Koreans of that generation, knowing the bloodline, I think is really important.

(0:36:59) speaker_0: How did he take it?

(0:37:00) speaker_1: Oh, pretty early on, like, he’d known before.

(0:37:01) speaker_0: Oh, ’cause your name isn’t Kim or…

(0:37:01) speaker_1: Yeah. And I think both of my friends had said that to him, like, as in, “Oh, do you know Delight? She’s a Korean American adoptee.

(0:37:01) speaker_1: ” There are lot of Korean adoptees in Seattle. And Tom had actually dated an adoptee before me.

(0:37:02) speaker_0: Okay.

(0:37:02) speaker_1: So it was, it was just, like, not a big deal for him beforehand. Mm-mm. No.

(0:37:02) speaker_0: Did you ever… Other things, like, when you’re dating and obviously now marriage, that you feel White when you are with him?

(0:37:02) speaker_0: Or in certain scenarios where it kind of does-

(0:37:02) speaker_1: Mm.

(0:37:02) speaker_0: … come out where you feel-

(0:37:02) speaker_1: More White? Um, not really.

(0:37:02) speaker_1: I think the Whitest I have felt honestly, and this might surprise your audience, is that I actually have felt Whitest when I’m with Tom’s family (laughs) because-

(0:37:02) speaker_0: Right, yeah.

(0:37:02) speaker_1: … they’re all Asian. They all, like, were raised, you know, as, in Korea as Korean Americans.

(0:37:02) speaker_0: The- some things are spoken in Korean, right? Some things.

(0:37:03) speaker_1: Yes. Some things. But you know, okay, there are just rules you have to follow.

(0:37:03) speaker_1: Like, nobody told me the rules, and so early on, it was very difficult ’cause I broke a lot of rules.

(0:37:03) speaker_1: But as I would have to tell Tom repeatedly, I didn’t get the handbook.

(0:37:04) speaker_0: Right. Well, adoptees, right. We don’t… (laughs)

(0:37:04) speaker_1: Like, I didn’t get the handbook, so he needed to tell me these things. I’ll give you an example.

(0:37:04) speaker_1: The very first time I ate with his family, it was family style.

(0:37:04) speaker_1: Well, in my family, you know, it’s just me and my brother, but I’ve got five cousins that I’m pretty close to.

(0:37:04) speaker_1: And if we were all together and food was served, it was just a free-for-all, right? You got a plate, and you just went to town.

(0:37:07) speaker_1: Well, nobody told me that in Korean culture, you get your plate, and then you wait for the oldest male to start eating first.

(0:37:15) speaker_0: Mm. Mm-hmm.

(0:37:18) speaker_1: Like, nobody told-

(0:37:18) speaker_0: Not only did he get served first…

(0:37:26) speaker_1: Not only did he get served first, but then you’re supposed to wait to eat. But, like, nobody told me that. So the first time we eat dinner, I’m just…

(0:37:35) speaker_1: You know, I get my plate, and I’m starting to eat, and then somebody nudged me.

(0:37:36) speaker_0: (laughs)

(0:37:36) speaker_1: And I’m like, and I’m, like, looking around, like, “Oh, okay.” So the joke for a long time was, like, I didn’t get the memo.

(0:37:58) speaker_1: “Tom, you need to tell me these things.”

(0:38:15) speaker_0: Right.

(0:38:15) speaker_0: And some of it is, you know, in his defense, some of it’s so ingrained he probably doesn’t even think about it that, “Oh, not everybody knows these customs.

(0:38:17) speaker_0: “

(0:38:17) speaker_1: Exactly. Exactly. I mean, that, that’s a difference.

(0:38:19) speaker_1: You know, when you’re raised in a certain culture or in a family, things that are just, like, it’s like table stakes to you, right?

(0:38:26) speaker_1: You’re not even aware of it. You don’t think to mention them.

(0:38:26) speaker_1: Once he was aware of it, he did definitely w- went out of his way to say to me, “Okay, now when we do this, here’s going to be this.

(0:38:30) speaker_1: ” And it was really all about expectation. Here’s the expectation. And the thing about Thomas, he is not confrontational at all.

(0:38:35) speaker_1: I really had to listen to figure out, “Okay, this is what he’s telling me.

(0:38:41) speaker_1: ” He’s saying, “In this situation, here’s how I might be treated,” or, “Here’s, here’s what I should be prepared for.” We had a small…

(0:38:52) speaker_1: Well, we had a relatively small wedding. We got married in Vancouver, BC, and it was 75 people.

(0:38:57) speaker_1: And I wanted to elope, and he was like, “No, that’s not gonna be acceptable ’cause I’m the oldest son and my parents have waited all this time for me to marry.

(0:39:02) speaker_1: ” But they had wanted to invite, like, hundreds of people, like their friends and relatives, and I was like, “No, no, no.

(0:39:05) speaker_1: ” So the compromise was that we got married in Vancouver, had the wedding that the two of us really wanted, and then I agreed we went to Korea.

(0:39:07) speaker_1: Actually, this was my first time ever to Korea. We went to Korea and, like, 300 former people came to a reception.

(0:39:13) speaker_0: What? So your first time back was your wedding?

(0:39:15) speaker_1: Yeah. Yeah.

(0:39:15) speaker_0: Wow.

(0:39:15) speaker_1: And it was, it was-

(0:39:15) speaker_0: (laughs)

(0:39:15) speaker_1: … pretty amazing. And there were some really cool things to it. Like, I don’t know who, but some relative bought me a really expensive hanbok.

(0:40:52) speaker_0: Mm.

(0:40:52) speaker_1: Beautiful. It’s, like, silk and I’m looking for a time to wear that again. There’s gotta be some occasion I can pull this out ’cause it’s beautiful.

(0:40:59) speaker_1: It’s just so, so nice.

(0:41:00) speaker_1: But yeah, there are things, like, I don’t speak any Korean, so it was basically an hour of me standing there while these little old ladies came up and they’d just, like, look at me really closely, and then they would talk about me.

(0:41:11) speaker_1: They’d look at my face, and they’d talk, and then they’d, they’d go off. And, um, it was just different. It’s, like, things that wouldn’t happen…

(0:41:19) speaker_1: It just was something I had never experienced before.

(0:41:21) speaker_0: Did you feel like an outsider at your own wedding?

(0:41:24) speaker_1: Well, there I definitely was like… But, but I knew it going in. I knew that it was gonna be speeches in Korean.

(0:41:30) speaker_1: I knew that I would mostly not understand what was gonna be happening, and I, and I was fine with that.

(0:41:35) speaker_1: I mean, it was really important to Tom’s parents, and so I was like, “All right. Yeah, I’ll, I’ll go along with this.”

(0:41:40) speaker_0: It sounds like you gave a lot… You know, you made a lot of effort to sort of ingratiate yourself into the family.

(0:41:47) speaker_0: Did things turn around with your mother-in-law or when do you think… I mean, they probably had to approve of the marriage, right?

(0:41:55) speaker_1: Well, what’s interesting is, no. I mean, I…

(0:41:58) speaker_1: Tom was old enough that he actually told them, he’s like, “Look, I’m gonna marry her, and that’s just the way it is.

(0:42:06) speaker_1: ” Which now I know was a huge deal for him-

(0:42:09) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:42:09) speaker_1: … because it’s very unusual for children-

(0:42:12) speaker_0: Yeah.

(0:42:12) speaker_1: … especially for the oldest son, I think in Korean culture in general, to, to buck their parents. You know, it, it did, it definitely evolved.

(0:42:21) speaker_1: There were some really challenging times, and I think having less to do with me personally…… and just the expectation.

(0:42:28) speaker_1: When my mother-in-law got married, it was pretty harsh. And my mother-in-law was amazing.

(0:42:32) speaker_1: She went on a hunger strike when she was a young woman, because she wanted to go to college. She wanted to be a teacher.

(0:42:38) speaker_1: So, she went on a hunger strike until her father relented and she was the oldest daughter.

(0:42:43) speaker_1: Finally, he relented, was able to go to school and teach, and so she was older by Korean standards, and she and my father-in-law, I think, were in an arranged marriage.

(0:42:52) speaker_1: When she married, she basically left her family home and then moved into my father-in-law’s home. He’s one of, like, I don’t know, 15 kids.

(0:42:59) speaker_1: Basically right away took over the cooking, the cleaning, and everything else.

(0:43:04) speaker_0: Y- I mean, become a property of his…

(0:43:06) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:43:07) speaker_0: Yeah.

(0:43:07) speaker_1: That was how she started her married life, right?

(0:43:10) speaker_1: And so I think the expectation was, “Oh, when Tom marries, there’s gonna be a daughter-in-law who is going to, you know-“

(0:43:17) speaker_0: Cater to me. And I’m gonna want that same benefit, right?

(0:43:20) speaker_1: Yes. And the other thing that was challenging, with like, a lot of Asians, when their parents, and at the time, Tom’s parents were living in Korea.

(0:43:28) speaker_1: When they come to visit, they would come for four to six months. So-

(0:43:32) speaker_0: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

(0:43:32) speaker_1: … we were newly married, and then here were my in-laws coming to live in my house for half the year.

(0:43:38) speaker_0: Oh, that must’ve been so nerve-wracking.

(0:43:40) speaker_1: It was really, really hard.

(0:43:41) speaker_1: But really, it was mostly hard because my mother-in-law didn’t speak super great English, so there was that issue too, in terms of just communication.

(0:43:51) speaker_1: But you know what? We did bond over food ’cause we both liked to eat, and it’s pretty funny ’cause my husband is a better cook than I am.

(0:43:58) speaker_1: And I like to cook, but she’s used to say to me, “Oh, women’s hands make better food.

(0:44:03) speaker_1: ” Like if men were cooking, the food would not be as good or it would ruin the food.

(0:44:07) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:44:08) speaker_1: So, she was an amazing cook, and luckily, she taught me to make a couple of things.

(0:44:12) speaker_1: I just, I, I regret to this day that we didn’t have her write down all of her recipes and put them in some book.

(0:44:18) speaker_0: But I think that’s the Korean way too, right? It’s just by, by hand.

(0:44:22) speaker_1: Oh, it’s by hand, and when she was first teaching me, she’d be like, “And then you put this…” I go, “Well, how much of that is there?

(0:44:28) speaker_1: ” “Well, you know, just enough.” I was like, “Well, h- like, how much is…” Like, there was no, you know, just enough.

(0:44:34) speaker_0: Just the measurements. Yeah. Right.

(0:44:36) speaker_1: So, it did definitely improve. But it, it was hard.

(0:44:39) speaker_1: I think another thing that’s hard, if you’re an adoptee and you marry into a Korean family, you look like they do.

(0:44:45) speaker_1: So it’s really hard for them to remember that you’re not…

(0:44:48) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:44:48) speaker_1: That you’re not culturally Korean. That you are human American. And I was older. And the other thing that was hard for her too was that I do have a career.

(0:44:56) speaker_1:

(0:44:56) speaker_0: You had your own money.

(0:44:57) speaker_1: I had my own money. I had a house. I had a whole le- I had friends. I had this whole life, this full life of independence before I met Tom.

(0:45:04) speaker_1: So when we married, it was really a partnership.

(0:45:07) speaker_1: And I think from my mother-in-law, there was expectation that any wife of a Korean man would be doing all the cooking, the cleaning, and the laundry.

(0:45:15) speaker_1: But my mother-in-law was truly lovely and I think she really wanted to have a close relationship with me.

(0:45:21) speaker_1: You know, she used to give me gifts, and then she once told me that she watched K-dramas to figure out how it is with daughter-in-laws, which I thought was really charming.

(0:45:29) speaker_1: So, I do, I really think that she had wanted us to be close. And then I had my son 14 years ago, and boy, that was like I hung the moon because now…

(0:45:39) speaker_1:

(0:45:39) speaker_0: You had a son, right?

(0:45:40) speaker_1: The oldest son of the oldest son now lives on for the 33rd generation. (laughs)

(0:45:43) speaker_0: (laughs)

(0:45:45) speaker_1: And she just was the most amazing grandmother. I mean, she, she really was. And, and my mother-in-law was like super generous, very giving, very thoughtful.

(0:45:53) speaker_1: Just a really, a really kind human being. You know, I just think the expectation of who her son would marry…

(0:46:00) speaker_1: And then too, I think it might’ve been easier for me if I’d been Caucasian because at least she wouldn’t look at me and think, “Oh, that’s a Korean person.

(0:46:09) speaker_1: She should know all these things.”

(0:46:11) speaker_0: You know, that’s, that’s the thing, right? I noticed when I lived in Korea, that if you’re white, you basically get a white pass, you know? You can…

(0:46:20) speaker_0:

(0:46:20) speaker_1: Yes.

(0:46:21) speaker_0: You can butcher the language. You can, you know, ignore all social laws and cultural norms and- (laughs)

(0:46:28) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:46:28) speaker_0: … do what you want, and you basically get a pass. Like, oh, they’re, you know.

(0:46:32) speaker_0: I know there’s a double-edged sword because then some people feel like, um, they’re never taken seriously.

(0:46:37) speaker_0: But on the other hand, you know, having a Korean face and being Korean, that there’s these expectations still, even if they know you’re adopted, that you’ll do things correctly.

(0:46:46) speaker_0: And if you don’t, there’s like wrath.

(0:46:47) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:46:48) speaker_0: Because they’ll upset the laws of, you know, gravity or something. (laughs)

(0:46:52) speaker_1: Yeah, yeah.

(0:46:53) speaker_1: And I will say too, much to my in-laws’ credit, my father had worked in the business world for a long time, so he really understood what it was like to work in different cultures.

(0:47:01) speaker_1: And he’d worked in America for a long time.

(0:47:04) speaker_1: So, he understood some of the subtleties and the differences and could really work i- in different cultures and environments just fine.

(0:47:12) speaker_1: And I will say, to my mother-in-law’s credit, I think she recognized that the world was changing and evolving, but I think for anybody who was older, I- it’s a hard thing, right?

(0:47:22) speaker_1: Like, I think about every older generation.

(0:47:25) speaker_1: Some of the changes that come are foreign and a little inexplicable to them, and I think for my mother-in-law, just like everybody else, there was some of that.

(0:47:35) speaker_1: But I do feel like she was like, “Well, this is just the way of, you know, times have changed, and this is just how it is now.

(0:47:42) speaker_1: ” I think she definitely became more accepting over time. I think too when she figured out I was gonna be sticking around for a while too.

(0:47:50) speaker_1: But, um, it helped.

(0:47:52) speaker_0: I think that alone, that alone probably showed her that times are changing when her eldest son, name bearer, carrying on the family line, is, is going to marry who he wants.

(0:48:02) speaker_0:

(0:48:02) speaker_1: Yeah. Yeah, and, and you know, there’s some other funny stories too.

(0:48:05) speaker_1: Like, you know, my in-laws are very traditional, so when they found out we were having a boy, they, ’cause in traditional Korean families, the grandparents get to name the child.

(0:48:13) speaker_1: So they sent us an envelope. We get this thing in the mail one day and it’s like, “Oh, here, here’s going to be your son’s name.

(0:48:19) speaker_1: ” And we were both like, “Oh, I don’t think so.” Like… (laughs)

(0:48:23) speaker_0: Yeah.

(0:48:23) speaker_1: Like that’s not how it, how it’s going to be. And they were trying to be helpful, I think, and it’s just the way it had traditionally been done, you know?

(0:48:31) speaker_1: It’s the oldest son’s first son. That’s just something that was done. But they were great. Like they’d never challenge us. They were like, “Oh, okay.

(0:48:37) speaker_1: ” You know?

(0:48:38) speaker_0: You just… How did you let them know it, it wasn’t gonna be that way?

(0:48:42) speaker_1: Well, like I said, my husband’s not really confrontational, especially with his parents.

(0:48:45) speaker_1: It’s not like we called them up and was like, “Oh, just so you know, that’s not gonna be his name.” We got it.

(0:48:50) speaker_1: I don’t think we really said anything about it, and then I think at some point, before Ethan was born, we had said, “Yeah, you know, I don’t think we’re gonna go with that.

(0:48:58) speaker_1: We’re gonna go with something else.” But Ethan has a Korean… He has an, a American middle name, and he has a Korean middle name that we picked.

(0:49:05) speaker_1: I mean, most importantly, he’s got my husband’s last name. And to be honest with you, they were just thrilled that they were having a…

(0:49:12) speaker_1: Ethan’s their third grandchild and last grandchild, so I think they were just over the moon to be having another grandchild, and that the oldest son was gonna have a son.

(0:49:20) speaker_1:

(0:49:20) speaker_0: Do you think, you know, with your mother-in-law, do you think she accepted you?

(0:49:26) speaker_1: I do. Yeah. I, I do.

(0:49:29) speaker_0: Can you remember when that happened?

(0:49:31) speaker_1: No. I think it just came over time. I mean, first of all, we’ve been married for 14 years, so we started our family just a few years after we were married.

(0:49:37) speaker_1: Our son’s 14 now. You know, it was just the beginning that was a little bit hard.

(0:49:42) speaker_1: Um, especially after we had Ethan, I think she was like, “Okay, this is Tom’s family now.

(0:49:48) speaker_1: ” And then I became not the wife of her son but the mother of her grandson. You know what I mean? So it was a different… It was a different kind of thing.

(0:49:56) speaker_1:

(0:49:56) speaker_0: It’s always through the men, your relationship to the men.

(0:49:58) speaker_1: Yeah, my relationship to the men.

(0:49:59) speaker_0: That’s very Asian, Korean.

(0:50:01) speaker_1: Yeah. And the funny thing is, I, I think a lot of American mother-in-laws, like, it’s…

(0:50:05) speaker_1: I don’t think racial culture has anything to do with it, but, you know, she’s very spoiling of all the grandchildren.

(0:50:12) speaker_1: And, um, I laugh because my son’s first experience with a Haagen-Dazs bar, he wasn’t even two.

(0:50:17) speaker_1: We came back from somewhere, and my kid’s, like, chowing down on one of those big full-sized Haagen-Dazs bars. (laughs) And he… I was like, “Oh, my gosh.

(0:50:25) speaker_1: That’s a lot of ice cream and sugar for a little kid.” And my mother-in-law was just like, “Oh,” you know, “I’m the grandma.”

(0:50:30) speaker_0: Maybe that’s universal.

(0:50:32) speaker_1: It’s totally universal. I’ve heard that story time and time again.

(0:50:36) speaker_1: So yeah, I’m really very quite sad that she’s gone, and, um, and the hard thing was she died right after…

(0:50:42) speaker_1: just as things were opening up for COVID, and we were gonna go visit the next month. So we hadn’t seen them in… What was that? A travel ban. Two years?

(0:50:51) speaker_1: Three years? I can’t remember now. But I do miss her. She was super outgoing, and, and she always just wanted to make things better for people.

(0:50:59) speaker_1: This is the thing, too.

(0:51:00) speaker_1: My mother-in-law, e- every piece of advice she gave me or things that she had thought I should be doing, they were truly sincerely to make my life better and her son’s life better.

(0:51:11) speaker_1: That was the motivation.

(0:51:13) speaker_0: Was that maybe how she showed love or affections is by being kind of strict or having… setting these expectations?

(0:51:21) speaker_1: I think that for her, showing love… You know, for a lot of older Korean people that generation, they weren’t saying, “I love you.

(0:51:27) speaker_1: ” They were doing things for you, right? So they were trying to help you. And I think part of it was cultural, but part of it was a generational issue.

(0:51:36) speaker_1: It’s like, you know, when you’re 35, almost 40, like, you don’t really need help.

(0:51:40) speaker_1: You’ve got a lot of your life sort of figured out in terms of how to just subsist from a day-to-day.

(0:51:45) speaker_1: But, you know, the thing she really showed her love through cooking, and I was always so touched ’cause my in-laws ended up moving to California, uh, I don’t know how soon after we were married, but they’d lived in California for a while.

(0:51:58) speaker_1: And sometimes Tom would go and visit without me, and my mother-in-law, without fail, would send home a huge thing of kimbap or my favorite things.

(0:52:08) speaker_1: And when she would come to visit, if I had a early meeting or I had to leave early, she would get up early to make whatever my favorite dish was and then pack it up for me to take to work.

(0:52:17) speaker_1:

(0:52:18) speaker_0: Hmm.

(0:52:19) speaker_1: So I think food was love for her.

(0:52:22) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:52:22) speaker_1: And, and I luckily was mature enough and old enough to understand that.

(0:52:26) speaker_0: (instrumental music) Did you ever think of her as, like, a proxy for your Korean mom?

(0:52:38) speaker_1: No, not really. Um, I didn’t. And you know what part of it is?

(0:52:42) speaker_1: Is part of it is I didn’t really think about my Korean mom or think about finding a Korean mom for a really long time.

(0:52:49) speaker_1: And I’ll tell you the first time that it really sort of hit me and hit me, like, over the head, was after I had Ethan. And I…

(0:52:56) speaker_1: After he was born, I was still in the hospital, and I remember just thinking, “Oh, my God.

(0:53:01) speaker_1: If I ever had to give him up, like, I would at least want to know he was okay.” So at that-

(0:53:08) speaker_0: Or even that… I’ve heard people say, like, they can’t… When they’re holding their child at the age that they were given up, that they can’t imagine.

(0:53:17) speaker_0:

(0:53:17) speaker_1: Oh, I can’t… No, and that’s the other thing I thought, too. I thought, “There’s no way I would be strong enough to let this baby go.

(0:53:23) speaker_1: ” Like, you know, I don’t know if you remember, but during Sarajevo, there were some really moving pictures of women holding their toddlers and their babies out for soldiers to t- There was, like, one last bus out, and you saw women just trying to catapult their children onto the bus.

(0:53:39) speaker_1:

(0:53:40) speaker_0: Oh, wow.

(0:53:41) speaker_1: Try- trying to find people to take, take their kids.

(0:53:43) speaker_0: Take their kids.

(0:53:43) speaker_1: And I just thought to myself, “Oh my God. If I were in that situation, would I have the courage and the faith and the selflessness to do that?

(0:53:53) speaker_1: ” ‘Cause I do think, I, I… and I truly think this, that for somebody to have given up a child, it is an act of desperation and selflessness, you know?

(0:54:02) speaker_1: And, and I should say, too, my career experiences have also shaped my, my feelings about this because early in my career, I did child abuse and neglect prosecution, and so my cases involved kids who had been severely abused and neglected, and then I would go in and terminate the rights for the most severe cases.

(0:54:21) speaker_1: And so what I saw were a lot of children who were in situations where it would’ve been a mercy to have had them adopted out, you know, if those parents had given those children up for adoption.

(0:54:34) speaker_1: So when I had Ethan, yes, I, I thought, “Oh, I can’t imagine how desperate…” and, “I’m not sure I could… what I would do in that moment.

(0:54:41) speaker_1: ” But I also thought, “Gosh, maybe I should try to find my biological mother just so I can let her know I’m okay.”

(0:54:51) speaker_0: That’s really…

(0:54:52) speaker_0: I, I, I’m just really struck by the fact that in, in your line of work, that you actually saw, and this is maybe before you were, um, hearing about or learning about counter-narratives, but you actually saw where adoption was in the best interest of a child, or it was a safer environment for the child, or, uh, w- what have you, better environment.

(0:55:16) speaker_0:

(0:55:16) speaker_1: Yeah. You know, it’s really interesting, ’cause I didn’t really think about this until we’re talking now, but I went to law school to be a child advocate.

(0:55:22) speaker_1: M- my mom was a teacher for a school in a really poor part of town, and she was more than a teacher.

(0:55:27) speaker_1: She was like a teacher, a social worker, a mentor, a mom. She held all those roles.

(0:55:32) speaker_1: And when I went to law school, I was like, “Oh, wow, I really want to do something on behalf of kids. I want to basically work on behalf of children.

(0:55:40) speaker_1: ” And so even starting in law school, I had worked for, um, the attorney general’s office then in Utah doing some of the same work that I then went on to do in Washington.

(0:55:50) speaker_1: After I graduated from law school, I clerked for a family court judge, and so my interest in children and children’s welfare and trying to make things better, the one thing that really drove me for that was, like, I wanna be a voice for those that have no voice.

(0:56:05) speaker_1: I knew I wanted to be an advocate for… And there’s nobody more vulnerable than a child, and I say this now. It’s true.

(0:56:12) speaker_1: It’s like, we as a society, we care about kids if we know them, and we love them, but we as a society don’t care about, quote, “kids,” quote, that aren’t ours.

(0:56:21) speaker_1: You know, if you look at the child poverty rate in this country, if you look at the violence, if you, if you look at the hunger, like, th- we c- we cannot say that we are a society that cares about kids.

(0:56:33) speaker_1: And so I had wanted to go and do something to try to make that better.

(0:56:36) speaker_0: Oh, okay. Okay. When did you start…

(0:56:39) speaker_0: I mean, I’ve seen you now at a few adoption fly-ins and (laughs) around the country that happen, conferences and what have you.

(0:56:48) speaker_0: When did you start becoming interested in, you said about five years ago? In, in your adoptee self?

(0:56:56) speaker_1: Yeah. I mean, a- and part of it has been a function of just time and energy.

(0:57:01) speaker_1: I’m a working mom, and there’s just not been a lot of mental space with having a toddler or small child to really think about anything except the day before you.

(0:57:10) speaker_1: But a weird thing happened, and that is the, um, the gathering in Seoul last summer. Was that only last summer? Yes. Last summer.

(0:57:19) speaker_0: Summer, yeah.

(0:57:20) speaker_1: I started hearing about that.

(0:57:22) speaker_0: That’s where I met you, right?

(0:57:24) speaker_1: That’s where we met, yeah.

(0:57:25) speaker_0: Oh.

(0:57:25) speaker_1: And I really wanted to go. Like, I had never been to a gathering.

(0:57:28) speaker_1: My, my brother, so my brother is 18 months younger, and he’s been far more involved in the adoptive community than I’ve ever been.

(0:57:35) speaker_1: Like, whenever he’s moved, he’s found the adoptive, Korean adoptees and th- like, those have become his people.

(0:57:40) speaker_1: So he’d been to, like, two or three of these, and I just was never interested, and then I had a really strong desire.

(0:57:48) speaker_1: I think it was maybe I’d found out about, like, I don’t know, seven or eight months before it happened, and I told my husband, I said, “Oh.

(0:57:54) speaker_1: ” I said, “You know what?” I said, “I really wanna go to this conference.” I go, “I don’t know why.”

(0:57:59) speaker_0: Was he kinda surprised? Like, why?

(0:58:00) speaker_1: I, I think he was.

(0:58:01) speaker_1: I mean, but he’s a super chill, go-with-the-flow kind of a person, and he’s always been super supportive of any place that my adoption has taken me.

(0:58:09) speaker_1: When I went to Korea the very first time, when I got married there, the reception, we went to Holt.

(0:58:15) speaker_1: That was my first visit to Holt, and he, and he came with me.

(0:58:18) speaker_0: A- at your wedding?

(0:58:20) speaker_1: Yeah, yeah. So we’d gone for the wedding. Then we stayed for, I can’t remember, another week or two.

(0:58:24) speaker_1: And I had really wanted to go to Holt, so I made an appointment, had gone to Holt to look at my file.

(0:58:28) speaker_1: And so Thomas just been like, “Okay, you know, whatever you wanna do, I’m happy to support you.

(0:58:33) speaker_1: ” And here’s the, here’s another big advantage (laughs) if you’re gonna marry a Korean American. They love going to Korea. So-

(0:58:39) speaker_0: Mm. Mm-hmm.

(0:58:40) speaker_1: … anytime I’m like, “Let’s go to Korea. Let’s put our vacation budget and our time going to Korea,” it’s never a debate. It’s like, “All right.

(0:58:47) speaker_1: That sounds great. Let’s go. When should we go?” And so when I had said to him, “Oh, I really wanna go to this conference,” he was like, “Okay.

(0:58:55) speaker_1: ” But for me it was weird, ’cause I just for the very first time had had this really strong desire, like, “Oh, I really wanna go.

(0:59:01) speaker_1: ” And it was so great for me, ’cause I learned a lot that I just had no…

(0:59:05) speaker_1: It wasn’t even on my radar, and it was really important for me to know, ’cause it was the truth or closer to the truth than, than a lot of what I had learned.

(0:59:13) speaker_1: But, you know, going to those, it’s funny, ’cause I don’t really feel like I fit in.

(0:59:17) speaker_1: So it’s a little bit of a hard thing for me, and I think maybe it’s ’cause it was clear to me, oh, like, a lot of these people have known each other for a long time.

(0:59:23) speaker_1: They’ve been friends for a long time. Like, they got together-

(0:59:25) speaker_0: That’s true. That’s true.

(0:59:26) speaker_1: … they got together years ago. So I do feel like a little bit of a, a newcomer.

(0:59:31) speaker_1: The other thing that I found really hard, um, especially with the conference in Chicago. I have found that I just physically cannot take, like…

(0:59:41) speaker_1: It’s just almost too much for me to process. O- o- once I’ve had enou- like, I’m like, “Oh, my God. I just cannot. I, I, I can’t talk about this anymore.

(0:59:49) speaker_1: I can’t just be in this environment anymore.”

(0:59:51) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:59:51) speaker_1: It’s really hard for me.

(0:59:52) speaker_0: They really pack in, sometimes, the, the da- and especially that conference was very, um, you know, very scholarly.

(0:59:59) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:59:59) speaker_0: And so you got some people who were presenting research and books and, and so it can be really academic too, and it’s…

(1:00:08) speaker_1: Yeah. That might have been what it was. It’s like, “Oh, my God. This is just too… This is just too much for me.

(1:00:14) speaker_1: ” Uh, you know, whereas at least with the gathering, it’s like, there were fun things and art. I was really impressed at how much art and how creative…

(1:00:23) speaker_1: Like, I don’t have any statistics, but I would bet the adoptee community, I bet the percentage of artists is far higher than that of the general population.

(1:00:31) speaker_1: It seems to be a way a lot of people are working through, have worked through a lot of their feelings and some of their issues around adoption.

(1:00:37) speaker_0: It’s really interesting to hear your perspective, and I think it’s probably right on.

(1:00:41) speaker_0: You know, when you’re coming into the community later in life, I mean, I was in my mid-40s, so I mean, I’m right there with you too, that people have known each other for many years and have those relationships, and, and a lot of times when there’s these fly-in events, you know, I don’t really……

(1:01:00) speaker_0: blame folks for wanting to…

(1:01:01) speaker_0: They have a limited amount of time, they haven’t seen these people in many years or, you know, in a long time, and so they wanna hang out together kind of alone, and it’s, sometimes it’s very hard to make time for new people.

(1:01:13) speaker_0:

(1:01:13) speaker_1: Yes, exactly. That is exactly the feeling that I got. I was like, “Oh, people all already have their friends.

(1:01:20) speaker_1: ” And so, yes, yes, I certainly felt like that.

(1:01:24) speaker_0: And so did you go alone? When you went to IKAA, were you alone or did Tom go with you?

(1:01:29) speaker_1: Tom and Ethan came with me.

(1:01:31) speaker_0: Okay.

(1:01:31) speaker_1: But they didn’t come to any-

(1:01:33) speaker_0: Right.

(1:01:33) speaker_1: … of the events.

(1:01:34) speaker_1: And, um, oh, they, they did come, because I had given a presentation, um, around privacy and DNA testing, and so both of them came to that just for support, which I thought was very sweet.

(1:01:48) speaker_1: But they’re great.

(1:01:49) speaker_1: I think they would come if, if they thought it was important to me, but in some ways, I just feel like that journey is one you have to take on your own.

(1:01:59) speaker_1:

(1:02:00) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(1:02:01) speaker_1: You know? And so it’s not like I was like, “Oh, Tom, I need you to come with me.”

(1:02:05) speaker_0: Did it feel like it was two worlds? You went into one world and then back into your other world? (laughs)

(1:02:12) speaker_1: A little bit. Yeah, there was some of that. I mean, it still is mind-boggling to me, right?

(1:02:16) speaker_1: You go to that conference, and it’s like, “Oh my God, there are all these people,” especially when they did the breakout of people who were the same age, I was just struck by how similar our experiences were, even though we had been raised in completely different countries and cultures.

(1:02:30) speaker_1: I was like, “Oh my God, this is truly a universal experience.

(1:02:34) speaker_1: ” So for me, it was kind of mind-blowing to be literally in a room, or multiple rooms of people, who had very similar experiences, and then to walk 10 minutes to my hotel and it’s like, “Wow, now I’m in a totally different world.

(1:02:48) speaker_1: ” But I think for adoptees, we are really adept at maneuvering and stepping between all those worlds, stepping in and out.

(1:02:57) speaker_0: Yeah, for sure. I, I kinda wonder if maybe the next iterations, you know, as we’re all, we’re getting older, is if-

(1:03:06) speaker_1: Yeah.

(1:03:06) speaker_0: … the fly-ins are 45 plus (laughs) adoptee meetups. You know, it’s by age group, because I don’t know-

(1:03:14) speaker_1: I don’t know.

(1:03:14) speaker_0: … I feel like I would enjoy… I mean, people by far really love the breakout sessions, because-

(1:03:21) speaker_1: That’s a really good idea, yeah.

(1:03:22) speaker_0: It’s the same peer group and age, and people are, you know, grew up in the same generations, and so are dealing with, you know, have had similar experiences, and, you know, just maybe spending more time with people (laughs) that are…

(1:03:37) speaker_0:

(1:03:37) speaker_1: Of the same age.

(1:03:38) speaker_0: Yeah.

(1:03:38) speaker_1: Yeah.

(1:03:39) speaker_1: Oh, you know, that’s really interesting, ’cause obviously with the generation gap, like, adoptees in their 30s had a totally different experience than we did.

(1:03:47) speaker_1:

(1:03:47) speaker_0: Yeah.

(1:03:48) speaker_1: You know?

(1:03:48) speaker_0: Yeah.

(1:03:49) speaker_1: And, and adoptees in their 20s, oh my God, like they hit the jackpot.

(1:03:53) speaker_0: When we talk about the scarcity, we’re the only ones, or the only, you know-

(1:03:56) speaker_1: (laughs)

(1:03:57) speaker_0: … and that we didn’t see Asian people on TV, or in-

(1:04:01) speaker_1: No.

(1:04:01) speaker_0: … Target ads or anything.

(1:04:02) speaker_1: No.

(1:04:02) speaker_0: You know, it’s like we didn’t see ourselves anywhere. That’s a concept where younger people today maybe just-

(1:04:08) speaker_1: No, they don’t… They don’t under-

(1:04:10) speaker_0: They don’t get it. They can hear it. Oh, yeah. Okay. It was-

(1:04:12) speaker_1: Yeah. I mean-

(1:04:13) speaker_0: It really was a different time.

(1:04:16) speaker_1: I remember the first time I went to Korea, I was standing in the line, and we took Korean Airlines, and I had to call my friend Michelle, and she laughs to this day.

(1:04:24) speaker_1: I called her, I was like, “Oh my God, Michelle, I’m in this line and everybody’s Korean. I’ve never seen this in my entire life.” And-

(1:04:32) speaker_0: How did that make you feel?

(1:04:33) speaker_1: And it was crazy. I mean, I was really, I just was kind of in disbelief.

(1:04:37) speaker_1: And then, and then we get to Korea, and my mother-in-law takes me to get my hair cut.

(1:04:41) speaker_1: And I’m waiting for my turn, and I pick up the magazine, and I’ll tell you what, it was mind-blowing, because there were ads of people who looked just like me that were, like, buying refrigerators, they were buying, like, laundry soap.

(1:04:55) speaker_1: So, to your point, like, just seeing Koreans or Asians doing normal things-

(1:05:00) speaker_0: Right.

(1:05:01) speaker_1: … was completely… I just could not believe it, you know? I, I mean, it was one of the most shocking… I was like, “Holy cow, it’s, like, so fantastic.

(1:05:11) speaker_1: ” These are just, like, you can just, like, normal people having just, living life.

(1:05:14) speaker_0: I think for me, it kind of hit home too when, this must have been, yeah, when I was living in Korea, I suppose, that, you know, you go to a jjimjilbang, one of the Korean bathhouses, and there you see naked women of all ages, and you see their body shapes, and you see, like, grandmother, older women, you know, women in their 80s that have a body like yours, but you could imagine, you know, it’s a little more saggy, it’s, you know, older body.

(1:05:44) speaker_0: And I just marveled at it, because as an adoptee and growing up in a white household and around white people mostly, like, I never saw, you know?

(1:05:56) speaker_1: You never saw that.

(1:05:58) speaker_0: Right, other older, you know, Asian, much l- less Korean-

(1:06:03) speaker_1: Yeah.

(1:06:03) speaker_0: … bodies, people.

(1:06:05) speaker_1: I, I, yes, I, you know, I, I was in Vancouver, BC, it must have been maybe three years ago, and I take a picture…

(1:06:12) speaker_1: I was blown away because I was in a bookstore, and all the major magazine covers had an Asian model on it. How… And I-

(1:06:21) speaker_0: Oh, wow.

(1:06:21) speaker_1: I immediately took a picture, and I texted the mothers of my two adoptee friends, and I was like, “Oh my God, I would have killed to have seen this when I was growing up as a kid.

(1:06:29) speaker_1: ” You know? Because not only were you not considered attractive, you were just, like, you just, you know, you weren’t anywhere.

(1:06:39) speaker_1: Like, you were in M*A*S*H, like, everything I knew about Korea was from M*A*S*H. Remember that TV show?

(1:06:44) speaker_0: Mm, mm-hmm.

(1:06:45) speaker_1: And… ‘Cause there just was no, there was just no representation.

(1:06:49) speaker_1: And so I just love that, like, now, there are all these movies, and there are models-

(1:06:54) speaker_0: Well, it’s a, it’s a show based in Korea centered on white people, so-

(1:06:57) speaker_1: Ex- exactly, and, and the Koreans are like-

(1:07:00) speaker_0: … that’s

(1:07:00) speaker_3: Adopted in a nutshell.

(1:07:01) speaker_1: Yeah, yeah, e- exactly. The other thing I’ll say is the, the whole question around, like-… getting involved in the Korean community and adoption.

(1:07:10) speaker_1: I will say, an unexpected benefit for me of having married a Korean American is, like, I wonder if…

(1:07:19) speaker_1: I mean, because Thomas is so proud to be Korean, and like, culturally, uh, I just wonder if I had married…

(1:07:26) speaker_1: So I think being married to him has made it easier for me to be curious, has actually just made me more curious about my own background, about wanting to learn more about my culture.

(1:07:36) speaker_1: I, sometimes I think, “Gosh, if I’d married somebody who was Caucasian, would I be as invested or would I be as curious?

(1:07:43) speaker_1: ” Especially, if I then had a child who was half white, who looked more white than Asian, ’cause I- I know people who have that scenario, and they just sort of, their Asianness just sort of isn’t really…

(1:07:54) speaker_1: It’s just not something that’s kind of at the forefront of their lives.

(1:07:58) speaker_0: Not something that’s maybe, uh, forefront or maybe not that proud of, or it’s not that important?

(1:08:06) speaker_1: Well, I think, here’s the thing.

(1:08:08) speaker_1: I think that if you are a Korean or an Asian, an Asian woman, and you marry somebody who’s white and then you have a child, and if that child, especially if they have a lot more sort of Caucasian-looking features, I think that the fact of your Asianness becomes more buried.

(1:08:27) speaker_1:

(1:08:28) speaker_0: Mm. Mm-hmm.

(1:08:28) speaker_1: And if you’re in a family of three or four, you’re gonna be the minority person out as the only Asian and as the adoptee.

(1:08:35) speaker_0: Right. And I- I also wonder if like… Do you know Youngmi Mayor? She’s a podcaster, mixed race.

(1:08:41) speaker_1: No.

(1:08:42) speaker_0: I think her dad was white. And- and so you do see kids of mixed race who look more white, um-

(1:08:51) speaker_1: Yes.

(1:08:51) speaker_0: … or who can pass for white, that sometimes they’re a little bit more militant in their Asian identity.

(1:08:59) speaker_1: Oh, really? That’s pretty interesting. Militant like, “Oh, I really am Asian even though I might not look it”?

(1:09:07) speaker_0: Yes.

(1:09:07) speaker_1: Oh.

(1:09:07) speaker_0: Like, because people don’t identify them as Asian, but they identify as Asian and they have to work harder at it.

(1:09:15) speaker_1: That’s… That is very interesting, ’cause I can see it going both ways, right?

(1:09:19) speaker_1: Either you’re like, “Oh, I’m super proud of it,” or like, “That’s just too much. I’m just gonna, you know, be- be white.” Oh, that’s really interesting.

(1:09:28) speaker_1:

(1:09:29) speaker_0: Do you… I would check her out.

(1:09:31) speaker_1: Yeah.

(1:09:31) speaker_0: Do you, um… So Ethan’s a teenager, right?

(1:09:34) speaker_1: Yes, he’s 14.

(1:09:36) speaker_0: Has he talked about or shown any interest in having you search or wanting to know his… You know, finding Korean relatives as being…

(1:09:46) speaker_0: You know, I don’t know if he thinks of himself as someone impacted by adoption.

(1:09:52) speaker_1: I don’t think he really does. I mean, part of it is, you know, he’s a teenager.

(1:09:57) speaker_0: Right.

(1:09:57) speaker_1: And look, the teenagers are just all about themselves.

(1:10:00) speaker_0: Right. We were in our 40s before we… (laughs)

(1:10:03) speaker_1: Yeah. Yeah. But I- I am very open with him, and I’ll talk about things that make me sad or things that I wonder about.

(1:10:09) speaker_1: And I’ve told him, I’m like, “Oh, you know, if I had to give you up, that would be the worst thing, and it’d be devastating in itself for my mom, you know, my biological mother, to do that.

(1:10:20) speaker_1: ” So we talk about it a lot. And I went back to Holt four or five years ago, so I’ve been twice, and I took him with me.

(1:10:27) speaker_1: So I took him and Tom both with me. And I- and I had wanted to… It was very important for me for Ethan to go with me to Holt.

(1:10:33) speaker_0: Oh, wow. Okay.

(1:10:34) speaker_1: Just because it is part of my story, you know? And I just want him to know.

(1:10:38) speaker_1: The other really great thing about living in Seattle and in this time, it’s like his best friend is adopted. She’s Caucasian. She’s got two, two moms.

(1:10:47) speaker_1: But adoption is just totally normalized for him. So he knows that your family, families are made by who you love, not necessarily by a bloodline.

(1:10:57) speaker_1: And that’s really important to me too.

(1:11:00) speaker_1: Like, I never want him to think that, you know, the rest of our family, like my cousins and my uncle, who I’m very close to, are like not my, quote, “real family.

(1:11:10) speaker_1: “

(1:11:10) speaker_0: And is he close to your brother, who’s Korean?

(1:11:14) speaker_1: Yes. Yeah. He’s- he’s very close to my brother. So… And, you know, it’s fantastic. Ethan has a… He’s pretty proud of being Korean.

(1:11:23) speaker_1: He’s got like a little Korean flag that he had hung up in his room for a while. He loves going to Korea. It’s his favorite thing.

(1:11:31) speaker_1: And so, um, uh, it’s just, just something. He loves Korean food. It’s his favorite food.

(1:11:37) speaker_1: So like, all of the things that I was embarrassed about when I was a kid or, you know, didn’t have any knowledge of, it just makes me really happy that he does not, has not seemed to internalize.

(1:11:50) speaker_1: He just has, has been raised in a different way and has a much healthier outlook.

(1:11:54) speaker_0: His Koreanness is just in the air he breathes too, you know?

(1:11:58) speaker_0: Not like where something like we, as adoptees, I feel like we have to either teach ourselves or have it be taught to us or…

(1:12:07) speaker_1: Yes, he doesn’t have to go seek it out as much ’cause it’s just who we are. And Tom and I have a lot of friends who are Korean American, so he…

(1:12:15) speaker_1: It’s just part of our community. So he sees people, you know, and Korean food.

(1:12:19) speaker_1: It’s like if- if you go to somebody, one of our friends’ houses for dinner, there’s a pretty good chance we’re gonna have Korean food.

(1:12:26) speaker_1: Or like if our friends want to go out, it’s a pretty good chance they’re gonna wanna go eat Korean food.

(1:12:31) speaker_1: So it’s not like we have to go out of our way to be like, “Oh, this is a special Korean, you know, Korean thing, and let’s do that.

(1:12:38) speaker_1: ” I mean, the nice thing is like at Chuseok and some of the holidays, the Korean holidays, like, we don’t really celebrate them, but we do make it a point and have always made it a point to call my in-laws and wish them a happy whatever the holiday is.

(1:12:51) speaker_1: So Ethan, you know, Ethan is aware of that. It’s just a different time. And living in Seattle where there are so many Asians is just fantastic.

(1:12:59) speaker_1: And actually, when I left Utah, I knew I wanted to go to one of the two Washingtons, and I wanted to do that because I wanted to go someplace where there were going to be more Asians.

(1:13:08) speaker_1:

(1:13:08) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(1:13:08) speaker_1: … I didn’t ever want to be, like-

(1:13:10) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(1:13:11) speaker_1: And I didn’t like California, but I was like, “Oh, I want to go someplace where I’m not gonna be stared at anymore.” You know?

(1:13:18) speaker_0: Well, it sounds like Seattle’s been great for that.

(1:13:21) speaker_1: Oh, Seattle, yeah. I’ve lived here now for almost 30 years and it’s, it’s a pretty… Yeah, it’s great.

(1:13:27) speaker_1: Although, it does pain me that as progressive as Seattle is, and as many Asians as there are, there’s still a fair amount of…

(1:13:34) speaker_1: We do still have incidents around Asian hate and stuff still ha- Like, my son was actually bullied for being Korean at one of the schools, for being Asian.

(1:13:42) speaker_1: So, I just think that some of that just is inescapable.

(1:13:47) speaker_0: Mm-hmm. Well, Delight, I think we’re gonna have to wrap up, but I would love to hang out with you more.

(1:13:54) speaker_0: So let’s definitely plan something, sometime in the next… You know, to definitely, like, spend more time, in… Instead of, like, a quick, you know?

(1:14:01) speaker_0: (laughs) Quick meal on the-

(1:14:03) speaker_1: Yes.

(1:14:04) speaker_0: … But, you know, I definitely would like to-

(1:14:06) speaker_1: Uh, yeah.

(1:14:07) speaker_0: (laughs)

(1:14:07) speaker_1: I would love that too. And you know what? I love your idea about something for adoptees of a certain age.

(1:14:13) speaker_1: You know, there was some person, she had done some tour to Korea for adoptees who were, like, over 50. Did, did you hear about that?

(1:14:21) speaker_0: No, but I wouldn’t be surprised if… Yeah.

(1:14:25) speaker_1: And I don’t remember who did that. I mean, to be honest with you, like, that’s not really my, my thing. Uh, traveling with people I don’t know.

(1:14:32) speaker_1: I think, especially in a trip like that, I think can be a lot of stress and pretty emotional, so I would not…

(1:14:38) speaker_1: I wouldn’t ch- And it was, like, a two-week tour. That’s awesome they’re putting that together, but I would not-

(1:14:44) speaker_0: Not for you, yeah.

(1:14:45) speaker_1: Would not wanna do that. But, you know, I love the idea of, like, a weekend some place.

(1:14:50) speaker_0: Yeah.

(1:14:50) speaker_1: Like a retreat or something. Let me think about that.

(1:14:52) speaker_0: Yeah.

(1:14:52) speaker_1: I wonder how we could do that.

(1:14:53) speaker_0: Yeah, we could, definitely.

(1:14:56) speaker_1: With a few other… ‘Cause I did, I did really enjoy… I-I thought that breakout session was the best part of the gathering.

(1:15:03) speaker_0: Yeah. I mean, ’cause it, it’s sort of, like, you find your tribe or one where you feel like you belong, somewhat.

(1:15:10) speaker_0: And then within that, there’s even a tribe within a tribe, so… (laughs)

(1:15:14) speaker_1: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Well, Kiyomi, thank you so much for the invitation.

(1:15:18) speaker_1: This was really a fun conversation and you gave me some things to think about that I hadn’t ever thought about.

(1:15:25) speaker_0: What do you want people to know about… As a Korean-adoptee marrying into a Korean-American family?

(1:15:31) speaker_1: Oh, I think, I think that they should just be aware that there are some challenges. And I think…

(1:15:38) speaker_1: Like, to your point, I think if people have a fantasy about what it might be like, like if they think, “Oh, I’m gonna be marrying…

(1:15:45) speaker_1: You know, I’m gonna be getting the family that I didn’t, didn’t have,” or, you know, th- this is gonna be a replacement for that.

(1:15:51) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(1:15:51) speaker_1: I don’t think it’s… Obviously not that simple, it’s quite complex. But I also think there are some really wonderful things that it brought me.

(1:15:59) speaker_1: And I think the biggest thing for me is, I just feel like being married to Tom has really, I think…

(1:16:05) speaker_1: I don’t know if this makes sense, but, like, brought out more of the Korean-ness in me, in terms of curiosity and the support for searching.

(1:16:18) speaker_1: And I just really am not sure that that would have been present with, with anybody else.

(1:16:23) speaker_1: ‘Cause certainly when I had dated, you know, most of my boyfriends had been Caucasian. And I didn’t really talk about adoption nearly as much as…

(1:16:31) speaker_1: It just wasn’t sort of at the forefront.

(1:16:33) speaker_0: Mm-hmm. Well, it’s good you married Tom.

(1:16:37) speaker_1: Yeah. (laughs)

(1:16:37) speaker_0: (laughs)

(1:16:37) speaker_1: Well, for so many reasons. But I… Yes, that’s a really, a really wonderful and unexpected thing for me.

(1:16:42) speaker_1: ‘Cause it’s not like I went looking for that and thought, “Oh, I’m gonna find somebody that’s gonna help me figure out this part of my, my history or my life.

(1:16:50) speaker_1: “

(1:16:50) speaker_0: And then, Delight, if people… Do you want people to be able to contact you at all, or find you on social media? Or, you know, if they…

(1:16:57) speaker_0: Your story resonated and they…

(1:17:00) speaker_1: Yeah. If, if people have something that I can help them with, I’m happy to be of service.

(1:17:06) speaker_0: Okay, and how can they find you?

(1:17:08) speaker_1: Um, I’m on Facebook, and they can just DM me through, through Facebook.

(1:17:13) speaker_0: Okay. Thank you so much, Delight. Can’t wait to connect with you in person again soon. Shout out to new Patreon supporter, Seong Ju.

(1:17:37) speaker_0: If you’re new to finding this podcast, welcome. We are wrapping up Season 7 and have a few more episodes to go.

(1:17:46) speaker_0: If you’d like to help support the podcast in its final episodes, we have a Patreon page, patreon.com/adaptedpodcast.

(1:17:55) speaker_0: You can cancel at any time, or after the season ends. On June 27th, there will be a special Zoom call for Patreon supporters.

(1:18:04) speaker_0: Korean-American adoptee, therapist, and author, Camley Small has confirmed and will be helping to facilitate. Jenna Lee Park provided audio production.

(1:18:15) speaker_0: YuGung Jun is our volunteer Korean translator. I’m Kiyomi Lee, see you next time.