I AM KOREAN AMERICAN

Own Words

I am a Korean adoptee. Sometimes a day can go by where I forget, but mostly, it’s a quiet, continuous presence in my life. As a labor and postpartum doula, I find myself surrounded by birth and the creation of new families all the time.

Right now I’m developing specialized services for birth parents and adoptive families, and I’m really excited to push the boundaries of the birth support community a bit. I am a passionate supported of the reproductive justice movement and as an adoptee, woman of color, feminist, and doula, want to encourage women and their families to feel like they can make empowered choices about how they grow their families.

I have yet to make my way back to Korea, but I know it will happen at some point. Although I have decided not to search for my birth mother, I do want to see the land where I was born. I harbor no romantic fantasies of how I’ll be welcomed “home,” but I do think it’s important for me to go. I used to have lots of existential angst over how “Korean” or not I am…for now, I’m comfortable telling people I’m Korean American…but that labels are just that–labels, and really, I am more complex than a box on a piece of paper.