Happy New Year! It is officially the year of the pig. The part of me that is unquestionably a part of western culture has problems taking a pig seriously. The intellectual part of my brain understands cultural differences and symbolism.

The Korean new year is all about family. In many cases, it’s about returning to your roots. We didn’t specifically celebrate the Korean new year this week-end, but we have made it all about family. On Saturday, we went to Sesame Street Live, our Valentine’s present to my son, and then we had lunch at the... more

Part 1 - Introduction

Part 2 - Disappointment & Failure

Part 3 - Anxiety

Guilt

Last year, I wrote a post about guilt and I was thinking that guilt would be a perfect emotion for this series. Up until... more

Part 1 - Introduction

Part 2 - Disappointment & Failure

Anxiety

Anxiety is that emotion that causes a waiting parent to call the social worker once a week even though they’ve promised you that they will call you the minute that they have news. The adoption process is full of ups and downs that feed anxiety and make... more

It’s Valentine’s Day and my son has enough sugar in him to hold him through Christmas. He was so excited to go to daycare today because they were having a party in his preschool room. At first he hated the move to preschool, but he’s settling in. We did have to stop in his old room to give Valentine’s to his friends that haven’t moved to the preschool room yet.

Anyhow, I thought I’d see if Valentine’s Day was celebrated in Korea. It turns out that the greatest Greeting Card Holiday of all is celebrated everywhere. In Korea, it’s celebrated a little... more

Disappointment & Failure

Before people become to upset with me, I am not saying that Korean adoption is a disappointment. What I did want to share is that often parents arrive at the adoption process with a battle weariness that stems from disappointments. For many parents, by the time you get to the Korean adoption process, they’ve tried to conceive naturally, they’ve tried fertility treatments and they’ve tried domestic adoption. Disappointment is a part of life.

I don’t think that feeling disappointed makes you a bad person. I did not experience this process, but I’ve read about it with enough regularity that I know it’s not abnormal. It seems to me that if you try... more

They are talking about six to nine inches of snow in the next few days. When I hear that, I start thinking about nesting – finding warms places in my house where I can cuddle with my family under blankets. When I nest, I tend to have time to think. As I've mentioned before, this often a dangerous thing.

When parents share their adoption experience, you mostly hear about the good parts. With Korean adoption, parents talk about the happy moments. I remember my son’s arrival day. I remember her first smile. I remember the day the judge said we were... more

I was reading an article in the KAAN newsletter. It was about a program at a New Jersey college that brought in Comedians to welcome back students. One of the comedians was Amy Anderson (a Korean adoptee) who has been popping up on my computer with refreshing regularity.

Link: Comedians

Each comedian spent... more

The Korean people celebrate both the calendar new year and the lunar new year. This year, the Lunar New Year celebrations will be on February 17, 18 and 19. The 18th will be the first day of the first new moon, but they also celebrate the day before and the day after. It is a time to visit your hometowns and pay respect to your ancestors’ graves.

Some things that you can do to celebrate the Lunar New Year:

1. See if there is a Lunar New Year party in your area. One of the organizations that I belong to (at least if I remember to pay... more

On one of my Korean adoption message boards someone asked how much we share about our child’s birth parents with other people. Though I haven’t been on since early this afternoon, I noted that most of the early responses were that they didn’t tell people about their children’s birth parents (the information that they had). Most seemed to think that it was their child’s story to share. Some of the parents hadn’t even shared the information with their family.

It’s funny because I never thought about it. I don’t have information on my birthparents... more

In the article, Duckett Investigators Talk To Experts In Korean Adoptions, it talks about how the investigators are seriously looking at the possibility that Trenton Duckett’s mother may have sent her son to Korea.

For those of you who haven’t heard about Trenton, he is the son of a Korean Adoptee (Melinda Duckett). Melinda reported her son missing and then, shortly after, committed suicide.

Trenton's mother, Melinda Duckett, was adopted from Korea to a family in the U.S., and she had told at least one co-worker that she wanted to expose her son to the Korean culture. Detectives... more