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  17. Gazillion Voices
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  22. Mission & History
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  25. Gazillion Voices
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  33. Mission & History
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  36. Mission
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  38. To create a platform for adoptees and their allies to bring topics important to the adoption community to life through rich, compelling, and thought-provoking content that will be accessible to the broader community and will ultimately reframe and reshape the conversation about adoption.
  39.  
  40. History
  41.  
  42. Awhile back, Korean adoptee Kevin Haebeom Vollmers started Land of Gazillion Adoptees (LGA), a multimedia company premised on a simple, yet ambitious idea – it’s the adoptees’ time to lead the adoption community. LGA started at the grassroots level as a small blog. Soon thereafter, LGA expanded into other areas. It co-published the anthology Parenting As Adoptees, put into motion plans for five additional books, created the website Watch Adoptee Films to stream adoptee-centric films, and coordinated from the ground up successful micro-fundraisers.
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  44. The LGA blog quickly became one of the most read and influential online spaces for adoption by becoming a place to highlight the expertise and experiences of adoptees and their allies: a “go to” partner to those in the adoption community who wish to quickly and widely disseminate information; a space for serious, in-depth discussions about adoption practice, ethics, policy, legislation, and research; and a “tool” to question and hold accountable the traditional adoption narrative and those who adhere to it.
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  46. Gazillion Voices Online Magazine
  47.  
  48. The LGA blog was always meant to transition into something else. Kevin took a look at how much the blog was flourishing. More importantly, he took a close look at the impact of the topics and issues important to the adoption community had on the mainstream, but at the same time how misunderstood adoption was by the general public. So, with the encouragement of adoptees, adoptive parents, first/birth parents, friends, and family, Kevin assembled a talented team to launch a subscription-based, monthly online magazine to up the ante by bringing the voices of critically thinking members of the adoption network, especially adoptees, into the broader community.
  49.  
  50. Gazillion Voices is that magazine, and all of us involved with GV look forward to offering robust content on a monthly basis.
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  61. Gazillion Voices
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  63. Gazillionvoices.com
  64. About
  65.  
  66. To create a platform for adoptees and their allies to bring topics important to the adoption community to life through rich, compelling, and thought-provoking content that will be accessible to the broader community and will ultimately reframe and reshape the conversation about adoption.
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  89. Mission & History
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  92. Gazillion Voices
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  99.  
  100. An Introspective Conceptualization of Student Development of an Activist Identity
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  104.  
  105. When throngs of protesters took to the streets of several local cities as part of the Occupy Movement, I took the opportunity to observe and absorb the reactions to activism in my community. Some of the reactions surprised me; some people accused the activists of being selfish. Protesters were supposed “lazy” individuals who would sooner demonstrate for policies that would increase government “hand-outs” instead of getting a job. Others erupted with compassion, their eyes opened to human suffering and injustice that they had never before seen. Praised or critiqued, activist life is not easy. Activism involves taking a position that is not popular and embarking on a mission to create social change. For activists throughout history, this has meant enduring everything from unkind remarks to violence, exhaustion from slow progress, and putting forth an exorbitant amount of energy with often little change in return. No matter what, many people embrace the activist life anyway, which begs the question: why?
  106.  
  107. What is it that draws an individual to activism? Some surmise that individuals organize for change when the distance between the current reality and their vision of what reality ought to be becomes increasingly unacceptable (see Coming & Myers, 2002, for a literature review of Relative Deprivation). Other theorists have offered that activism originates from a person’s own propensity to engage in activism behavior as determined by having an internal locus of control (Coming & Myers, 2002). In other words, a person with an internal locus of control is inclined towards activism because she is more apt to see her own potential as an effective agent of change.
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  112. Post navigation
  113.  
  114. Next
  115. Life Grief, Life Goals
  116.  
  117.  
  118.  
  119. About
  120.  
  121.  
  122. To create a platform for adoptees and their allies to bring topics important to the adoption community to life through rich, compelling, and thought-provoking content that will be accessible to the broader community and will ultimately reframe and reshape the conversation about adoption.
  123.  
  124.  
  125. Recent Posts
  126.  A Reply to the Vitriol
  127.  A Reflection on Mama’s Day & What I’d Take With Me to Mars
  128.  A Prayer From An Empty Hospital Bed
  129.  A Conversation With John Ng and Lina Goh of Zen Box Izakaya
  130.  A Conversation With Hei Kyong Kim, Author of The Translation of Han
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  139. Gazillion Voices
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  141. Gazillionvoices.com
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  176. Life Grief, Life Goals
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  179.  
  180.  
  181. On the fateful day when I found a listing in the New York City Yellow Pages for an adoption agency, I knew that in many ways my life was never going to be the same again. My thoughts were on the here and now; however, there was no way I could have seen how it would all unfold. The obvious issue — I was almost 6 months pregnant and thought I had no means of properly being able to mother my child — was the “problem” and the kindness of the adoption agency was a path to a “solution.” Little did I know that adoption relinquishment would also be the path to a life I could not yet imagine.
  182.  
  183. I was nineteen, and my story was pretty typical. As a middle-class suburban girl raised on middle-class suburban Long Island in the 80s, becoming pregnant was still seen as a clear path to a life of missed potential and lost opportunities. I had been disillusioned by my prestigious art school earlier that year and dropped out. That choice was strengthened by the sad fact that there was no money available to continue anyway, as my parents were in the middle of a nasty divorce. My father’s refusal to support my education was not considered a need for financial aid. With my life dreams floundering and my mother preoccupied in her personal battles, I was left alone and ignored. What I thought of as freedom was, in hindsight, a recipe for self-destruction. There were many more negative consequences that could have happened to a girl running wild in NYC; being pregnant was actually not the worst, but it didn’t seem that way at the time.
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  188. Post navigation
  189.  
  190. Prev
  191. An Introspective Conceptualization of Student Development of an Activist Identity
  192. Next
  193. The Band-Aid of Heritage and Culture Camps and What They Cover Up
  194.  
  195.  
  196.  
  197. About
  198.  
  199.  
  200. To create a platform for adoptees and their allies to bring topics important to the adoption community to life through rich, compelling, and thought-provoking content that will be accessible to the broader community and will ultimately reframe and reshape the conversation about adoption.
  201.  
  202.  
  203. Recent Posts
  204.  A Reply to the Vitriol
  205.  A Reflection on Mama’s Day & What I’d Take With Me to Mars
  206.  A Prayer From An Empty Hospital Bed
  207.  A Conversation With John Ng and Lina Goh of Zen Box Izakaya
  208.  A Conversation With Hei Kyong Kim, Author of The Translation of Han
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  217. Gazillion Voices
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  241. Mission & History
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  244. Gazillion Voices
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  249.  
  250.  
  251.  
  252. The Band-Aid of Heritage and Culture Camps and What They Cover Up
  253.  
  254.  
  255.  
  256.  
  257. Heritage and culture camps are very popular among adoptive families with children from other countries as mini-vacations with similar families (which mostly means white parents with adopted children from Korea, China, India, Guatemala, Ethiopia, and so on). Google “heritage camps for adopted children” and you will see dozens listed that take place all across the country. They are largely run by adoption agencies and adoptive parents, though increasingly they include adult adoptees as presenters and mentors. The camps are billed as ways to strengthen adoptive families and to build pride in the children’s culture and heritage. They are part post-adoption services and part easy way to focus “positively” on a country that is thousands of miles away, where a different language is spoken and the child’s original family still lives.
  258.  
  259. Ethiopian culture camps are relatively new. My sister and I arrived in the U.S. from Ethiopia in 1994 when we were 6 years old. There were not many Ethiopian adoptees at that time, never mind culture camps. So my sister, our other siblings, and I went to programs for adopted kids and adoptive families a few times when we were little (mostly events sponsored by the Center for Adoption Support and Education in Maryland). Thankfully, my parents purposely raised my siblings and me in a diverse community where I had Ethiopian families as neighbors and classmates. Many people of different races, religions, ethnicities, and socioeconomic statuses surrounded us.
  260.  
  261. In my adolescent years, I began to question my identity. What did it mean to be Ethiopian, black, and American? This quest for my identity was a journey that I had to take on my own. Although they loved me, it was not something that my parents could teach me or be a part of.
  262.  
  263.  
  264.  
  265.  
  266. Post navigation
  267.  
  268. Prev
  269. Life Grief, Life Goals
  270. Next
  271. Between the Extremes
  272.  
  273.  
  274.  
  275. About
  276.  
  277.  
  278. To create a platform for adoptees and their allies to bring topics important to the adoption community to life through rich, compelling, and thought-provoking content that will be accessible to the broader community and will ultimately reframe and reshape the conversation about adoption.
  279.  
  280.  
  281. Recent Posts
  282.  A Reply to the Vitriol
  283.  A Reflection on Mama’s Day & What I’d Take With Me to Mars
  284.  A Prayer From An Empty Hospital Bed
  285.  A Conversation With John Ng and Lina Goh of Zen Box Izakaya
  286.  A Conversation With Hei Kyong Kim, Author of The Translation of Han
  287.  
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  295. Gazillion Voices
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  297. Gazillionvoices.com
  298. Skip to content
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  314. Gazillion Voices
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  319. Mission & History
  320.  
  321.  
  322. Gazillion Voices
  323.  
  324.  
  325.  
  326.  
  327.  
  328.  
  329.  
  330. The Band-Aid of Heritage and Culture Camps and What They Cover Up
  331.  
  332.  
  333.  
  334.  
  335. Heritage and culture camps are very popular among adoptive families with children from other countries as mini-vacations with similar families (which mostly means white parents with adopted children from Korea, China, India, Guatemala, Ethiopia, and so on). Google “heritage camps for adopted children” and you will see dozens listed that take place all across the country. They are largely run by adoption agencies and adoptive parents, though increasingly they include adult adoptees as presenters and mentors. The camps are billed as ways to strengthen adoptive families and to build pride in the children’s culture and heritage. They are part post-adoption services and part easy way to focus “positively” on a country that is thousands of miles away, where a different language is spoken and the child’s original family still lives.
  336.  
  337. Ethiopian culture camps are relatively new. My sister and I arrived in the U.S. from Ethiopia in 1994 when we were 6 years old. There were not many Ethiopian adoptees at that time, never mind culture camps. So my sister, our other siblings, and I went to programs for adopted kids and adoptive families a few times when we were little (mostly events sponsored by the Center for Adoption Support and Education in Maryland). Thankfully, my parents purposely raised my siblings and me in a diverse community where I had Ethiopian families as neighbors and classmates. Many people of different races, religions, ethnicities, and socioeconomic statuses surrounded us.
  338.  
  339. In my adolescent years, I began to question my identity. What did it mean to be Ethiopian, black, and American? This quest for my identity was a journey that I had to take on my own. Although they loved me, it was not something that my parents could teach me or be a part of.
  340.  
  341.  
  342.  
  343.  
  344. Post navigation
  345.  
  346. Prev
  347. Life Grief, Life Goals
  348. Next
  349. Between the Extremes
  350.  
  351.  
  352.  
  353. About
  354.  
  355.  
  356. To create a platform for adoptees and their allies to bring topics important to the adoption community to life through rich, compelling, and thought-provoking content that will be accessible to the broader community and will ultimately reframe and reshape the conversation about adoption.
  357.  
  358.  
  359. Recent Posts
  360.  A Reply to the Vitriol
  361.  A Reflection on Mama’s Day & What I’d Take With Me to Mars
  362.  A Prayer From An Empty Hospital Bed
  363.  A Conversation With John Ng and Lina Goh of Zen Box Izakaya
  364.  A Conversation With Hei Kyong Kim, Author of The Translation of Han
  365.  
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  373. Gazillion Voices
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  375. Gazillionvoices.com
  376. Skip to content
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  397. Mission & History
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  400. Gazillion Voices
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  407.  
  408. A Conversation With John Ng and Lina Goh of Zen Box Izakaya
  409.  
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  412.  
  413.  
  414. For this Gazillion Voices podcast, I took a short trip over to Zen Box Izakaya, one of my favorite local restaurants, and had a nice conversation with John Ng (Owner and Executive Chef) and Lina Goh (General Manager) to talk about the history of their two restaurants, thoughts on the local food scene, ramen on a stick, and perspectives on the concept of food as a gateway to culture.
  415.  
  416.  
  417. ~ Kevin Haebeom Vollmers
  418.  
  419.  
  420. About John Ng and Lina Goh (via Zen Box Izakaya)
  421.  
  422.  
  423. Executive Chef / Owner: John Ng
  424. If John Ng’s architectural skills embodied the level of passion, creativity, and attention to detail that he brings to bear in the kitchen, then the world lost a great architect. John chose to follow his passion for cooking, a passion he learned at the foot of his mother and grandmother. It was where he was taught that even a grain of rice tastes better when shared with family and friends, which is something he values as being as precious as gold.
  425.  
  426.  
  427. Like great architecture and design, John believes that your food and dining experience should also have the ability to transport you somewhere else. The two eateries he co-founded in Minneapolis with his wife Lina Goh, Zen Box Japanese Eatery and Zen Box Izakaya, are designed to take you right to Japan to experience authentic Japanese food. It’s the kind of food that puts smiles on the faces of newcomers and feels like a comfortable piece of home!
  428.  
  429.  
  430. Growing up in San Francisco, John worked his way up from busboy to executive chef and names Chef Koji Okada as one of his mentors. He learned that food should be simple, original, and dynamic. He also developed his mantra for working in kitchens—”Be bold but be patient as well!”
  431.  
  432.  
  433. General Manager: Lina Goh
  434. Lina Goh has always been a people person. Whether it was selling shoes or serving food, she has always wanted to connect to people and have them connect with each other. She found out quickly in life that food was the “glue” that held all of us together. “We all have fond memories of food,” she says. “It can give us a feeling of contentment.” From growing up and living in Singapore and New Zealand to now living and working in the Twin Cities, she realized that those food memories are a huge tie to our home, wherever that may be. That led her to want to open restaurants with her husband, John.
  435.  
  436.  
  437. Lina’s preparation for operating a restaurant came from working in management at different companies. It was a path where she formed her style and belief that every position in her restaurant is valuable and that the managers need to work just as hard as the dishwasher to make sure they operate as a team.
  438.  
  439.  
  440. Her team considers her as being quirky and sometimes goofy, something she attributes to a lack of sleep. She laughs when people tell her that it must be so “glamorous” being a restaurant owner, as she quickly explains that while it has always been her dream, it has taken hard work to get there.
  441.  
  442.  
  443. Her idea of a dream vacation would be to eat her way across Japan exploring all of the variations of the ingredients they use to make their food, but she’s really just as happy with a nice rib eye steak on the grill because she believes that “Good food should never be pretentious!”
  444.  
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  446.  
  447.  
  448.  
  449.  
  450.  
  451.  
  452. Post navigation
  453.  
  454. Prev
  455. A Conversation With Hei Kyong Kim, Author of The Translation of Han
  456. Next
  457. A Prayer From An Empty Hospital Bed
  458.  
  459.  
  460.  
  461. About
  462.  
  463.  
  464. To create a platform for adoptees and their allies to bring topics important to the adoption community to life through rich, compelling, and thought-provoking content that will be accessible to the broader community and will ultimately reframe and reshape the conversation about adoption.
  465.  
  466.  
  467. Recent Posts
  468.  A Reply to the Vitriol
  469.  A Reflection on Mama’s Day & What I’d Take With Me to Mars
  470.  A Prayer From An Empty Hospital Bed
  471.  A Conversation With John Ng and Lina Goh of Zen Box Izakaya
  472.  A Conversation With Hei Kyong Kim, Author of The Translation of Han
  473.  
  474.  
  475.  
  476.  
  477.  
  478.  
  479.  
  480.  
  481. Gazillion Voices
  482.  
  483. Gazillionvoices.com
  484. Skip to content
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  500. Gazillion Voices
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  505. Mission & History
  506.  
  507.  
  508. Gazillion Voices
  509.  
  510.  
  511.  
  512.  
  513.  
  514.  
  515.  
  516. A Conversation With John Ng and Lina Goh of Zen Box Izakaya
  517.  
  518.  
  519.  
  520.  
  521.  
  522. For this Gazillion Voices podcast, I took a short trip over to Zen Box Izakaya, one of my favorite local restaurants, and had a nice conversation with John Ng (Owner and Executive Chef) and Lina Goh (General Manager) to talk about the history of their two restaurants, thoughts on the local food scene, ramen on a stick, and perspectives on the concept of food as a gateway to culture.
  523.  
  524.  
  525. ~ Kevin Haebeom Vollmers
  526.  
  527.  
  528. About John Ng and Lina Goh (via Zen Box Izakaya)
  529.  
  530.  
  531. Executive Chef / Owner: John Ng
  532. If John Ng’s architectural skills embodied the level of passion, creativity, and attention to detail that he brings to bear in the kitchen, then the world lost a great architect. John chose to follow his passion for cooking, a passion he learned at the foot of his mother and grandmother. It was where he was taught that even a grain of rice tastes better when shared with family and friends, which is something he values as being as precious as gold.
  533.  
  534.  
  535. Like great architecture and design, John believes that your food and dining experience should also have the ability to transport you somewhere else. The two eateries he co-founded in Minneapolis with his wife Lina Goh, Zen Box Japanese Eatery and Zen Box Izakaya, are designed to take you right to Japan to experience authentic Japanese food. It’s the kind of food that puts smiles on the faces of newcomers and feels like a comfortable piece of home!
  536.  
  537.  
  538. Growing up in San Francisco, John worked his way up from busboy to executive chef and names Chef Koji Okada as one of his mentors. He learned that food should be simple, original, and dynamic. He also developed his mantra for working in kitchens—”Be bold but be patient as well!”
  539.  
  540.  
  541. General Manager: Lina Goh
  542. Lina Goh has always been a people person. Whether it was selling shoes or serving food, she has always wanted to connect to people and have them connect with each other. She found out quickly in life that food was the “glue” that held all of us together. “We all have fond memories of food,” she says. “It can give us a feeling of contentment.” From growing up and living in Singapore and New Zealand to now living and working in the Twin Cities, she realized that those food memories are a huge tie to our home, wherever that may be. That led her to want to open restaurants with her husband, John.
  543.  
  544.  
  545. Lina’s preparation for operating a restaurant came from working in management at different companies. It was a path where she formed her style and belief that every position in her restaurant is valuable and that the managers need to work just as hard as the dishwasher to make sure they operate as a team.
  546.  
  547.  
  548. Her team considers her as being quirky and sometimes goofy, something she attributes to a lack of sleep. She laughs when people tell her that it must be so “glamorous” being a restaurant owner, as she quickly explains that while it has always been her dream, it has taken hard work to get there.
  549.  
  550.  
  551. Her idea of a dream vacation would be to eat her way across Japan exploring all of the variations of the ingredients they use to make their food, but she’s really just as happy with a nice rib eye steak on the grill because she believes that “Good food should never be pretentious!”
  552.  
  553.  
  554.  
  555.  
  556.  
  557.  
  558.  
  559.  
  560. Post navigation
  561.  
  562. Prev
  563. A Conversation With Hei Kyong Kim, Author of The Translation of Han
  564. Next
  565. A Prayer From An Empty Hospital Bed
  566.  
  567.  
  568.  
  569. About
  570.  
  571.  
  572. To create a platform for adoptees and their allies to bring topics important to the adoption community to life through rich, compelling, and thought-provoking content that will be accessible to the broader community and will ultimately reframe and reshape the conversation about adoption.
  573.  
  574.  
  575. Recent Posts
  576.  A Reply to the Vitriol
  577.  A Reflection on Mama’s Day & What I’d Take With Me to Mars
  578.  A Prayer From An Empty Hospital Bed
  579.  A Conversation With John Ng and Lina Goh of Zen Box Izakaya
  580.  A Conversation With Hei Kyong Kim, Author of The Translation of Han
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  587.  
  588.  
  589. Gazillion Voices
  590.  
  591. Gazillionvoices.com
  592. Skip to content
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  613. Mission & History
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  616. Gazillion Voices
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  624. A Conversation With John Ng and Lina Goh of Zen Box Izakaya
  625.  
  626.  
  627.  
  628.  
  629.  
  630. For this Gazillion Voices podcast, I took a short trip over to Zen Box Izakaya, one of my favorite local restaurants, and had a nice conversation with John Ng (Owner and Executive Chef) and Lina Goh (General Manager) to talk about the history of their two restaurants, thoughts on the local food scene, ramen on a stick, and perspectives on the concept of food as a gateway to culture.
  631.  
  632.  
  633. ~ Kevin Haebeom Vollmers
  634.  
  635.  
  636. About John Ng and Lina Goh (via Zen Box Izakaya)
  637.  
  638.  
  639. Executive Chef / Owner: John Ng
  640. If John Ng’s architectural skills embodied the level of passion, creativity, and attention to detail that he brings to bear in the kitchen, then the world lost a great architect. John chose to follow his passion for cooking, a passion he learned at the foot of his mother and grandmother. It was where he was taught that even a grain of rice tastes better when shared with family and friends, which is something he values as being as precious as gold.
  641.  
  642.  
  643. Like great architecture and design, John believes that your food and dining experience should also have the ability to transport you somewhere else. The two eateries he co-founded in Minneapolis with his wife Lina Goh, Zen Box Japanese Eatery and Zen Box Izakaya, are designed to take you right to Japan to experience authentic Japanese food. It’s the kind of food that puts smiles on the faces of newcomers and feels like a comfortable piece of home!
  644.  
  645.  
  646. Growing up in San Francisco, John worked his way up from busboy to executive chef and names Chef Koji Okada as one of his mentors. He learned that food should be simple, original, and dynamic. He also developed his mantra for working in kitchens—”Be bold but be patient as well!”
  647.  
  648.  
  649. General Manager: Lina Goh
  650. Lina Goh has always been a people person. Whether it was selling shoes or serving food, she has always wanted to connect to people and have them connect with each other. She found out quickly in life that food was the “glue” that held all of us together. “We all have fond memories of food,” she says. “It can give us a feeling of contentment.” From growing up and living in Singapore and New Zealand to now living and working in the Twin Cities, she realized that those food memories are a huge tie to our home, wherever that may be. That led her to want to open restaurants with her husband, John.
  651.  
  652.  
  653. Lina’s preparation for operating a restaurant came from working in management at different companies. It was a path where she formed her style and belief that every position in her restaurant is valuable and that the managers need to work just as hard as the dishwasher to make sure they operate as a team.
  654.  
  655.  
  656. Her team considers her as being quirky and sometimes goofy, something she attributes to a lack of sleep. She laughs when people tell her that it must be so “glamorous” being a restaurant owner, as she quickly explains that while it has always been her dream, it has taken hard work to get there.
  657.  
  658.  
  659. Her idea of a dream vacation would be to eat her way across Japan exploring all of the variations of the ingredients they use to make their food, but she’s really just as happy with a nice rib eye steak on the grill because she believes that “Good food should never be pretentious!”
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  676.  
  677. About
  678.  
  679.  
  680. To create a platform for adoptees and their allies to bring topics important to the adoption community to life through rich, compelling, and thought-provoking content that will be accessible to the broader community and will ultimately reframe and reshape the conversation about adoption.
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  685.  A Reflection on Mama’s Day & What I’d Take With Me to Mars
  686.  A Prayer From An Empty Hospital Bed
  687.  A Conversation With John Ng and Lina Goh of Zen Box Izakaya
  688.  A Conversation With Hei Kyong Kim, Author of The Translation of Han
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  732. A Prayer From An Empty Hospital Bed
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  737.  
  738. I didn’t know till now how secret from myself my hopes were.
  739. They tell me you’re on medication.
  740. They tell me you don’t remember me.
  741. The anesthetic they injected before my birth must have done its work.
  742. Now, you remember no pain.
  743. Now, you don’t remember the extraction, the surgery,
  744. the body that burgeoned like a weed from yours.
  745. Me, the mud you wiped from your boot at the door,
  746. or maybe it was your mother and father who scraped me from your sleeping soles,
  747. either way the rain has come
  748. and rinsed my rust down the driveway.
  749.  
  750.  
  751. Your mind is fluorescent hospital hallway.
  752. Our blood has been bleached from the sheet.
  753. They’ve convinced you sterile means peace.
  754.  
  755.  
  756. You never named me
  757. and I hope this means I can be
  758. the clipped hair swept into the trash can,
  759. a choke collar removed,
  760. a tumor extracted.
  761.  
  762.  
  763. But if not—
  764. if some days you still wake
  765. with a clanging empty behind your breasts
  766. and a blind white where you remember
  767. blood, and a baby—
  768.  
  769.  
  770. then mother,엄마, I would pare myself down
  771. to the slimmest parched wishbone
  772. for you.
  773.  
  774.  
  775. 엄마, for you, I want to be a good daughter.
  776. And this is the same as saying: I want to be the best
  777. return on an investment, I want to
  778. have been an investment, I want to
  779. heal
  780.  
  781.  
  782. you, my blood, blood of my blood,
  783. I am yours, you stitched me from nothing,
  784. I am the bud on your tangled vine,
  785. this venomous root of insanity
  786. singing and stinging through my veins.
  787.  
  788.  
  789. I’ve never been one to trust in fate
  790. for the Lord to save me at the end of the day,
  791. but엄마, you have taught me to pray,
  792. because everything good about me must be meant for you in some way:
  793.  
  794.  
  795. God, if you have given me hands, let it be so she can hold them. If you have given me a voice, let it be so she can hear it. If you have marked me with the same madness that sparks and shadows her world, let it be so I am the one radio in all the world that can understand her frequency. If you have made me compassionate and kind and good, let it be for her. Let it be for her. Let me be all these things just so I could show up on her doorstep one day and be a gift, a blessing, a blessing not “blessing” like “luck” but “blessing” like “love,” the way the poor are loved and the sick are loved and the grieving, the lost, the broken, the sinners, are loved. Let me be love, for her, for her, for her.
  796.  
  797.  
  798. Amen.
  799.  
  800.  
  801. ~ Rachel Rostad
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  822. To create a platform for adoptees and their allies to bring topics important to the adoption community to life through rich, compelling, and thought-provoking content that will be accessible to the broader community and will ultimately reframe and reshape the conversation about adoption.
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  826.  A Reply to the Vitriol
  827.  A Reflection on Mama’s Day & What I’d Take With Me to Mars
  828.  A Prayer From An Empty Hospital Bed
  829.  A Conversation With John Ng and Lina Goh of Zen Box Izakaya
  830.  A Conversation With Hei Kyong Kim, Author of The Translation of Han
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  875. A Reflection on Mama’s Day & What I’d Take With Me to Mars
  876.  
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  879.  
  880.  
  881.  
  882.  
  883. Until the age of 29, I had never met anybody who looked like me. That is, until I met my birth mother. This is the memory I’d take with me to Mars.
  884.  
  885.  
  886. In June, I attended the Allied Media Conference in Detroit for the first time. Described as a “collaborative laboratory of media-based organizing strategies for transforming our world,” it is an annual gathering of healers and rabble rousers of all kinds that pays particular attention to centering the stories, experiences, and leadership of women, people with disabilities, queer and trans* folks, people of color, lower income people, immigrants, and other historically marginalized and silenced communities.
  887.  
  888.  
  889. To set the stage at one workshop, the facilitators told us that due to the post-industrial destruction of Earth, we would be evacuating to Mars. The only catch was that we would each lose all of our memories but would be able to listen to the three-minute story of just one, which we would be learning to craft, tell, and record as part of our session together.
  890.  
  891.  
  892. For people who know me, it comes as no surprise that Mother’s Day is an emotionally challenging holiday for me. As a daughter, I carry with me the complex sadness of being estranged from my parents for reasons that are partially due to identity and conflict and partially due to my own survival and self-preservation. As a cis woman, I grapple with the internal and external forces that will decide whether I become a mother and struggle with society’s desire to place our worth within this role alone. But faced with even a pretend Never Ending Story-like threat of complete memory loss, carrying my birth mother with me to another planet feels essential on both a personal and a political level.
  893.  
  894.  
  895. Many of us in the adoptee community know that the existence and importance of our birth mothers is often erased through our adoptions and through dominant narratives that tell us we were neglected, abandoned, forgotten, or unloved. Strong Families, a collaboration led by social and reproductive justice organizations, is trying to change the ways that people think and talk about families.
  896.  
  897.  
  898. Their annual May campaign, Mama’s Day, similarly seeks to shift the conversation about mothers, motherhood, and parenting through art, media, and creative campaigns. Mama’s Day 2014 showcased a reframe of the #BitchesBeLike meme with new takes on the ways that #MamasBeLike could instead be used to have a discussion rooted in love, acceptance, resilience, and inclusivity. Like KoRoot’s ongoing #BuildFamiliesNotBoxes campaign, Mama’s Day challenges our cultural definitions of what it means to have and be part of a family. It was out of this work that I found myself faced with the fake prospect of survival on Mars looming “just outside the door” of the Wayne State University classroom in which my friend and I were learning about storytelling and sound recording.
  899.  
  900.  
  901. I was 29 years old before I met someone who looked like me. And now I can’t get her face out of my head.
  902.  
  903.  
  904. Listen to my entire Mars Memory story below.
  905.  
  906.  
  907. ~ Joy Messinger
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  928. To create a platform for adoptees and their allies to bring topics important to the adoption community to life through rich, compelling, and thought-provoking content that will be accessible to the broader community and will ultimately reframe and reshape the conversation about adoption.
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  933.  A Reflection on Mama’s Day & What I’d Take With Me to Mars
  934.  A Prayer From An Empty Hospital Bed
  935.  A Conversation With John Ng and Lina Goh of Zen Box Izakaya
  936.  A Conversation With Hei Kyong Kim, Author of The Translation of Han
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  980. A Reply to the Vitriol
  981.  
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  983.  
  984.  
  985.  
  986. The rant. Angry words splashed onto a virtual page. Nonsensical.
  987.  
  988.  
  989. “Adoption is child trafficking! It should never happen under any circumstance!”
  990.  
  991.  
  992. Where does this person live that they can make this statement with such venom, with such determined and righteous force?
  993.  
  994.  
  995. It sounds like privilege.
  996.  
  997.  
  998. My mom lay dying.
  999.  
  1000.  
  1001. Is this your ‘real’ mom or your ‘adopted’ mom? I hate that question. I didn’t used to. For a long time, I viewed it as a need for clarification, a way of explaining how having two moms works. However, it’s complicated. I share genes with one woman, but nothing else; I share life with the other woman, but no genes. Descriptions for “real” abound in our language, in the scholarly papers, as we attempt to dichotomize our relationships: birth, biological, first, genetic, previous.
  1002.  
  1003.  
  1004. But how do you split apart the two very real aspects of who you are, nature and nurture. For me, then, the question becomes: is the other “real” or “adopted”?
  1005.  
  1006.  
  1007. I didn’t watch my (birth, biological, first, genetic, previous) mother die. I couldn’t deal with the fact that she’d disappeared from my knowledge and awareness once and then resurfaced only to lose her again ten years later. This time forever. So instead of sitting by the side of her bed on the sheet that covered her hospital gown, beneath which lay seventy-five pounds of skin stretched over bone, and taking her hand and waiting until we were both ok with letting go, I panicked. I gulped my sobs and walked outside where my tears melted the colors of a September landscape of golds and greens, running them together like rain on a chalked sidewalk. That’s the last time I saw her, this first mother; she died five months later in the room that I’d left behind.
  1008.  
  1009.  
  1010. I have so much guilt.
  1011.  
  1012.  
  1013. I did, however, watch my mom die as she lay in her bed, a small wizened figure that was a fraction of who she’d been, both weight-wise and as a force to be reckoned with. In the leaf green room of her nursing home, I held her hand, I wiped her brow, I swabbed out her mouth of the mucus that gathered and rehydrated with it a different swab. At one point, I placed both of her arms around me, wanting so badly to have one last hug. And I cried. Through those final hours of tears, I told her stories of the wonderful places she’d taken me, the beautiful experiences she’d given me, the strength she infused into me.
  1014.  
  1015.  
  1016. In between these stories, when she fell into the dreamworld that preceded that unknowable darkness, I studied the photos that surrounded her: me–her adopted daughter, her grandsons, her daughters-in-law and her now-deceased great grandson, dead at one year of age of unexplained liver failure, his face creased by large smiles and punctuated with twinkling eyes. The bulletin board below her wall-mounted television held the large photo calendar my husband had created, its monthly pages a collage of lived lives. The only photo of her in the room was the one where she, at thirteen, stood with two friends and her favorite sister, Barb, now long gone.
  1017.  
  1018.  
  1019. For months she’d asked me who the people were in the photos and I would tell her, explaining her relationship to each and every one of the people who had, at one time, been important to her. And although she would nod, her eyebrows, still black after all these years, never fully unfurled from her confusion. Eventually, she stopped asking. I imagine she wondered why there were so many photos of strangers in her room.
  1020.  
  1021.  
  1022. However, she rarely misplaced me in time. Every so often I was her sister, the favorite one, but the rest of the time I was her daughter, Susie. I was never her adopted daughter. One day, a few months ago, she said, “Sometimes it’s difficult for me to think that I didn’t give birth to you.”
  1023.  
  1024.  
  1025. There were those brows again, furled with confusion.
  1026.  
  1027.  
  1028. Her death, my grandson’s death, and my two cancer diagnoses have lowered my bullshit tolerance to zero in every aspect of my life, including adoption. I find I’ve grown tired of the pulsating, drummed messages of “stolen” as a euphemism for American Indian transracial adoption. My adrenaline pulses with the picture this construction and reconstruction paints: of vigilant men and women who will do anything, literally anything to keep their children within their families, within their communities. But I know different. Not everyone does that. And that’s the part of the conversation about adoption that is currently missing.
  1029.  
  1030.  
  1031. I am the first person to admit that it is easy to wax poetic if that first family is never found, if reunions never occur. How simple it is to idealize that first family while the people who raised us (or people just like them) become the antiheros, the reprobates, the sinners, the members of the ugly society who forced us away from our initial families, our implied “forever” families, and made us live, like second-class citizens in a foreign world.
  1032.  
  1033.  
  1034. It’s not that simple.
  1035.  
  1036.  
  1037. Colonizing governments and their assimilation policies left behind the emaciated bodies of colonized societies, where cancers like alcoholism, drug addiction, domestic violence and child neglect consumed what little was left. These were the cancers that raged through my biological mother, destroying her until she was no longer recognizable to me as anything but transportation for genetic information.
  1038.  
  1039.  
  1040. I was removed at eighteen months of age because of neglect. The social worker described that condition in her notes, the ones she made at the home visit, after someone called the department. Mosquito bites, bright red with infection and bleeding, covered my body. My diaper hadn’t been changed in days – severe blistering covered my buttocks; no guesses on when I’d last eaten. You see, my sister, aged three and brother, aged six months, and I had been left in the care of our six-year-old sister. Our mother was gone and had been for at least several days. It turns out this behavior was her norm; she would disappear for days, weeks, months at a time and no one knew where she was. She and her remaining children admitted this freely. Our grandmother was already raising several grandchildren and wasn’t able to take in three more. She was too old, she explained to the social worker. Family members were trying to raise their own large broods with limited space or resources for an additional three children. Besides, if there was room, they’d already taken in one of the two of our oldest sisters. Community members were under the same burden.
  1041.  
  1042.  
  1043. This is the reality that is never discussed.
  1044.  
  1045.  
  1046. Knowing this, was I stolen?
  1047.  
  1048.  
  1049. Mom lay beneath the sheets that had recently been changed, her eyes closed against the remaining hours. Peacefulness defined her wait.
  1050.  
  1051.  
  1052. “She likes hearing your voice,” the sandy blonde-haired nurse said; the one with the two-inch thick braid that ran down the center of her back; the one who’d just gotten off her night shift and was ready to head home. Like so many other employees of the nursing home, she’d stopped by just to say, “See you later.” Her gaze remained focused on Mom.
  1053.  
  1054.  
  1055. “How do you know?” I asked.
  1056.  
  1057.  
  1058. “Her breathing relaxes whenever she hears you talk.”
  1059.  
  1060.  
  1061. Mom took her job as a mother seriously, adopted or not, but she had strong opinions on what I should know with regard to my adoption.
  1062.  
  1063.  
  1064. On pride: “Your Indian grandmother was a proud woman. She’d stand straight and tall when she walked down the street in Hamilton and no one gave her anything but respect.” I don’t know how she would have known that, so I don’t know if it’s true. But, she did give me a framework by which to imagine being a proud Native woman in Montana, something unheard of.”
  1065.  
  1066.  
  1067. On closed adoption records: “There is no one who should know more about you than you!”
  1068.  
  1069.  
  1070. When I first made contact with my birth family in 1993, I could feel the tension around me, filtering through all who knew of this reunion. In the midst of Western Civilization, mothering and its relationship with her child is an either/or concept. Mom didn’t see it that way. A few months ago, she’d told me she was glad I’d created relationships with my family. “I won’t have to worry about you. You’ll still have family after I’m gone. That’s important.”
  1071.  
  1072.  
  1073. At that time, I couldn’t fathom her leaving.
  1074.  
  1075.  
  1076. But she did. On June 25 at 4:20 in the afternoon.
  1077.  
  1078.  
  1079. In the last ten months, life has turned my world upside down and inside out. So what I have, I am thankful for. Grateful, even. Words that are shunned in so many conversations having to do with adoption. But with my bullshit tolerance at zero, I’ve grown tired of adoption rhetoric. I’ve lost compassion for people who jump on this train with their factless and uncompassionate anger and venom, forcing it to veer jarringly off course.
  1080.  
  1081.  
  1082. Adoption has always existed and it has happened on various guises of resource: this practice allowed people to take in children who no longer had anyone to care for them—death was, and is, a reality—through wars, genocide, societal violence. In more negative connotations, it was a way to pay outstanding debts and to gain cheap labor. The grey areas illustrate its existence as a way that allowed people to obtain and train in a trade and to rid households of too many mouths to feed. Sound familiar? Most of the rhetoric makes it sound as if these are new practices of a colonizing society. However, many have existed for hundreds, if not thousands, of years through the societies that have come and gone. In fact, several can be found in Hammurabi’s Code, written around 4000 BCE.
  1083.  
  1084.  
  1085. Adoption has become an ugly buzzword and that in itself has created or extended the either/or messages we love to wrap ourselves in, as if these are the only options that exist: either it is the best thing since sliced bread or it is the worst possible event that can happen to a child. Much of the rhetoric that is marched around as truth doesn’t require us, let alone allow us, to have a dialogue about safety or change. These concepts are drowned in the roiling river of righteousness that tumbles through the media.
  1086.  
  1087.  
  1088. For instance, dysfunction as an outcome of adoption implies that natural parents are somehow vaccinated against mistreating their children. However, a skim through the media, the scholarly psychology and sociology papers show otherwise. Natural born children are also victims of violence, physical, emotional and sexual, by their parents; they have been drowned, locked away, raised in chaotic filth, or their small bodies sold on the Internet. Therefore, dysfunction as a result of abuse is not an adoption-focused issue, so much as it is a child welfare issue.
  1089.  
  1090.  
  1091. Too many times I view and re-view the sensationalized stories of adopting parents mistreating their adopted children. This is not the norm, this is not a given, and to state otherwise is an injustice. Too many times the stories I read are filled with righteous fervor of how parents saved children and are to be recognized as heroes, or how adult adoptees criminalized their parents’ actions and view themselves as victims.
  1092.  
  1093.  
  1094. It’s so easy to sensationalize the arguments, it’s a given attention getter. But we need to be honest about what we know. Do we have the lives we wished for? Probably not, very few do. Do we know, without a shadow of a doubt, the lives we would have led if we hadn’t been, for whatever reason, placed? Again, very few do.
  1095.  
  1096.  
  1097. Therefore, let’s have a dialogue about this place, in the middle, where most of us exist, and how it looks with its beauty and its warts. Let’s talk about the children of war, of policy, of poverty so severe they have virtually no chance to change attitudes, ideas, behaviors, from the class they’ve been born into. Let’s have a dialogue that includes what works, as well as what doesn’t, instead of deviating into the either/or raging debate of the adoption rainbow. Because, in either/or, no pot of gold exists on either end for the adoptee.
  1098.  
  1099.  
  1100. Life changes have caused me to reconsider, to carefully re-evaluate what I’ve lost and what I’ve been given. The only answer I can give when asked if I would have had the same life I have now had I not been adopted is, “It’s complicated.”
  1101.  
  1102.  
  1103. In the current climate of adoption dialogue, I feel uncomfortable for the adoptive families, several of them my friends, who are made to feel like pariahs for their choices. I feel uncomfortable for the adult adoptee who, if they are not unsatisfied with their adoption, are made to feel that they just don’t understand the issues.
  1104.  
  1105.  
  1106. So, from my perspective, I seek two changes that are interwoven concepts: 1) a social acceptance of the idea that it is not immoral, unethical, or otherwise inappropriate to have two families that can have equal influence on who we are a human beings, and 2) an end to the rhetoric that doesn’t allow this acceptance a place to grow.
  1107.  
  1108.  
  1109. Had I not been placed into my family, I would never have had nor would I have been given equal access to have my voice added to the conversation. I am well aware of the privilege I’ve been given and I never forget that.
  1110.  
  1111.  
  1112. ~ Susan Devan Harness
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  1120.  
  1121. Post navigation
  1122.  
  1123. Prev
  1124. A Reflection on Mama’s Day & What I’d Take With Me to Mars
  1125.  
  1126.  
  1127.  
  1128. About
  1129.  
  1130.  
  1131. To create a platform for adoptees and their allies to bring topics important to the adoption community to life through rich, compelling, and thought-provoking content that will be accessible to the broader community and will ultimately reframe and reshape the conversation about adoption.
  1132.  
  1133.  
  1134. Recent Posts
  1135.  A Reply to the Vitriol
  1136.  A Reflection on Mama’s Day & What I’d Take With Me to Mars
  1137.  A Prayer From An Empty Hospital Bed
  1138.  A Conversation With John Ng and Lina Goh of Zen Box Izakaya
  1139.  A Conversation With Hei Kyong Kim, Author of The Translation of Han
  1140.  
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  1146.  
  1147.  
  1148. Gazillion Voices
  1149.  
  1150. Gazillionvoices.com
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