I was abandoned in the latter half of 1977 in Jeonju, South Korea. No name, no parting gifts or pictures. Just a 7-month-old baby boy left at a police station.
Who knows why I was left? Maybe my first mother was a single mother who didn’t have the support to fight the stigma and hardships that accompanied the label “single mom.” Maybe I was the last of multiple children in a family that simply couldn’t afford to feed one more. Or maybe sudden illness or death struck my family and the only option was to let me go.
It’s all speculation and I’ll probably never know what actually happened, but here’s what I know for sure. The police took me to the local orphanage where I’d do what infants do — cry, eat, soil diapers, and sleep — for a few months before I was sent to live with a foster family in Seoul.
Then, in May of 1978, my number was called and I was on the next flight to the U.S. to be adopted into a small farming community in Iowa. Mom and Dad raised me with all the benefits of middle class life. I had a loving family, graduated from college, got married, had a child, bought a house, earned a graduate degree, and enjoyed steady employment.
Not too shabby.
Often times when people hear my story, their first inclination is to express how lucky I am to be adopted, because without adoption, none of this would have happened.
I have two problems with this.
First, while technically true, it’s unfair to attribute my state in life to adoption. It would be like responding to any modestly successful person’s story with “you sure were lucky to have been born.”
Second, being labeled “lucky” minimizes my unique Adoptee struggles and joys while simultaneously obscuring the equally valid bad luck in adoption that’s shaped the person I am.
To be fair, I’ve had great luck throughout most of my life and everything I am today — good and bad — is the result of my abandonment and subsequent adoption. But lurking in the statement “You’re so lucky to be adopted” is an implication that adoption is an unequivocally positive one-time event that’s brought me nothing but good fortune.
It’s not that simple.
Sure, adoption has given me a lot, but it’s been challenging, as well. For example, let’s take a snapshot of my life from my time in Korea to when I landed in Iowa. At first glance, this image represents a joyous occasion and the chance for new life. I was lucky that my first family had the capability to leave me at a police station where they assumed I’d be cared for. I was lucky there was any sort of social services system to provide me permanency. I was lucky I ended up with a great family who supported me as best they could. But if you look closer at the snapshot, you begin to see flaws and areas that are out of focus, perhaps touched up to hide imperfections and blemishes. I was unlucky to experience the loss and trauma of abandonment that no one should have to endure, much less an infant. I was unlucky to have immigrated thousands of miles away from my homeland to a place where no one looked like me. I was unlucky that my first family tried so hard to raise me for seven months, only to realize it could never work as I was left alone outside a police station.
These simple examples from a small piece of my ever-evolving adoption story demonstrate the blurriness that people overlook when they call me lucky.
The reduction of the Adoptee’s life as a stroke of luck leaves little room for exploration and discovery of the complexities of our existence, both within ourselves and with the people we love.
Unfortunately, it’s this reduction that many adoption conversations start with, and as luck would have it, often shuts down potentially powerful and connecting conversations around who we are and the struggles that created us.
Was I lucky to be adopted?
I guess it depends on how you look at it.
Either way, it’s important to think critically about using “luck” to describe or respond to anyone who has an adoption story to tell.
Steve Kalb | Director of Post Adoption Services
Thank you very much for an excellent article. As the parent of an adopted child from China, I have often heard people say to my daughter how lucky she is to have been adopted and brought to the US. I realize most people are just trying to be polite and find something to say, but the cultural assumptions behind that comment are immense. I have always replied that we are the lucky ones, but reading your article has made me think deeper about this issue. I am not sure how I will change my response to the next person who says this to my daughter, but as she grows up, I will be able to have more meaningful discussions with her because of your openness.
Thank you so much for this affirming story. More pearls of wisdom from Steve. Thank you. So often since we have brought our daughter home from Ethiopia people have said to me “she is so lucky” “she is so blessed”. I have always been uncomfortable with how to answer because it doesn’t feel lucky. I!! feel blessed and lucky to have been giving the opportunity to be her mom!! As you so sagely point out, it is a traumatic way for her to begin her life.
She is only 7y/o now. The trials of identity and grieving her birth mom are really still ahead of us I am sure.
Thank you again for another way to validate her, and my, feelings about the lifelong process adoption is!
Thank you for writing this. My son lived through trauma before coming to our family in the US when he was 4. When people say he is lucky I adopted him, I think of how unlucky he was to be born into a situation where life had more dangers for him and his family. Yet, how lucky to come from a place where there is so much love and goodness. What you said makes so much sense to me and I would like to share it on FB. Adoption is complex, and I have found it to bring up very deep, mixed emotions, positive and negative, awesome, fulfilling and uncomfortable, painful even. Talking about inequity and why some countries have more wealth and privilege and how to make things better, more balanced fairness and use of earth’s resources will keep humans moving forward. Some day in the near future, perhaps adoption will be less needed as an option. Thank you again for your words. Blessings to you and your loved ones.
This is such a great, balanced view. Thank you for articulating it. I’ve known since before our first adoption that “lucky” was offensive. But this article will help me articulate to friends and family why. My kids who were adopted aren’t any “luckier” than my kids who were born to me, and that their losses have been (and still are) substantial. Calling them “lucky” necessarily minimizes the importance of the losses in their lives. Thanks for assisting my process, and blessing so many others with your thoughts.
Steve,
Thanks for the article. I think the word “lucky” gets overused. 🙁 As parents of two children from China, my husband and I just turn it around and say that we are the lucky ones and leave it at that.
Thank you for all your work with the adoption community and specifically at Holt. My daughter absolutely loves the summer camp even though she can’t articulate why. 🙂
I am glad you are here, making a difference.
Best Regards,
MaryBeth