in response to the anonymous adoptive parent who responded to Lori Jane's blog at http://coloringout.blogspot.kr/2013/01/adopter-savior-syndrome.html

A not short response to the "Anonymous" who wrote: "Some people enjoy having a miserable outlook and a victim mentality. That is the "syndrome" I diagnose you with. You get what you put out in the world. Karma baby. You are looking for the evil, girl. It's you who is the A.S.S. Love, an adoptive mother of a Korean daughter" in response to this blog post by Lori Jane (http://coloringout.blogspot.kr/2013/01/adopter-savior-syndrome.html) :

i would ask that you take the time to read the following words just as we as adoptees and our allies have taken the time to read your response...

first allow me to begin with words by Nancy Verrier  "a mother, a former teacher, a psychotherapist, author, and lecturer" and the author of "The Primal Wound":

"This loss cannot be eliminated by intellectual understanding, although this is important; or by legislation, although reform is certainly needed. The adoptee’s loss must be acknowledged, validated, and worked through, so that she can gain a new attitude toward it and begin to gain a sense of Self (who she is), self-esteem (how she feels about herself), and self-worth (how she believes she is valued by others). Only when we set aside our denial … when triad members acknowledge their pain, and when clinicians recognize the differences between biological and adoptive families … can we proceed down the path to healing with understanding, insight, honesty, and courage." - http://nancyverrier.com/position-statement/

-- as tempting as it is for me to respond to your venomous words with equal vitriol i instead would like to talk about why you have said what you have said... i can only assume by the ardent seeming anger and contempt you hold for Lori Jane and her words that maybe at the end of the day... what she wrote... scares you and brings out your own insecurities as an adoptive parent. - growing up as a korean-american adoptee in a very white conservative household in the south i recall my own adoptive mother telling me that she used to wake up in the middle of the night from nightmares of my biological mother coming to take me back... and though i do not dare to assume that you have nightmares like this related to whether or not your child feels a GENUINE attachment to you... i can only guess (due to your response) that the words that Lori Jane wrote may have scared you to death... that maybe they caused you to wonder/fear that maybe one day when your "Korean daughter" is an adult and able to form her own identity that maybe she will reject you and how she was raised... that maybe she will tell you "you taught me to see myself as being white - do you know how damaging that ended up being? do you understand that we live in a world where asian women ARE fetishized by the rest of the world especially by white men? do you understand how damaged i am? do you understand that my need to find my korean roots and identity actually has NOTHING to do with you and i cannot babysit your insecurities about MY abandonment?" etc.

your words... your response... remind me of my own adoptive mother... i can only guess that you would defend yourself by saying that you LOVE your "Korean daughter" and that any adoptee who speaks out against international adoption is just a bitter angry person... and i want you to know... you aren't alone in thinking what you seem to think... but the reality is... it is unfair for you to only talk about how adoption affects you when it IS a "triad" - there is you, yes. but there is your "Korean daughter's" mother who most likely did not WANT to give her child away any more than you would want to give your children away. AND there IS "your" "Korean daughter" and HER voice is AS VALID as yours... to squelch her voice... to tell her or other adoptees who may think differently than you due to the REALITY of the fact that WE (NOT YOU!) WERE the ones who were abandoned by both our very flesh and blood and our government and people - to imply, to state so blatantly that we are WRONG to express our very real experiences? -- it is akin to the victimizer telling the victim that their voice is not valid and shutting them down by attacking their character and their words with hate.

the reality is... the era that we now live in... the concept of being "color blind" is NOW harmful and damaging to racial minorities in the west. we are no longer living in a time period of racial segregation where there was a genuine reason for why being "color blind" was "radical" ...

here is the reality - and i say this as a korean-american adoptee and i say this as one who will proudly sign my name to my comment and not hide behind "anonymity" -- we as adoptees did not choose to leave our country of korea, our people, our culture, our very DNA our families. we did not choose to grow up in white families in the west - we did not choose to grow up being exotified by western society - we did not choose to lose our very KOREAN identity. and so when we grow up... SOME of us begin to explore our identity and the reasons for WHY our mothers/fathers gave us up and we begin to examine how our growing up experiences affected us... and when we discover injustices along the way - when we discover how many of us were actually and literally kidnapped and sold to the west for profit - when we discover that our mothers were young and single and were only given the option to turn us over to agencies... when we discover that the korean government and society would rather deal with single mothers and their children by encouraging our mothers to leave us... when we discover that we are so broken due to being raised to view ourselves as white and that we spent our childhood struggling with what we saw in the mirror... when we discover that when many of us were adopted south korea was under the rule of a dictator who would rather see us sold than to actually do anything to help our families... when we discover that adoption agencies have been and continue to lie to us and to our adoptive families and that they financially benefit immensely from the adoption system... when we discover that we actually are allowed to SPEAK OUT and UP about OUR individual experiences as adoptees - that our voices are VITAL to the discourse on international adoption... and so we finally do so for the first time in our lives... and all too often the response is akin to yours... accusing us of being ungrateful, evil, bitter, angry, etc.

i am NOT ungrateful for my life nor am i bitter about it... Lori Jane in no way in her blog implies that she does not love her life...

but quite bluntly - who are you to tell anyone how to speak about their very real experiences? and who are you to tell an adoptee who lives with the very real trauma of having been separated from their genetic and cultural identity that none of us have the right to talk about this? or that when we do and if we don't think as you that you then have the right to try and make our experiences irrelevant by labeling us with such hateful labels?

yes, you as an adoptive parent have every right to question or disagree JUST AS I and just as Lori Jane have every right to express our views and experiences and in your case - just as your "Korean daughter" has the right to do so now and when she is an adult... and maybe she will agree with you but maybe she won't

and i would ask you now in light of everything - i would respectfully challenge you and leave you with these questions - do you really want to tell or imply to "your" child that her experiences of the world and her opinions, even if they end up greatly differing from yours - that you will one day label her voice as being irrelevant or "evil" if she does not agree with you on adoption one day? will you threaten her with abandonment all over again if she one day views her adoption experience differently than you do? will you bully her into being the one to solve your insecurities over adoption as she grows up? will you cause her to think that if she one day speaks out like Lori Jane or others that she is "evil" or as you so crudely wrote "an A.S.S."? -- 

kim michelle thompson. seoul. s. korea. thursday 24 january 2013