Kids of `quiet migration` come of age

A6
|| westcoast news
p | BREAKING NEWS: VANCOUVERSUN.COM | Saturday, November 20, 2010
weekend extra
Jenna Wiebe was adopted from Korea at age three by a loving, tight-knit Abbotsford family. But she felt drawn to her birth country to see if she could find the woman who’d given her up.
Ian Lindsay/PNG
Kids of ‘quiet migration’ come of age
Adoptees from other countries search for answers to sometimes painful questions
BY DENISE RYAN
Vancouver Sun
H
er name, in Korean, was
Chun Hee. Bright Girl.
It was on the paperwork that completed the little
girl’s adoption in Canada.
Chun Hee was adopted by
strangers in a country she
didn’t know, a Caucasian couple who spoke a language she
didn’t understand.
For days after she arrived in
Canada, the terrified young girl
clung to the home she carried
on her body: her clothes and
her tiny backpack.
“I wouldn’t let anyone take
off my clothes. I slept with my
backpack on.”
Finally, her new mother,
although it wrenched her to do
so, removed the backpack and
clothes, the last things that tied
Chun Hee to home.
She was given new clothes,
and a new name. Jenna Wiebe.
“I cried and cried and cried,”
Jenna said.
She adapted soon enough
to the warm, loving Abbotsford family; there were two
older biological kids, and later
another adoptee, a boy from
Hong Kong.
As Jenna grew up she would
learn that she had been given
up for adoption in Seoul at the
age of three.
What she didn’t know was
why.
Jenna, now 28, is one of thousands of inter-country adoptees in Canada, part of a global
demographic that has been
called the “quiet migration.”
Between 1971 and 2001 in
the United States, more than
265,000 children were adopted
from abroad; in Canada, numbers have hovered around
20,000 per decade since the
1980s.
It is a demographic that is
coming of age.
Many of these children, like
Jenna, face unique issues of
racial and cultural identity, and
belonging. For inter-country
adoptees, searching for resolution by finding a birth parent is
daunting, if not impossible.
Lee Crawford, an art therapist
and registered clinical counsellor, sees many adoptive families in her practice.
“Many of the psychological
and emotional issues are the
same for domestic and international adoptees: the loss of
the biological family system,”
Crawford said. “But with international adoption we have an
additional loss, of culture and
country.”
Even a child adopted at birth
can grow up grieving for a
country she has never known.
“They ask, ‘What would it
be like if I was living in Mexico, Romania or China? Why
am I in Canada?’ It first surfaces around ages eight, nine,
10. Peers start asking questions, and often that opens the
door.”
My mother was a
stranger when I first
saw her. She was
petite, and beautiful
and ladylike. Part of
me said, ‘There’s my
mom.’ Another part of
me said, ‘What if she
isn’t?’
Jenna Wiebe
Fragments of memory
Jenna’s parents made her file
available, and made sure she
knew they were willing and
ready to talk when she was.
“Anyone who is adopted
always wonders why they were
given up,” Jenna said.
She was around 10 or 11, she
says, when she leafed through
the file of her adoption papers.
There wasn’t much information: her name. The names of
her birth parents. What she
liked to eat, how much she
slept.
But Jenna had memories, feelings, sensations, like
glimpses of the beach glass that
sometimes surfaces and then
tumbles back into the waves.
She remembered the roof of a
house. It was wavy, like corrugated plastic.
She remembered being locked
up, wrapped tightly in a bunch
of blankets, in the dark, peering
through a crack into another
room. She remembers being
afraid.
“I didn’t know when that was,
or why it was. I just knew it
wasn’t a dream, and it wasn’t
made up.”
As much as her adoptive parents wanted to be open, Jenna
was not able to communicate
the strong feelings that moved
inside her. She was in a wonderful, loving, tight family, but
she was different.
“Abbotsford is a very Caucasian community,” she said. “I
remember saying, ‘I want to be
white.’”
It wasn’t just race. It was part
Sung Ja Yang, Jenna Wiebe’s birth mother said she prayed
every day for her daughter’s return.
of herself she was missing: “To
look around the dinner table
and never see that I have my
mother’s nose or my father’s
eyes.”
Jenna’s parents had adopted
a fourth child, a boy, from
Hong Kong.
“My little brother was feeling some of the same things,”
she said. “It helped to be able
to talk to him.”
The feelings were as unique
as their situation. “It was not a
lack of love or good parenting.
It’s abandonment. It’s identity.
Part of me felt a bit of guilt if
I questioned why I was feeling
the way I was feeling. It felt like
I was not being loyal.”
Throughout her teens a mix of
feelings surfaced: resentment,
anger, perfectionism.
“I felt that if I was perfect, I
would be more loved.
“If I was perfect no one could
be mad at me, or not love me,
or give me away.”
At 20, Jenna met a journalist
from Korea who had come to
do a documentary about one of
her former high-school teachers, who was also Korean.
At a dinner, the reporter casually invited Jenna to visit her in
Korea some time.
“Something inside me said,
‘Just go.’ I quit my job and two
weeks later I had a ticket.”
Her parents wanted to come,
her boyfriend wanted to come,
but she knew it was a journey
she had to make alone.
“I needed the freedom to feel
my feelings without guilt, whatever happened. This trip wasn’t
about having fun. It was about
finding myself.”
In Seoul, she felt like she fit
in, somehow. “Even though I
didn’t speak the language any
more, I never felt stressed or
anxious.”
Jenna visited the agency that
had handled her adoption, and
its staff agreed to help.
She travelled around Korea
and visited Dageu, where she
had been born.
She saw small shacks with
corrugated plastic roofs. The
roofs she remembered.
On the train back to Seoul, the
agency called: Her birth mother
was sitting in their office.
Rite of passage
Reunions with birth parents,
mothers in particular, have
become part of the rite of passage for domestic adoptees.
For inter-country adoptees,
this is not always possible.
Some don’t want to go there,
no matter how difficult their
adjustment to their adoptive
identities.
Kim Parker, 25, who was
adopted from Seoul at the age
of six months and spent her
teens struggling with racial bullying, said she has no desire to
go to Korea.
“I grew up on steak and potatoes, not kimchee and rice. I
didn’t know how to use chopsticks until 2008.”
Kim’s adoptive family moved
from Richmond to New Zealand when she was a teenager.
“In New Zealand I felt very
alone.” There were few Asians,
certainly no families like hers:
Her adoptive mother had red
hair and freckles. Once she was
mouthy with her mom at a soccer game, and another mother
told her mom off: “How could
you let an exchange student
talk to you like that?”
The racism was intense, and
confusing. “I identify as white,”
Kim said. “In New Zealand,
they would yell ‘f--- off monkey’, throw stuff at me from
car windows, tell me to go back
where I came from.”
She did. For her, coming
home meant returning to Vancouver, a city where she sees
herself in all the multicoloured
faces around her.
“I’m pretty grateful for
what I have here,” she said.
“I feel lucky to be in a society where it’s acceptable to be
transracial.”
Others, like Jenna, are part of
a quiet tide seeking more distant shores.
The truth about inter-country and trans-racial adoption, Crawford said, is “It’s
complicated.”
“In the early part of their lives,
a lot of good things are said to
kids about adoption. ‘We chose
you.’ ‘We wanted you to have a
better life.’ ‘You’re in Canada,
you’re safe here.’”
A lot of inter-country adoptees hit 14, 15, 16, Crawford said,
and realize they won’t have the
opportunity to meet with their
birth parents. “They are disempowered and this makes the
loss more complex.”
Sometimes the best an international adoptee can hope for
is a visit to the country or the
village of origin.
In China, and Mexico, where
children are often abandoned
with little or no information on
the steps of an orphanage, the
searches are more challenging.
Anna James, at internationaladoptionsearch.com, facilitates inter-country adoption
searches — something that
became a passion for her after
adopting her second son, Justin, from Ukraine.
CONTINUED ON A7
westcoast news ||
Saturday, November 20, 2010 | | BREAKING
BREAKING NEWS: VANCOUVERSUN.COM
VANCOUVERSUN.COM | P
A7
Canada:
Abbotsford
I identify as white. In New Zealand, they would yell ‘f--- off monkey,’
throw stuff at me from car windows, tell me to go back where I came from.
Calgary
Charlottetown
KIM Parker
adopted from Korea at the age of six months, lived in Richmond,
and moved with her adoptive family to New Zealand as a teenager
Comox
Deer Lake/Corner Brook
Edmonton
FROM PAGE A6
“I was adopted in the U.S. at
five days old,” Anna said. “I
found my birth mother at 39.
She was overcome with happiness. Many years of guilt were
taken away for her when I said it
was okay.”
She wanted that connection for
Justin, and for his birth mother.
With the help of the Ukrainian
translator she had met while
adopting Justin, she was able to
locate her.
Anna sends pictures, and hopes
they will meet one day.
Since then, she has facilitated
more than 1,000 searches and
reunions in Kazakhstan, Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia
and Guatemala for adoptees and
families in countries around the
world including Ireland, Africa,
Germany.
Jan and Lindsey Graham-Radford, a Vancouver lesbian couple,
are adoptive parents of Romanian twins Mikaela and Zoe.
They brought the girls back to
Romania for an extraordinary
reunion with their birth mother,
Moria, when the twins were just
nine years old.
The girls’ birth mother had
slipped a piece of paper into
Jan’s hand at the courthouse
in Romania, with her contact
information.
A few months after they were
settled in Canada, and the babies,
who had been near death, were
nursed back to health, Jan sent
a letter to Moria in Romania to
let her know the girls were doing
well.
“We kept in touch with her,”
Jan said.
Although the girls had been
adopted at birth, “Mikaela struggled right from the beginning,”
Jan said.
“She used to play a game called
‘little girl lost in the forest,’ where
she would find a baby and come
and drop it at Lindsey’s feet.”
The trip to Romania, and a
reunion with their birth family,
was a turning point for the girls.
They had lunch and took
photos, and met cousins and
extended family.
“Mikaela seemed to be floating
on clouds after that. She just kind
of relaxed,” Jan said.
“I found it really fascinating to
see where I would have grown
up,” Mikaela said.
“There was a shack with a big
back garden with vegetables and
a pig. ... Zoe and I really look like
our birth mom. I’m really happy
to have that connection.”
Making connections
For Jenna, making the connection with her birth mother, Sung
Ja Yang, meant making a connection with herself, the bright
girl she had once been.
“My mother was a stranger
when I first saw her,” Jenna
said. “She was petite, and beautiful and ladylike. Part of me said,
‘There’s my mom.’ Another part
of me said, ‘What if she isn’t?’”
Yang seemed to understand.
Through a translator, she asked
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Kim Parker and her father Ron at her father’s home in Vancouver. Growing up, Kim says she struggled
with her identity, having been adopted by a family of a different race.
Jenna if she had a mark on her
stomach.
Jenna nodded. Her birthmark.
Yang explained that it wasn’t
a birthmark. It was a scar, from
when she had fallen, as a toddler,
against a steaming kettle.
It was a story that only her birth
mother could have told her.
The tears came.
“She kept putting her hand over
her heart and saying she was
sorry,” said Jenna.
“She said she and my father
were very much in love, and very
happy to be pregnant with me.
But a year into the marriage, my
father became very abusive to my
mother, and then abusive to me.
She was pregnant with my little brother, and had to leave my
father.”
Her mother had nobody; her
own mother and father had both
died. She was just a teenager
herself.
“She had no education. No
chances. No way to support us.”
She took her daughter to an
orphanage, hoping she would
have a better life.
But the next day, she went back
to see her, perhaps to get her.
The orphanage turned her away.
She told Jenna that she had
prayed, every day, that her daughter would come back one day.
Jenna spent her last week in
Korea at her birth mother’s modest home, among the family who
remembered the child they knew
as Bright Girl.
She eventually learned that
her birth father had been killed
in an auto accident, and that the
brother she has never met was
also put up for adoption.
Jenna discovered that she and
her mother had identical mannerisms; she saw herself in her
mother.
“I was very sick with strep
throat,” Jenna said. “She kept
making me food she said was my
favourite, and feeding it to me.
She made a fish soup and she’d
pick out the fish and make sure
there were no bones in it like I
was still that little girl.
“I let her, because she’d never
had the chance, and I had never
had the chance to be cared for by
her.”
The journey changed Jenna’s
life. “People think finding a birth
parent is the completion of something. Really, it’s a beginning.”
When she returned home,
Jenna felt more at ease with herself. She is trying to find a balance between her birth family
in Korea and getting on with her
life, which is here.
Her search only deepened
the bond with her Canadian
parents.
“When I left, they gave me a
card at the airport, saying they
were taking care of the flight. It
was the most selfless thing they
ever could have done. They are
amazing parents, and amazing
people.
“I told my mom here no matter
what, you raised me. I have two
mothers, yes. But you couldn’t
have been my mother without
her.”
[email protected]
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