Intake

Abby shared that she was adopted from Cambodia at the age of 4 years. Prior to being brought to the orphanage, she lived with her grandmother and two biological siblings. Abby’s biological grandmother was sick, and her older siblings helped to take care of her. Abby recalled them, “asking if I wanted to stay or help out with her, or, they didn’t say to an orphanage, but did I want to go live somewhere else. At 3 years old, Abby made the decision to live somewhere else, as she thought, “it would be better if I was just out of the way so that they could take care of her (grandmother).” Multiple themes emerged from Abby’s intake, including assumptions, privilege, vivid memories, trauma, healthy attachments, and the integration of her native culture.

Abby returned to Cambodia when she was a junior in high school and shared, “surprisingly it felt like I was returning home. It just felt like you were home and back and everybody is so welcoming.” Regarding her integration into her native culture, Abby found herself apologizing for outsiders’ assumptions of her culture. When she was in Cambodia, native people would “come up to me and be like Khmer? And I’d be like, yeah but then they started speaking Khmer to me and I was like oh no, no I can’t understand it. And then they would look at you and be like umm…and I would be like I’m so sorry.” This is an example of the incongruence of identity—outer appearance compared with who they identify as. Abby spoke about the privilege she feels since living in the United States with her Caucasian family, compared with the developing country where she lived for the first 4 years of her life. “My biggest strength is appreciating what I have, including having a better life, and a family who loves me.” When asking about her attachment to her adoptive family Abby responded, “I love them. If anything happened to them, I would be heartbroken.” This is notable as not all adoptees feel a deep connection and experience healthy attachments within their adoptive family. Abby did share that one of her biggest struggles is “sometimes I just don’t feel like I belong there, but I know I do. It’s just really hard to watch how they interact with each other and how they all look alike and I’m over here…just like watching that, it kind of hurts sometimes.”

Post Art Interview

Abby chose watercolors, markers, colored pencils and three pieces of paper for her “Chapter One.” Abby explained that the first page (Figure 1) is a depiction of her Cambodian village, “It’s tropical and dry there, and so warm.”

Figure 1 - “Abby’s First Page.” Watercolor by Abby.

Abby’s second page (Figure 2), created using markers and colored pencils, is a picture of “what would have happened if I had gone with the other family.” Prior to her final adoption, a different family was interested in adopting her. She shared that the father in that household was a professional clown and Abby remembers him doing tricks for her and taking picture of her in a blue dress with yellow shoes. The small image to the left of the clown is a self-portrait, the same picture that was sent to her “forever family” before she was placed with them.

Figure 2 - “Abby’s Second Page.” Marker and colored pencil by Abby.

Abby’s final page (Figure 3) was created using watercolor and colored pencils. Abby described that it was a depiction of what she wants: “I want to be living on the coast, near the water, somewhere quiet.” When asked if Abby’s experience of her “Chapter One” had changed after working with the art she explained, “drawing my last one, it really sets a goal for what I really want. Something that makes me really happy.”

Figure 3 - “Abby’s Third Page.” Watercolor and colored pencil by Abby.

In response to an interview question about how/if her past has helped shape her identity, Abby explained, “I really don’t have a past in a way because I don’t know, I was still young.” Abby indicated that the past that helped shape her identity started with “Chapter Two”—where she felt it was okay to grow and experience. Themes of fantasy versus reality, trauma, grief, and loss all emerged throughout Abby’s artwork, and within the verbal discussion.

Intake

Eva was adopted from South Korea when she was 2 years old. She recently visited her birth country and said she plans to visit again this coming summer. Eva shared that she has not deeply explored her biological culture, other than owning a traditional Korean dress when she was younger, until she traveled back to her birth country. “I’ve been trying to like teach myself how to cook and I’ve been trying to learn the language…there’s just a lot of barriers when you don’t have any exposure and people don’t know how to talk to you.” Eva talked a lot about the assumptions native Koreans had of her when she went back. “I felt like I did a lot of apologizing for not speaking Korean, and I did a lot of “I don’t know” and then they are like, “why don’t you know,” and then you have to do this whole like back-story explanation.” Eva explained that the most frustrating thing for her is “people and their assumptions.” She shared a story of when her friends made some jokes about being adopted. Eva described that her culture is very Midwestern Americanized, including the way she dresses, speaks, and her values.

Eva compared herself to her adoptive family and identified some traits that she feels she was born with: “my passion and dramatization.” She explained that, in contrast, her adoptive family is very stoic and laid back. Eva shared how important the idea of biological traits was for her because “you don’t really think about yourself apart from that because you are always trying to think about yourself integrated into your family.”

Eva shared how independent she is and has been throughout her whole life. She shared how difficult it was for her to bring this into conversation with her family. She stated that her relationship with them is complicated. “If they were gone, I’d be okay…It’s almost like you have to force yourself to be connected because you don’t really have any of those other things that are keeping you guys together.” Eva started to explore the anger she has around her unknown beginning—the sonograms or when people talk about being in gestation. There were clear themes of frustration, grief, trauma, assumptions, and the importance of her South Korean heritage.

Post Art Interview

Eva used oil pastels and markers for her first page (Figure 4).

Figure 4 - “Eva’s First Page.” Pastels by Eva.

She shared that her first page is what she imagined her “Chapter One” was like growing up. “I know I was left in a train station, and I always imagined that somehow, maybe I got lost or something happened…that I was at this very crowded train station and somehow, just became.” Eva explained that she is the blue person on the bottom right of her first page. She was unable to answer where the train was going and questioned if it was coming from somewhere.

Eva’s second page (Figure 5) was created using graphite pencil, colored pencils, and markers. She shared that this picture was inspired by her trip back to Korea and her search for her birth family, “I guess my actual ‘Chapter One.’” Eva learned that she was found in the waiting room of a train station. “There was a man there who was just a random stranger, and this woman left me with the man.” Eva explained that she is the middle human figure, the figure to the left is the man, and the figure to the right is “the woman that left me: And we don’t know, we think that she was probably my mother, but we don’t know.”

Figure 5 - “Eva’s Second Page.” Colored pencil and pastels by Eva.

This past summer, Eva was able to meet the now 80-year-old Korean man who brought her to the police station. “There’s something about meeting someone that has those baby stories, you know what I mean? It’s kind of amazing.”

Eva’s third page (Figure 6) was created using pen, oil pastels, and graphite pencil. She explained that she had some pictures from the orphanage where she remembers a “red room for the infants…and a blue room for the toddlers.” As an adoptee, Eva felt that seeing pictures of her in the orphanage that she never saw growing up was surreal. When asked if she was in this drawing, Eva indicated that she did not draw herself because it was hard for her to imagine her early years. What she did remember was all the children dressed in traditional Korean outfits for a special holiday.

Figure 6 - “Eva’s Third Page.” Colored pencil and pastels by Eva.

After looking at her “Chapter One” drawing, Eva entitled her piece “Daegu,” the town where the train station and orphanage are located. In response to the idea that the past shapes identity, Eva feels like she is “more accepting of myself and of my past, which is hard…nobody wants to say like ‘I lived in an orphanage for six months,’ that’s sad, and that’s a hard thing to own without feeling awful about it.” Eva found the art therapy directive helpful in visualizing her story and committing it to paper. She acknowledged the importance of expressing it on paper. “It’s like something that you cannot put into words.”

Intake

Isaac was adopted from Korea when he was about 1 year old. He shared that he returned to Korea for the first time in 2010 but does not feel like he has explored his native culture in much depth. Isaac identifies his culture as American, and one of his biggest struggles is, “I think, at times, I wish I were more…I wish I could speak Korean, I wish I were more Korean just because then the person that I am on the inside would match the person I am on the outside more, because people have the expectations.” People expect things from Isaac that do not match how he identifies. Isaac indicated that he has naturally been a leader throughout his life, and one of his strengths has been resilience and his independence.

Isaac and his biological older brother were both adopted into the same “forever family,” who have three other children—one adopted daughter and two younger siblings biological to his adoptive parents. Isaac shared that he is very close with his biological brother and adoptive sister. His parents divorced when he was younger, which made things “strange for a while,” but he now works with his adoptive father, and he has a “sort of strange slash border repair relationship with my mom.” Isaac shared that he is not close with his two younger siblings. Isaac’s biological brother met their birth mother a few years ago when he visited Korea. When asked how much information Isaac had on his birth family he said, “not a lot…our dad died…I would love more information.”

Post Art Interview

Isaac was the only participant to use all six pieces of paper; all were created using colored markers.

Isaac’s first page (Figure 7) depicts his early life, “I always imagined that we lived in like this rural part and there’s like wheat fields, and I don’t even know if wheat grows in Korea, but I always pictured there to be some kind of wheat field thing, so I drew that.” Isaac shared this image represents his birth mother, father, and older brother, and he drew himself in his mother’s arms.

Figure 7 - (G) “Isaac’s First Page.” Marker by Isaac.

Isaac’s second page (Figure 8) is very similar to the first, with fields, hills, a tree, and a red house. A notable difference is that there are three people instead of four. “At some point we knew my dad died…and it was just our mom and us.”

Figure 8 - “Isaac’s Second Page.” Marker by Isaac.

On the third page (Figure 9), Isaac captures his birth mother bringing him and his brother to the adoption agency. “At some point my mom, after consulting my family, brought us to the adoption agency, which I don’t know what it looks like, but I imagine it to be something…it’s a side profile of a building.”

Figure 9 - “Isaac’s Third Page.” Marker by Isaac.

Isaac’s fourth drawing (Figure 10) was of his mother walking out of the agency alone. “So that’s her bringing us in, and then that’s her walking out without us, and I don’t know if that’s how it happened, but I don’t know any other way that it would happen.” Isaac was asked what it was like for him to draw these two images, one after the other. “Looking back on it now, it looks really sad…It looks very sad now.” When asked if it was sad, Isaac responded, “I think it was sad. You know, it’s like she obviously made a decision at some point to…that it was better that she gave us up for adoption, but I can’t imagine that was easy. To go in with two kids and come out alone….”

Figure 10 - “Isaac’s Fourth Page.” Marker by Isaac.

Isaac’s fifth page (Figure 11) relates to a photograph he grew up with. “There’s a picture of us at the agency, there’s a lot of older women and some kids…I don’t think there were any pictures of us with other kids, but I imagine there were other kids there.” Isaac shared that he is one of the babies with a caretaker.

Figure 11 - “Isaac’s Fifth Page.” Marker by Isaac.

Isaac’s last drawing is a plane (Figure 12). “And then, you know, we were adopted…and then our lives began when we landed in the States. So that’s sort of how I think about it, or when you asked me, I guess that’s how I thought about it, what my life was like.”

Figure 12 - “Isaac’s Sixth Page.” Marker by Isaac.

Five of the six images have human figures, but none have faces. When asked if this was because he did not know what people looked like or because he struggled to know what their expressions would be, Isaac shared that he never draws faces with stick figures. “I figured I don’t really know what our dad looks like, I mean I know what my brother and I look like, but I don’t think I could do a proper representation.”

Isaac relates his “Chapter One” past to his identity: “everything about the past makes you who you are so I think that probably in more ways than I am even conscious about—growing, having this as part of my past absolutely is part of who I am.” Isaac also indicated that in order to commit his story to paper, he had to think about the story and concluded that it was a sad story. The author validated the idea and asked if the word “sad” was describing his story or what he was feeling in the moment. Isaac shared, “No. I feel a little sad…This is who I was at some point.” When asked if he would change anything Isaac said no, explaining, “I feel like everything that happens in your life makes you who you are today, so if you were to change anything, you wouldn’t be who you are.”