Adoptee Story: Julie

“I was born November 5, 1985 in a hospital in Incheon South Korea. According to the paperwork in my file, I was given up for adoption because my mother had left the province she was raised in and was unable to support her and me. I flew to Minnesota in May 1986 when I was 6 months old to meet my adoptive parents. I do not have all the information regarding the length of the process that my adoptive parents went through, however, I do know that my mom was not able to have children because she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. I would eventually find out that the day I was picked up from the airport, my adoptive mother had received cancer treatments that morning. The information I have regarding my biological parents is rather limited. According to the paperwork that I have received from Korea, my mother was raised in Yesan province and lost her mother at a young age. My mother did not get along well with her husband’s second wife and went to live with extended family. After my mother’s grandmother died, she left Yesan and went to work in Incheon. After that, the story gets a little lost in translation and then it was noted that she was pregnant and gave the child, me, up for adoption. There is no information regarding my biological father and I have two different birthdays for my biological mother. Growing up as an adoptee was a different type of experience. I was raised in a predominately white small midwestern town and there were very few adoptees in the community. My adoptive mother lost her battle to breast cancer the summer I was seven and several years after that my father remarried.