For Shelby, growing up as a Korean adoptee left her feeling “othered” as she didn’t quite fit into her community. The Korean school her parents tried to raise her in wouldn’t accept her either. She was forced to live in between her culture and what Americans would or would not let her be.

On a heritage trip to South Korea she experienced the heavy emotions of reunion with her birth mother, the challenge of remaining a secret, and witnessed the frustrations of her brother who couldn’t locate his biological family. Shelby also gained a real compassion for her adopted mother whose reasons for adopting brought Shelby and her mother closer together. This is Shelby’s journey.

The post 106 – Beautiful Truth appeared first on Who Am I...Really? Podcast.

Shelby (00:02):

She had been raped and she got pregnant and her parents did not want to help raise the baby. So they essentially told her like, you have to give this baby up for adoption or you can't stay here. So she felt like she had no option. And so it's been a lifetime of pain for her.

Damon (00:32):

Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I really a podcast about adoptees that have located and connected with their biological family members? I'm Damon Davis and on today's show is Shelby who called me from Valrico, Florida due East of Tampa for Shelby, growing up as a Korean adoptee, left her feeling othered as she didn't quite fit into her community and the Korean school, her parents tried to raise her in. Wouldn't accept her either on a heritage trip to her home country. She experienced the heavy emotion of reunion with her birth mother, the challenge of remaining a secret and witnessed the frustrations of her brother who couldn't locate his biological family. Shelby also gained a real compassion for her adopted mother who's reasons for adopting brought Shelby and her mother closer together. This is Shelby. When I spoke to Shelby. She was frantically packing and planning for a very special trip to New York with her adopted mother. She started off telling me about her adoption that originated overseas.

Shelby (01:47):

Well, I was adopted from South Korea when I was almost one year old and I flew over on a plane to an airport in DC. And my parents picked me up at the airport and that's where I met him for the first time. Um, my mom always tells me that the first time she held me, I just looked straight into her eyes and she, um, felt like I was asking her, are you my new mother? Now? She always gets emotional when she tells that story. And I do too. Um, I do feel like I bonded really quickly with her. I don't remember, but I just felt my life. I felt so close to my adopted mom. Um, and then when I was put into my dad's arms, I took one look at him and I immediately cried because he had glasses, blue eyes, very pale skin, that eighties moustache. So it took me a bit of time to warm up to him, but he did take off a few weeks of work, uh, so that he could connect with me and for me to become comfortable with him, that was good that he was able to do that.

Damon (02:59):

The family lived right here near me in silver spring, Maryland until she was five years old. When they moved to North Carolina, they spent a stint in Montana. Then back to silver spring, the family finally settled in Jupiter, Florida near West Palm beach. Shelby admits. She doesn't have many memories of those early days, but during that time, the reality of adoption hit her hard.

Shelby (03:23):

It was about when I was around five or six is when it finally hit me, what adoption meant. And my mom always tells me that I was devastated and heartbroken. And, um, my, my brother who was, uh, they adopted him from Korea as well. And he's two and a half years younger than me, but he, we, we are not biologically related. Um, he saw my reaction of, uh, just incessant crying. And I apparently was begging my parents to go to Korea and find her and bring, uh, my biological mother back so that she could live with me because ever since I can remember, they just told me that I was adopted and my mother gave me up out of love to give me a better life because she was so poor and so that whole narrative, that simple narrative, um, which I think is dangerous to tell a kid, it didn't make sense to me. She was so poor. Then she could come live in this big house. I thought it was a very big house. You know, why would, why would they, why would they separate us?

Damon (04:34):

Shelby's mother could only deliver the message to her daughter in the ways that she learned to do it. She went to conferences where adult adoptees spoke and exposed her to different narratives. So her mother did the best she could with what little information she had. And Shelby said she did something else that helped a lot.

Shelby (04:53):

She gave me like a lot of space to be able to talk about my feelings and emotions, especially if it had anything to do with adoption. So I always had that and I think that's why we're really close. Um, and my dad, you know, to be he was not the greatest at talking about his own emotions, but he did the best he could. And, um, I do remember this when I was really young, that I would fantasize about being the princess of Korea and that my real mother would come back or would find me. And then I would go Google Korea. So that definitely was a fantasy of mine. I would imagine what she looked like, because that was really difficult, not knowing who I looked like

Damon (05:39):

Shelby wanted to see who she looked like, where she got her personality traits from, and so much more to frame things. Shelby's parents are white. Her father is a tall man with light Brown hair. Her mother is Italian with more olive skin and darker hair. She'll be says she with her mother for several months before she was placed into foster care in South Korea. So she probably got familiar with her birth mother's face and therefore felt some sense of familiarity with her adopted mother's Italian features, going back. The many moves the family made were in pursuit of her father's job opportunities as a scientist. But when the family was in silver spring, Maryland for the last time, the school year commute and the increase in crime in the area got to be too much for her mother that's when they moved to Florida.

Shelby (06:27):

The only thing that was unfortunate about that move was my parents did, there was a lot more Korean adoptees and Korean or translational adoptive families in the area. And so we would go to like groups and meetings and there was a culture camp we went to. So I think I also, well, I know I also had a Korean babysitter even who would talk to me, in Korean and my mom's told me that like I understood basic Korean up until I was about four. So I had a lot of exposure to the Korean culture, but I don't really remember it. And then, so we moved to Florida because of the warm weather. It's safer, I guess. Uh, and it's a very predominantly white community. And so besides the moving stressful, and it was just a stark contrast of, um, the people around, around you. I remember in public school, this is, this is when I start getting like Cooley or crystal clear memories, um, of kids making fun of the way I looked.

Shelby (07:32):

And that was new to me. So I am a very quiet, introverted person. So I usually would shut down and I wouldn't know how to react, but when a kid would call me Chinese Japanese, look at these, and then they would like pull their face back to try and make their eyes look slanted. Um, a lot of times they would call me flat face. They would ask the question. I mean, why was your parents or your old, your real parents give you up? So that was a hard question to answer because I didn't feel like, you know, it wasn't really their business. So a lot of times I would just add, I'm just adopted from Korea. I don't know why

Damon (08:10):

She's written a lot about her experiences in blog posts. And her mom has read her posts. Shelby's mother was dismayed that her daughter never shared her struggles. Her mother would have loved to have done something about it, spoken to the school administration or something Shelby can see now that she internalized the feelings that came from those harsh experiences. They effected her feelings of self-worth and her self-esteem. She said she just really wanted to be white so much so that when she started wearing makeup, she picked tones that were way lighter than a match for her own skin. Shelby said she was really embarrassed when one of her best friends finally told her about her cosmetics, blender, when they were in high school, she talks about her desire to feel better about herself as an adoptee

Shelby (08:57):

Growing up, I was very much a people pleaser and I tried really, really hard to be perfect, you know, so that my parents would be proud. Um, and that kind of thing, just basically to just try and be worthy, I guess, of their love. And, um, and I felt like if I did all of this work and I did everything I was supposed to, that I would, I would feel better about myself. You know, I would feel whole, but when, you know, come high school, I still felt this huge void inside because of the loss of my biological family. It felt like a huge let down, I guess, you know, because you grow up. I, at least for me, I felt a lot of, of shame and embarrassment about, about it because I didn't know if my, my biological mother did truly love me. And so I feel like growing up with a doubt of a mother's love really, really hurts. Like she was a person. And how you view yourself, sorry. I always get emotional when they talk about it. It still has an effect on me, even as an adult, even though I've done so much work and I've gone to therapy, like I think my mom, she put me into therapy when I was six because of how hard I had taken the whole adoption. Like what it meant.

Damon (10:28):

Shelby said, her brother, Garrett, also a South Korean adoptee, but not biological to her, looked up to her when they were younger, copying all of the things she liked to do and basically annoying her intentionally or just by being there. I asked her if she shared her feelings with her brother about being an adoptee back then she said they did not, but they did bond over it partially because of the discrimination they experienced in a variety of settings.

Shelby (10:55):

I think what was our comfort is that we were both adopted. I can imagine families that have both biological and adopted children. I would, I would feel like I wouldn't, I would feel if my parents had biological, biological children that I would, I would feel less loved than them, if that makes any sense. But I mean, maybe that's not the case for other other families, but yeah. So I think, and also that he was also Korean. Like I do remember when we were sitting in the doctor's office. Um, and it was for my mom appointment and we were just waiting in the waiting room and there was this old man and he just started going off and how much he hated Japanese people. And he looked right at my brother and I, and I think I was probably 13 and he was 10. So we just, we just kept quiet.

Shelby (11:49):

We didn't know what to do. And at first I was like we aren't even Japanese, like, why do we keep getting this? Like, people not know there are other Asian countries around the world. I don't even know if I don't even think we told my mom because he had left or something. So it seemed pointless, but that's kind of, you know, we had that in common and I don't even know we had to talk about it, how it would help me to feel, but it certainly was fruitful. And, but we were also kind of used to it.

Damon (12:21):

It's kind of weird that you guys would have this unfortunate bond over, you know, the ignorance of discrimination against you, both. You know what I mean? Like what a weird club to be in that's. It sucks

Shelby (12:34):

Yes. And you know, what's even harder is my, my parents wanted to put Garrett and I, and that's my brother's name into a Korean school on the weekend where we could learn more about the culture and possibly learn about the language. And you know what the director of that school said, he's like he advised against it because we weren't being raised by Korean parents. Our parents are white and they said the kids would make fun of them and call them, call them KVA's, which stands for Korean, but American. So this really weird place where we would not be accepted by the Korean American. And then it was hard to, you know, be embraced by the predominantly white community. So we were like really stuck in this place where we're like, what, it's not even our fault.

Damon (13:30):

Shelby went on to say, she's heard from Korean adoptees younger than herself, that the discrimination by other Koreans in America isn't as bad as it was for she and her brother back in the Homeland. However, where traditions hold steadfast through the generations, they're still discriminatory toward children born out of wedlock or those who are not full-blooded Korean Shelby navigated high school, managing othering and discrimination. She said, she always knew she wanted to find her biological mother ever since she was six years old, her parents always told her and her brother that they would take them on a trip to South Korea when they were in high school, as promised when Shelby was 17 years old, her parents contacted the adoption agency through which Shelby and Garrett were adopted and booked a two week Homeland tour to Korea, the tour hosted several other adopted kids and their families on a journey to the land they came from as an additional service. The agency will search for biological relatives. If the child is interested in locating them for Shelby, it was the sole reason for that trip.

Shelby (14:36):

I remember my mom had put in that both Garrett and I wanted to meet our foster moms and our biological moms, if they could be found. And I remember for me, I, it was probably two weeks before the trip. And, uh, I got a letter from the agency saying that they had found her and she was reluctant to meet me. And I remember locking myself in my room and crying so hard. I feel like, you know, when you have a trauma or traumatic things happen, like when you, when you go back to it or revisit, it it's literally like, it just happened. Um, at least for me, that pain, like I can still recall that almost as vastly as when I first felt it. Um, but it felt like a second rejection. And I, I told my mom, there was no point for me going on this trip. If I couldn't meet her, that was the whole point. I don't care about getting Korean food and stuff like we eat Korean food in Florida. I I'm like Garrett and I are in TaeKwonDo. So we literally can count to 10 in Korean and say, hello and goodbye. Thank you very much. We got it. We've got the culture thing down,

Damon (15:55):

Along with the notification that Shelby's birth mother had been found, but was reluctant to meet her was a document that had been withheld from her adoption papers describing her biological mother and father. Garrett got one to. Shelby's birth parents had been factory workers and she was born out of wedlock. I asked Shelby how it felt to see those details...