“You can spend years searching for the road home
before realizing that home was never going to be one destination.”
The following reflection is my own. It does not represent the opinions or experiences of other adoptees. As with all of my reflections, I want the Haneul audience to experience my own thoughts and perspectives as I continue my adoption journey. These are simply my thoughts and feelings this week.
My eomma has pointed something out to me more than once.
My Founder’s Reflections don’t always follow a consistent storyline.
She’s right.
I originally imagined these reflections would unfold almost like chapters in a book. One experience would naturally lead into the next. There would be a beginning, a middle, and eventually something resembling an ending.
But the more I have tried to write them that way, the more I have realized something:
“That isn’t my story.”
My journey has never been a straight line.
And maybe that’s exactly the story I am supposed to be telling.
I was adopted from Korea when I was five years old. One of the earliest defining events of my life was something over which I had absolutely no control. Decisions were made around me and for me that would change the course of my entire life.
I didn’t choose to leave Korea.
I didn’t choose America.
I didn’t choose which family I would grow up with, which language I would speak, which culture would become familiar to me, or which parts of myself would become distant.
So perhaps it isn’t surprising that, as an adult, I sometimes find myself trying to control the things that can be controlled.
I want answers.
I want plans.
I want to know where something is going.
I want the pieces to fit together.
Even these reflections became something I wanted to organize—to make the story cleaner and easier to follow.
But adoption isn’t clean.
Identity isn’t clean.
Reunion isn’t clean.
And coming home certainly hasn’t been clean.
There have been moments of incredible joy alongside moments of grief. There have been answers that created more questions. There have been relationships restored, pieces of my identity rediscovered, and parts of myself that I am still trying to understand.
Sometimes I move forward.
Sometimes I circle back.
Sometimes something I thought I understood years ago suddenly means something completely different.
That’s why I struggle when someone who hasn’t lived this experience tells me they completely understand what being adopted feels like.
They may understand pieces of it.
They may love an adoptee.
They may have raised an adoptee.
They may have studied adoption or worked alongside adoptees.
And their perspectives can absolutely matter.
But there is something about living inside this experience that is difficult to explain.
I’ve felt that even more strongly while meeting other Korean adoptees.
I’ve now connected with adoptees from America, France, Sweden, and other parts of the world. We grew up speaking different languages. We were raised in different cultures and different kinds of families. Our experiences with adoption are not identical.
Some have reunited with their Korean families.
Some are searching.
Some may never search.
Some feel deeply connected to Korea.
Others are still figuring out what Korea means to them.
And yet, when we sit together and talk, there are moments when very little explanation is necessary.
Different countries.
Different families.
Different lives.
But somehow, there is recognition.
One thing in particular continues to fascinate me: the pull back to Korea.
I have heard versions of it from adoptees whose lives unfolded thousands of miles apart.
Why do so many of us eventually look back toward the place where everything began?
For me, it sometimes feels like an internal compass.
When I am in America, part of that compass points toward Korea.
It doesn’t mean I don’t love my life in America. It doesn’t erase the family that raised me, the family I have built, or the life I have lived there.
But Korea exists inside me in a way I spent much of my life not fully understanding.
And now, when I am here, another strange thing happens.
I think about America.
I think about my family there.
I think about the life waiting for me on the other side of the world.
The compass moves again.
Maybe that’s part of being a Korean adoptee.
Maybe home isn’t a single point on a map anymore.
Maybe some of us spend our lives navigating between places, families, cultures, languages, memories, and versions of ourselves.
For a long time, I think I wanted that navigation to eventually end.
I wanted to arrive somewhere.
To finally understand who I was.
To finally know where I belonged.
But I’m beginning to wonder whether belonging isn’t a destination at all.
Maybe it is learning how to carry all of these places with me.
Korea.
America.
My Korean family.
My American family.
The five-year-old boy who left Korea.
The adult who keeps returning.
None of them cancel the others out.
They are all part of me.
And that realization is changing the way I think about Haneul, too.
Haneul doesn’t need to tell one kind of adoptee story.
It shouldn’t.
Some of us are reunited.
Some are searching.
Some don’t want to search.
Some feel Korean.
Some don’t.
Some come back to Korea and immediately feel something familiar.
Others come back and feel like foreigners in the country where they were born.
Every journey is different.
Every story matters.
Maybe Haneul’s purpose isn’t to provide a map telling adoptees where they are supposed to go.
Maybe it is simply to create a place where we can meet one another along the way.
A place where we don’t always have to explain everything.
A place where our stories are allowed to wander.
A place where there doesn’t have to be a straight line.
Because after everything I have experienced, I am starting to believe something I couldn’t have understood when I began this journey:
“You can spend years searching for the road home before realizing that home was never going to be one destination.”
Sometimes home is a direction.
Sometimes it is a person.
Sometimes it is a memory.
Sometimes it is a country on the other side of the world that continues to pull at something inside you.
And sometimes, home is simply finding other people who understand why you are still searching.
Rooted in Korea. Connected in New England. United in Haneul.