The Journey: A Personal Search
by Kendra Belvins-Barton
Originally Published in TransCultured Magaine Winter 2000-1

Often a search for birthparents is about the search for self and a reconnection to our birth heritage. While all searches might not result in reunions, it is important that the value of a search is in the journey itself.

On the airplane from Los Angeles to Seoul, Korea, they served bibimbop for lunch; slices of beef, seaweed, carrots, cucumbers and other vegetables neatly placed in separate piles in a bowl served with a side dish of rice and tubes of sesame oil and hot pepper paste. It was the first time it hit me that I was actually on a plane, on my way to South Korea, to search for my birthfamily. For months it didn't seem real, even as I received my airline tickets in the mail, or read the Lonely Planet's Guide to Korea, or began eating kimchi and mandu at the Shilla Restaurant near my house in preparation. For months I was like a bride planning her wedding day, with little thought to the emotions I would feel once the big night was over and reality set in. Instead, I was so excited at being served Korea food that I took a picture of it, to the humor of my Korean seatmate, and followed his example as he dumped rice in the bowl, added the oil and hot pepper paste and mixed it up.

I had prepared myself to be shocked by Seoul and Korea. I thought the senses would overwhelm me. I'd heard that other adoptees had experienced long lost memories when they smelled certain foods or recognized buildings or sounds. Maybe such things will happen to me, I thought. Instead, I was surprised by how ordinary I felt. As I walked down the streets, I though my past would be pasted on my forehead - a big A for adoptee. There were little things that caught my attention - standing in the "Foreigner" line at customs, the loud way we, a group of adult Korean adoptees from America, laughed compared to the quiet demeanor of the Koreans we were with, the traffic. Still nothing about being in Korea was making me feel unwelcome or uncomfortable. I felt comfortable in my skin.

I had a lot of ambivalence about searching for my family. While I told virtual strangers - people at the Y where I work out, parents in the parent-child classes I attend, friends of friends - I kept most of the birth search plans quiet to my family members, especially my adoptive parents. It's not that I questioned my feelings towards them, but I was concerned about their feelings. My parents have never openly supported my desire to connect with my Korean-ness, not that they were forcefully against it either. It was never discussed, even when I would point out magazine or newspaper articles about a Korean Adoptee meeting his/her birth family. To my knowledge they never read those articles; they certainly never discussed them. Their feelings were that I'm American, raised American and I should be satisfied to be American. Or maybe they were just waiting for me to bring it up.

My mother recently told me about a co-worker whose 19 year old adopted Korean son was having "problems". "Like you, he was never interested in being Korean until recently," she told me. I could only wonder what planet she had been living on the past 25 years. I know she is referring to an incident that happened when I was about four of five years old. My parents told me I would cry whenever a Korean person would try to talk to me. First of all, I didn't know real Koreans existed in the very Caucasian suburb I grew up in. Second, since I was adopted at almost three years old, maybe I was scared they would take me back tot he orphanage - I doubt I was trying at that age to "deny" my heritage. Or maybe I was just shy, and wary of someone speaking a language I had learned to forget.