VOICES OF KCCNYC ADOPTEES
For National Adoption Awareness Month, KCCNYC asked members of our community to share their personal essays about their experience as Korean American Adoptees or as a parent of an adoptee. We hope you will spend time with each story, helping us to more deeply understand the experiences of adoptees. We are profoundly honored to share these with our readers.
Click on the links below to read their full essays:
Growing up as a Korean American adoptee in the Midwest shaped my identity in ways I’m still discovering today. I was adopted from Seoul, South Korea, when I was about 3 months old, and was raised in Michigan communities where I was often the only Asian person in my neighborhood or school. Although my parents tried to introduce me to Korean culture through cultural groups, embracing my Korean heritage wasn’t too important to me as a child.
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 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 was born in the late 70s, adopted by my white parents as an infant, and grew up in the south. I always knew that I was adopted. The facts that I knew growing up were that I was born in “Seoul, South Korea,” my birth date, that I was adopted through Holt as a baby, and that my Gotcha Day was whatever that date was in August. Ironically, my birthdate turned out to be inaccurate. I’ve since found out that I was actually born a week prior, which not only changes the birth date, but also my zodiac sign, and my lunar birth year!
I’m watching my son. I’ve been watching him for days. It’s like that sometimes. He becomes paralyzed, then becomes semiconscious, and cannot move until this monstrous disease lets go of him. I wait, helplessly, praying for him to be released. Not knowing, just praying… That was and is my life from the time he was five years old.
My name is Mary Klein. I am 52 and live in Orlando, FL. I am married to Casey, my husband of 27 years, and we have 3 children: Skylar 23, Katie 19, Anna 16. I am a Master’s Degreed CRNA (Certified Registered Nurse Anesthesiologist), as is my husband. Two of our three children are at FSU, both my husband and my alma mater, with the eldest about to graduate with his Master’s in Biomedical Engineering. Life is one Helluva ride and it’s far from done. This is my story…
My name is Matthew Faulkner, or my Korean name, 오은수 O Eun Su. I was adopted from Seoul, South Korea on August 26, 1988. I was always asked about my adoption story when I was a kid and I would say that it depends if I wanted to search for my birth mother or not. Internally, I was thinking she probably did not care about me. However, I was very fortunate to be given my birth mother’s name and her age at the time she had me. My sister was not so fortunate and she was not given anything. It amazes me, in a 7-year time span, how much information I had versus what she had.
