“I had grown up with my adoptive mother always putting the emphasis on nurture, and this makes sense. Because as an adoptive parent, she believed that she and my father had the formative weight on their side, that they were shaping me to be the person I would become. Nature wasn’t that important, nurture was the more important dynamic. I would say that I started to question that a couple years ago. I don’t know how to say it other than that my own body, my own psyche, started to feel the presence of “nature.””
Tag Archives: Culture
Culture Shock
“There is so much more to people who are adopted than the parts that make people immediately pity them. It’s hard to figure out how to explain my story depending on the person or crowd because they already have a scenario in their head about my life which makes it challenging to tell them at all. I miss my family above all else, though I gained a new one but never will forget how my life all started. With pain and a different lifestyle in Ethiopia, I would never give up or forget the memories of my life.”
Brokenness in Adoption
“From the outside looking in, it can appear I have been sent to the most glorious summer camp. I live in the world of endless food, education, opportunity, resources, etc. But from the inside looking out, I am like a child at summer camp who is never allowed to return home — always grateful for what I have but always grieving what I have lost. The complexity of being an adoptee is feeling conflicting emotions. This is okay.”
Kimchi and Grilled Cheese
“While food brings Korean culture closer to me, I feel part of and separate from it as an adoptee, a tension that’s evident in many small ways. For instance, I remember one of the first times I found myself in a small Korean restaurant filled with only Koreans. It was a new and strange experience to be part of the majority, to blend into a room where I looked like everyone else, where everyone was going about the normal activity of eating dinner.”
A White Adoptee’s Search for Her Birth Culture
“So where do you go to explore your birth family’s culture when you’re white and have a closed adoption? Honestly, I don’t know. I assume that learning about your birth family’s culture is easier if you have an open adoption (at least for getting information—I know it’s certainly not always easier emotionally).”