We began our journey toward you long before we knew your name.
Before there were stacks of papers, interviews, and long nights waiting for news from across the ocean, there were years of quiet hopes and heartbreak. I had dreamed of holding a child in my arms, of lullabies in the dark, and tiny hands reaching for mine. But again and again, those dreams slipped away with each miscarriage, leaving us with empty arms and a house that felt too quiet.
Those losses were not just medical events; they were tiny futures we had already started to imagine. Each time, we grieved not only the baby we lost but also the growing distance between who we were and the parents we so wanted to be. There were days when it felt like our hearts were made of thin glass, always one step away from breaking.
Then, slowly, a new path began to appear. We started hearing more about adoption, especially international adoption, and South Korea kept coming up, as if it were being gently placed in our line of sight again and again. We read everything we could find. We spoke to other parents who had adopted from Korea. And somewhere in that process, the question quietly changed from “Will we ever be parents?” to “Where is our child, and how do we bring her home?”
The paperwork seemed endless: forms, references, medical checks, home studies. We carefully answered questions about our lives, our marriage, our finances, our beliefs, all so someone halfway around the world could decide whether we could love a child we had not yet met. Each signature felt like a small promise: “We are ready. We will love her. We will protect her.”
We sent off letters and photographs, sharing pictures of our home, our smiles, and our extended family, who had already spoken about “the baby” coming from Korea. We waited for news the way people listen for footsteps on the front porch, hopeful and anxious. Then one day, there it was: a description, a photograph, and a name. A tiny girl in a simple outfit, looking into the camera with solemn eyes. Thirteen months old. Our daughter.
The journey to bring you home felt both endless and like a single breath. Flights, time zones, unfamiliar language, and forms stamped with official seals—yet beneath all that was something pure and simple: we were coming to get our child. When we first saw you in person, small and quiet, I remember being so afraid of startling you. I held out my arms, uncertain if you would cry or turn away. Instead, you studied us, serious and thoughtful, as if you were deciding whether we were safe.
We brought you home across oceans and continents, and suddenly our quiet house was filled with new sounds: the patter of small feet, your Korean lullabies played on an old cassette, and the gentle murmur of us learning one another. You were only thirteen months old, yet you had already known separation and transition. We watched your adjustment with tender attention—your initial hesitations, your tears at night, the way you clung to a familiar blanket.
You learned our faces, our voices, our smells. We knew your different cries, what made you laugh, and what frightened you. Slowly, remarkably, “this house” became “your home,” and we could see trust blooming in your eyes. The first time you fell asleep on my chest without starting at every slight sound, I knew you were telling us, in the only way you could: “I belong here.”
Our own adjustments were real and sometimes humbling. We learned to be parents while also learning to honor the part of you that came from a place and people different from our own. We mispronounced Korean words as we tried to tell you about your birth country. We kept every scrap of information we had about your beginnings, knowing one day you might have questions we could not fully answer, but that we would face them together.
Explaining your adoption, as you grew older, was a process, not a single conversation. When you were little, we used simple phrases: “You grew in the tummy of a woman in Korea, and then you came to our family, who loves you very much.” As your questions grew more complex, so did our answers. We tried to be honest and gentle, to make sure you knew that your story did not begin the day you arrived in our arms. It began in Korea, with another set of arms that loved you in their own way and made a decision, however painful, that led you to us.
We spoke openly about my miscarriages, but only when you were old enough to understand that you were never a second choice. You were the child we fought for in a different way—a journey that spanned oceans rather than nine months. The love it took to bring you here came not from replacing what we lost, but from expanding our hearts to hold all of it: the grief that came before you and the joy that came with you.
Our family’s acceptance of you was not a question; it was immediate and wholehearted. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins—everyone knew from the moment we showed them your picture that you were “ours.” There were no qualifiers. You were not “our adopted daughter” in everyday life. You were our daughter, their granddaughter, their niece, their cousin. Family gatherings shifted to include favorite Korean dishes on the table, dolls with dark hair among the toys, and stories that always ended with, “And we knew you were meant to be with us.”
Looking back, the journey to you was made up of a thousand small acts of love: the courage to hope again after loss, the determination to navigate an unfamiliar system, the willingness to open our hearts to a child born in another land, the gentle patience of helping you adjust to a new home, a new language, a new life. Every form we filled out, every day we waited, every mile traveled was an expression of that love.
You arrived in our lives at just thirteen months old, but in a very real way, we had been waiting for you for years. You were the child who turned our quiet house into a home. Your older brother, Jason, welcomed you with open arms and has always stayed close to you. The love it took to bring you here did not end the day you landed in our arms; it continues still, in every memory we share, every question we talk through, and every time we look at you and remember the long, winding path that brought us together—across loss, across oceans, and finally, home. Over the past 20 years, we have both undergone many changes and grown apart. I reflect on the ’70s and remember how it felt to try to repair the void in my life you left. I have always Loved You and Wish you the Best.
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