327 Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW
/Transcript
Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/327
Haley Radke: [00:00:00] This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing stated on it, either by its hosts or any guests, is to be construed as psychological, medical or legal advice.
You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. On today's episode, I'm talking with Beth Yu Simpson, a therapist, educator, and founder of AIRE Roots. Beth shares how mentorship, community building and her own lived experience as a Korean adoptee have shaped her work, including her focus on ancestral healing and adoptee-centered care.
We also dig into the gaps in social work education around adoption and what meaningful change could look like. Before we get started, I wanna personally invite you to sign up for my podcast newsletter, which you can find at adopteeson.com/newsletter. [00:01:00] We wrap up with some recommended resources for you and as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website adopteeson.com.
Let's listen in. I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On Beth Yu Simpson. Hi, Beth.
Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: Hey. Thank you for having me.
Haley Radke: I'm so glad to get to talk to you. You have appeared on Patreon for Ask an Adoptee Therapist, but this is our first time having you on Adoptees On. So I'd love it if you would start, if you don't mind sharing a bit of your story with us.
Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: I'm a transracial Korean adoptee. I was adopted when I was 10 months old. I grew up in the Seattle area, so in the suburbs, so the Coast Salish people. And I also had a stepparent adoption around maybe 10. I have two brothers who were not... who were biological to my parents, and I'm the only girl. But I am estranged from my adoptive parents.[00:02:00]
And the other thing I think is interesting about me is I'm married to another Korean adoptee, which is unique, but actually not so unique, which is interesting. And he is not estranged from his family and is really close with them and it's been really healing for me to be part of their family and even to witness the way that he was raised.
And for me, my family has really been my chosen family, so that's other adoptees and my best friend growing up. Her family really took me in and so that's actually the other family we do a lot of our holidays with. And I owe a lot to my mentors and teachers. So for my adoption, I would say I was interested I realize now I was actually really interested in my Korean culture. So when I was in eighth grade we moved to Federal Way which is- has a ton of Korean people actually. And I asked my mom if I could go to Korean school or do TaeKwonDo, and she was like, "No." And so I kinda just dropped it. But I really got [00:03:00] immersed into the adoptee community around 2005. I did Holt Camp. And I had grown up doing camps. I grew up really Christian, and I had grown up actually being a camp counselor. And it was perfect, because it was the first year Steve Kalb, it was his first year, and this was the year that Holt was moving from the cultural camps to identity. And that really resonated with me, because I had also just started the, my undergrad as a social worker.
And this is so powerful. You're just immersed into it, and it's so transformative. You spend a whole summer with all these adoptees. And for me, I love working with young people, so it was really perfect for me. And that just kinda launched, my work with the adoptee community and my adoptee community family actually.
And then I went into the MSW program right after that, the School of Social Work at University of Washington. And that, I think, is where I was more politicized and really embraced my identity as a person [00:04:00] of color and as a Korean person, and also continued to learn about the industry of adoption and the structural things at play.
And I was really lucky to be surrounded by adoptee community at that time, and tons of mentors. I went into public child welfare. So I went into this program. It's a Title IV-E program, so they pay for you to go to your MSW, but you work in public child welfare in return. And I actually ended up working for that program as a teacher for 10 years.
But I think a lot of people go into that thinking they're going to be doing adoption or be doing adoption work, and I actually think I thought that too, and then quickly you're like, "I actually don't wanna do adoption. I wanna do family preservation." But I did that, and I worked in child welfare for 20 years actually.
And then in that time, when I was around 30, I also did my, I did my birth search then. So I did find my birth family, and around the same time I decided to go to Korea. So [00:05:00] I had never left the country, ever. I went to Canada. But I just got up and I moved. I went Do the EPIK program as a English teacher.
I actually can't believe I did that. I think I was, like, 33. But I had already worked in child welfare for a little bit and I just, I moved and I was there for a year and a half.
Haley Radke: You just moved to Korea?
Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: I totally just moved to Kor- I, I look back and I can't believe I was able to do that.
Haley Radke: And you didn't travel there first? You just your first step there you were moving there?
Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: Yeah, exactly.
Haley Radke: Wow.
Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: I look back at that and I can't believe I was able to do that. But it was also financial. It's such a privilege to be able to go to Korea and travel there, but I just was like, "I'm gonna just do this." And I was really encouraged by some mentors who were like, "You should go back. If you wanna go back." So I went there and that I had also been in contact with my birth mother and I can talk about that later. We ended up meeting and then she kinda ghosted me which is fine. I think at that point [00:06:00] I, because I was a social worker, I understood the cultural dynamics and the pressure.
But I did, I lived in the country because I decided I didn't... I was really connected with the adoptee community at that time, but I actually wanted to learn about the culture, so I decided to live in the country. And so in that time I got connected with an orphanage there and that is where my full circle was.
I started a, like, where the foreigners would come and teach English and I did some programs there which was special. Because for me being from Seattle, there's so many social workers so I, there's a lot of people doing a lot of community work, but there I was the only one. So it just forced me to, that, that's where I learned to organize and do events and if you want something done, just do it. So that's where my full circle was I think, is the orphanage and the director there, the Wonjeong. And then I came back. Actually, I was there for just over a year and a half. I came back. I went back into child welfare.
But at that [00:07:00] time, that was when I started with a group, with AAAW, Asian Adult Adoptees of Washington. That's when we started our AMP program, the Adoptee Mentorship Program. That was the vision of Sarah Kim Park who was the president there at that time and then Jenny Kelly really supported it, the new president and that went on for 10 years and that was for Asian adoptees.
And I think what was significant about that program, and it was with a group of people, is we really realized, and it'll, this'll come back later, but we really realized the mentors actually needed what we were doing for the mentees. So then we started really working on identity development, racial, anything we were doing with the young people we actually did with- The mentors.
And then we started doing a parent program. We called it PAIR, I think. But that ended and we kinda tried to hand it off because then we s- started AIRE Roots, which is the BIPOC adoptee group that I'm doing now. I'm the principal of it, but it's with a [00:08:00] group of other adoptees, and we do capacity building.
The goal is actually to support other BIPOC groups with using our privilege and knowledge to actually hopefully support other adoptee groups that wanna do things, or individuals that have a vision. And then, so yeah, I can talk about our work later, but I just wanted to say, I owe a lot of my adoption work actually, and adoption identity to my mentors.
First AAAW had been, I think, 10 years old when I came around, but Amy Pak and Saul Tran-Cornwall. So Amy was, like, this Korean auntie to me and encouraged me to really immerse myself in Korean culture and go to Korea. And then Saul actually, I would say, was a mentor through actually just working together.
And I think what's so powerful about our community is the multi-generational and we can mentor one another. We love each other. And so I've learned... I wouldn't be here without my mentors. And not just them, but the community. And so [00:09:00] now professionally, I worked in public child welfare for 20 years doing child welfare and then training students.
And then recently I just moved. I work in the Department of Psychology in a master's program as the Associate Director of Educational Equity and Student Wellbeing, so basically doing social work there. And through that, it's part-time. I also do a pr- I have a private practice, so AIRE, and that's where I do my therapy, and I focus on BIPOC people, adoptees, and doing a lot of somatic EMDR because of your podcast, and ancestral healing.
So I think I approach healing both... the work we do is both spiritual and emotional. And so that brings me up to now, where I'm really focusing on, for myself and also in the work I'm doing, I'm diving more into our ancestral healing that we have access to. And, I do it with everybody, [00:10:00] but I think it's really powerful for the adoptees that I'm working with. So that is kinda where I am now.
Haley Radke: Can you... I just w- before we go to ancestral healing, I wonder about your step parent adoption. Not that you have to go into the personal of it, but I've had, folks who were adopted by a step parent compare their experience to an adoptee who's been severed from both biological parents, and I wonder if you have thoughts around that.
Because to me it's- different. There's still a connection there, but y- for you, it was adoptive parents are s- there's a new stepparent to take over one of the adoptive parents', empty spots, I'll call it. Do you have any thoughts around that?
Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: Yeah, that's interesting. I think the first thing that made me think about is for us as adoption, because it's a stepparent adoption, but really adoption, the, a lot of the trauma [00:11:00] for us in adoption is from the separation. And so if there isn't a separation from your first parent or the non-stepparent, I think, yeah I think it is different. I think it can be connected, but I do think the experience is different. There, and depending on the situation, so maybe it's a stepparent adoption because they were a child and th- one of the parents l- left or passed away.
So I can see how it would be very similar, and also I can see how it could be very different.
Haley Radke: Yeah.
Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: But I say I had a stepparent adoption to just normalize that, and also say that it can happen for adoptees as well.
Haley Radke: Totally, and I appreciate you bringing it up, because I think there's this traditional fantasy that if an expectant parent chooses a hopeful adoptive couple to adopt their baby, that this is the couple that is going [00:12:00] to parent and raise this child forever. But people get divorced. There is a diff- there could be a new, person in town. There's no, no guarantees in adoption, as we like to say.
Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: I actually thought back in the day adoptees, we're... Sometimes I think it's just the same as if we were born into a family around if we're going to have, what our experience is going to be like. It's just a crapshoot. The same, and I think I was thinking that because people always think we have a better life. But then you, when you pull out a little bit more, it's even someone navigated and facilitated that, so it actually should've been a lot better than a crapshoot. But I was just thinking, yeah, maybe we're just average.
I think I thought that as a child. I was like, "Oh it's just the same." But actually, I hold the industry responsible to, it shouldn't have been a crapshoot, though.
Haley Radke: Yes. Yeah. Where were our guarantees? I'd love to know that. The other thing I'm really [00:13:00] curious about is your work as a social worker and as an educator of future social workers.
I wonder if you've seen any changes over all these last years. I remember- A few years ago now, but I connected with this lady in my city. She was going back for her, second career, and she was studying social work and we were connected through podcasting. And she told me in her program, basically almost no content related to adoption.
And it was so disappointing to me that they're not teaching about the trauma involved in family separation, which can often be a large part of a social worker's role. So have you seen any changes? I'm assuming you've got you and, other adoptees experienced or care experienced folks in your program there. I don't know. What's going [00:14:00] on there?
Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: I do think that there's more classes being offered. So I know ... I think it's Cam Small. They're doing something with Portland University or Portland State with BIPOC adoptees, I think. I think it is so dependent on the instructors themselves being educated and knowing that adoption is a trauma.
So I'm lucky because I worked in the Child Welfare Training and Advancement program. And so part of that we teach, our students and there's a class on child welfare. So we do talk about the trauma of separation. I think in the child welfare community in general, there's a lot more awareness around the trauma of separation.
So there's a new policy that came out in Washington State, the Keeping Families Together, which really makes people articulate why are we separating this child and how is that [00:15:00] actually not as bad ... how is the safety so much more that it would actually be greater than the trauma of separating the child?
So they actually have to articulate that at removal. And that's been really advocated by first parents, adoptees. AIRE is actually I don't know, we're an advisory, so if we- if they ever need us to say something, we can. So I think there's a push in general in child welfare around family preservation and the harm of separation.
But I would say it's still not there. So there's not a class on adoption. I talk about this all the time with JaeRan who teaches at UW Tacoma, and I'm like, "Why don't we ... You should teach a class." I know she actually has the curriculum. But there's always this tension around who's gonna take the class, the money.
And so I just, I don't think ... it's not where it should be. And so many social workers, especially people that are working with children, youth, and [00:16:00] families, they actually have a connection they'll be working with young people that were in care or were adopted. So it really should be more integrated actually, I think, into all the classes, but it's not.
We did start a group in the School of Social Work when I started BAC now, BIPOC Adoptee Collective. And so we do, one of the things that we do if the students wanna do it is psycho-education. So we brought in Angela Tucker and JaeRan to talk. So we try to do it on our own through these workshops, but it's better the child welfare community in general is, knows more about it, but there's always pushback too.
"Oh, but it's better actually for the kids to be with this other family that can provide them with the picket fence." So there's always pushback, especially if something happens and they say, "Oh, that's because of this policy." There's always the tensions, I think, of child safety and family preservation. But of course, it's in the context of capitalism and white [00:17:00] supremacy culture.
Haley Radke: Thank you for your thoughts on that. And I find it interesting, like of course an organization like the one that you've been working for, like you have adoptees working there and teaching there, and so there's some influence there.
But like, how much can you do that? And that's your personal life and, you don't wanna, put your professional life at risk going too you don't wanna be seen as that one that's pushing too far. So I can see the balance needed, especially when it is your career on the line.
And then I think about all these other organizations all over the country, your country, my country, who have no one there to just put their hand up and be like, "Wait, why are we still doing this?" Yeah, sounds like it's slow. Slow to change.
Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: It's slow and I think a lot of adoptees, some of us talk about it. We're like, "Why is it exactly the same now that it was 10 years ago? All of this work [00:18:00] that we've been doing?" And it's interesting in social work, I think there's 10... maybe that's an exaggeration. When you look at the faculty and staff, I think there's eight of us that are, adoptees, and then there's actually also a lot of adoptive, some adoptive parents. But we're overrepresented in social work, for sure.
Haley Radke: Yeah, just gotta get in those helping careers.
Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: Why would you do social work?
Haley Radke: Classic. Classic. Okay. Let's talk about Beth as therapist, and you mentioned that you started doing EMDR because of this show. That's wild. What do you mean by that?
Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: I love it. I refer people all the time to your podcast. I love the attachment series. But yeah, so I remember I was working with adoptees and I was doing, a lot of mindfulness and somatic ther- so I love somatics and, just becoming embodied. I think for us as adoptees, so much is held in our body.
So I was [00:19:00] listening to your podcast, I was on my way to work, and the therapist, it was the therapist series, she was saying, "EMDR is an amazing modality for adoptees because it gets to the pre-verbal trauma, and our trauma is pre-verbal." And I think I ha- I had another friend who was an adoptee who had started doing EMDR, and that was all I needed.
I was like, "I'm doing it." I think I signed up maybe a few weeks later, and I've been doing EMDR since. And I actually love it. And it is true. It really does help get to that pre-verbal trauma, because you can reprocess feelings. It really is an incredible modality, and it is really powerful for us as adoptees.
Yeah, so I'm really grateful for that. And I tell people that all the time. I say, "EMDR is great. You should do it, and this is why... how I learned about it."
Haley Radke: Oh, cool.
Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: And I have people listen to your podcast. So adoptees, when I give them information about EMDR, I actually [00:20:00] send them that episode and I say, "Listen to this episode, and then we can talk about it, and kinda what, our process is going to look like."
Haley Radke: That's awesome. I love that. I still use EMDR when I go see my psychologist, as a recipient of that, and it's been really impactful for me personally. So- yeah.
Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: Yeah, I love it. I actually started doing it. I was working with my therapist, my non-EMDR therapist, and I was starting to do EMDR with people, and I was witnessing all of these incredible foundational transformations and I was like, "What is happening?"
And I'm like, "I have to get into EMDR," so then I did it myself. I kinda moved it up and it's been incredible.
Haley Radke: Can you talk about what you mean when you say ancestral healing? What does that even mean? It's Haley from the future. Beth wanted to add a little bit to her answer to my [00:21:00] question, so you're gonna hear a slight change in audio while she does and then we'll get right back to the interview.
Here's Beth.
Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: I think that this is a really difficult question and complex, and also partly because I'm learning this and I am a new student, but I can talk about what I believe it is and really what my experience has been. It's also really unique to each of us, and so I encourage people, if they're interested, to seek it out on their own, because really I think it's important.
That whatever we do when we are thinking about ancestral healing or healing in general, is that it feels aligned for us and that it resonates with us. So no one can really tell you what it is. I think we have to feel into it what it is and feel that alignment. But for me, I think about it as the healing that's done through connection and building relationships to our ancestors, learning about them, their practices and beliefs, like our [00:22:00] connection and relationship to the land, and also the healing that occurs on an individual, ancestral, and collective level.
So for me, this has looked like learning about my ancestors, who they were, what their experience was, what their practices and beliefs were, our origin stories, and then allowing that to impact my life and the way I live. So really incorporating those beliefs and practices into my life and just talking to them.
So as part of the Korean diaspora and an adoptee, a big part of that has been first believing that I have ancestors and that I am connected to a lineage. And I've learned that it's a lot larger and deeper than just blood, but the connection to our ancestral field and making this connection, which really anchors me to the land and the people.
A part of this healing also is through making these [00:23:00] connections, is the healing that we do as descendants of our ancestors. And actually, for me, this has been the deepest but also the most difficult part of it, and where a lot of my liberation and freedom has come from too. So the best way to explain this, I think, is when we talk about we talk a lot about generational trauma and how it's passed down.
This is part of it. It's held in our bodies and also other ways of knowing that, that trauma. And so it's a healing of that trauma and pain that occurs that's not just ours, but it's been passed down through us, so through many generations. Our mothers, fathers, grandparents, and way further back.
And again, it's not just our direct lineages, but the ancestral field. And I think this has been a big part of me learning about our people and what they've endured and also their resistance. So as we [00:24:00] metabolize this trauma, it means, the healing is that it isn't held in our bodies anymore.
It's not held by us anymore. And another big part of it is it means it's not passed down, so we don't pass it down to our children I think that as an adoptee, this is really significant as we already ... First, that we're connected to anything, but also to know, as adoptees, we already know that we've inherited some ancestral trauma directly through our parents being separated.
For many of us also, if we just, read about our histories, we know that our communities and countries have also experienced a lot of trauma. And so there's so much healing to do that has been inherited. And as I move through this, honestly, I have felt resentful, like kinda mad. Like, why am I the one healing up my family lines when they're the ones that, in my mind I would say rejected me?
It really feels [00:25:00] like that, and I had to really, and I still sometimes really grapple with that. But now, a lot of times I'm in a place of awe because there's also so much joy in the healing especially my last recent trip to Korea, that I as an adoptee have this opportunity and have been the one to come back and begin the healing for my ancestors, after I don't even know how many generations.
And it feels not only like an honor, but a miracle. As for many of us, it's a journey just to get to that place of healing, so it took me so long to even go to Korea, and then it took a long time to learn about healing and spiritual healing, and then to come to this point of going to Korea and doing this healing work, it was a miracle in itself.
I think for many of us that's true. And there's also so much joy and resilience that we inherit from our people. That's part of the healing as well, and I've [00:26:00] learned that this is so big and so joyful, but connecting to the resilience and joy of the people, many that have survived, we're proof of that as their descendants, that they're strong.
We're here, and we are proof of the resilience and joy and strength of our ancestors by being alive, and that we had to do a lot of work to get here. And we were led to this, so I believe that when I went back to Korea, it was, to do the ancestral healing work, it was because I had been led and guided by my ancestors.
And Daeyeon talks a lot about reclamation, and I believe this is a big part of it. It's part of the healing. It's also reclaiming of what was lost, our inheritance, what was severed, not just for us, but for our people. And she recently reminded me and talked about, the reclamation, the healing I think too is a process, and this [00:27:00] also resonated with me.
And I think what's so great about it is- We don't have to have access to our first families. We can still do this work. The healing that comes from connecting to our ancestors, our ancestral field, which is bigger than just our lineage, but it's the collective ancestral field, so our histories, our spiritual practices, and reclamation of that, especially as adoptees.
But the healing that can come from that connection. So that could be like doing an altar. It could be, and if that's healing for you because you feel like you're honoring or calling in your ancestor, your well ancestor. So if that's healing for you, that's a ancestral healing. If it's asking for support.
So sometimes I just, when I first started, I was like, "Okay, I'm just gonna give it a try." So I would literally be driving and I would say, "Fine, can you help me teach this class?" Or, "Can you help me figure out this [00:28:00] issue?" And I would feel supported. And the healing that comes through that by being like, oh, there is someone, there are...
There is this entity, whatever. If you call it spirit, the universe, I think that's healing to also feel like we have something in our past or in our lineage or that is somehow connected to us that isn't connected actually to our first family, our bloodline. And you can of course have ancestral healing through your bloodline, but that is difficult for us as adoptees.
So the healing that can come from that, I think it's even connected to the land. So if the land is here, and like getting energy, that's ancestral because I think if you go far enough, all of our ancestors were connected to the land, and actually were connected to their bodies. And so I think any healing that comes from that connection, I would consider ancestral healing as well.
Haley Radke: I think I like the idea of this so much because [00:29:00] many of us feel like we were just, dropped, I guess- from the proverbial stork or just from out of nowhere into our adoptive families. And that can feel very disconnected. Like-
Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: Yes ...
Haley Radke: and so whether reunion is even on the table you mention that you were able to find birth family through a birth search, but for many Korean adoptees, I understand the stat is 95% don't or something like that.
It's very unusual. And for a lot of us, we maybe did get a reunion, but there's no connection now. And so there's this longing for information or just I'm gonna keep saying the same word, connection, that feels like it's not possible.
Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: Yes.
Haley Radke: And so I like this idea of maybe I can build it in a different way.
Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: Yes. And that is what I'm so glad you said the word [00:30:00] longing, because ... So I have two thoughts. So the first one is actually, I was talking to Daeyeon, the director and founder of Ancestral Korea, and my friend and teacher. And one of the first things she said in her, in one of the workshops that was so powerful for me and multiple people that I talked to after, is she said that longing, which I think for us, it feels like an untethering.
We're longing for connection. Yeah, I think sometimes I think of myself, I used to think of myself just literally in space, like with no connection. It's ... You talk about that, too. It's called, there's a whole episode that, on the un- the nothing place, the nothing-
Haley Radke: The nothing place, yep.
Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: The nothing place. And Daeyeon said the longing is evidence that we are connected, and this can be seen as an anchor. So there's this reframe. The longing is evidence that we are connected, and we are being called to be connected [00:31:00] to our roots, our ancestors. And that reframe was so powerful. So instead of thinking of it as this emptiness for me, it actually, I had this vision of it becoming like a light, like this connection.
Why else would I have gone to Korea and done this gone on this mountain? It was this longing. And actually, that longing has always been there, but it has felt so empty because I didn't have an entry point. And I think that the other thing is it's so powerful for us as adoptees, and I used to always say that "Oh, we can connect to our ancestors," because the way that Daeyeon, I was sharing this with her, I'm like, "This is so powerful for adoptees."
She's not an adoptee. And the way that she described it that I now share with others is she says it's most people have acce- if there's an ocean, think about an ocean, and that's actually our collective ancestral field. So not just our lineage, but the whole field of all of our ancestors.
Adoptees maybe don't [00:32:00] have access to five feet of it, but actually, there's this whole ocean that we have access to, and it's just as hard to get to for us as other people. And so the other thing I share with clients and people I talk to is I say, "It's the great equalizer." We're all on the same ... it's just as powerful and also just as hard for us, actually, as it is for non-adoptees.
And that feels actually really great. And then you know for native adoptees, there's research, for indigenous adoptees, the power of finding, connecting to their origin story. Suicide ideation goes down and ... But it's the same for us, and I think we're so used to thinking like, "Oh, indigenous practices."
I remember looking a long time ago for- what are the indigenous practices for Korean people? But it's just been wiped out on purpose. It's political. But we all have it, so it's the same. We can all do it as adoptees, even, BIPOC adoptees and non-BIPOC [00:33:00] adoptees, we all have those.
We just have to seek it out. So if you feel that longing and it resonates, just ask for guidance and see what happens. I really believe you'll find it.
Haley Radke: The other thing I feel like is connected to this is I've had a few different conversations with adoptees over the years that mention in some way they've gone back to somewhere they knew their biological family had lived, or either literally a house or just the area they were or those kinds of things.
And of course, I think of transnational adoptees going back to their country of origin and just having a shift, just... You were talking about this connection to the land as well. And I know it kinda sounds woo-woo, but I don't know, I think there's something to that. A lot of people have had this big mental shift happen when they all of [00:34:00] a sudden are in the same place that they know someone literally connected to you by your DNA also was here before you.
Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: Yes. Yeah. It's so powerful. I'm just thinking how we went to Taebaeksan. So one of the things that we did in this reclamation is we go to this mountain. I'm not athletic. We climb this mountain that is the spine of Korea, and it was so powerful. I... because you f- I felt like when I returned, when I went to that mountain, I had returned to Korea I don't know, 17 years before that and have gone back, but I felt like I was returning for real this time.
I don't know. I had been open to being received by my ancestors and the land, and I think that what Daeyeon says is that actually they're waiting for us. The land, if you think of the land as something alive, which I do, and even those places, they still have the [00:35:00] energy of our ancestors and the people who cared for us.
Even if it's going back to the place where our orphanage was or our group home there's something there. Yeah. And so I think it calls us back. Yeah, it's an embodied experience and a spiritual experience. It is woo. I love the woo. Actually, I live, I kinda embrace the woo.
Haley Radke: Can you share with us what was it like when you moved to Korea as a 30-something?
Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: Oh, my gosh. Yeah. I re- I think I was, like, so brave and maybe a little disassociative because I wasn't- ... as I am now. Because I really, I struggle to cry even now. I really... So I, that actually might have helped me get through it. This is so significant. I think about this. When I left, some of the people that showed me off were actually Amy and Saul, who I talked about.
And Amy's husband is a [00:36:00] musician and was singing this Somewhere Over the Rainbow song on a ukulele, and I'm waving, and it's I feel like I'm in a movie. And I literally get through the gate and I start bawling. I'm like, "What am I doing?" But then I got on the plane, and I remember eating Korean food, like bibimbap, which I've gotten every single time now since I've flown.
But the first time I ate it, I'm like, "This is amazing." Everything felt so sensational. Like, when I moved there, it was hard. Sometimes I say it was, like, the hardest thing I did in my whole life, and after doing that, I feel like I can do anything. But also, it was so heart-wrenching to be there, and it was really hard the way I was treated sometimes.
And also, on the flip side, I received so much love, and it was so powerful and transformative, and everything feels special, I felt. And I built a [00:37:00] community there. So when I look back, sometimes I don't know how I did it, actually, but I think the orphanage helped. By the time I left Korea, I was going there every day after school and just hanging out with the babies, and then hanging out with the Wonjeong.
I didn't speak good Korean and she didn't speak that much English, but we would just sit there together. And I think for her, she saw me as maybe a child that she raised kinda coming back. And I think what's... I think about now as I'm, as I go back now, I have a landing place. So I call it my Korean hometown.
So when I go back to Korea now, I will go there and I have places to stay and I have friends there, and I realized, oh, I created a life there. And I feel so privileged by that because it is so meaningful for me. And then I also think about other adoptees who go to Korea, which I've also done, and you don't know anyone, and I know what that's [00:38:00] too.
And my yearning is actually for all adoptees who want it to be able to go back and have some sort of landing place. It was the hardest thing I did, but it was one of the most beautiful things I did, and made me feel more Korean, actually. Which is bad, because you say, "We are Korean," but I felt so adopted there, and when my birth mother- kind of stopped talking to me because what happened was when I told her I was moving there, before when we first made contact, she was, she wrote a lot of letters. And then when I told her I was moving there, her letters actually stopped, which was strange to me, but now I understand it.
And then when I moved there, we had some contact, but what happened was I, as I was living there, I realized, oh, there's these ... She had told me my first father had passed away. So as I lived there, I realized, oh, I actually wanna go to his site, his grave site. That's a thing. So I asked her about [00:39:00] it, and then she didn't talk to me I think for six or nine months.
And then I saw her right before I left, but what I realized is her family didn't know about me. So I found this out through my cousin, my birth cousin. She said, "Oh, yeah, we didn't know about you." But she told me stuff like my birth mother couldn't have a child, so my sister who I met, who was 20 years younger than me, she is actually adopted domestically in Korea.
So she told me that my first mother, she couldn't have any children, so she ended up adopting, which I heard actually is not uncommon of, the trauma of the separation of your child. But I just think it was so hard for her, and she was scared, I think, of me derailing her life. And so I kinda just let it be.
And I understand adoptees that don't, but then I just immersed myself in the orphanage. And since then, I think after I left for [00:40:00] Korea, I went back and I think I saw her one more time, but she hasn't responded to emails or anything recently. And I just sent an email maybe a year ago because one of my friends, we were talking and she said, "You know how adoptees, we're, like, ready for rejection, so we're like, 'Oh, if you're gonna reject me, I'm just gonna let it go.'"
And she was like, "Are you..." She didn't say, "Are you doing that?" But she brought it up and I thought, "Okay, I wanna make sure I'm not doing that." So I emailed her again and I didn't hear anything, I'm okay. It's that secondary rejection, and I had to process it when I was in Korea, which was intense. But I don't know. It is what it is.
Haley Radke: Yeah, I experienced secondary rejection as well. This is interesting. Do you know much about domestic adoption in Korea?
Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: A little bit, because I volunteered at the orphanage, but that was 15 years ago, and I was a child welfare worker already.
I'd already worked in child welfare. So I was like, "What the heck is happening here?" There was, like, no court structure. [00:41:00] Here we go to court in the States at least every six months. We have to say, "This is how the child is doing. This is what we're doing to try to reunify the child with their families."
But there it wasn't like that at all However, now, with everything that's happening and the new child welfare agency, the federal agency, the orphanage, there actually is a lot more structure for the kids. I don't know that they're really going back to their families often, and I also don't think they're getting adopted as much as here, but it is increasing.
I don't know the statistics, but I do know, adoption internationally has basically ended in Korea, which is good. But I think it's hard because there's so much emphasis on the bloodline. You even have to give your gajog your family bloodline when you go to school. So I think it's really around the old Confucius.
So I think it's the cultural piece that prevents adoptions. But [00:42:00] one thing that is interesting that's changed in the last 15 years is when I lived there, they were telling me a lot of the children, some of the kids had family still, so they would go to their families for holidays, which I thought that would be so difficult.
And they were adopted, they were in the orphanage being single parent, a single mother. And so I was thinking, gosh, these are all this could be prevented. But now they were telling me it's a lot of times from abuse or neglect, so it's actually changing a little bit. This is just from the story I heard a month ago talking to the new director of the orphanage.
But I think it's changing, and hopefully the kids would be less kids being really, separated from their families and then more adoptions for those that have to be adopted.
But there is more oversight, which is good, because I remember thinking, "I could literally take one of these kids with me and nobody would know."
If I could get them through customs, the court wouldn't know. The orphanage would know, but there was just no [00:43:00] oversight, I felt, and that was interesting for me and hard for me to see as a, as a social worker.
Haley Radke: Think about all the years of them just making stuff up on forms, and let's just name this kid the next, name down our list that we just rotate through, and what day were they found on? I don't know. Which police station steps were they found on? Oh, my God.
Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: Yeah, and it was sad to see the kids still there. So a lot of the kids that I saw in the baby room are the k- I just watched them grow up actually and age out. Yeah. And that broke me.
Haley Radke: God, there are just so many downstream issues from upstream problems that I really hope we can work on as society. Geez. Is there anything I didn't ask you about that you wanna make sure we talk about today
Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: Yeah, what about [00:44:00] my name? What do you think about the name and the saju?
Haley Radke: What about your name? I think your name is changing. What? Tell me more.
Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: Okay, so the name change is connected to the ancestral Korea, but first, it's connected to my birthday as well.
So I'm in transition, I believe, and my friend Daeyeon said, "It's like your process of reclamation, like the reclaiming and healing." And also part of, I think, what you asked around ancestral healing. But when I was in Korea last time, through ancestral Korea, I was able to get my saju read, which is our birth chart, which has always been a trigger for me.
I've heard you talk about it. I think adoptees, it's like one of the table talks we have. It's "Oh, what-"
Haley Radke: Do you know your real birthday? What's your horoscope?
Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: Yeah, and what time were you born? And so I actually said, "I don't know my time." And she said, actually, in the saju, which is the Korean birth chart the time is later, so she said that's okay.
But she read my saju, and she, through reading the saju, because, I'm [00:45:00] 45, she was able to figure out when my birthday was. So that's actually part of the process of reading the saju, for adoptees at least, is I said my birthday, I was always told my birthday, my legal birthday is October 26th."
But when I met my first mother, I was asking her about my time. I said, "Oh, do you know what time I was born?" Because of course I wanted to get my chart read. And she said, "No, I don't, but, you were born on October 28th." And I, my Korean's not good, so I was like, "Wait a minute, what did you say?" And she said, "Oh, yeah, you were born on October 28th."
So I always wondered, who do I believe? My birth mother, my first mother, who was probably very traumatized, or, the paperwork. So I've always wondered. So part of the saju was we went through the dates, and she... you can tell which date is yours. So I think for October 26th, the characteristics were, like, you have a lot of siblings, which I don't.[00:46:00]
You are really harsh, like your words are, they slice, which definitely is not me. So she went through the days, and actually, we went through the whole week, I think. But October 28th was definitely me. In my saju, in this... So not only did I find my birth date, but what can be healing about the saju is it makes you realize a lot of the things that you've experienced, it's actually part of our healing and journey.
So in my saju, it ha- it shows the endings of my mothers. It actually shows- endings with my first mother, my adoptive mother, and then it actually shows this coming in of the mothering I received from my mother-in-law and then actually I think Tracy's mom, my best friend's mom. But it's in my Saju.
My adoption basically is in my Saju. So I found my birthday. So now on the 28th I get Korean food, and that can be really powerful for us as adoptees. And then the other thing that we can do as adoptees is our names have always been, I think, tricky. I [00:47:00] actually asked my birth mother, "Did you name me SooJin?"
And she said, "No, I didn't name you that." And I said, "Oh did you name me?" And she said, "I didn't name you." Which is so sad, right? But what you can do in your Saju, there's actually a tradition in Korea, it's called a Ho, and it is a new name you get. I think it's like a spiritual name, but it's a name that's actually supposed to support you in your journey and whatever you wanna support.
And the Ho, the idea with your Ho is when you say your name like Yu SooJin, when I say that I'm calling in the energy of that name, which I think is connected to the elements. So what your name holds, you're calling that energy. And so what she does is she reads your Saju and then you can get a Ho.
You can get a new name that actually supports your Saju and supports you in what you need. So they do it so it's completely balanced and your name is balanced. So actually it's interesting, she said Yu SooJin is actually a really balanced name, so I didn't change my name. [00:48:00] And she said it seemed like the orphanage, it was intentional.
And I thought, "There's no way that was intentional," because it was through Holt, which is Christian. But I was watching my friend Michael Tessier's talk, and he said that actually the social workers in the orphanages, they do, they did create our names. Some of them did create our names on purpose using our Sajus.
So I think whoever created my name put a lot of intention in it, and so I'm actually continuing to use my... I'm not changing my name, but I'm in process of slowly, I think, starting to go by SooJin.
Haley Radke: Okay. Interesting. When I was making light of the list of things before, I didn't mean workers were thoughtfully, choosing based on these different things. I meant that they used to have these spreadsheets where they'd be like, "Oh, baby number two this one, this year gets this name."
Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: I [00:49:00] think a lot of them do.
Haley Radke: Yeah.
Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: But I think some, maybe they didn't. And I think it shows you how actually even though they're Christian, it kinda shows you how our ancestral and indigenous practices are actually really mainstream and they, it's just like- intertwined.
But yeah, that surprised me actually. And I didn't believe it, and then I actually had to verify with my friend. Did they? They told him that at Holt. They said, "Oh, no, they do that." I had no idea. I wouldn't have thought. And that might have been a very rare thing, and I don't know how much they did it, but yeah.
Haley Radke: Okay. SooJin. I like it.
Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: Oh, yeah, I, yeah, I think it rings nice.
Haley Radke: Lovely. We didn't talk too much about AIRE, but for recommended resources, I wanna make sure people know a little bit more about your organization. So can you tell us a little bit about it and why you started [00:50:00] it?
Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: Yes. AIRE Roots. So AIRE is my therapy, and also AIRE Roots is the community mobilizing leg of it.
And so this is a group of adoptees, BIPOC adoptees, and we started it to support other BIPOC adoptees. We realized that we have so much privilege and knowledge, a lot of us as Korean adoptees, so we wanted to support other organizations or upcoming organizations or individuals with capacity-building to actually create their own organization or mentoring program.
Or even if it's we're an indigenous group of adoptees, or I'm an indigenous adoptee and I wanna just do a potluck and see who's out there, we wanna support that. And we can support, we support that through agenda-making, promoting, but we also have some money. So we received a grant through Asian Counseling Referral Services, and they so they've supported us to get [00:51:00] started.
We're also fiscally sponsored, so we can get grants, but we're not at that point yet. We need to start fundraising. But it's actually capacity-building for individuals or organizations. So if you're interested in, we're actually looking for projects. So if you're an adoptee, and it's BIPOC adoptees, but if you're interested and have an idea, we're open to it.
We're based in Washington State, but I think if it's something online, just please contact us. And we're also doing affinity group. So we're starting one for QTBIPOC adoptees and parenting adoptees. But really, our goal in it is to fill whatever gaps if there's any gaps that we see. So I think there, for me, I kept saying "There's a need for this," and it actually came out of a focus group.
But anyways, we do capacity-building affinity groups, and we're bringing in some speakers this year, I think two speakers. We're trying to find speakers that are representative of m- like, more marginalized BIPOC [00:52:00] adoptee groups though. So maybe not Korean or even Chinese But we're really trying to help other adoptee groups find one another and actually highlight the voices.
And then we are also, we did some work with JaeRan and Angela Tucker. We're doing a SAM project. We did a SAM project, so we looked at mentoring programs and what the training needed to be. So that was something we did. We try to collaborate also with other orgs. So the biggest thing coming up is the BIPOC Adoptee Conference in Portland.
We're working with Adoption Mosaic and the TIES program to do some events together. So we're also really supportive and try to collaborate as much as possible, because I think our community sometimes is really siloed. And so we're trying to collaborate, because we're stronger together.
Haley Radke: I love that. And you never said, but it stands for Adoption Identity Race Exploration, which I love that.
Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: And the AIRE Roots comes from the monstera. It was a [00:53:00] monstera, but the idea is I thought of it before Roots is so popular now, but it was this idea of air roots, because I think of us as trees and we're growing, but actually later on in life, we create these roots with community and we get stronger.
And that's how I think of us as adoptees, growing these air roots. And so we're hopefully helping to support that. Yeah, 'cause we played around with AIRE Roots. We were almost AIRE Space AIRE Talk. And then I was in the kitchen and I was like, "What are those?" And my partner was like, "Those are air roots."
And I was like, "Oh my gosh, that's what it is. It's AIRE roots."
Haley Radke: That is awesome. That's a great story. Amazing. What do you wanna recommend to us?
I love, love, love the Adoptee Consciousness Model, and actually it's from JaeRan Kim, Susan Branco, and Grace Newton. If you haven't looked into the Adoptee Consciousness Model, they have a website now that is so great.
You can just look at the model and click on it and click on each of the stages [00:54:00] that are not linear, and it'll show you what it looks like, what support. But I love this model and I actually use it with clients all the time. I think it helps normalize our experience and it gives us a starting point to talk.
The other thing that can be found on JaeRan Kim's website, Harlow's Monkey, which I also love, because it's just this amazing website with tons of resources. And so I use that also. There's research, there's books, there's media, and I use that with my clients as well. Sometimes we'll go on and we'll pick a book to read together off of that.
But I think that those are great starting points for adoptees, and also not just starting points, but actually places that we keep coming back to with Adoptee Consciousness Model.
Yeah, totally. Totally. We've talked about those before here, and I loved hearing you're using them with clients, which is-
Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: Oh, I love it. I use it ...
Haley Radke: I think what they intended, right? To help us navigate This [00:55:00] be all these different layers to our experiences, especially over time. Thank you so much. This was such a good conversation. I really enjoyed speaking with you. Where can folks connect with you online, follow your work, and see what AIRE Roots has to offer?
Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: Yeah, so you can just go to aireroots.com, and that's for the ther- I, I actually am full right now, but I'm really committed for any adoptee, not just BIPOC adoptee. If you're seeking therapy, I'll help you find a therapist. So I do consultations for free for adoptees. So even though I'm not open right now, you can reach out and I have a list of adoptees and we'll just work together.
So aireroots.com, and then I would also check out The Ancestral Korea. I think it's ancestralkorea.com. So that's where you can find us. We're on Instagram, AIRE Roots. We're not super active. We're working on it. But yeah, that's where you can find me, and you can reach out to me through the [00:56:00] AIRE Roots, and I'm always open actually to talking to adoptees.
Yeah, especially helping connect and find resources.
Haley Radke: Thank you. Thank you.
Friend, I have been talking about this all year, and it is finally here. If you are listening to this when it drops in real time, then please watch your podcast feed on July 1st for a special 10-year anniversary show before we take our summer break.
Thank you so much for listening. Let's talk again soon.
