Recipes for Our Children

The worst part about being an adoptee is grieving

my loved one’s alongside people who will never be able to say,

“I miss them too.”

The worst thing about being an adoptee is

having to over-explain my loss so that it can be believed,

seen,

and honored by those who cannot relate.

The worst thing about being an adoptee,

is never being able to reminisce with our families, “remember when we…”

Memories lost before they had the chance to form, to be shared. 

My partner recently asked me why I love them,

I answered it’s because you listen to me, you believe me.

I know for them, this was not the answer they sought,

though for me, being believed can at times feel like the closest thing

to being understood.

I know I am not alone,

I know there are many other adoptees that understand.

I have community.

Though I wish that I didn’t have to explain my loss to

be believed, to receive the care that we all deserve

if we lost our

entire world.

Hae, I want ice cream.

Hae, can we do face paint?

Hae, I’m Arielle and you be Ursula, okay?

*Spits food I made back into my hand*

Hae,

Hae,

HAE!

Hae, go away.

Hae,

hehe. I just farted.

Is it time for you to go yet?

Hae, open this.

Hae, will you come to Christmas?

Hae, your face looks weird.

Hae, I love you.

1999

My dad holds onto my knees as my small hands grip the sides of his baseball

cap. In my imagination, I pretend that I am steering us,

as we weave through a sea of blue and white jerseys.

Wrigley is packed as always, and

and together we get to experience the world at six foot, four.

I don’t particularly love the games, but I always enjoy the commute.

***

2011

Storming into my room, he yells, “What are you doing?”

“Get up!”

It’s Saturday, and I lay depressed in bed unable to move.

I’m unsure if it’s humanly possible to lift myself up;

but before I have the chance to explore the possibility for myself,

his hands are already wrapped around my shoulders.

His rage hurls towards me,

and he begins

shaking me up and

down.

Sandwiched between his body and my mattress, I brace the best I can.

My eyes desperately scan his face in search of a glimmer of my father.

“Dad? What are you doing?”

I plea with a man who pretends to no longer know me.

Instead, he makes orders.

“Stop crying, get up!”

My body continues to be overtaken by his unprocessed pain,

and I beg him to stop to no avail.

My mom always joked that men in our family have selective hearing.

I guess she was right about some things. Eventually I hear her footsteps and

voice from a distance,

she calls him by his name.

“Peter!”

My felt sense is gone by the time he releases my body. He flees,

and she calculates whether or not to stay with me

or to follow him.

She trails quickly behind, and I am free to cry again in the safety of

aloneness.

Tears no longer come, but

lifelessness begins to fills the space between my silenced grief

and the body I’m left with.

She returns to my room later to console me.

I tell her that he abused me. She assures me,

“that didn’t happen.”

***

2015

“Yang,

just punch me.

I think that will help me cry.”

“Annie, what the fuck? I’m not going to punch you.”

You may have purchased me,

but you have never owned me.

You may have acquired property,

but you have never owned the land.

You may have bottled water,

but you have never owned our oceans,

our lakes,

our rivers.

It is impossible to own

what is living, what belongs to all of us, what is sacred.

I am ocean,

I am human,

I am free.

When did the purpose of being human become getting better at things?

When did success become a pre-requisite to being lovable?

When did classroom standards begin to standardize our souls?

Inform how we relate to our bodies?

To our spiritual and emotional well being?

To our healing journeys?

To our relationships?

When did we begin to craft our journeys with tools made by hands that have harmed us?

When did we begin to believe that growth is an individual journey?

That our therapists are our friends?

That a lifetime of pain can and should come undone in fifty minutes?

Why do I feel the need to be smart?

To express qualities that I may not possess?

To be “pretty”?

To present myself well?

To present myself at all?

Why do I perennially wish that I was less sad?

Less serious?

When did I forget that I don’t have to be anything specific to be lovable?

Was I ever taught this?

When did I forget how to be myself?

Was it when I taken from my land?

From my mothers hands?

Was it when I was told my name was Annie?

Maybe the highest risk investment we can all make in this lifetime

is giving ourselves the time we need to tend to our life’s most pressing questions.

To begin speaking truthfully about what it’s really like to be here.

Admitting to ourselves that as humans,

we will all experience anxiety,

self-doubt.

Say and do mean things we regret.

Get depressed.

Lose and gain weight.

Will be unable to work.

Will be unable to care for ourselves.

Will be unable to care for our children, our partners, our parents, our dearest friends, our families – the one’s that we love the most.

Not because we are failures, not because we are unlovable,

but because we are humans and

not machines.

We will all experience inconceivable pain and loss.

Become sick.

We will all internalize insecurities that have been created

by a country that continues to mask itself as a caretaker.

An abusive parent that needs us all to hate ourselves and each other

so that we work harder to earn its love.

It will insist that we change ourselves to become “better” children.

To forget our lovability

and the lovability of everyone else around us.

Seven years ago, I began my therapeutic journey after being thrust into

one of the deepest valleys I’ve ever known and hope to see in my lifetime.

As a newborn, I survived the separation from my family of origin as well as from my second family in foster care.

At six months, my body fell into a global exploitative system, known as international adoption, in which I was purchased and placed into a white Midwestern family I had no previous connection to.

As a first generation adopted immigrant, I was expected to adapt to a new family, political landscape, and land with unfamiliar foods, language, culture, and kin.

In that family, I found connection and protection with my older brother, who too was a baby caught within that same system two years prior.

As a young person, I experienced innumerable accounts of racial discrimination without protection or tools to voice my experience and interrupt harm.

I remember having peers mock me by pulling the sides of their eyes, reducing my intelligence and qualities to stereotypes, pushing me constantly to the edges of social belonging, marking me as inferior, as ugly, as less than.

When I was 17, I was sued with assault for defending myself from a racist encounter on the fourth of July. Told to take off an American flag bandana because I wasn’t American, I fought back with my words and with my fist. I was slandered through media as a minor, hyper-sexualized and exotified.

Blamed for the discrimination I faced, my voice was reduced to that of a drunken flirt, pining for the attention of white boys who wanted nothing to do with me.

When I was 22, I met my family of origin for the first time.

That same year I too fell victim to the advances of a man twice my age. Was raped in my sleep and physically abused when I tried to end the relationship.

When I returned to Chicago,

I experienced feelings of insurmountable loneliness and low self worth. I had fragmented connections from the trauma I had experienced in high school.

And returned to a less than emotionally close relationship with my adoptive family.

For the first time in my life, I began engaging in self-harm. Repeatedly beating my legs and occasionally hitting my own face, seeking to validate the scope of my unwitnessed pain.

When I began seeing my first therapist, I like many other trauma survivors read The Body Keeps The Score. I remembering becoming obsessed with the idea that every seven years, our body’s cells regenerate.

I dreamt about who I’d be at 29, and how much further I’d be in recovery.

Seven years later, I approach 30. I feel closer to truth telling and finally feel strong enough to tell parts of my story I’ve long kept stored inside.

I too dream about who I will be in seven years. Giggle about my prior conceptions of time. Smile proudly about my sheer grit,

determination to live a more beautiful life.

My biggest priority in this lifetime is growing my heart.

A difficult task for a gardener who’s bed’s been

tilled and tilled, and

tilled.

Seeds planted within

without my consent, I find childhood abuse to be the most noxious weed.

I hope there are other gardeners who too find my garden

worth the effort of tending. Nevertheless,

I am beginning to trust the powers held

within

my own green thumb.

While glancing at my phone,
she asks,
“Hae, what are you doing?”

A surge of guilt passes through me,
as I find myself scrolling mindlessly through instagram.

I leave my phone in my bag and approach her on the swing.

“I’m sorry,
do you want to connect?”
A big smile flashes on her face.
I chomp at her feet with my hands as
she squeals in delight.
The hungry alligator is back and so are
we.

I dream I am chasing my dad on foot as he drives around and around
a cul de sac talking on the phone.
I am screaming and sprinting after him,
but he is too fast and his eyes never meet mine.
Eventually I give up running and wait despondently on the curb for him to pick me up.

He drives just past me and unlocks the door.
I hop into the passenger seat
unable to contain my rage.

I yell, “Didn’t you see me running after you?!”

Phone still pressed to the side of his face,
he finally looks at me and says,
“No, I didn’t.”

I wake up feeling as if I’ve passed a fever in the night.
I check my phone
to find sweet texts from my partner after a weekend of hive inducing conflict.
They send me a photo of freshly sprung tulips,
tell me that they love me,
and ask me what I need.

Tonight, I had my first bowl of rice in weeks.

Cooked perfectly in my Cuckoo,

my rice maker is the only being in my life who consistently speaks to me in

my mother’s tongue.

Without expectation of response,

I am invited to feel the fullness of my ancestry;

belonging to a people who measure wellness in rice.

Steaming each grain to perfection in exactly twenty-five minutes,

I lean on modern technology to meet my forever need

of omma.

One day, I too will sing to my children when our rice is ready

and think fondly of her manufactured

presence.

Her jingle a reminder of the consistent nourishment

we have always been worthy of.

My life began on the streets of Seoul in September of 1993

when our omma first began her quest to set herself free.

Away from her childhood home she fled, determined to outrun her existential dread.

Hungry and looking for somewhere to lay, our omma encountered a tiger on Chuseok Day.

The tiger was handsome and dressed as a man,

desperate to woo our omma

he showered her with free drinks and flaunted his fan.

Even as he peacocked around, our young omma could sense that this tiger was a bit of a clown.

But our omma was kind with a curious ear, this good quality making it hard for her to fully listen to her fear.

Why oh why did this tiger keep moving so near?

With each sip of soju, our omma slowly began to lose her wit.

The greedy tiger excitedly watched and licked his lips.

With no virtue or patience the tiger took his chance,

taking her to his cave he didn’t bother to ask her to dance.

Forced to lay beneath him, our omma desperately prayed.

The tiger stole her dignity in ways that our ancestors forbade.

Patient and strong, our omma

waited, and waited, and waited,

finding an hour when the tiger was just enough sedated.

Into the night she would finally escape,

our omma was now with child and

had survived what we would call rape.

Scared and afraid her family would not approve,

our omma made a brave yet impulsive move.

Up for adoption her baby would be placed,

away to America she’d go,

her new family would be of a different race.

Separated by oceans,

our omma would miss, the baby who she gave birth to was destined to become a fish.

Convinced that her child had a special fate,

our omma hoped that Hae-in would find her soul’s mates.

It would be up to Hae-in to reconnect to her past,

crafting a love for life that would last, and last, and last.

In Korean,

Hae means sea,

our omma hoped that I would bridge love

between you and me.

An ocean of kindness, I strive to be, in hope

that we can remember our shared humanity.