Thursday - 14 April 2011 - Day 52
For the time being, I believe this will be the final chapter of my birth search story. I had my most recent meeting at the Holt post-adoption center 1 day ago. This story did start out with surprise and success, with the ease of the process and the fairly quick locating of my birth-family, but now it seems we have reached a standstill.
As told in my second update, my birth-mother and oldest half-sister were located living together in the relatively same region in the outskirts of Masan where I was born. 2 telegrams were sent, signed for, and received. My birth-family and I have discovered and acknowledged the existence of each other, but there is no desire on their side to take this any further and meet in person for the time being.
Although this may seem like a sad way for this part of my Korea journey to end, I couldn't be happier. My positivity and possibly lack-of-care has carried me through. I feel complete and am happy that I know they are alive and well, albeit super-poor. They know I am alive and well and contact information was given to them, so the door is always open for a later reunion (which I don't yet know if I would even agree to). Who knows what the future holds, but I do believe everything that needs to be, will be.
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As important and meaningful as this event should seem, there have been more important thoughts circling my head. These days I am consumed with thoughts and attempts to understand relinquishment rather than adoption and reunions.
I recently went to help out at Holt's Reception Center. It is a single floor of the same building that I work out of, and at the time, it was taking care of 11 orphans, all under 1 year old. It was a vey moving morning, possibly more moving that meeting my own birth parents. Certain things just fill my brain with experience and insight that I will never forget.
As I sat on the group, holding a 5 month old girl in my lap, rocking her to stay calm, not cry and fall asleep, I stared into her eyes are asked myself how anybody could abandon a baby. This wasn't even my child, and I didn't want to set her down for a second. It blew my mind. I had what I have come to refer as a moment of "Columbine shooting" realization.
After the Columbine shooting took place, I was in the movie theater watching Bowling for Columbine and jolly ole Michael Moore was showing real life clips of the young boys before the shooting. They were sitting at the lunch table talking about how much school sucked and how everybody hated them. Now I'm not here condoning shooting up schools, but at that moment I did feel sympathy for them. I thought to myself, "how much undeserved ridicule, teasing, and persecution would it take for me to reach the point of shooting up a school?" Really, please process that for a second. You think you're a good person now who would never even hurt another human being, now think about how much making-fun-of it would take to get you to lash out on your peers? How many people would have to call you ugly, or a loser, or a racial slur? Every single day of your academic life. It would take a lot, and those boys got it. They were laughed at everyday of their lives.
Anyways…back to the adoption center. I thought about that little girl, Yuna. How bad did life have to be for our birth-parents to relinquish us? Pretty bad. By realizing how precious a baby is, and how much I did not want to set her down for a moment, I came to understand how bad our birth families' lives and situations must have been. I have been told from my file that my birth-family suffered from extreme poverty. Most of the family members couldn't afford and didn't have time for anything past a elementary school education. So they were off to the factory floor and crop fields right away. But feeling in my heart how much I loved Yuna, and all the other babies, at that moment, I think I inversely experienced the extreme poverty my birth-family faced. The love for me was out balanced by the terrible living situations, and I now know it would take A LOT to relinquish a child. I hope people can understand this.
I am at peace with everything.
Relinquishment and adoption.
Thank you Korea.
Thank you Yuna.
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