What’s real?

I have two birthdays.

One birthday is the day/ anniversary of the day on which I was born.

The other birthday is the one which appears on my birth certificate but has nothing to do with my birth. Originally it was an ordinary day which had abosolutely nothing to do with me, but an adoption agency’s workers attributed it to me as my birthday as they invented a family background story in order  to make me more adoptable/sellable and to prevent my family from finding me.

A birthday is a birthday.  One can be born only once in his/her lifetime. There should be no need of adding a modifier with a birthday.  But the land of adoption is a land apart where the language is tweaked and moral values are twisted [link], so I have to use a modifier to distinguish between the two birthdays. The day/anniversary of the day on which I was born is my real birthday. The day which appears on my birth certificate is my legal birthday.

Still the legal birthday feels more real and more natural to me as I’ve been using it since almost fourty years, every time I’m required to give my birthday to identify myself for legal matters or every time I’m asked casually when is my birthday or when I’m asked to prove my identity.

I also had two sets of parents (they are all deceased).

One set of parents whom I was born to.

Another set of parents whose names appear on my birth certificate. Originally they were complete strangers who had nothing to do with me, but an adoption agency matched me to them randomly and sold me to them.

A mother is a mother. A father is a father. There should be no need of adding a modifier to a mother or  a father, especially to a mother who gave/gives birth to; if there is any need, the modifier should be added to the others (step-mother, mother in law, adoptive mother). But  the land of adoption is a land apart where the language is tweaked and moral values are twisted, so I’m going to use the words “real” and “legal”.

Using the word “real” the same way as in my “real birthday”, my real parents are those whom I was born to. I’m using it in an authentic way, not in an emotional way. The other set of parents are my legal parents.

If I had to use the term “real” emotively according to my feelings instead of using it authentically, I would say that the legal birthday which has nothing to do with my birth and yet appears on my birth certificate and legal papers is my real birthday, because I’ve been raised/trained to use it as if I as if it was my birthday, and I would still be saying things all adoptees are raised/trained to say that “my real parents are those who raised me” or that “both my parents are real”.

For years I’ve used the terminology invented by  the adoption industry which separated me from my family, “birth mother/birth father” or “biological mother/biological father”,  but I don’t  anymore.

It would be ludicrous to say “birth birthday” or “biological birthday”, I found the terms “birth parents” and “biologial parents” ludicrous  as well and inauthentic.

A mother is a mother and a father is a father regardless,  except in the adoptionland where words are twisted, the meaning of the words are changed and moral values are tweaked and twisted.

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A happiness built on the misfortune of others

When I hear the words “pregnant” and “joy” along with the word “adoption” like on the image above, I’m reminded of my adoptive mother speaking of my adoption. She’d say that she had felt the pain of childbirth when she saw me entering the waiting room for the adoptive parents at the airport, that  other parents started crying and laughing at the same time when they got their babies in their arms just like any parent would after giving birth, that she had heard of many women experiencing the childbirth pain when seeing their adopted children the first time, and that adopting a child is no different from giving birth.

When I hear the word “joy” along with the word “adoption” like in the image below, I’m reminded of my adoptive mother speaking of her joy of becoming a mother.

While my adoptive parents were living the joy of adoption, my natural family in Korea was living the sorrow of adoption. While my adoptive parents were praised for adopting/saving an orphan, my natural father in Korea was trying to drown his sorrow  in alcohol for losing his youngest child.  The people who praised my adoptive parents for their generosity  heard of the joy of adoption but they never heard of the sorrow of adoption. They ignored the sorrow of adoption because I never spoke of the sorrow of losing my language, my country and my entire family. They ignored the sorrow of losing a child or a sibling because my natural family spoke a different language and lived in the other side of the world.

There was no internet then…

Even in this era of internet, friends and acquaintances of adoptive families know (or only want to know) the joy of adoption,

but they ignore the sorrow of adoption…

When I hear of the word “happiness” along with the word “adoption” like in the images below, I’m reminded of my life in Korea with everything that life consists of, joy and sadness.

When I hear the word “happiness”, “money” and “adoption” together like in the image below, I’m reminded  of the happiness I’ve known in the poverty with my natural family and all the misfortunes we went through together, and I think if  only a fraction of the money my adopters spent to adopt me/buy their happiness had been given to my father instead, I could have lived where I belonged to without knowing the sorrow of adoption.

A French proverb says that “the misfortune of ones makes the happiness of others” (in French, “le malheur des uns fait le bonheur des autres”).

Other equivalent versions are:

“one man’s loss is another man’s gain”;
“one man’s death is another man’s bread”;
“one man’s sorrow is another man’s joy”.

It means that an event that is unfortunate for one is beneficial to another; what’s disavantage to one is advantage to another.

Adoption illustrates well the proverb. And how!

Losing a child to child traffickers is an event that is unfortunate for its parents and benefial for its adoptive parents. Being abandoned is unfortunate for the abandoned child and beneficial for adoption agency processing its adoption and  the adoptive parents.

Here are some of events that are unfortunate for the child and/or for its natural family and beneficial  to its adopters, events that can lead to the ultimate event of adoption.

– poverty;
– war;
– natural or accident catastrophes;
– famine;
– death of a family member;
– disease of a family member;
-lost of a child (child trafficking, child kidnapping, orphanage kidnapping*, etc.)
-domestic violence;
-alcoholism;
– rape;
-abandonment;
etc.

*what I call orphanage kidnapping is when a lost child is kept in an orphanage instead of returning the child to its family or when a child who was temporarily placed by its family member is kept in the orphanage.

For example, my father experienced the following woes before losing me, his youngest and favorite child: work accident that left his arm paralyzed followed by lost of job, the death of his mother immediately followed by the death of his wife, being swindled by two women and a relative, and poverty.

The unfortunate events of poverty, death, war, catastrophe, … alone don’t necessarily lead to the event of abandonment or adoption. For these events to end with adoption, it also takes the  money-driven market of children that incites the abandonment of children, trafficking of children, corruption, etc., the demand for children and the government policy such as one-child policy in China.

My father wouldn’t have experienced the final ultimate bad luck of losing his child if it weren’t of foreign money brought by orphanages, the presence of adoption agencies and the infrastructure of international adoption that was set up after the war, dictatorship collaborating with adoption agencies for the mass exportation of  children and the demand of my adopters and other adopters and their government allowing adoption of foreign children.

Adoption illustrates well the proverb both literally and metaphorically.

A missing child family’s loss is an adoption agency’s gain…

A lost child’s family’s sorrow is an adoptive family’s joy:

One man’s death [link] is an adoption agency’s bread

Total amount of money earned by Holt in 1975 only from selling girl K-6714: $1,300 .

More cynically the proverb means that one takes advantage of or benefit from unfortunate situation  of another.

Like vultures are attracted by prey in danger, adoption agencies and wannabe parents are quick to inquire about orphans when a disaster hits a country. For example, in the aftermath of  earthquake in China in 2008, China was swamped  with adoption offers [link]. So was Haiti [link] after the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Even Japan  in 2011, yet Japan is not a sending country  [link].

Adoptive family’s happiness is a happiness built on the misfortunes of others. The sorrow of families who have lost their children is the joy of adoptive families who adopted their children/bought their happiness.

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