{"id":628,"date":"2022-10-28T03:42:15","date_gmt":"2022-10-28T03:42:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.annavaneekeren.com\/digistory\/uncategorized\/summer-dressings-2\/"},"modified":"2023-12-12T05:06:02","modified_gmt":"2023-12-12T05:06:02","slug":"adoption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.annavaneekeren.com\/digistory\/21-pieces\/adoption\/","title":{"rendered":"Return to Sender"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Feel free to listen while you read! (Or just listen or just read!) <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/blog.annavaneekeren.com\/digistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Return-to-Sender.m4a\"><\/audio><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse has-text-align-center has-ast-global-color-4-background-color has-background\" style=\"font-family:montserrat;border-style:none;border-width:0px;font-style:normal;font-weight:400\">Dear birth mom,\ndid you cry,\nwhen it happened,\nwere you as broken and lost as I?\n \nThey say I was left on the steps of the orphanage,\nwrapped in a baby blue blanket, a bottle of milk by my side.\nNo note, no identification.\nJust a whisper of affection.\nA trace of direction.\n\nDear birth mom,\nAm I your reflection? An abstraction or objection.\nGod, I have so many questions \u2013\nWhat did I do?\nTo deserve this.\nWhere are you?\nWho are you?\nI hate you.\nI love you.\n\nDear birth mom,\nI think about you. When shadows crawl and voices roar.\nDuring Lunar New Year, at any Asian content, in the mirror.\nA haunting presence I cannot shake.\nAn invisible tie I cannot break.\n\nMy blood carries the weight of your history.\nMy DNA is a derivative of your narrative.\nAnd yet, I do not know the face that bears my resemblance,\nor the laugh that echoes mine.\nI do not know the hands that nurtured me,\nand silently abandoned me to hope and time.\n\nDear birth mom,\nDo you curl into a ball when overwhelmed,\nand love the taste of rain and reading at night?\nDo you scream into endless voids,\nand drown out the world beneath the waves?\nIs your voice croaky and strained by design,\nor is it flowing and beautiful, an enchanting mind?\nAre you good at puzzles and logic,\nor do words and phrases stick?\nDo you flee from crabs and spiders,\nand escape your troubles overseas,\nonly to learn infinity was just out of reach?\nDon\u2019t you understand?\nI don\u2019t even know who I am.\n \nDear birth mom,\nI don\u2019t belong. \nNot here, after 21 years.\n \nIt\u2019s marking <em>unknown<\/em> on medical forms,\nand numbly repeating \u2018I\u2019m sorry.\u2019\nIt\u2019s the sideways stares and backward glares,\nwhenever I walk in public with my white parents.\nIt\u2019s the lack of connection to my culture,\n\u2013  I can\u2019t even utter a proper syllable in Chinese, yet my white mom speaks it fluently \u2013\nmasked by a deep desire for understanding and community.\nIt\u2019s the constant displacement of living two lives, two identities,\nand never existing as either,\nnever being enough of one or the other.\n \nDear birth mom,\nWhere have you gone?\nI\u2019m still searching,\nfor some kind of sign,\nof a hereditary line.\n\nDear birth mom,\nCan you mend this bond?\n \nDear birth mom,\nThank you.\n \nFor all that you\u2019ve done. \n<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dear birth mom, am I your reflection? An abstraction or objection?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2191,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-21-pieces"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/blog.annavaneekeren.com\/digistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/return.jpg",719,774,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/blog.annavaneekeren.com\/digistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/return-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/blog.annavaneekeren.com\/digistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/return-279x300.jpg",279,300,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/blog.annavaneekeren.com\/digistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/return.jpg",719,774,false],"large":["https:\/\/blog.annavaneekeren.com\/digistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/return.jpg",719,774,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/blog.annavaneekeren.com\/digistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/return.jpg",719,774,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/blog.annavaneekeren.com\/digistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/return.jpg",719,774,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"https:\/\/blog.annavaneekeren.com\/digistory\/author\/admin\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Dear birth mom, am I your reflection? An abstraction or objection?","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.annavaneekeren.com\/digistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.annavaneekeren.com\/digistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.annavaneekeren.com\/digistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.annavaneekeren.com\/digistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.annavaneekeren.com\/digistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blog.annavaneekeren.com\/digistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2497,"href":"https:\/\/blog.annavaneekeren.com\/digistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628\/revisions\/2497"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.annavaneekeren.com\/digistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.annavaneekeren.com\/digistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.annavaneekeren.com\/digistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.annavaneekeren.com\/digistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}