I was born in Busan, South Korea around noon on October 8, 1984, and immediately surrendered at birth. Even though I was adopted by a close and loving family in West Michigan and grew up within a supportive extended family and small community, it is still painful having my initial entry into the world be an unendurable sense of grief and loss: of a mother, a home, a country, and a culture, even of my original name, Jin Jung Mee.

Growing up without any genetic mirroring, I felt rootless, and it was difficult for me to feel tethered to the messiness in myself and in the world. To find grounding, I had to restore the connection to my heart, body, and natural environment that had been severed at birth. I’m still not sure if it’s the peculiar way trauma shapes a certain quest for understanding, meaning and self-questioning, my own personality, or my innate love of learning (it’s probably some combination of all of those things with a bit of mystery I’ll simply never know), but I wasn’t content to live my life feeling fragmented and disconnected to many aspects of myself. I also didn’t accept that change and transformation wasn’t possible without being reunited with my biological mother, as I had been told by one of the leading adoption psychologists in the field.