Adoptees' reality is different from script written by society

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Alex Bonk / Courtesy of Alex Bonk

What everyone has been led to believe about international adoption is fundamentally wrong. On the surface, my life followed the Korean adoption script as it was written. I had an adoptive family, health and an identity in the United States thanks to benevolent intervention that saved me from a fate that was certain to be worse.

In this gifted life, it would be impossible to feel insecure, unhappy or hollow. In a foreign country that once prohibited immigration from Asia, I would assimilate seamlessly and my belonging would never be questioned. This is the Korean adoption story that we have all learned, internalized and believed. I did not write it but it defined my identity and shaped my life before I could.

Missing from the script, with profound consequences for adoptees, are lived experiences told by us. In reality, we face a life of complex adversity that contradicts widespread and entrenched adoption beliefs.

Too often we are left alone to wrestle with inexplicable challenges that are real to us and invisible to others. It is a recipe for a diaspora of cognitive dissonance, insecurity and hidden lives of survival. If we acknowledge the contradictions between our experiences and what others are told to see, we risk alienating the only support and world we know. If we seek more information about who we are, we must navigate a pathless world shrouded in a visceral fog made of the collective sorrow and anguish of adoptees — only to learn that the information in our documents was systematically fabricated.

The person that everyone thinks is me is fiction written by the international adoption industry that sanitized beyond recognition truths about my birth, how I entered the system and my lived experiences. It shaped how people saw me, how I saw myself and how I perceived the world long before I was adopted. What I believed was my identity was really a character in someone else’s story that I did not know I was in. And it was a fragile facade waiting to crumble against inescapable realities. My life was not fully mine and it was helping veil an adoption system that commoditized nearly 200,000 Korean children, including myself.

I found comfort in this paternalistic script for more than 30 years, but it was the kind that is inherent in what is familiar. It was an instinct shaped by what was written for me rather than a decision I made for myself based on my experiences. I believed the script for as long as I could and ignored glimpses of a reality that threatened everything I knew. It was the only choice I had until a medical crisis unraveled my world and forever changed my perspective on international adoption.

Alex Bonk in Korea before he was adopted / Courtesy of Alex Bonk

Moment of change in perspective

I was adopted in 1989 and, throughout my life, I buried every aspect of my adoption that I could. It was my subconscious survival strategy as an international adoptee raised in a corner of the U.S. that was more rural and less diverse than others. I was trying to fit in with what I could see and grasp — my adoptive family, my friends, my peers and accessible media.

I did not know anyone who had a second family who loved them so much they could never know each other, so neither did I. I did not know anyone who could help me process the vile racism I experienced, so I pretended like it did not exist. I did not know anyone who shared the interests or hobbies that I eventually abandoned. I knew few people of Asian descent, but they already saw me as the adoptee they read about in the script. My world was fundamentally shaped by experiences connected to my adoption that I never allowed into my identity.

A recurring moment in my life that always shattered my defense was disclosing to doctors my lack of family medical history. Each experience was a deafening reminder of my missing past and the paradox of not being able to bury something that was not there. In hindsight, I did not want to accept the reality that any life I could build would have to be assembled without a conventional foundation, without a type of emotional support that can be crucial in life’s biggest challenges, without a type of empathy that adoptive parents, friends and therapy cannot provide, and without a sense of deep security and identity that I am still learning to understand.

In the context of my medical crisis, I was forced to revisit these familiar moments in a new light. Any comfort I had achieved was irreversibly replaced by the reality that I may have an uncommon type of cancer and that a clear diagnosis remains elusive despite months of testing. I would have to rebuild my life around debilitating symptoms without knowing what caused them and I would have no truthful family medical history that could potentially provide vital answers, or even leads.

I started examining my life with the clarity that arrives when it might be about to end. For two years I have been researching adoption and confronting my true reality, while rebuilding a life around an authentic version of myself that I am the author of. It is exhausting and brutal work for anyone, but challenges are an inescapable part of life that lets us grow when we embrace them. The script omits this crucial fact and another important reality for adoptees — inherent in all of us, and waiting to be seen, is an extraordinary type of strength that can only be forged by the invisible adversity that is inseparable from our lives.

I eliminated what did not matter to find what was truly meaningful to me and rebuild a life around what was left. I gave up my career of 15 years which I thought was rewarding. I sold the house I worked to buy and that I thought would make me happy. I started letting myself cry and have realized that I needed to cry my entire life. Sometimes my tears carry a lifetime of quiet pain that I can now see and cannot be kept inside forever. Increasingly, they carry the beauty in the world that I am starting to see again but in a new light that I am holding for the first time — and it is brighter than anything possible in my scripted life.

Alex Bonk is a Korean American adoptee. He is a former digital director at a national environmental organization and campaign strategist specializing in advocacy and development. He grew up in Indiana and spent time in Chicago and Washington, D.C. before moving to the West Coast, where he currently resides with his beloved dog.