I’ll embrace the sorrow I still feel, and one day I will heal and forgive.

It’s not a job, but getting married that’s a challenge.

There’s a different layer on life when someone chooses you.

I’m most likely a foundling, left near a police station.

My birth mother has remarried, and her husband can’t know that I exist.

My earliest memories are of living in one room with my birth mother.

It was like opening Pandora’s Box, this piece of paper in my hands.

My mom’s comment to me was, “You should be dating your own kind.”

If I were to be given another life, I would want to receive parental love.

My adopting father told me he met my mother, and he negotiated with her.

My facility experience has made me tough. I don’t cry over small things.

I remember, vividly, the morning my mother gave us up. She was crying.

People say my happy appearance is impressive, given my childhood.

I meet facility alumni. Some are successful, some have gone astray.

My husband and I are both Korean. Our son inherits our Korean heritage.

I ask myself a lot of questions about my ability to be a mother.

I didn’t get the answers I wished for, but I am more at peace with that.

I don’t know how to put it into words. I wish I could live like everyone else.

Mild curiosity grew into a need to connect with adoptees and Korean-Americans.

I remember looking in the mirror, trying to see what made me a target.

After that, I kind of realized…okay, I’m a child born of rape.

When I met my birth mom, it wasn't under the best circumstances.

Yeah, I’m black and Korean. But first and foremost, I’m black.

I have chosen to see adoption as a part of my life, not the driver.

It wasn't until college that I started to sort out my multiple identities.

I did a total 180 from not hanging out with Asians, making up for lost time.

I am a man who should have died a long time ago, but I have a family now.

Why is Korea still sending children for adoption abroad?

She gave me a ring she was wearing and said, “We have the same hands.”

I was the baby—the first choice to give up for adoption. I understand that.

Five Korean adoptees getting together, then 12, 15, 20, hundreds.

My adoptive parents are Korean. I found out I was adopted 3 years ago.

I see a lot of Chinese babies who are adopted. We kind of blazed a trail.

He puts his little hand on my face. “Momma, we have the same eyes.”

The woman on the phone says, “We think we found your mother.”

It made me embarrassed, that I had to explain my existence to other people.

My biological parents wanted us to be together with a Christian family.

The email said, “We found your mother. You have to come to Korea now.”

I didn’t have problems during childhood. I am who I am, Dutch Korean.

My adoptive parents loved me so much, before they even had me.

My mother thinks that I’m happy all the time, not how I have struggled.

For the first time, I saw other adoptees who looked a bit like me.

I sold hard taffy, physical labor. Those jobs were my ticket to survival.

My college essay was called “My Lucky Number”— my case number, K90821.

As of today, I do not know who is telling the truth, and who is not.

My biological father is standing there, leaning over a motorcycle.

I want to be as good a parent as my mom was for me. I’ll try my hardest.

Maybe even more as an adoptee, I’m afraid of losing my parents.

I enjoy traveling. When you travel, you’re not supposed to belong.

In the Holt records, it says that I was left on the doorstep of a man’s house.

I remember walking down a dirt road in Korea, and crying.

If I wasn’t adopted, I’d be working a rice field. I’m not really an outdoor guy.

I feel my friends hold the concept of finding birth parents closer than I do.

There’s no information about me, my birth, my family in Korea. Nothing.

Korea never left me. Korea is inside of me. I eat, breathe, and live Korea.

A feeling of detachment, and an inability to connect with anybody.

I miss Korea and my birth family. It’s a sadness that I carry with me.

My mom told me herself that I was born on the floor at home.

It’s important for me to share, to encourage others who’ve been victims.

I don't talk much about growing up in an orphanage—my darkest moment.

As a child, I often dreamt about what I saw the night I was abandoned.

What I’ve learned through my faith in the Lord, is that it happened for a reason.

My oldest son got me a DNA test, and it stated I’m 100% Japanese.

I grew up feeling like a Martian who had arrived from outer space.

I don’t remember much, except the crying—all those unhappy children.

I’m grateful, truly, to be alive today. That’s why I tell my story.

We always felt we were Danish children, with Danish values and norms.

I got married after my husband promised me he’d never mention my past.

I was born to have an identity complex, being adopted and transgendered.

I was in the orphanage for the undesirable children. I was not adoptable.

My mother simply asked me, “Would you like to go to America?”

My adoptive parents are Korean. I grew up speaking Korean.

I never really discussed racism with my parents. I didn't want to relive it.

I did 23andMe. My second cousin on my birth father's side contacted me.

Learning Korean really made me the most in touch with being Korean.

When I married, I hid my history. Afterwards, the truth became known.

Because I’ve chosen to become a single mother, I think about my birth mother a lot.

I was 7 and a half when I was adopted. I was told that I had two sisters.

All of a sudden, I saw real Koreans, who weren’t speaking Danish.

I have both my birth family and my adoptive family, and I love them both.

Mixed-race kids were seen as human refuse, a scourge on their culture.

Our extended relatives made it clear. My sister and I were “add-ons.”

I learned how to pronounce my Korean name, and realized that it’s beautiful.

We have to stop turning ourselves into victims.

God, why am I here? Why did you put me in this household?

It was an unspeakable act. I wanted to forget it. But I couldn’t.

My teacher told the class, “This is her last day. She’s going to America.”

In Korea, I can feel the way people look at me, and I lose confidence.

That pain never goes away. I take my pain, and I put anger over it.

What I had been looking for in my birth mom, I found when my son was born.

What if I find out something I don't want to know? That scares me.

It took my birth father 35 years of searching. He finally found me 3 years ago.

I learned that I was incredibly lucky to have grown up in Denmark.

Would I have been better off in Korea? I think the answer is always, no.

It’s good to feel like you can acknowledge the complexities around adoption.

An immigrant family that was unwilling to give up on an abandoned orphan.

I think that’s why God gave me my daughter, so I wouldn't be alone.

I’ve been homeless 15 times, from 1987 to the present—5 years in NYC.

When I walk into a room, do people look at me and say, there’s the Asian girl?

Adoption includes the first family. The child did not appear from nowhere.