Reflection
I chose to skip responding overall to National Adoption Month. November is the month I dislike the most, due to the trifecta of NAM, my assigned birthday, and the Thanksgiving holiday. But I did miss one happy anniversary in November!
November 22, 2022, was the launch of the Lab Note series here on this blog. I was inspired to start these reflections because I found blogs by other transracial adoptees such a support for me when I was trying to understand the broader context and implications of adoption. As I’d mentioned in my introduction to the series, I wanted to find a spot between the slower, dense, academic writing I do as part of my scholarly work and the fast-paced, immediate (but often shallow) social media posts I had been trying. I can see from the data most people still engage more with my social media accounts (mostly Instagram but also LinkedIn and Facebook) but I have seen an increase in people reading my blog, though it is nothing like those days in the mid-2000! I still prefer to read other people’s blog posts if I’m being honest – I like the subscription newsletters too. Some of the (ahem) older readers might remember those RSS feed subscriptions we relied on for our daily news and recent blog posts. I kind of miss those days! In general, I just prefer long-form writing but I think the social media posts serve our community in important ways.
November was a busy month – the release of several books by adoptee authors, the launch of a new organization supporting adoptees (AIREroots), and of course, so many requests for training.
Now we are in January 2024. For most of 2023, I was on sabbatical, working on projects and trying to catch up on reading and scholarship. And rest. The Lab Notes came about partly because I wanted to make sure I continued to engage while I was on sabbatical and I’m really happy with this project. I need to figure out the balance now that I’m back to work. I never intended to have a specific schedule for writing these posts. The only downside to my sporadic writing is the challenge of being able to post what’s in the news in a timely way.
I have a longer end-of-the-year reflection I’m working on, about some of the trends (good and not so good) I’ve observed about our adoptee community over the past year. In the meantime, thank you to everyone who has read these Lab Notes, subscribed to the blog, followed me on my social media, and reached out in other ways.
Recommendations
I’m currently reading Sara Myers’ book Monstrous: A Transracial Adoption Story and it’s fantastic. I highly recommend this graphic novel of a Korean transnational adoptee. I wrote about it before but now that I’m almost finished I wanted to highlight it again. Sara is also a guest on Adoptees On so I’m linking that episode here as well.
I saw Sun Mee Chomet’s How to be a Korean Woman when I lived in Minnesota and she is performing her show in Washington DC at Theater J through January 14th. Link to an article about the show from DC Theater Arts.
Harlow's Monkey 