November 2020

In a few weeks, it will be the 30th anniversary of my becoming a U.S. citizen. Even now, I can’t begin to tell you exactly what was required or how long it took. My adoptive parents successfully navigated that process for me when I was just a child, several years after my adoption from South Korea. We celebrated as a family afterward, but I didn’t understand what it all meant at the time. Today, I see more clearly how that piece of paper has shaped my life and what I have been allowed to take for granted. As a citizen, I have been able to vote in elections year after year my entire adult life. I have been able to work, get a U.S. passport, and receive federal financial aid. I have not lived in fear of deportation. Other transnational adoptees have not been as fortunate. In many cases, the steps required for naturalization were not clearly communicated by the government or adoption agencies to adoptive parents. Today, it is estimated that thousands of adults who were adopted as children lack U.S. citizenship. These adoptees fall into a loophole from the Child Citizenship Act (CCA) that was signed into law in 2001. The CCA granted citizenship to many adoptees who were still minors at the time of enactment but excluded others, including adult adoptees born before 1983. The bipartisan Adoptee Citizenship Act of 2019, which would close much of the loophole, has been sponsored by Congressman Adam Smith of Washington and introduced in Congress, where it awaits committee action and a floor vote in the House. This legislation would grant citizenship to more than 50 deported adoptees and other adoptees without citizenship who are still in the U.S. It would also provide the citizenship that all intercountry adoptees are entitled to as the children of U.S. citizens, end the unequal treatment between adopted and biological children of U.S. citizens, and allow deported adoptees to come home, reunite with their families, and rebuild their lives. Due to the widespread erasure of adoptee voices, many people’s understanding of adoption comes largely from the perspective of adoption agencies and adoptive parents. This mainstream, mostly positive narrative frames adoption around “families” and “love.” In contrast, for many adoptees, the experience is more complicated and often traumatic. These feelings can be acute and front of mind. In other cases, these traumas linger in the background, shaping how we perceive our place in the world: in our families, friendships, and sense of belonging. They can resurface without warning. Even though I have been struggling with my own Korean American identity and adoptee experience, I was largely ignorant of the issue of adoptee citizenship. While I have supported other immigration measures in the past, I did not learn of the Adoptee Citizenship Act until earlier this year. Finally, I read and heard more stories of deported adoptees who’ve been forced to confront this other form of separation. As I’ve tried to learn more, I’ve come to better appreciate how U.S. policy falls far short. After all, many of our fellow Americans—both adoptees and other immigrants—cannot fully participate in U.S. life, even though this may be the only country they have known. I believe issues of families and belonging are always paramount, and our current crises have only magnified this urgency. During this pandemic, we all probably know families who are struggling with forced time apart. Holidays, birthdays, and major life milestones are conducted via Zoom or FaceTime. For adoptees who have been deported, the uncertainty of not knowing when they will next see their loved ones has been the reality since even before COVID-19. Without the Adoptee Citizenship Act, deported adoptees will remain in unfamiliar countries, separated from their families and friends, and uprooted from their homes. For those who lack access to economic relief from their country of origin or from the U.S., where can they turn? When it comes to addressing policy failures that span years, we cannot completely atone for the injustices of the past. All we can do is act. With the bill expiring on December 10, it’s up to all of us to come together and demand our elected representatives in Congress pass the Adoptee Citizenship Act and finally provide internationally adopted Americans with the citizenship we were promised.

Tell us about your own NPE story to the extent you’re comfortable sharing it. Seeing only 1% French was the red flag in my initial 23andMe DNA report. I was raised to believe I was significantly French and Norwegian. A few months later I took the Ancestry DNA test to compare from the same database that my sister had used. Those results produced the most shocking and traumatic day of my adult life. I had a half brother appear on my DNA results, and I didn’t have a brother as far as I knew. A trip over to my mother’s house an hour later produced more confusion, dismissal, and a host of secrets started to come out. Apparently, my mother and BF worked together in the 80s and had a one-night stand. My mother never told him she got pregnant and never saw him again, or at least that’s what I’ve been told. My mother still claims she didn’t know to this day. I think the most painful part of finding this out is how my mother, birth father, and newfound family have treated me in the aftermath. How far into your own journey were you when you started your podcast? Six weeks after I had my DNA shock I published my first trailer for the podcast calling for NPEs to share their story and giving a launch date of July 2019. What compelled you to start the podcast? The only comfort I had in those first few weeks of shock was reading other NPE stories on the forums online. I was nodding along with their written stories and scrolling for hours and hours. I would read aloud parts of other NPE stories to my husband at all hours of the day and night. I wanted to be able to listen to these stories as I walked around the house and did my errands. I knew I couldn’t continue to sit in front of a computer the rest of my life but I wanted to bring the comfort of finding others like me everywhere I went. I searched “NPE” on the podcast platforms and at the time did not find anything like it so decided I would produce my own. I realize now I could have used other terms and certainly found other podcasts with these stories on them, but with my limited knowledge at the time I was unable to find other podcasts. Did you initially find NPEs very willing to speak out, or did you have to coax people to share? I have only ever asked one guest. My first one I had to search for on reddit; I was too afraid to ask anyone on the DNA sites because I didn’t want to break the rules and get kicked off if they considered it “self-promotion.” After that I’ve had a pretty steady stream of people who reach out. I’m booked for 22 weeks out. I can only handle about one guest a week at this time because I do everything myself including scheduling, recording, and editing. I’m only a hobbyist—I’m literally learning everything as I go. I believe stories benefit the teller as well as the audience. From your experience sharing people’s stories, can you talk a little about the ways the stories help the listeners, and the ways telling the stories helps the storytellers? I know every story I record is sacred. Somebody out there is listening and nodding along in relief. A lurker, or perhaps a new NPE bingeing on stories all night long when they can’t sleep from the overwhelming grief they are experiencing. I get emails from listeners saying they have been listening or bingeing all night long to some of these episodes. As for the storytellers, I wish I could explain the relief, giddiness, and joy I hear in their voices after I sign off. Some of what they tell me afterwards is pure gold, but of course off the record after I’ve stopped recording. They all sound like a weight has been lifted off their shoulders; sometimes they’re exhausted and yawning. I leave every recording session feeling filled with empathy and love for my fellow NPEs. Why do you think storytelling and sharing is so important for NPEs? I don’t think most NPEs receive true understanding and empathy from people. We get it. We can empathize with each other’s heartbreak, confusion, anger, and, sometimes, joy. Finding a community has been life-saving for me in this journey. In one episode you mentioned that you sought therapy after your NPE discovery. Can you talk about how you chose a therapist and whether it was difficult to find someone who understood NPE issues?

I recently visited Earth Sanctuary—a perfect place to reconnect with my soul and nature. There I found peaceful ponds, sacred stone circles, a labyrinth, Tibetan prayer and Native American medicine wheels—all nestled in a protected forest.  Perhaps, I thought, it would also be the perfect place to connect with my recently discovered BioDad, Michael,  who passed in 2015. After my NPE (not parent expected) discovery and after having found his family, I understood my gravitation toward all things Native American. Visiting this land, with its sacred Native spaces, had me hopeful and happy for a soulful adventure. Leaves crunched beneath my feet on the winding path. Deep breaths and deliberate steps… inhale… crunch, crunch, crunch … Exhale… crunch, crunch, crunch. Wearing low-tread sneakers instead of hiking boots was an intentional choice that forced a more mindful gait on the muddy, slightly hilly trail.  At each activity location, I said a prayer, left an offering, and felt lighter. The Native American prayer place surprised me. It felt familiar, though I’d never been to or seen one. Intuitively, I peeled off my sneakers and socks, then stepped barefoot on the flat rock at the pond’s edge. With hands outstretched and palms up, I closed my eyes and thought of Michael.  In my mind’s eye, I had a strong vision of the man whose genes created me. His face was clear from photographs shared by his family. The stories they’d generously shared of his struggles and joy created both peace and sorrow. One deep breath and a tear ran down my cheek. Two breaths, another tear.

A common mistake adoptive parents make when hearing adult adoptees speak about adoption trauma is discounting their experiences because “times have changed” or their adoptee hasn’t voiced similar feelings. Some parents will straight-up ask their adopted children if they feel the same way and then rest easy when their children deny having similar feelings. Differing details of adoption stories can be used as evidence of irrelevance. Adoptee voices that land as “angry” are often quickly written off as “examples of a bad adoption.” “Not my adoptee,” is a knee-jerk, defensive response that blinds parents to adoption-related dynamics that may be uncomfortable or painful to consider—especially when everything seems to be going swimmingly in early childhood. This posture, though, discounts the real and proven trauma inherent in adoption, missing an opportunity to fully support adopted children and ultimately benefit from closer, more authentic relationships. That trauma looks good on you. One reason it’s so easy to miss signs of adoption trauma is because it can present so well. Adoptees are unintentionally groomed to be people-pleasers. Once we’ve lost our first mothers to adoption, we can work incredibly hard to win the love of our next mothers. We strive to measure up—doing and saying whatever is needed to keep our adoptive mothers close. This is all unconscious and certainly not meant to be fraudulent. To our brains, running the show, it’s simply a matter of survival. Children need parents, after all, and attachment is our greatest human need, taking priority even over such basics as shelter and food, as explained by child developmental psychologist Dr. Gordon Neufeld.

That evening Ma ate clumsily from a bag of cheese curls and the orange dust caked on her fingers; crumbs hung from stray hairs on her chin.  Her left eyebrow tensed with each dramatic revelation the show brought. The episode was about the reunification of a mother and son after decades apart. They fell into each other’s arms and I became as tense as a pole. My heart sped up and a hard lump formed in my throat. I remembered the box in the upstairs closet labeled, The clothes Lisa came in, as though I purchased at a store with nothing before. A clean slate. “I never stopped thinking about you,” said the mother on tv. Tears escaped from my eyes. I wondered aloud over the years but had never asked the actual question. “So Ma, what do you actually, really,  know about my birth mother? She looked at me, one hazel eye lifted slightly. She breathed in carefully, turned to me, and switched off the tv. “Well, her name was Margaret. Your name before we got you was Libby. But we thought you were more of a Lisa.” My cheeks flushed. “Libby? Like short for something, like Elizabeth? Lisa’s better anyway.” “Nope, just Libby. Margaret was mentally ill; we know she lived for a while in the State Hospital. Also, we know that she may have been raped – or something.” Raped- or something? A tremble tightened in the pit of my stomach. “By who? Who raped her?” “It may have been another patient. They didn’t tell us much.” She sounded a bit too removed. “Seriously? Really? That’s really nuts huh?”