Changing

Being an adopted person sucks sometimes.

"Where others are born with certainty of their origins and their place in the world, adoptees have to construct our own origin stories and search out where we most feel at home." -- author, Alice Stephens 

Truer words were never spoken.

I like the safety of knowledge. It feels nice knowing a lot about the thing I'm doing. I like understanding the purpose of knowing why I'm doing things. I like knowing they serve a greater good.

But lately, the spark has become a dying ember. My energy's tapped out. I know I like creating, that hasn't evaporated. But what I want to create is changing.

More and more, my energy is being pulled to empower the girl I once was. She never saw faces that looked like hers, never heard stories about where she came from, and never felt the soil of her ancestors under her feet. She was hungry for the safety that comes from knowing.

The woman I am now wants to feed that girl.

Is it possible, even, to do this? And what exactly is this? Is it working for an adoptee nonprofit? Is it teaching English in Korea? Is it shifting to a career that would allow me the time to move in this direction, one in which I wouldn't feel expected to eat, breathe, and sleep my job?

The possibility of dramatically changing gears now, when my son is still so little, seems wrong. He needs stability. He needs the safety of knowledge.

The urge to search for what Stephens calls "home" isn't new. It lingered, small and feeble, for years. Since traveling to Korea, though, it has grown. I nourished it last summer with kimchi and the sound of my omma's voice.

2019 may be a year for changes.