>Be South Korean girl adopted by White American parents >Grow up relatively wealthy >Go to good schools and be pretty intelligent >But starting boys >WHITE BOYS >But the white boys keep PUMPING AND DUMPING YOU >Go to college, hopefully things will get better >WHITE CHADS KEEP PUMPIN AND DUMPIN >Develop mental problems >Post nudes on reddit >Start to lean into being a White Chad Cumdumpster >Start fucking as many men as you can, get into really kinky sex >Have another mental breakdown >Start to believe white people are evil >Get into leftist politics >Help tear down a Confederate statue in North Carolina >End up joining a black Maoist group called Black Hammer lead by this guy Gazi >Become a they/them >Start to believe North Korea is right and Juche is the best ideology >Disassociate with your adopted parents, call them colonizers >Claim your adopted uncle molested you >Revert to your original Korean name your adopted mother gave you >All of this happening while you get a biomedical masters and enter a PhD program >Black Hammer tries to found a city in the mountains of Colorado >But they get kicked out by the cops >End up in Atlanta house >Black Hammer turns into a cult run by Gazi >Eventually escape the cult >Go back into your PhD program >Still believe most of the same things but reconcile with your parents >Gazi gets arrested for rape after someone calls 911 and a dead body is found in his house >Also turns out Gazi was in contact with a Russian intelligence asset >So you decide to go dark on social media, and take back your adopted family's last name >About to graduate from you PhD program
Her parents seemed to really love her and wanted her to keep in touch with Korean culture. She wrote this really nice post about them awhile back on her old blog.
>Being adopted means you grew in your mother’s heart instead of her stomach. - Unknown
>Here’s to twenty-one years of loving care and laughter-filled family nights, petty fights and tearful make-ups, trips to both grandmothers’ and chocolate chips pancakes, night-time stories and books as gifts, and, being asked, repeatedly and earnestly, why my parents are white.
>Well, since you asked, Karen, my parents are white because I was adopted. In 1993, I was born Suh Hee Jun in South Korea, healthy except a small hole in my heart, to a woman that I have never known. She made an adoption plan for me, and I was transferred to a foster home in Seoul. I stayed in the foster home until I was 4 months old, when my life changed immeasurably and for the inconceivably better. On December 30, 1993, twenty-one years ago today, David and Donna Cook welcomed me into their home and their hearts.
>My mother read to me every night. My father taught me how to tie my shoes. Together, they taught me what it means to learn, to grow, and, above all, to love. From them, I have learned respect and tolerance, kindness and generosity, prudence and frugality, honesty and perseverance. Everything I have in my life that is beautiful and good, I have either because they have given it to me, or because I have earned it using the virtues they have taught me. And I know, in my soul, the truth of the words that Richard Bach penned in Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah:
>The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life.
>When one of us feels joy, the rest of us are uplifted into the effulgence of their triumph. When one of us feels pain, the rest of us feel it as deeply as if it were our own. Through everything, we know we have each other’s unconditional support. In my family, I have found generous helpings from an endless reserve of patience so unfathomably deep that it would make Mahtatma Gandhi fall to his knees in awe.
>My parents have taught me, by example, all the lessons I need to create a life for myself: That endurance is the father of success; to live below my financial capacity; to be conscious of the image I present to the world; that all human beings are equal, despite race or gender or religious belief or socioeconomic status; to practice tolerance, forgiveness, and acceptance; that nothing worth having comes easy; that the ultimate strength comes from the soul and the self; and, most importantly, that you should never, ever trust a goose.
Chase Perez
>And, even in our angriest times, even near the ends of our patience, even when my infant self cried inconsolably through the night as my sleep-deprived parents wondered What have we done?!, even when I tried to run away on my bike when I was 8, even when mom didn’t let me go to that concert that I would absolutely diiiiiiiiiie if I missed (I didn’t), even when I lashed out in anger during my rocky adolescence, even when I crashed the car last year – there was never a single moment wherein I doubted the emotional supremacy of love. Its place in our family is one that is holy in its sovereignty. In short, my family is a family because of love – and that’s something that has nothing to do with the class of antigens within our red blood cells.
>Even though it’s love, not blood, that makes us a family, there are some things that make us different from the traditional, biological family. My parents have always just been plain old mom and dad to me, but I realize now that I’m older that they’ve had to make some decisions that a biological mother and father wouldn’t have to make. In my opinion, the way my parents handled raising an adopted child should be the model for all adoptive parents. They never tried to hide it from me, though, to be fair, it probably would’ve been pretty hard to conceal:
Xavier Martin
>But, even without the obvious racial difference between me and parents, they’ve told me they still would have shared the story of my adoption with me, once I was old enough to understand – because they believe that it’s a part of me… and they’re right.
>From the beginning, they have strived to keep my heritage in my life. They set the precedence with their very first act as parents: naming me. They named me Taylor Alexandra, the names they picked, but they kept my mother’s name, ‘Jun,’ as a second middle name, out of respect for my biological mother and her role in my life. In my full name, Taylor Alexandra Jun Cook, there is an etymological history of all the people that have made me who I am. There is ‘Taylor’ – the name I respond to, the being I have created for myself through my choices and experiences. There is ‘Cook’ – the name that my parents have gifted to me, along with their generosity and love. And, snugly in between, there is ‘Jun’ – for the woman that brought me into this world.
>Since that first act of homage, my parents have done everything they can to keep my heritage a part of my life. As a child, they used books to teach me about Korea (The Korean Cinderella) and adoption (Through Moon and Stars and Night Sky). They, along with a couple other families, founded the Asian Connection in our hometown, allowing a community of adoptive families with Asian children to come together for support and good times:
>They bought me a hanbok, the traditional dress of Korea. For about a decade, they took me to Camp Moo Gung Hwa, a non-profit Korean culture camp for adopted kids. I practiced Tae Kwon Do, the martial art of Korea, alongside my dad for many years:
>I went on to join my school’s elite sparring team and compete across the country until I was about 15. (Side note: Shoutout to the leader of my Taekwondo school, Master Woo Sup Kim, for coaching the US team in the 2012 Olympics.) At the age of 20, I returned to Camp Moo Gung Hwa as a volunteer, and it felt a lot like coming home:
>Throughout my entire upbringing, my parents have shown a Herculean effort to keep my Korean heritage at the core of my being, and they have done a wonderful job. But, even with all these things they’ve given me about my heritage, there’s a fine line that adoptive parents must tread, and it’s one my parents have walked with balance and grace. Though they keep me aware of my history, they have never made me feel like their adopted daughter. I have never felt anything less than the love I would expect had I been born into the family biologically.
>To be honest, I forget that I’m adopted. It’s not something that ever crosses my mind. Because though The Korean Cinderella and Through Moon and Stars and Night Sky were occasional adventures during bedtime stories, the staples of my childhood reading experience were being held and cuddled as I was read MADLY, Love You Forever, and Guess How Much I Love You? – books not about adoption, but about love.
>People often ask if I’m interested in finding my birth parents, and the answer is one befitting of Schrodinger’s most mischievous cat. No, and also yes. I say no because I don’t feel incomplete. There is no gaping hole in my being where a mother and father should have been, simply because I’ve had the best mom and dad anyone could ever ask for. There’s no burning curiosity that gnaws at my consciousness, leading me to seek out my biological family.
>Today, now that I am old enough to understand and appreciate it, my mom and dad shared with me the information we have about my biological parents. There is very little. We don’t even know their names. I know barely anything about my Korean mother. I know her height and weight, that she didn’t have the financial means to support me, that she had me out of wedlock, and that she suffered “much agony for the baby’s unknown future.”
>Therein lies the ‘yes’ part of my ‘yes and no’ answer. I know that putting a baby up for adoption was probably the most difficult thing she has ever done. I am only three years younger than my birth mother was when she had me, the same year that she put me up for adoption, and I cannot imagine the emotional strife associated with giving up your very own flesh and blood in the blind hope that they might have a better future than the one you could provide.
>I have always guessed that adoption wasn’t what my birth mother wanted for me, and today, unexpected tears sprang to my eyes as I learned my assumption was correct. I know now that she cared for me deeply, but did not have the resources to give me a good life. It’s difficult letting something you love go, even if you know it’s the right thing to do. Adoption is the quintessential example of such an act; in short, adoption is the ultimate sacrifice. And so, my motivation for finding my Korean mother would be not to fill some aching void, but rather to look her in the eyes and tell her that her that what she did for me has made me more fulfilled than she could ever imagine, that everything turned out wonderfully, that I am healthy and happy and safe, and that I love her.
>So, thank you, mom and dad, for adopting me – but any married couple with financial stability and clean criminal records can adopt a baby. What you’ve done is infinitely more remarkable than simply adopting me: You have loved me, for every second of every day, through every struggle and triumph, with everything that you have. To say that you are a part of me is an understatement. You are the very heart of me. Something I’ve always found significant is the fact that the hole in my heart I mentioned at the very beginning of this post was gone by the time I had my first doctor’s visit in North Carolina. Because in the end, my story is one of a little baby girl that once was lost, but is now surrounded by goodness and beauty and truth – the story of a girl that had a hole in her heart until two inconceivably good and tirelessly pure people stitched it up with their endless love.
>Also, there’s no Bojangles in Korea. So yeah, I’m pretty happy about how it all turned out.
