VOICES OF KCCNYC ADOPTEES: MARY C’S STORY
Voices of KCCNYC Adoptees: Mary C.’s Story
By Mary Collins
Random Thoughts on Adoption from A Korean-American Adoptee
Photo Credit to Mary Collins. Mary on left, and Mary’s friend Megan on the right. The picture was taken in Korea.
The adoption industry, international and domestic, both have something in common: this business is held together by the glue of human emotion. Perhaps it is too dry of me to look at the concept of adoption as merely buyer vs. seller, but the appeal to adopt would not exist if not for the application of one's own personal feelings. And I think we are all well aware that emotions, while powerful reflections of our core values, are also extremely fragile and easily manipulated. It is my personal opinion, as a transnational adoptee, that the multi-million dollar adoption industry is fortified by emotional messaging, to both the child and parents. And I know this from experience, that if I had not reunited with my family in 2018, it would not have crossed my mind to even consider what adoption did to me.
I will be 100% honest. I have not come to terms with my own adoption. I know that I haven’t because I exhibit symptoms of abandonment trauma that occur from adoption practices. For example, I do not feel comfortable in my own skin. I struggle with mind-body connection, where I cannot truly recognize the person looking back at me when I look into a mirror. It’s like I’m an alien wearing a human skinsuit. The brain knows of its existence, but has no connection to its physical solid-state. Other symptoms include: (2) I cannot seem to figure out my life purpose, (3) I cannot connect deeply nor easily build trust with other people, and (4) fear is the primary emotion that drives every decision I make for myself. This type of trauma occurs when a child is permanently removed from their parent. It irreparably injures both the child and the birth parents to such a scalable degree, it makes sense why identity crises arise equally between both parties. There is very little acknowledgement for the grief caused by the loss of a child or parent when adoption is spun as an emancipative or restorative act.
I liken my birth family search to something similar to Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings: perilous and wrought with trauma bonding. I spent over a decade searching for my birth family. Even after being told by my Korean adoption agency that they could not find my family, I still searched. I’m a research scientist by training. It’s instinct at this point. Fear did bind me at times, paralyzing me in a belief system that I was unwanted. But it wasn’t until I found my birth parents that I learned they too were imprisoned, believing that I would never want to see them again. They question their worth as parents, as humans, still living with self-condemnation and shame, even though they themselves are victims of an emotionally manipulative commercial industry.
A photo taken in Korea by Mary
But this industry was not originally established to help children, it was established to address a homelessness and poverty crisis. Adoption becomes ethically questionable when financial incentives create a system that exploits families experiencing systemic poverty and emotional distress. I recently had a long talk with my friend, another adoptee, and we asked ourselves, "What would've happened if the amount of money our adoptive parents paid for us was instead given directly to the birth parent?" The cost for a single adoption to the United States was approximately $30,000 USD back in the late 80's… if the government had given $30,000 dollars to our birth parents instead of facilitating an adoption overseas, it's quite possible our lives would have turned out very, very differently. If adoption causes psychological damage to a person and their child, the humane method of action is to try every, feasible, alternative solution before adoption should be considered. Adoption is not only about creating a new family, it's about the destruction of another.
