Pain Points of Joy

Behind every family there is a love story. Usually it’s the traditional—two people fall in love, get married and have babies, but sometimes, oftentimes throughout history, the pregnancy is unplanned or unwelcome and mothers are unable to cope. Sometimes the mom has a poor or nonexistent support system or are experiencing the ravages of war, resulting in unrequited hopes and dreams, derailing life. Poverty and not being able to feed your kids has a way of doing that. In my case, the situation was the aftermath of the Korean War, a time of unwanted pregnancies with the influx of soldiers, babies being born in hard circumstances to moms without a support system making desperate, hard choices. Fear, shame and poverty led to babies being abandoned and too many orphans. For mothers even in seemingly impossible situations, there is still a love story, though.

The love story is between the mom and child whether she chooses to keep or give the baby up out of desperation for a better life for her child. How does familial or societal pressure influence a pregnant woman in her choices that will forever affect her life? Love cannot begin to describe the strength of the maternal, instinctual and fierce bond the umbilical cord produces. Love arises from the protective nurturing shell of encompassing warmth—heartbeats echoing another. This creates the desire to protect and hold a baby close and the knowledge that your baby will be born to unwelcome circumstances must be one of the cruelest realities of life. An injustice of the basic and natural order of things. Thus, the love story becomes broken, a story of abandonment the child will keenly feel, always, though it may ebb and flow, like the seasons that lie dormant only to crop up when life is rich with emotional change. To reconcile the love story, however, is imperative; it is the only way the mom or child can survive after such a connection is broken. But, how do you reconcile heartbreak when the other person is absent and in its place, empty space of pain, longing and the void of the unknown? God fills in the gaps, I promise, “Behold I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert (Isaiah 43:19 ESV). If you bring him your pain and brokenness, he will reconcile the past with a brand new beginning, a pristine new life.

I have never lost a child, but I imagine it must feel like an amputated limb. Flesh and blood that once was and is no longer there. The muscle memory of love and its ache does not go away, but is sorely felt in its absence. As a parent, I would want to possess a powerful potion to break the nightmare spell, to take the poison if it meant that I could die so my child could live. Though I have never lost or given up a child the experience of being a child abandoned reflects the flip side. I was left at a police station at two-years old, then spent the next couple years in an orphanage before being adopted and flown to wintery Minnesota. My birth mom’s story with me was broken the day I was given up, a broken bond that bled with loss and the pain is a phantom limb; and unrealized love story. A child will feel it in an emotional place that is raw and cavernous, but will not be able to comprehend its narrative. I had no words when I came to America, only my Korean language and I especially had no words or understanding to help with sharp pangs of loneliness, much less grasp a trauma that was as visceral as the blood coursing through my veins. The chasm to a place of healing was a wide, open gap, manifesting itself to varying degrees in all my thoughts and interactions, virtually affecting every relationship.

Thoughts are so powerful, at a young age they infiltrated my heart and mind with its dooming presence—you are worthless, unwanted, rejected…you were given up. I never asked myself why I felt like I was defective and when waves of self-hatred would paralyze me in its grip, I had no tools to ward off these insidious lies. Children hide or accept the lie if they don’t know anything different and as I became older, my belief that I needed to hide this part of me became strategies in disguising. My appearance became an unhealthy obsession—if I looked pretty and perfect than no one could see the ugliness and shame inside. My house was the same way. Presentation and perfection took precedence over making people feel welcome. If they couldn’t really see me, just the surface, then I was safe. And if I couldn’t show up authentically then I certainly was not coming from a place of truly seeing them too, thus any form of true connection was lost. Life became stage set of playing roles, yet the spark for any relational warmth was suffocated the second I buried all the parts that needed to be healed.

My story is about rekindling the love. To make the story matter you need to grieve or mourn through tears, anguish or art, but know this—forgiveness is imperative. Forgiveness does not mean reconciliation in person for that may never be an option. Forgive your birth mother for giving you up and breaking your heart. Forgive yourself for not feeling worthy or even guilty for breaking your mom’s heart. Forgive your adoptive mom for not being your birth mom. But, mostly, forgive yourself again and again. It is not your fault. Rescue that inner baby, hold and soothe. This is what I mean that the love story comes after the birth, even in a broken situation of loss. Even when the mom chose to give up her child or was forced out of lack of better choices. She was essentially saying yes to life, a different kind of life for her child, one she could not provide. She was heartbroken and will always feel that break. How do I know? Because I am the recipient of my birth mom’s heart. I feel her heartbreak in the loss of what I didn’t receive from her physically and emotionally. Formative moments, sensations, primal and necessary were lost. But here is the twist, here is the blessing. Recovering that loss in yourself brings healing and life to a love story that is very true.