Marijane Huang - Beyond Two Worlds: A Taiwanese-American AdopteeS Memoir & Search for Identity

Beyond
Two Worlds

A Taiwanese-American Adoptees Memoir
& Search for Identity

Marijane Huang

AuthorHouse

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2017 Marijane Huang. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 03/29/2017

ISBN: 978-1-5246-8410-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-8408-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-8409-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017904198

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To my parents, Wendell and Gloria and to Ma and Pa whose everlasting wish for our family to be reunited one day came true.

There is no greater burden than carrying an untold story inside you.

~ Maya Angelou (1928- 2014)

Contents

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank some very special people who have supported me during the production of this book. First, Carole Ann Kaplan. My dear friend, Carole, was a writing teacher where I attended high school in Louisiana and very popular with the students. I did not take any of her classes, which is most bizarre, because it certainly feels as though I had. Carole managed a writing group on Facebook that I joined in 2010. She encouraged me to create my blog, Beyond Two Worlds , and became my biggest fan. Not only has Carole encouraged me to write all these years, but has been with me since the beginning of the search and reunion for my birth family. She graciously read each chapter of this book at every stage from start to finish, offering kind words when I most needed them and insightful feedback. Carole has been the wind beneath my wings, a mentor and confidante and supporter and believer of my work. Carole, I am inspired by your bold and beautiful spirit.

An enormous thanks to my editor, Allyson Sharp, who had the vision for what this book could become. Thank you for challenging me to dig deeper, for your invaluable feedback and insight, and most of all encouragement and support. You are the reason my story will see the light of day.

To Shuchen Chuang, thank you for your timely assistance with translation where needed and for your kind support. I have always appreciated your sunny disposition.

Thanks to Laura McKnight, a dear friend and fellow social worker, who provided a listening ear on countless occasions and lent interminable support while I wrote the pages of this story. Thank you for your interest and reading the early chapters. Thanks, Mr. Jerel Cain, for inspiring me to step out and write about what I am most passionate about. Your encouragement helped spark the creative process. Thanks to Nicole Hogan for your enthusiasm to continue writing this story after reading a very rough couple of first chapters and then connecting me to Allyson, our mutual editor. Thanks to all who have followed, and who continue to follow my blog, Beyond Two Worlds ( https://beyondtwoworlds.com/ ) - adoptees, adoptive parents, and friends. Without you, I would never have dared to write this book.

A loving thanks to my husband, Pat, who patiently endured hours of my sitting in front of a computer to finish this story. And to my daughter, Lexie, you are the light of my life. I hope this story inspires you as you have inspired me.

Finally, thanks to Christina and Amy, my dear sisters, who embraced me as their little sister, mi mei, , after nearly forty years of separation and have never let go. You inspire me and are role-models of everything lovely and noble.

Authors Note

People often say this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something that one finds. It is something that one creates. ~ Thomas Szasz

It brings me unbelievable joy and gratitude to share this unique journey with you. In sharing my story, I hope to provide support and encouragement to others seeking a connection with their birth family. For years, I have thought about writing this memoir encouraged by friends, but had difficulty wrapping my mind around how to tell such a labyrinthine story. After much thought, prayer, and most especially, other adoptees, I was drawn to put all the pieces together as though the force of gravity itself were pulling me toward my past. One inspired morning, I sat down at my computer to tell the story of how one forty-two year-old adoptee began searching across the world for her birth family.

To search for ones birth family on the other side of the ocean is a quest that is quite daunting. There is, of course, the investigative piece, navigating through language barriers and government agencies, searching for documents and the right people who are willing and able to help. According to the U.S. Department of State, there were 261,728 international or inter-country adoptions worldwide from 1999 to 2015 (U.S. Department of State, 2016). International adoptions to the U.S. peaked in 2004 at 22,989; however, there has been a sharp decline in such adoptions due primarily to stricter international adoption laws enacted to banish child trafficking and unethical international adoption practices. (U.S. Department of State, 2016). In fiscal year 2015, there were 5,648 international adoptions to the U.S. (U.S. Department of State, 2016). International adoption continues to decline as countries attempt to place orphaned children domestically first before considering adoptive families from other countries.

The process of searching for ones birth family is often amplified by the emotional and psychological consequences that affect many adoptees as a result of multiple losses, the most significant being the loss of the adoptees birth mother, but also that of a culture, language, and original family. Nancy Newton Verrier aptly defines this loss as the primal wound. In her book of the same name , Verrier speaks of the bonding in utero of mother and child. She cites the research of pediatrician, T.B. Brazelton, whose pioneering research on child development and clinical practice led to the establishment of the Brazelton Institute of Boston Childrens Hospital. Verrier (1993) explains,

Many doctors and psychologists now understand that bonding doesnt begin at birth, but is a continuum of physiological, psychological, and spiritual events, which begin in utero and continue throughout the postnatal bonding period. When this natural evolution is interrupted by a postnatal separation from the biological mother, the resultant experience of abandonment and loss is indelibly imprinted upon the unconscious minds of these children, causing that which I call the primal wound (p.1).

Verrier (1993) likens an adoptees relinquishment to that of a kind of death, not only of the mother, but of part of the Self, that core-being or essence of oneself which makes one feel whole (p.6). She continues,

In acknowledging this loss and its impact on all involved in adoption, there is no way one can get around the pain: the pain of separation and loss for both the child and the birthmother, and the pain of not understanding or being able to make up for that pain and loss on the part of the adoptive parents (p.6).

In many cases, when a family seeks therapy to address behavioral or emotional issues displayed by an adopted child treatment focuses on the relationship between the child and adoptive parents without consideration to the impact of the initial trauma on the child and, subsequently, adoptive family (Verrier, 1993). Additionally, international and transracial adoptees must navigate through two different cultures. Assimilation into the predominant culture is frequently not a seamless process.