Latest / Stuff Mom Never Told You / Happy Hour #111: Adoption, Identity and Unanswered Questions

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Happy Hour #111: Adoption, Identity and Unanswered Questions · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha, and welcome to Stephane.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Never told your production, but I heart radio, and welcome
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: to another edition of Happy Hour. We're taking a small break.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: We usually featured a section of the city, watch party
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: or a watch live watch. It's not really it's life
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: for me and you. I don't know what to call it.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: I guess we're just gonna a reaction Yeah, that's a
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: reaction party because Annie's never seen it and I love
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: watching her seeing these episodes. But today we're not doing that.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: We took a quick break. Lots of things are happening,
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: including in my own personal life. We've had a lot
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: of very sad, sad, sad conversations about what's going on
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: in my life, and so I just wanted to take
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: a small break and kind of do a hey, this
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: is what's happening with Samantha flash follow my journey type
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: of thing. Um, And it's not going to be often,
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: but there are some things happening that I think it's
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: interesting enough that I do want it. I guess recorded
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: and shared. It's not the best way to say it.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: But again, before before we start, because it is a
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Happy Hour a and we're not necessarily sponsored by anything
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: that we're talking about on this episode right at this point. Yeah,
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: that's how I'm going to say this. Anny, are you
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: slipping on your red wine? I'm not. Yes, I got
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: sent a I'm not going to name the company because
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: I don't know if they're any good or not, but
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: I got sent like this. It's supposed to be kind
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: of a pair of tief draper, thank you. I love that.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: I want a food show and I don't know how
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: to say anything. I just had a conversation about this.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: I just took me a moment because I was like
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: a pair of what sounded. I had to sound it
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: out of my head to see what you're up. But
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: no judgment. We can call it a pair of tief.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: I like it, thank you. That should be what it is. Yeah,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: it's very good. It's very it's bitter and orangey. Yeah.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Appertif is very like it's supposed to be the cleansing
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: and can help your stomach too. Oh oh, indigestion. Yeah.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: People have given me things as like that for me
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: because I'm like, I have a stomach again. They give
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: me this liquorice and I'm like I hate this. Why
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: did you give me this and like it helps your stomach.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: I'm like, never give me this again. I'm gonna vomit.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: I feel like that. That's all wise though. It does
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: it though, but doesn't And of course, just it's a
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: reminder if you are drinking. If you're drinking, it an
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: appertif yourself or a pair of teeth or anything else,
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: drink responsibly. Do things responsibly, That's what we're saying. In
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: all things, do things in moderation and consideration of others
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: as well as your body. There you um for me,
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: I am keeping it still no alcohol for now. I
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: have my bubble water, which they were running out of
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: my flavor. I'm very upset about this. Someone needs to
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: tell me what's going on because I need my favorite flavor.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: I need answers. Y'all get to the bottom of it.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: Oh week, I gotta get to the bottom of it.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: And today's episode is definitely a lot of personal stuff.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: I know, any you're probably gonna just sit back and
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: stare at me because I have a lot of questions,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: unanswerable questions right now. But I am working on getting
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: some answers. So as most all of you know, if
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: you have joined us before, especially if you know of
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: us and who we are and what we do. I
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: am a Korean adoptee. I came into the US when
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: I was seven almost seven slash eight. It's kind of
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: all that stuff, and I have a lot of trauma,
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: a lot of things that I've worked through. I have
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: a difficulty when it comes to having conversations about my identity,
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: and there's a lot of searching. In my forties, I'm
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: still searching, and honestly, part of the reason it's so
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: late coming is the overwhelming guilt that I should be
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: grateful for where I am, so that means not looking
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: into the past. I also want to put here that
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: my parents, by adoptive parents, have never tried to stop
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: me from learning about myself. A lot of it had
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: a lot to do with my own self esteem issues,
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: wishing I was white, thinking and being told by society
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: not by my parents. Once again, I need to put
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: that that white is better and is considered the norm,
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: and that's what I should have attained to those way
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: too impossible so many things, or that if I was
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: going to be Asian, I need to be a beautiful
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: Asian person, like gorgeous model type in order to be
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: accepted like that's the only way, because the fetishism of
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: Asian people teaches you that as well, especially when you
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: see them being portrayed on television and or any kind
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: of media, especially when I was growing up in the
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: eighties nineties, So all these things have a lot of
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: deep rooted I guess self hatred of my own ethnicity,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: of my culture, and it took me till probably late
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: twenties later, maybe mid thirties, I mean honestly to really
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: really want to be a part of it. I did
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: take Korean in college. I've already told the story that
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: I was really really awful at it. I've retried several
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: times since then in trying to learn it. But there
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: comes a lot of trauma with that when I do this,
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: because there definitely has a lot of triggers, whether it's emotional, physical,
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: or even like sensations like taste and all all of that.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: But I am in that journey. You may have heard
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: the DNA episode that we did with twenty three and
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: me and I didn't really discover much there was. It
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: was a lot of dead ends. Didn't have too many
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: relatives to people who were closest to my relative they
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: were like a second third cousin, and I realized I
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: didn't understand what that meant, and I thought I had
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: and I was like, oh wait, that's not what I
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: envisioned that meant, but never really gotten any answers. So
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of question marks in my life. And
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: recently I told y'all, I'm really getting into all the
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: Korean cultural pop culture that I can right now, and
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: it's it's brought a lot of emotions, it's probably a
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: lot of sensations. I have found several new dramas that
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: I love. Annie One has fifty two episodes, one hour each,
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: and it is the pit of me of the Korean
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: drama that you would assume that the dramatic shots, the
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: love stories, the soap opera, bit like hidden identities, murder.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, all the things, all the rich people, all
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: the things. But it's very quite quite fun. So I'm
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: all of that that I've been doing a lot more
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: language learning in which I some of this is familiar
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: to me, so there's there's a lot. There's a lot
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: coming at me. Recently, I wanted to try to look
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: up specifics to where I was told I was from,
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: which also led to me looking up the actual adoption agency,
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: which I've talked about before. My experiences were not pretty,
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: so I don't think about it too often. But I
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: was like, you know, well, let me just look into this.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: And it turns out there's several lawsuites that happened last
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: year with them, specifically including them forging papers to adopt
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: children out, misleading parents, misleading biological and adoptive parents about
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: these youths, and they're all about my age. So around
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: the time that I was adopted, this was happening with
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: Hult International, who has a big backstory of being Christian
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: and wanting to save Korean children, so that's a whole
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: different thing. They came around after the Korean War, I believe,
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: and whatever. There's a lot of things I feel about that.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: Again as a part of the Christian like trauma that
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: we've been recently talking about religious trauma, this is a
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: part of it. But they have been under fire because
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: they have come out different adoptees have come out with
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: the accusation that they have been lied to. They have
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: essentially been stolen and trafficked. And I don't know who
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: that all entails. I know there's about two to three
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: hundred adoptees who are part of this lawsuit. There's another
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: lawsuit where the adoptee accuses the facility of pretty much
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: exploitation and neglect, allowing for a lot of trauma and
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: abuse that happened within the facilities, as well as when
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: they were sent out, and then not supporting those who
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: were adopted when they were pretty much ostracized by the
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: families that were adopted by so so many things. So
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: that brought out a lot of things in my head.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: I was like, oh, my god, this is my age group.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: I don't know what it is. And when I was
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: looking at their site, I found out that I can
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: actually request information, a lot of information if they haven't.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: Of course, they've also been told that. I've also read
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: that there may be trying to destroy records. But what
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: I'm understanding that the human rights advocates have been working
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: with the president in Korea to stop that from happening.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: We'll see I sent an email requesting things kind of haphazardly.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: I was sitting here procrastinating as I do, and then
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: I was like, oh, let me look at this in
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: the middle of my work, and then went down this
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: rabbit hole and I was like, you know what, it
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: doesn't hurt, might as well send it out. I sent
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: it out and guy of a response pretty quickly from
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: their agency, this post I think post adoption people saying
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: that they do have my information. Well, they were able
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: to get my information because I am on their records
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: of being as being adopted through them, so I should
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: be getting something. I sent an email today saying that yes,
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: they verified, they're verified that I do actually want this information,
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: and I asked for all in any that I could
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: grab And of course this sparked a lot of memories
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: that came at me, including the memories that I have
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: of my grandmother being the one that signed me over
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: into the orphanage. Who I cannot remember the orphanage. This
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: is the part of the problem because I don't think
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: it was necessarily I mean, it's not Halt Orphanage. They
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: are the agency that it worked through, so I don't know.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: And yes, when I say orphanage, I'm not I'm not
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: being like crass or any of that. That's what it
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: was called, that's what they called it. That's what I have.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: All my records essentially that I have, so a lot
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: of information. I don't have. We'll see what comes back.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: Every time I think I'm going to discover something big,
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: it ends up not being big. And every time I
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: think something is small, it ends up causing a lot
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: of triggering for me. So who knows at this point
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: what's going to happen right now? Like I said, I've
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: really been inundating myself in Korean culture has a lot
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: of feelings, a lot of feelings. Of course, part of
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: that is Korean cultures that we see what we see
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: not necessarily what is happening, but what we see in
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: the US is very glamorized. So I feel even less
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: worthy of being Korean, you know, like I'm not worth
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: their time to be a part of their culture. So
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: it's kind of like and I say they, because it
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: feels very much like they. So it's a lot of
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: emotions and feelings and then trying to figure out loving
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: something that didn't love me. That's what it feels like.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: I think I told you that when I was talking
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: about doing the Korean New Year's tradition. A part of
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: that is giving offerings to your ancestors. And I said
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: the ancestors because they me over and I'm over it.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: If they didn't care about me, why should I care
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: about them. It's kind of that whole level of like
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: not necessarily Korea as a whole, I guess Korea as
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: a whole, but even knowing, like even thinking about what
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: would have been had I stayed there, had my parents
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: kept me. Again, a lot of realities, a lot of stuff, abuse,
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: lots of neglect in that situation, what would have happened,
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: And so of course I have to be again link
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: to that, I need to be grateful because there's no
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: telling I definitely wouldn't be doing a podcast telling my
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: story had I remained in South Korea. So there's definitely
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: like a lot of conversations. And there's also an option
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: to get a citizenship review with South Korea, and I'm
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: considering it. I don't know. I think there's something about
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: I would like to be a dual citizen because I
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: do want to know about that. There's also there's a
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: whole tour you can take through the agency to learn
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: about your culture, and I think it can include trying
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: to find your biological parents. That thought just now, as
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: I said that out loud, makes me nauseous that it's
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: not something I want, but I am really sure I
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: had a sibling, and I don't at least one. There's questions.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: I have questions, and that brings to mind when I
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: look at pictures of or when I see movies or
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: any of that of people of Korean people, I'm like,
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: do I look like them? We would be could be
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: be considered, you know, like siblings where you see people
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: like they obviously look alike, and then the whole Korean
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: culture is like, y'all all look alike, which is very general,
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: you know, like very huge stereotype that's really grows and racist.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: But to the level of like is it do I
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: look similar to them because we're Korean? Like? Is that
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: a thing? Is that? I don't know? So there's a
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: lot of questions, like would I be able to recognize
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: a sibling. I don't know the feeling of looking at
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: someone look looking like me. So of course it's funny
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: to me when I see biological siblings that they do
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: look exactly alike. I was like, Wow, what is that?
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: What is that to know that you look that close
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: to each other? And then having that moment of like,
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: this is this is the commonality between all of us.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: We all have this one knows or we all have
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: this specific type of you know eye or I said
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: to one eye, I don't know why I stay right,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: we got one eye. The other one's like just you know, swollen.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: I guess I don't know clue. I'm sorry they rambling,
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: But yeah, there's there's a whole lot of questions that's
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: unfathomable to me. And again I'm like a fat man,
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: I'm really late in this journey coming into mic like
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: what we would call midlife and doing this work fills
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: natural but unnatural and daunting. And then as again a
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: Korean woman who knows the bad things that are happening
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: when it comes to feminism and who believes in what
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: in the sexism that's happening in that country, knowing that
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: I probably wouldn't be accepted anyways because of the views
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: that I have, and thank God for them. I mean,
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: I think that's what keeps me alive. Um, there's there's
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: a conflict. There's a level of conflict, but also the
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: desperation of wanting to be a part truly a part
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: of something, like truly to understand something and have something
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: to hold as cultural, something cultural to me and important
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: to me as well so there's a lot right now,
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: and I feel like it's important that I talk about it.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: I feel like it's important that we acknowledge, I guess,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: and I acknowledge that there's still that conversation that hasn't
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: had enough when it when it comes to people who
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: are marginalized in their own community. I don't know how
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: to deals to say that, um, and that's whether it's
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: being marginalized in the feminist community, being marginalized in a
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: specific ethnicity, being marginalized as UM specific family member, even
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: that that's an overwhelming feat. But but there's still a
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: journey ahead, I guess to it. Yeah, and that's in
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: fact that email I told you about I just sent
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: out today. So we shall see what the answers will be.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: And also I will be watching obviously these cases to
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: see what the implications are, because I know the US
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: has a big, a pretty large percentage of the overseas
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: adoptions that occurred through HALT as well, although the actual
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: two hundred or more adoptees following that lawsuit it's based
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: in Denmark. Hm hm, So yeah, we'll see. Thank you
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: for taking the time to listen and then coming with
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: me on this interesting very odd and very intimidating journey. Yeah,
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: thank you for being open and sharing. It's always interesting
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: because you and I started working. We've been doing this
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: four years together, and I feel like i've I've heard
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: you grappling with this and dealing with this, and I've
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: seen kind of your your journey through it and moving
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: through it. So I just am happy that you're you're
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: sharing it and I'm here for you, and you know
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: the listeners are too. But you don't have to share
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: anything you don't want to share. Well, thank you. Yeah,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: an open book in trouble. Wow, thank you. Thank you
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: Samantha for sharing. I'm sure we'll have updates. You'll have
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: updates about it um and in the meantime, listeners, thank
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: you for joining us. Cheers to you. If you would
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: like to email us, you can or emails the stuff
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: ner mom Stuff at iheartmia dot com. You can find
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: us on Twitter at Mom's toff podcast, or on Instagram
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: and TikTok at stuff one never told you. We're also
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: on YouTube. That's your thing. We have a book, you
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: can pre order it at stuff You should read a
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: books dot com. I'm still kind of grappling with that dude,
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: what we have a book? Yeah, yes, Thanks as always
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: to our super producer Christina, our executive producer Maya, and
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: our contributor Joey. Thank you, thank you, thank you, and
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: thanks to you for listening. Stephanever told you inspection of
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: I Heart Radio, well podcast or my heart Radio. You
• 18:25
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• 18:27
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