This is my story. Take from it what you want, and please leave the rest. I am not preaching. I am sharing with you my authentic self, because this is all I have. This is all I have to share.
The following is a piece was written a few years ago. I was inspired by comments by +Scott Bae and +Chris McGregor and wanted to share this. I am sharing this on my "fitness blog" because ultimately I feel my struggle with food was directly related to the happiness in my life . . .
My name is Kristen, and I am a Citizen of the United States of America. I was born in Seoul, Korea. Today I am basically going to run naked with you, as I share the way that I have discovered an inner peace, that enables me to live, a truly happy, and satisfying life, everyday. Doesn't that sound unbelievable? So many of us struggle our entire life just to be happy. Many driven by the ego of a capitalist society, that molds us to aim higher, work harder, think bigger . . . and outside the box . . . be a team player, yet work independently with little direction. From the moment we are born we are told we can be anything we want to be when we grow up, as long as we are a good person and a hard worker.
Unfortunately, as I learned more, I discovered that I couldn't be “anything.” I have limits. I, for whatever reason, am in this body. That alone has its own limits. I will never be a professional football player, no matter how hard I try. Look at me . . .I am 5’2” (on my toes). The build of my body will challenge me in many ways, and exclude me from opportunities. Maybe if I’m smart enough I could be President of the United States. Well, even if I was smart enough, I can’t be, because I wasn't born in the United States. I could be a Priest . . . if I was a man. What is this thing I call my soul? I’m confused. I am going to take it way back right now. From when I was a little adorable Chinese kid.
When people meet me for the first time they ask me if I am Chinese. Which I am not. I am American! My ethnicity is Korean. However, asking me if I am Chinese, is far better than the people who ask me “what are you?” My response, in my head of course, is “human?” you *** idiot.
My response as a child was, “I am Korean and my parents adopted me.” This led to a series of other questions. People wanted to know why I was adopted. They were so inquisitive. I grew up in white suburbia. I wanted to fit in. Why are these people asking me what makes me different? It isn't novel to me. It isn't something that even makes me feel proud. I am an American. I was raised by Americans. That other country, gave me up. How awkward I felt whenever I stepped into an Asian restaurant and immediately the staff started to speak to me in whatever Asian language, and I had to reply to them with “Hi! I need a . . .” Then, they would realize I was not one of them. Then on the flip side, I would sometimes be approached by very slow speaking Americans who were astonished to hear that I did not have an accent. I felt ashamed of who I was. I did not fit in anywhere.
Over time, I learned to adapt. When someone interacted with me, I could sense if they were going to go to that place and ask me about my history. My quick “pitch” to satisfy their curiosity goes like this:
My parents are Irish and a little German.
They adopted me when I was a baby from Korea.
I have an older brother, also adopted from Korea.
We are not biological.
Some people will move on after that curt bio of myself. While others just don’t know when to leave well enough alone and will engage me in the second set of questions. That result in the following answers:
I have not been back to Korea.
I do not speak Korean.
I do not know any actual Koreans.
I do not know if I will ever go back to Korea.
I am not curious about my biological family.
I don’t know what my brother’s desires are about that either.
My adoptive parents are my parents and that’s about it.
I always finish with a big teethy smile, and hope they get the hint.
Luckily, I have never had anyone pursue the subject any deeper. Well, only my close friends after knowing me for some time. The thing is that I still never looked inside that piece of me . . . until recently when my entire life imploded. I take full responsibility for my inability to accept the parts of me that made me different which resulted in my “quarter life crisis.”
Growing up I was always told that I was special. I was chosen. My parents chose me, so I was special. This wasn't just the mantra from my parents, this came from my neighbors, my teachers, and my friends. Why not give me a name tag that said “special”? I guess they didn't need to because my slanted eyes and flattened face told everyone I was.
Everyone in my hometown seemed to have been given the same manual on how to boost an adopted child's self-esteem. When I was in elementary school, “special” meant that you were riding on the short bus. However, I was integrated with the other kids. I was the only “special” kid on the bus. It was a great ride 90% of the time. Until some of the more boisterous kids decided to showcase my "specialness" for the ride. Yay lucky me!
Children are cruel. This is worth repeating, with a little more emphasis . . .children are ***** cruel. Children are raw emotions running around without leashes. It is a dog eat dog world, and the object of the game is not to be “it”. The best defense if a good offense, and my offense sucked. My offense was follow the golden rule, and treat others how you want to be treated. I never knew when it was going to be my day, but more times than not, it seemed like most days were my day . . . because I was special.
The bullies had a great offense. Throw the attention off of yourself and on to others. It was very acceptable to point out the different shape of my eyes, or maybe my weight (I was a big kid). Other kids would look the other way, feeling it is best not to get involved. They had their own weak spots that could easily be pointed out. Who knew if the bullies would target them next. I didn't begrudge anyone for not stepping in. I understood. I was willing to be made fun of because I could handle it. I knew how to take the words and let them bounce off me . . . or so I thought. I ignored it. I didn't let it get to me (too often). Bullies always need to push to get the reaction. Sometimes when I would react, (I had a quick tongue), my adversary always had a secret weapon. They could mention that at least they weren't given up for adoption.
Adopted child target was the ultimate offensive move. That comment hurt, and was so cutting, that I never needed to respond. The bystanders, would know how low that comment was, and would always rush in to defend me. I didn't need to defend it. I could ignore it. The fact that others thought that the comment was so offensive that they were motivated to take action, made me realize that my adoption was more shameful than any other degrading comment someone could make. I didn't know this cognitively. This is something I’m recognizing now, 30 years later.
I am very grateful for my life in America. I had many challenges growing up. There is no perfect family. However, as a child, I did everything I could to portray a perfect family. This was the sign of the times. Beaver Clever, Brady Bunch, Family Tides, and even The Cosby Show tried to portray the ultimate family model, and everyone was striving for that type of sitcom life. I did everything I could to portray myself as a perfect white child.
I did have friends, great white, suburban friends. I never felt like they knew me. I envied so much of what they had. Some things I only now can actually say out loud. The desires I had I thought would hurt my parents feelings if I admitted or discussed with them. Sometimes when my insecurities bubbled up, and I actually tried to address them, it was a one time conversation that I never wanted to return to again. I didn't want to live the pain I was feeling. Mind over matter was my mantra. When the feelings became too much I went into a total lock down mode.
In school, where I developed most of my identity, which I also call my ego, I was lost. I didn't know who I was supposed to be. Society tells me that Asian kids are really smart, and play the violin (maybe the piano too). My parents gave me both violin and piano lessons. I didn't do well in either one. Asian kids are supposed to be really good at math. I was great at failing it. My dad was so frustrated. He didn't understand what was going on inside me. He said over and over, “the school told us you have such a high IQ, you must be doing this on purpose.” Looking back, I think I was. I was a master at sabotage. I just wanted to fit in.
Today I still carry some of the luggage from my childhood. I stare in the mirror and wonder why I don’t look anything like Barbie. Took forever for Disney to have an Asian princess. Her story is nothing like mine anyway. (She looks kind of white in her design anyway . . .)
I wanted to be loved and admired, and well liked, by both girls and boys, men and women. I wanted and needed to be everyone’s friend. I yearned for acceptance. I was so happy at school (when not being tortured). No one ever knew inside I was so **** up. I was struggling. I didn't know what to do. Until I started to develop. I started to get attention from boys. They liked me. Even though my parents warned me about boys only looking for sex, it didn't matter to me. I was getting attention and I felt wanted and needed. It didn't matter what was driving it. The feeling of being wanted was intoxicating.
I started smoking in middle school. I wanted to be accepted, and the dirt bags were the most accepting people I have ever known. When you showed up you only had to have a cigarette in hand, a knowledge of the same music, and the right inexpensive clothes. It was an easy path. We were all looking for the same things. Somehow that wasn't enough for me. I morphed myself into whoever I needed to be at anytime depending on who I was with. I was lost. I didn't know it. I was told all teenagers were lost.
Then I was a young adult, and still had no idea who I was. However, I knew how to be who I needed to be to be accepted. I wore so many masks. I was tired. I failed out of college every semester I was there. Somehow I always managed to get readmitted. I knew how to play the system for what I wanted. I wanted acceptance. I was still craving attention. I never let anyone too close to me. I never revealed who I was inside, because I didn't know who I was. I didn't know who the *** I was.
Post college, I thought happiness would be mine if I followed the plan that society dictated. Find a good stable man to marry. A honest man, who would treat me like a princess. I did find that man. He is the most genuine and good man I know. He was my husband for 10 years. We struggled to get by. Bought a house, and had a beautiful daughter together. We volunteered for our community, and worked hard. Somehow though, I was living the dream and still dying inside. What was wrong with me. Why isn't this working out the way it was supposed to. He loved me exactly as I was. He was never concerned about where I came from, just that I was there with him - beside him.
I was dying inside. A man I was friends with in high school found me on Facebook. He filled me emotionally and made me feel special again. He couldn't get enough of me. I was wanted all the time. I left my marriage for him. I nearly killed myself as I broke from everything that I had built. Grasping on an idea of happiness with this man. Which by the way, this man never wanted me to leave my marriage. I was his escape from his marriage. He wanted me to live out my life with my husband and enjoy our romance on the side. In my gut I couldn't do it. I couldn't live this unfaithful life. That was far worse than the misery I was already feeling in myself.
I left my husband and my daughter. My husband, my poor husband, watching me rip apart at the seams, loved me enough to let me go. He could see that I was deciding if I wanted to live or die. I’ll never forget the one fight where he threatened to tell my affair’s wife what was going on. I couldn't deal with the thought of destroying someone else's family like I was doing to my own. I told my husband if he told I would stab myself with a chef knife right then and there. He told me he was calling 911, because I was out of control. I dried my eyes and looked up at him and said, “I never said that, I have no idea what you are talking about.” Then he knew I was too smart, and beyond anything he could do to help me. He only wanted me healthy, and protect his daughter.
Soon after I moved out, my affair disintegrated too. He was not able to fill the void in me either. I didn't know what was wrong. I was so lost. I was at the lowest place I had ever been. I struggled with so many things, throwing blame anywhere I could. I am not going to share with you all the places I had to assign blame, but there were many.
On my own, single, I reverted back to what I knew could give me my fix of attachment and desire - Men. Men wanted to date me. They will give me all the attention I desire. Yet, the feelings were not there. The people I was attracting were just as lost and fucked up as me. No one was saving me. After agonizing, and torturing all my friends with my obsessive, unhealthy confusion . . . I finally bottomed out. My father died. I discovered the man I was seeing was seeing someone else, and I was alone.
Alone . . . is horrible when you have no idea who you are. A friend asked me, if you had all the money in the world what would you do? I had no idea. I've been focusing on this question, and all I wanted to be was happy.
The pursuit of happiness. What is happiness? To me happiness is waking up each day and being happy with who I am, and being able to flow with life. Happiness is not trying to grab at something to stabilize me. Happiness is letting go of expectations. Happiness is stopping from being the back seat driver in my life. Happiness is taking my story and sharing it with anyone who will listen. Happiness is supporting those around me as they discover their own happiness. Sounds pretty simple. Took me 35 years to get to this point.
My biggest secret is that I am ashamed of being adopted. It may be totally irrational, but I am. There is no way to deny the fact that my biological mother and biological father did not keep me. I was abandoned at a time when I did nothing except live. People have hypothesized why I was given up and why this was the best for me. I have been told that:
Maybe your mother was raped (which means my father was a rapist)
Maybe my family didn’t have enough money to raise me
Maybe my mother was not married and I was illegitimate
Maybe I was the product of an affair
Maybe my mother died during child birth
Maybe my father doesn’t even know I exist
They loved me enough to give me up
None of these reasons ever gave me peace. I am ashamed of any of these reasons.
Then I think about the family who adopted me. I see how hard it is for couples trying to get pregnant. I see how they go through such a shameful process. First they are told as a couple that maybe they are trying at the wrong time, or maybe it is the husband, maybe it is the wife, maybe they need hormones, maybe they need invitro. Then finally they come to the point when they decide to adopt, and they pay through the nose for this. They receive their baby, and everyone rejoices, and the reasons why they couldn't have a child are all of the sudden made okay, because they have this baby that they provided a family for. It becomes a humanitarian act.
When I had my daughter I went through so many emotions. Having the baby I couldn't understand how on earth my mother gave me away. I look in my daughters eyes and I see myself. She is my only blood relative. We go places and people say immediately how much we look a like. People tell her she looks just like her mommy and she eats it up. She relishes in the fact that we look like each other. We are bonded in such a unique way. No matter how much love and experience I share with my mother, I will never share her DNA. I will always be high risk for everything, because my past is unknown.
I struggle everyday with this. I must accept that part of my identity is not having a family history.
Accepting that I was abandoned as a baby is very hard for me. I was given up. I was left. I was not loved the way that other babies were. I was sent to a country where no one looks like me. I am in a unique family, where everyone knows I am different.
Then through this year, a turning point for me was when I started to reveal my fears. When I started to share my darkest secrets with my few trusted friends. I learned that they love me. My friends love me as I am. Even seeing all my scars. Those things I am most shameful about, secrets I haven’t shared with you today. Those secrets that I couldn't forgive myself for, my friends accepted me. Their acceptance helped show me that I needed to forgive and accept myself, be the best friend to myself.
These fears inside me were tearing me down. No matter how tightly I locked these pieces away in me, they were getting too strong for me to ignore. I couldn't numb them. I couldn't split them from myself. I had to integrate them into me. I began to notice, that life was giving me the same lessons over and over again. The repeated pattern of abandonment was happening to me. I was constantly finding situations where people abandoned me. If they didn't abandon me, I was abandoning them. I was living out the struggle that I locked away inside me.
The ah ha moment for me was when I realized, via a web course, that I had abandoned myself. I left myself a long time ago. When I was a child I turned my back on my authentic self. I yearned to fit in and denied my soul of who I was.
I am an international adoptee. I was born in Korea. I was given up by my mother and my father. I don’t know and never will know why this happened to me. It could have been for love, or it could have been for hate. I have to feel the tears and the pain. I cannot ignore it anymore. I had to sit in a corner and cry it out, for months, to get to the point that I can tell you this today.
To tell you that I was abandoned hurts me each time I say it. I feel scared telling you. I feel tears as I say it. My heart breaks each time. I accept the feelings. I want to feel them. I don’t want to live a numb life. I don’t want to shove away the pain anymore. My body cannot handle it. When I hide all this pain inside me, I have nothing in me besides pain, covered by the mask I show everyone else.
I am also ashamed of the lack of soulful connections I have made in my life. I am ashamed that I have interacted with so many people in an utterly shallow way. I am ashamed that I couldn't share the wonderful gift of me with them. I forgive myself because I didn't know who I was. Maybe at some points I was able to be of some assistance to some people, but I was never truly giving them my all. I was never all there.
I am ashamed that I was a voice of the ego of society for so many years. I was preaching a life motivated by fear. I learned how to protect myself from the unknown and I encouraged others to do the same. I was wrong. I was wrong to ever feel that my opinion on your life was ever valid. I can only tell you my opinion on my life and on my life experience. I can share with you my story, but there are times in my past when I shook those around me to make them take the path that would “hurt them the least.”
My body for so many year was unhealthy and fat. I ate in excess and did not exercise at all. I was living a numb life. I numbed myself with food. My favorite activity was going out to dinner. I was treating myself. I was loving food. You know the wonderful thing about food for someone with abandonment issues? Food sticks with you. I think I am still carrying pieces of my wedding cake on my ass after all these years.
As I work on checking my ego and turning it into something that I am proud of, I also exercise my body at the same time. My body and my ego are one. The power of the mind is inexplicable. Science can only explain what a small percentage of the human brain does. As I exercise my body I have been learning a few things. There are many ways to approach the change of my body. I can go slow and steady, with minimal changes in my diet and activity, and see minimal changes in my body, or I can make drastic changes to my diet and activity, and see drastic changes in my body. The ego works the same way. We can change small thoughts each day, and see small changes, or we can try to embrace more drastic thoughts, and see drastic changes. Just like the body, drastic changes hurt. We feel pain from this change. Going into the unknown hurts. We want to go back to what is comfortable. We don’t know if the end results justify the pain we are going through as we change.
I do believe we are all butterflies. We start as a tiny sperm and a tiny egg and within 9 months we turn into a child. We first are born in the womb of our mother, and discover a world that is only in her tummy. Then we are born into this outer world. So much more complex to where we were before. Think of life in the womb. Think of the sounds we may have heard coming through the walls of our mother, and listening to our mothers heart, and voice, and never knowing that we were going to be pushed out, rather violently, into another world.
In this new world we continue to grow. We come in with a Ego, Body and Soul. We continually are shaped and pushed and pulled, and we feed ourselves and grow ourselves. My Ego, Body and Soul are my responsibility. When I make decisions, there is only one voice I need to hear, and it’s my own.
Crazy right? Everyone says that you have to take into account everyone else around you. Those people relying on you. The truth for me is that I only need to rely on me. I enjoy the company of others, and feel that I benefit from sharing experiences with others, however, it is all about perspective.
If we were all the same we would be ants. There are so many clues around us everyday that help point us in the direction to listen to our own voice. I have no idea why the voices I always nurtured in my mind were the negative ones. Why I filled myself with doubt and reason upon reason that I could not, or would not be the highest potential I could be.
I want to live, in my means. I want to earn money to support a comfortable life for myself. I want to live life. I want to meet new people. I want to continue to learn from the people I know. I want to love with the ability to let people come and go in my life.
Meaning in my life. I was abandoned as a baby. My mother and my father let me go, for whatever reason. I have to stop clinging to the past, and denying the past, and I have to turn it inside out, and see the other side. I see it now. The biggest lesson for my life is letting go, and discovering my potential each day. One foot in front of the other.
This makes me happy, this brings me peace. Supporting and helping someone else realize their darkest secrets and letting it flip inside out into something that is something amazing is my path. It makes me immensely happy to be able to share this with you today.
Recognize who you are, accept those parts of you that you try to hide. Stop pulling and grabbing and keeping your hands clenched on the things you have known. Instead open your hands to the unknown, and once you get pushed out from the shelter of your Ego, you will be born into the world of the Soul, and you will transform again into a new person.
