In honor of transracial adopted people whose voices are not properly heard. For those who lived silenced and took their lives due to the complexities of race, gratitude, and identity. Your legacy remains. Your deaths were not in vain. — Who is Colin Kaepernick? Colin Kaepernick is a person who beat the odds. It is not his football career that causes me to say this. It is merely him being alive and thriving.

A lifetime that never was now lives in me. I never had a Korean Umma make comfort food for me. She never came to my side to make me Tteokbokki. It didn’t come to me. Not with extra rice cakes. Not with melted cheese. When I was 20 something I had it and later in my early 30s I…

Artwork by Cristina Rago, “Liberated” This is the body that came to America and struggled in a lily white world. This is the body that contains the soul which carries residual trauma of her birth mother. This is the body that feels language in her bones as memory and pain…

White Woman Privileges in Interracial Friendship Whenever I pick up my son at school, his friend’s mom and I make it a point to find one another. We’re not just friends because our kids go to school together. We have been good friends for years, and were even pregnant together…

A former AAPI professional ice skater reflects on (not being) cast as Mulan because of body type I remember getting confirmed for two Disney on Ice auditions; once in Minneapolis; I was out of shape and deserved to not get hired. The second was in Chicago at United Center; I was definitely in shape, had dropped about 25 lbs, and the line captain remarked, “You can do…

I have no headline other than — huh? It’s hard to raise kids with this craziness on the Hill. — This weekend we watched with mixed emotions and so much pride as our oldest graduated from high school. Members from the board of education got up to speak before the ceremony. One member got up and quoted Wanda Sykes in reference to honoring National Gun Violence Awareness and advocacy for…

I know what you’re thinking. Just … hear me out. Did I tell you your daddy loves you Your daddy knows you’re a flame Your daddy knows you’re a flame Oh child don’t you know Your daddy love come with a life time guarantee Your daddy knows you’re a flame Daddy love you yeah —…

An older White woman born into the Great Depression, and how our lives became connected forever — My adoptive mother is Swedish Norwegian and was raised in the Swedish Covenant faith in the Midwest of the United States. She and my dad, a third generation Irish American man, adopted me in the midst of the largest wave of Korean adopted children being exported for economic purposes in…

Finding the courage to push back and further professionalize oneself is a journey in itself — I’d like to preface that I became the first professional athlete in my family at the age of 17. I remember bringing home my first check as a teaching professional in my chosen sport and my mom ripped the check out of my hands. “What? This is almost as much…