I’m Choosing to Speak Up

Sharing my story is important because adoptees need to be heard and potential adoptive parents need to be educated.

Without these two things, all the regular horrors of adoption will continue.

I was adopted at four months old.

My adoptive parents raised me as their Caucasian-American daughter in the "safe" suburbs of Minnesota.

Unfortunately, the suburbs are only safe if everyone views you as white.

The relationship with my adoptive parents has been a rocky one.

Sometime between two and three years old, I stopped being close with my adoptive parents. It’s a relationship I’ve been working on and am glad to see evolving.

I never stopped missing my birth mother.

As a toddler, I cried myself to sleep, wanting her to come save me from America and take me back to Korea. Sometimes I still feel this way.

In addition, I grew being sexually abused by my classmates and boyfriends. It is the reason why I’m choosing to speak up.

As mentioned previously, I grew up in a white neighborhood, which made it difficult not to be "the Asian girl."

It was hard to overcome many of the negative experiences I had to endure, just for being in my own skin.

In fact, it is still something I am working on, balancing my race and culture, as well as everything else that makes me wonderful.