Thanks, Aimee.

Last week I received the terribly sad news that my friend Aimee Bang, one of the first Korean adoptees I met in NYC, had suddenly and unexpectedly passed away. We weren’t incredibly close: we weren’t “we go back 10 years” or “bye, call me in the morning!” kind of friends, but she made a lasting impact on my life. In 2012, being new to the city and not having family in the area, Aimee was the very first person to visit me after I had my daughter, who then wore the sweater Aimee gave her in her passport picture six months later.

It’s not the visit or the baby gift, though, that I will remember most about Aimee. What will stick with me forever is our conversations about being KADs and finding our places within the community.

Aimee wasn’t the kind of adoptee who would meet you, then immediately bombard you with information and save-the-dates about adoptee events. She wasn’t the kind of person who constantly introduced you as her “adoptee friend” or assumed that every time you’d get together, you wanted to eat Korean food or throw back some soju. She just wanted to be a friend—no modifiers—and, over time, we bonded over our mutual annoyance of the aforementioned personality types. Back in 2012, Aimee blogged about that, and what I especially like about that post is when she concluded “My story is my own. It is distinct and exclusively flawed. Please do not try and take this away from me. I am not you and you are not me.”

Back in 2012 when I started this journey, Aimee showed me that it’s entirely possible and okay to be involved in the KAD community without—and I’m going to be frank here—letting everyone else’s experience, expectations, and, well, baggage weigh me down or determine how I’d continue on my own journey. In those days, I confided a lot in Aimee because she never suggested that I “see someone” or blamed my own identity crisis on my adoptive parents or told me that I should feel like a victim… she would just let me talk; she let my story be my own.

So when I say, “Thanks, Aimee, for your quiet independence and strength,” I imagine her looking right at me, smiling, shrugging her shoulders and saying, “It’s okay.”

Reaching Out

31 Weeks Pregnant.

I’m a little ashamed to admit that I’m 30 years old and have never researched Korean adoption until recently. This week, I’ve been pondering the million dollar question that all adoptees, Korean or otherwise, ask themselves: Why? Why did my biological parent(s) give me up?

I started a Google search for information about Korean adoption in the ’70s and ’80s, wondering if there was a particular reason why so many Korean children were adopted during those decades. I was surprised to find a Wikipedia article on the subject (although really, I should be more surprised when something isn’t on Wikipedia) and also on Korean adoptees (or KADs) themselves. Through the latter article, I learned that KADs are considered to be a unique cultural group and that they have organizations around the world. I quickly searched for organizations in NYC, and I found Also-Known-As (AKA).

I browsed AKA’s website for a while. I was surprised — if not shocked — to discover that there are so many people in NYC alone, just like me, and that they’ve organized themselves into an active group. I guess because I grew up knowing only two other KADs, all of who were always shunning their Asian-ness and self-identifying as white, I just assumed that all KADs must feel the same.

After some internal debate (Should I contact them? Should I even go there? Do I even want to start opening up this part of my life?) I ultimately decided to reach out. Why? Because I noticed that the book they were reading for their next book club meeting happened to be the same exact one that I just requested from the library — that seemed too serendipitous to ignore, so I’m going with it!